Tianna Valentine was just 18 years old and fresh out of high school when she decided to open her own hair salon. Her mother, Tamika Valentine-Pierce, was nervous for her young daughter, but didn’t want to stand in the way…
What was supposed to be a gathering to protest threatened repeal of the Affordable Care Act turned into something of a celebration Saturday as nearly 100 people showed up at a Germantown meeting hall just hours after Republican leaders in…
The rapper Drake played on the overhead speakers in the Weave Bar on the 5600 block of Germantown Avenue. Black leather swivel chairs lined two of the walls in the salon, and sunshine poured in through the large storefront windows. The sound…
Nadine was 19 years old when she was first incarcerated. After that, she spent most of her life in and out of Pennsylvania state prisons on drug-related charges. Today, she’s been clean for seven years and is now out on…
Under a blazing sun and blue sky, Joe McIntyre dug his shovel into the soft soil, turning it over and over to get it ready for planting. By mid-summer, the small lot in the 100 block of East Rittenhouse Street…
On a warm spring day, a group of fifth graders from the John B. Kelly Elementary School huddled on the banks of the Wissahickon Creek in far Northwest Philadelphia. A college professor plunged a three-foot-long clear plastic tube into the…
Many people in Germantown and other hard-scrabble neighborhoods of Philadelphia will never read this article. That’s because it’s only offered online and more than 100,000 of Philadelphia’s 1.5 million residents can’t afford internet access. The figure, based on a 2013 study…
With Pennsylvania’s presidential primary looming on Tuesday, the campaigns of Democratic rivals Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are heating up in Philadelphia’s Germantown neighborhood, a predominantly black Democratic stronghold of some 40,000 residents that may be a litmus test of…
The house on the 4900 block of Rubicam Street in Germantown was in bad shape. The walls and ceiling had outdated popcorn spackling. A rotten beam on the top floor stretched across half the roof. In front, the roots of a…
Like any new business owner, Zoe Rose was nervous on the day she opened the doors of her new cafe, Happy Bread, in Germantown, But there was a good omen. “Who opens on their first day with the governor stopping…
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