August 31, 2006 Issue
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Classified Chestnut Hill Local Online Editor Don't Miss an Issue, Tell us what you see or ©2006 Chestnut Hill Local Winner of One |
Local LifeA double dancing dose of
‘Mt. Airy Amber’ for 76ers
If you visited the Philadelphia 76ers’ Web site last week and looked up entertainment for the coming season, you would already be familiar with Mt. Airy’s Amber Rawls. As one of the Sixers Dancers, Rawls, 26, along with fellow Mt. Airy resident, Amber-Joi Watkins, 21, and 15 other dancers are part of the NBA franchise’s entertainment package. (What are the odds that both Mt. Airy members would be named Amber — a million to one?) Featured alongside team mascot Hip-Hop; the gymnast group, Hare Raisers; the Broad Street Beefcakes, a super-sized male dance team; and the Junior Dancers (ages 9-12); the Sixers Dancers are more than cheerleaders, as Rawls and Watkins tell it, both on and off the court. Rawls still lives in the East Mount Airy house she grew up in as the daughter of restaurant manager and single mom, Yvette Rawls-Gypton (now remarried to retired police officer Harold Gypton). She and her son, Cion, 5, often bike around the neighborhood where she and her older sisters, Tammy, 32, and Brandy, 30, spent their youth. Her parents live just three blocks away.
Ellie Seif (pronounced Sife) has a passion for learning and a method of teaching that allows those around her to gain a better understanding of the value and beauty of friendship in our world today. A resident of Mt. Airy for over 35 years, Seif, 65, recently took her approach to a faraway land that played a major role in her young adult life. In 2005, Seif and her husband Elliot, also 65, took a three-week tour of Vietnam and Cambodia. Seif returned with a new story to teach.
It may be a contradiction in terms, but that hasn’t stopped the High Point Café from cooking up The World’s First Organic Pie-Eating Contest — a high-stakes, high-calorie, low-pesticide event if ever there was one. The contest is one of several dozen activities scheduled for the upcoming Mt. Airy Village Fair, itself a first-time venture. On Sunday, September 10, pastry chef Jim Flail will rise at his usual 4 a.m. to begin preparing the fine confections the café has become known for. He’ll then go on to bake an extra 10 nine-inch organic fruit pies – centerpieces for what is anticipated to be a riveting contest at 1 p.m., in front of the café.
“I wanted my own theater company even as a nine-year-old when I started doing theater in elementary school,” Mt. Airy resident Lisa Jo Epstein said last week. Her Gas & Electric Arts Company is, 30 years later, the fulfillment of that dream. Now in its second year, Gas & Electric Arts’ mission “is to create highly refined, viscerally evocative theater that engages our hearts, senses and imagination while broaching oft-unspoken but ever-present social concerns.
This is the 19th in an ongoing series of articles by Paula M. Riley on Chestnut Hill area volunteers I have been writing every week in the Local about big-hearted area residents who generously donate their time to local non-profit organizations, but these same organizations could not exist if not for voluntary contributions of money as well as time. And when it comes to donating money to organizations, localite Bennett Fairorth — although he is no billionaire Bill Gates or Donald Trump — might qualify for the Guinness Book of World Records under “Most Charitable Donations.” Each year on February 1, Bennett starts saving the letters. Though they arrive from organizations throughout Philadelphia and across the world, they all make the same request: please contribute money. That is exactly what Fairorth does! After collecting and alphabetizing the solicitation letters, he creates
a list of the organizations that solicited him for funds. During the first
days of June, Fairorth writes a check to every single organization that
has sent him a request. This year, he contributed to 747 organizations
— over $17,000 in all!
On entering McNally’s, the green-doored institution with the little brass plaque at 8634 Germantown Ave., one gets the cozy feeling of a neighborhood bar. But it is far more than that. This wood-paneled comfort zone with its checked-cloth tables and wood bar seats 50, more or less, and seemingly has not changed in years. The rafters, festooned with past customers’ beer mugs, appear to have been there forever — but rafters and mugs actually date from a major 1960s’ renovation when the old pressed tin ceiling was replaced. Some mugs are still used; these are kept behind the bar.
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