Click here for an article from the Allentown newspaper, about the Phantoms' potential move there.

I hasten to add that Allentown should have had a minor-league team with another league, I think it was the UHL, a good 8-10 years ago. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was told that they dug a hole in the ground to start building the arena for them and that's as far as it got.

Yeah, that bodes real well for this idea.

Meanwhile, Joe M. and I discussed my previous posts, and he offered several suggestions regarding how the Phan Club might lead the charge to Fight City Hall. Too bad our Board Meeting was last Saturday. The next General Meeting is in mid-July, so we'll have to discuss it with the membership then.

We discussed said topic at Riverview Plaza, the ONLY movie theater left in South Philly. It's in great condition, it has multiple screens, and it draws well. However, for whatever reason, it IS NOT enough of a magnet to support the businesses that immediately surround it. I pointed out four major empty sites in their plaza, all of which have suffered repeated turnover. Even the sites currently occupied by a pizza place and a restaurant, literally the only two tenants I can recall seeing this afternoon, are only situated in those places due to turnover. There's not a satellite business in that plaza that's been there since the site was established, other than the movie theater they were built to entice patrons to/draw patrons from.

It's the only site like this anywhere near here, on this side of the river, and it can't keep tenants. Philly Live! is supposed to be a grand total of a couple miles away from this site, and full of LUXURY places into the bargain. How is that supposed to draw people in, when the nearest one-stop-entertainment-plaza is sputtering along? But the blinded-by-dollar-signs crowd can't (or refuses to) perceive that. They're too deafened by the cha-chings they're imagining will be resounding along Pattison Avenue. I wish them the fate of Icarus.

Anyway, a-HEM. Stepping off the soapbox now... In other news, the movie we saw, WALL-E, was thoroughly enjoyable. I'd gladly recommend it to anyone. Even if the freakin' theater nearly forgot to show it to us, lol. We sat there in the minutes prior to the movie's scheduled start time, and thought it was odd that there were NO ads playing on the screen. None. Then the start time of the movie came and went, and STILL nothing happened. Joe finally went out to speak to someone in management -- an "old man in a suit" -- who used a walkie-talkie to call for a guy named Jimmy. I'm not sure if Jimmy was the person who should have been on duty but failed to report to his station, or if Jimmy was filling in for an AWOL projectionist. Either way, within a minute or two of this exchange, the house lights went down and the previews started. On with the show!

Anyway, tomorrow continues my two-week stretch of having at least one thing on my plate per day. I hope to heck I get more sleep tonight than I did last night (next to none). Farging insomnia.