Center City

THE RESTAURANTS and merchants of Rittenhouse Row are gathering again on Walnut Street this Saturday, and that means about 50,000 area residents and guests will be joining them for one of Center City's largest street fairs. The Rittenhouse Row Spring Festival will close Walnut from Broad to 19th streets (from noon until 5 p.m.) and feature food, fashion, entertainment and fun for children. It's big. It's crowded. It's fun. And this year there's a lot of new stuff. * Dunkin' Donuts will be giving out free iced coffee on the 1400 block of Walnut.

Hello there In 2008, Wednesdays were CJ's favorite day of the week. He was a medical case manager at Mazzoni Center, a health center for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people - the same place Alison did mental-health assessments for those beginning hormone treatment. Usually, CJ and Alison worked in separate buildings. On Wednesdays, they shared an office. CJ would tell Alison he needed to talk about a client, even when he had the needed info. "It was a convenient way to follow her around, like a little puppy," he admits.

EYEWITNESS NEWS anchor Susan Barnett is leaving CBS 3 and the CW Philly. Barnett has been at CBS since 2006, anchoring the evening newscasts since 2008. She anchored the 5, 6 and 11 p.m. broadcasts on CBS, and the 10 p.m. broadcast at the CW Philly, along with co-anchor Chris May . Her contract expired in March. "I have decided to not renew my contract with the stations at this time. I am incredibly thankful for having been a part of the CBS Philly family, but I feel that this is the right decision at this time," Barnett said in a statement yesterday.

Bernice Sherman is giving a visitor a tour of her 29th-floor condominium in Center City, nearly breathless as she tries to fit in every detail. See the baby grand piano in the living room? Neighbors sold it to her when they moved. No, she can't play, but it's a great prop for lying across (suitably attired) while entertaining, she says wryly. Isn't the view fabulous from the balcony? You should see it in the summer, she says, with beautiful flowers in pots, and strips of lights wrapped around the fence.

MAYOR NUTTER yesterday took a spin around Rittenhouse Square in a test ride of the bike-share program he hopes to bring to Philly. "It's obviously an economical way to get around and also plays into our health initiatives, takes cars off the street and makes the air cleaner as well," Nutter said to a crowd before hopping on a yellow bike. "It's green, it's clean, it's convenient, and we just want to move the city into this new environment. " Mimicking programs in Washington, Denver and other cities, Philly's bike-share program would feature a series of kiosks throughout the city where riders would pay to rent bikes and return them to any other kiosk.

Jake Blumgart?is a freelance reporter-researcher in Philadelphia One hundred years ago, the United States was a trolley nation. In 1903, more than 30,000 miles of street railway wended their way through America's cities and towns. In the peak year of 1917, America had 72,911 electric streetcars, and total national ridership topped out in 1929 at 15.7 billion trips. But the nation's affections were soon transferred to automobiles, which received extensive subsidies and lavish taxpayer outlays for roads.

Philadelphia didn't need Bicycling magazine to confirm that it is one of America's best biking cities (No. 17 on its 2012 list). You can see it every day on the streets: The steady stream of commuters sluicing down Center City's bike lanes. The tangle of bikes hitched to U-shaped racks and bike corrals. (More, please.) The proliferation of neighborhood bike shops. Philadelphia probably could have ranked higher in the magazine's esteem if it had a bike-sharing program, like most of the list's top 20 cities.

Snow began falling as afternoon slid into evening. With the lights of Center City twinkling around and below her, Jane Miles stood by the vast expanse of windows that line one side of her new 27th-floor condominium in Symphony House, watching. "The snowflakes look so big up here," she said, more than a little awe in her voice. "With all the cars whizzing by in the streets below, it's like being in another world. " A world high above Philadelphia that, even a few years ago, Miles and her husband would have been very exclusive residents of. But as condo towers grow more commonplace in the city, taller, well-heeled buyers are choosing to feather their nests in the clouds - or as close as several hundred feet above street level can get them.

Independence from Philadelphia's power structure and those who make their fortunes from it is essential for a watchdog with bite. The mission of the city controller, an institutional watchdog, is to keep the public's money from being pocketed by the corrupt or frittered away by the incompetent. The controller has the power to review the spending and management of city departments, stop payments on questionable contracts, and deter bad behavior. The current controller, Alan Butkovitz, is facing activist and repeat rival Brett Mandel and attorney Mark Zecca in the May 21 Democratic primary.

MY FIANC? AND I both live in Harrisburg but travel to Philadelphia often because we love the city. What we don't love, however, are the outrageous parking rates. When he attended monthly meetings of the Black Data Processors Association in Center City, it cost him more in parking fees to attend the meetings than it did in gas and tolls to make the 105-mile trip from Harrisburg to Philadelphia. Parking also becomes an issue when we want to visit Delilah's at the Reading Terminal for a nice Saturday lunch.

