Sal Panto's King

This blogger has taken a number of shots at Sal Panto, especially concerning his Al Bundy Museum of High School Sports. For a wise-guy like me, Panto is the gift that keeps on giving. Last week Sal announced that an African King would be visiting Easton. Panto said that he's "very royal" and that he could go anywhere, but chose Easton. Turns out the kingdom is pretty much limited to inside the guy's head. In the past, Panto has invited me to Easton to discuss, face to face, those things which I criticize, such as the Lanta Terminal. If he's willing to give me the royal treatment, I will come.

Party On The Deck

Tomorrow, from 5 to 8PM Allentown will have it's annual Party On Top of the Former Hess's Parking Deck. The party will alternatively be known as Melt Your Cheerleading Ass as the temperature hovers around 100 degrees. Regular readers on this blog know that such language is not my norm, but neither is the delusion and distortion brought to Allentown by this Administration.

A Road Runs Through It

Once, there was a time when gasoline was twenty five cents a gallon, there was no internet, and a family would go for a drive on Sunday. There was no traffic congestion or road rage. The cars were large, and they all came from Detroit. You could drive through a park, even an amusement park. There was no rush to get back to the television; It was very small, with only a few channels. Life now seems to revolve around small silicon chips, I preferred when it was large engines.

photograph shows the road through Dorney Park
reprinted from December 2010

The Barrooms of Allentown

The Allentown of my youth had bars and working men, and lots of both. After work, the men would sit on the stools at their favorite tavern, and have a few shots and beer. Most of these bars were made from former row houses, and many have reverted back to such; Allentown's organic that way. These barrooms were small, only the length of the former combined living and dining rooms. The customers were all men, and the beer was local. Some of the larger ones were called hotels, and rented rooms above. The current apartment house on the southeast corner of 8th and Liberty Streets was called Ripenstahls, where many men lived and drank over the years. Shots now has a different meaning in Allentown.


photograph by Carl Rubrecht, circa 1970

Fill Wanted

By the late 1950's, residential Allentown was pretty much built up. The remaining lots were of the odd ball topography; Most of which were either significantly above, or below street level. It was common to see signs which said either Fill Wanted, or Free Fill, depending on the odd lots problem. We have an odd lot problem on Hamilton Street, between 7th and 8th. Currently, there is enormous political pressure to make sure that Allentown doesn't remain with a hole downtown. We got this hole because our esteemed political leaders figured that if they could pull off the caper fast enough, there would be no stopping them. That hole should now be filled in, even if the citizens eventually decide that an arena should be built. No project costing a quarter $billion dollars should be built just because we already have the hole.

photo:Harry Fisher/The Morning Call

Celebrate Allentown

This week Allentown City Council will decide if the new Managing Director must live in Allentown; A better question would be if Allentown needs a managing director. This new position was created by Mayor Pawlowski in 2006 to help him manage the city. Depending upon who you ask, anywhere from 30 to 44 new white collar positions have been created by this Administration, while at the same time police officers are retiring in mass, and the streets are strewn with litter. One of the positions the Manager would overseer is the Special Events Manager. Yesterday, Hamilton Street was closed for CELEBRATE ALLENTOWN, nobody came.  Nobody coming was the good news, the bad news was what the street closure cost the merchants. This was the third Saturday that Hamilton Street was recently closed to traffic. Matthew Tuerk told the reporter covering the event he was having a great time. Matt once again forgot to mention he's acting director of the Allentown Economic Development Corporation. In July a private promoter, Alfonso Todd, produced UPWARD BOUND, a Multi-Cultural Celebration on the 600 block of Hamilton Street. That event was reasonably well attended at no cost to the taxpayers. It required no full time director with benefits and pension to manage a full time coordinator with benefits and pension. I suspect the taxpayers could have sent the few people who attended on Saturday to DisneyWorld, for a week, and still saved money.

reprinted from September 2008


UPDATE 2012: It's four years later, the managing director referred to above,  left and returned. The litter remains. The park department is down one third it's former crew. We now have torn down an entire square block to build a $220 million dollar arena, which will use all local and state income tax for the next 30 years.