Beer Store

COMING TO America in 2012: The World's Greatest Beer. It's Westvleteren 12 , a Belgian rarity brewed at the tiny St. Sixtus Trappist monastery by a brotherhood of notoriously secretive monks. Packaged in a plain brown bottle with no label, Westvleteren 12 has consistently ranked as either the No. 1 or No. 2 brand over the past decade at RateBeer.com and BeerAdvocate.com. Along with its less potent (but equally delicious) sisters, Westvleteren Blonde and Westvleteren 8 , it is typically sold only at the monastery and only under a bizarre set of rules designed to protect the monks' privacy.

LEON DICKSON raped a 12-year-old girl on her way to school. Jerry Barker assaulted a woman with Down syndrome. And Malik Torian molested a 5-year-old boy. The three convicted sex offenders served time behind bars. After their release from prison, they were required to report their whereabouts to state police at least once a year under Megan's Law - for the rest of their lives . They failed to do so. Now, the U.S. Marshals Service is aggressively seeking the fugitives under Operation Guardian, a national effort to capture the 500 most-dangerous unregistered sex offenders in the country.

Reader: Do you agree that there is a dearth of good Mexican restaurants in the western suburbs (esp. the Main Line)? Have you heard about the two new Mexican places about to open in Wayne? C.L.: Wayne is getting two new places, Matador and Xilantro. I'm most intrigued by Xilantro, owned by the folks behind El Sarape, which I've heard good things about. The Fort Washington folks are hoping to get happy with Cantina Feliz, the forthcoming nuevo mex from ex-Garces hand Tim Spinner.

An 18-year-old man accused of stealing a car in Southwest Philadelphia with two children in the backseat was in custody yesterday and was charged with more than a dozen offenses, police said. The children were safe and back with their parents, police added. "They were very lucky. Anything could have happened to them," said Capt. Gerald Baker. "They were out there for a half-hour in an alley. " It all began Saturday at 9:05 p.m. Hae Young Park and his wife had just made their last sale and were closing down their beer-distribution store for the night.

Santorum must fear equality under the law As a lawyer, Mitchell Sommers should know better than to suggest that Sen. Rick Santorum has a valid point in suggesting that if gay consensual sex is legal, then bigamy, polygamy, adultery and incest must also be legal ("Santorum makes a valid point on sex," May 1.) There are many examples to indicate that this is not true. The most obvious is that laws banning prostitution, also a private, consensual act, remain effective. If there is a fear that the right to privacy would wreak havoc with other laws, then the Texas sodomy laws must be struck down for reasons of equal protection.

Greg Spearman and his neighbors have stood like sentries for more than a year outside a store in their West Philadelphia neighborhood, shooing away anyone who tries to purchase beer, malt liquor or groceries. They want 55 Fortune at 55th Street and Larchwood Avenue closed because they say such stores, known as "stop-and-gos" because they sell take-out beer and malt liquor, attract people who drink outside, loiter, and commit crimes. "The only way to shut them down is by what we're doing," Spearman said.

What this world needs is a uniform system of freshness dating. Most beer sold in America is packaged and labeled with a date that tells when the suds were brewed or when one might reasonably expect the stuff to turn into rotgut. These dates, unfortunately, are almost always indecipherable. Pick up a Heineken and you'll see something like: IPE 0089K 72496050207 10. Somewhere in there, I'm told, is Sept. 6, 1997. Others notch their paper labels, as if the head brewer had pulled out his penknife and personally whittled your bottle.

Three weeks ago, Jacqueline Arnao, 78, watched helplessly from inside a cashier's office as her 87-year-old husband, bloodied from a pistol-whipping during a holdup at their North Philadelphia beer store, staggered toward her. That attack left Joseph Arnao hospitalized for two days, and his wife determined no one would hurt him again. So when three masked men, one brandishing a sawed-off shotgun, tried to rob the couple's business, J & J Beer Mart at 10th Street and Montgomery Avenue, about 6:15 Thursday night, Arnao's first thought was for her husband's safety.

It's a tall order, this Bloque de Oro. Here in North Philadelphia, ghosts of plastic flap in flowered treetops and the graffiti require high gymnastics. Kids, somehow, have mounted the sign of the Laundercenter, dancing an antisocial ballet with spray can. From this 12-inch stage, six-foot scrawly letters now rise, up and over the cream facade, 20 feet above the ground. The Bloque de Oro - the Golden Block - is the Fifth Street heart of the Latino community, a stretch of commerce and resourcefulness, a place of pride and perseverance.