Hello there In 2008, Wednesdays were CJ's favorite day of the week. He was a medical case manager at Mazzoni Center, a health center for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people - the same place Alison did mental-health assessments for those beginning hormone treatment. Usually, CJ and Alison worked in separate buildings. On Wednesdays, they shared an office. CJ would tell Alison he needed to talk about a client, even when he had the needed info. "It was a convenient way to follow her around, like a little puppy," he admits.

Steven Figueroa Age: 41 Where ya from? South Philly, works a postal route in Center City. What's the craziest thing that has happened to you on your route? I work in Center City, so it's not that bad. Other people have gotten attacked by dogs and hit by cars and stuff. If you were mayor for one day, what would you do? Anyone who pays for Catholic school should get a tax reimbursement. My daughter goes to Catholic school. Why should I also pay for someone else's school? Charge the people who use public schools.

A message flashed across Philadelphia Police Chief Inspector Joseph Sullivan's phone as he sat in a Center City conference room Thursday: A suspicious package had been spotted blocks away. As it turned out, the bag was harmless, the tip familiar. In the month after the Boston terror attack, Philadelphia police responded to more than 300 such reports, with 32 just on the day of the Broad Street Run, Sullivan said. Bomb-squad officers even built and detonated a backpack bomb identical to the one that killed three people in Boston.

IF MAYOR NUTTER gets his way, smokers and drinkers could be forking up some big dough in city taxes - but not all of them are fuming about it. Sonny Deniro, a server at Jon's Bar & Grille at 3rd and South, said he opposed the new sin taxes - until he found out the money would go to the schools. City schools "need help," said Deniro, 27, a parent of a child who hasn't entered school yet. "They should raise it up even more. " Nutter proposed two new taxes yesterday - a $2-per-pack cigarette tax and a 5 percentage-point increase in the city's "liquor-by-the-drink" tax - to raise $67 million for the financially beleaguered Philadelphia School District.

Raise Labs Inc. , of San Francisco, last week climbed to the top of the 2013 Milken-Penn Graduate School of Education Business Plan Competition - one of several recent competitive business events. Raise, which wants to change how college scholarships are distributed, won three $25,000 prizes: the Milken Family Foundation First Prize, the Startl Prize for Open Educational Resources, and the K12 Prize for Online Learning in Grades K-12. It's the latest win for Raise, which landed $100,000 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation-based College Knowledge Challenge in January.

Independence from Philadelphia's power structure and those who make their fortunes from it is essential for a watchdog with bite. The mission of the city controller, an institutional watchdog, is to keep the public's money from being pocketed by the corrupt or frittered away by the incompetent. The controller has the power to review the spending and management of city departments, stop payments on questionable contracts, and deter bad behavior. The current controller, Alan Butkovitz, is facing activist and repeat rival Brett Mandel and attorney Mark Zecca in the May 21 Democratic primary.

Gambling foes filled the audience at Wednesday's hearing before the state Gaming Control Board, silently standing to strongly protest the building of another casino in Philadelphia. About 75 people, mostly from Chinatown, held anti-casino signs during back-to-back testimony from gaming opponents at the end of the fourth and last day of public input on a second license. The protesters represented a coalition of community groups called No Casino in Our City. While most of the earlier speakers were endorsing one project or another, the 11 people to testify at the end of the hearing denounced gambling as bad public policy that was promoting addiction.

Philadelphia didn't need Bicycling magazine to confirm that it is one of America's best biking cities (No. 17 on its 2012 list). You can see it every day on the streets: The steady stream of commuters sluicing down Center City's bike lanes. The tangle of bikes hitched to U-shaped racks and bike corrals. (More, please.) The proliferation of neighborhood bike shops. Philadelphia probably could have ranked higher in the magazine's esteem if it had a bike-sharing program, like most of the list's top 20 cities.

Last year's inaugural Center City Jazz Festival taught Ernest Stuart, its director, an important lesson: Never book yourself to perform if you're also running the show. He recalls that last year, just as he was about to step onstage with his trombone, "my phone started ringing. " The festival's headliner was threatening to walk because of problems at his hotel, and the WiFi had gone out at the box office. "Then I realized that I had been so busy working on the festival that I hadn't practiced this music," he says.

Lara Weinstein was a second-year student at Jefferson Medical College in 1992 and was frustrated by all the time she was spending in lecture halls. Every day on her way to and from classes, she passed desperate people living in the shadows of Center City. She wanted to help, but how? Weinstein approached a professor, James Plumb, who in turn reached out to Project HOME, the nonprofit agency in North Philadelphia that helps the homeless. A collaboration began. Under Plumb's direction, students, including Weinstein, began assisting Project HOME volunteers with medical care in a shelter.