Farm Films: Urban farming documentary double feature at Drexel tomorrow

For all those guilty of drooling over the fresh produce sprouting up in Philly’s many urban farms, it’s time to stop staring and learn about the roots of this growing movement. The Westphal College at Drexel University is hosting a special screening of two farm-focused films tomorrow, Feb. 7 at 6:30 p.m. First, watch "West Philly Grown," the story of West Philly’s own Mill Creek Farm, a community provider of organic produce and educational programs. Then, stick around to learn about Detroit's urban farming scene in “Urban Roots,” which screens at 7:30 p.m. Once you’re thoroughly motivated to get digging, discover how to turn your farming dreams into reality with a panel discussion featuring leaders of the movement. Admission is $5 or free with a Drexel I.D. The screening is at Drexel’s Bossone Research Center (3140 Market St.).

Carrotmob Comes To Philly

Imagine a world where consumers really did control corporate agendas. Whereby simply choosing to buy from one store over another, consumers could make a business more eco-friendly. This is the Carrotmob model.

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The Lunch Wars: For students and adults fighting for better, healthier school lunches, fresh cafeteria food is an issue of respect

Philadelphia high school student Seth Brown is frank about it: He started skipping lunch more and more this past year. “The rate has increased this year,” says the 18-year-old rising senior at West Philadelphia’s Parkway West High School, “because my English class is above the kitchen.”

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Land Grab: Urban Tree Connection

The Polselli lot at 53rd and Wyalusing in the Haddington section of West Philadelphia was a dangerous eyesore. Equipment from the owner’s contracting business, stripped cars and barrels of gasoline sat nestled in the overgrown weeds.

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A Dream Deferred

Unfortunately, the dream has come to an end. The West Philly Hybrid X Team (profiled in July’s Grid) has been eliminated from the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize Competition. Both the team’s cars failed to reach the mileage standards in the “knock out” round of tests.

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Cover Story: Growth Industry

Nic Esposito and a new generation of urban activists are starting in the garden

Answering a question about his favorite things to grow is a challenge for Nic Esposito. After a few nods to his Italian heritage—eggplants, tomatoes—he settles on a response that speaks volumes about the work he is doing in his West Philadelphia community: “I love planting perennials,” he says with a smile. “It might make me sound lazy, but I love the idea of putting something in the ground—like rosemary or berry bushes—and seeing them grow back. It gives you a stake in where you are.”

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Environmental Effects

Patients as Person, City as Healer?
by Nathaniel Popkin

In the earliest days of the Center for Community Partnerships at Penn, a project I was a part of for a few years in the mid-’90s, we considered (but never executed) a “misery/happiness index” for West Philadelphia. The index was an idea of the historian Lee Benson, the Dewian visionary who believed that an engaged university was a unique engine of participatory democracy. Benson didn’t hope to facilitate another study of an urban neighborhood, but rather he wanted to create a quantifiable tool to help West Philadelphians reflect on the relationship between the quality of their own lives and the condition of the city they live in.

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Free Flow

An abandoned building becomes a hub for social activism in West Philadelphia
by Natalie Hope McDonald

Just off the Number 10 Green Line, west of the sprawling Penn and Drexel campuses and trendy restaurants, past the tiny street corner bodegas and dimly lit bars, a group of aspiring social activists saw something special in an abandoned building at 41st and Lancaster Ave. Up for sheriff’s sale a decade ago, the dilapidated storefront dating back to the 1920s had been taken over by squatters and musicians who mostly borrowed the neglected space for band rehearsals and impromptu powwows.

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