Center City

The dish: Affogato is gelato topped with hot espresso. In Italian, affogato literally means "drowned. " Normally, that's a bad thing. But I'm a crime reporter. And Italian. And married to a Seattle native who is as coffee-crazy as you'd expect for someone from the hometown of Starbucks. So it's all good. Here's why you'd like it, too: Plenty of people prefer coffee with their dessert. This is coffee on your dessert. The piping-hot espresso melts the frozen gelato for a tasty experience in opposites.

In recent weeks, Anne Bryan, 24, celebrated a dramatic Phillies victory with her father, cooked a birthday dinner for her brother, and went for a drive along the Schuylkill with her mother. On Sunday, those relatives eulogized Bryan at an emotional memorial service in Center City, just days after she was killed in the building collapse at the corner of 22d and Market Streets. Bryan, of Lower Merion, daughter of city treasurer Nancy Winkler, was recalled as kind, talented, and passionate, with a variety of interests and a bright future ahead.

The block of Market Street where two buildings collapsed today is not just one of the most blighted stretches remaining in Center City; it is a block where blight was ignored for decades by successive city administrations. The collection of small, decrepit commerical buildings, which includes Hoagie City and the Salvation Army Thrift Store, was once part a larger empire of blight assembled by Philadelphia's most notorious slumlord, Sam Rappaport. Even as the rest of Center City took on a polished gloss, the deteriorated Market Street buildings were among the first things people saw as they entered the city from 30th Street Station.

As regular readers of this column know, I consider parking garages the lowest form of downtown development. The uninhabited structures suck the life out of their surroundings and encourage people to choose cars over transit for trips into Center City. But if there is one thing worse than a free-standing downtown garage, it is a blighted free-standing downtown garage. Center City, unfortunately, is riddled with such eyesores, especially in the retail corridor east of City Hall, between Arch and Walnut Streets.

THE SALVATION ARMY has a one-word answer for anyone who wondered if it rebuffed a request to put protective scaffolding over its Center City thrift shop: No. On Wednesday, the organization refused to address questions that arose after two lawyers separately claimed that the Salvation Army either denied or ignored requests to have scaffolding installed while a demolition crew tore apart a neighboring property at 22nd and Market streets. That four-story building crumbled on June 5, and flattened the narrow thrift store, killing six people and injuring 13 others.

Running Philadelphia can look like a child's game. Rock, paper, scissors: After landlord Richard Basciano hired a bankrupt contractor recommended by a formerly bankrupt architect to hire a marijuana-smoking ex-offender to knock down a building on Center City's main street, a few knowledgeable and conscientious citizens - an architect, bricklayers, people capable of recognizing knuckleheads at work and dangerous structural elements threatening collapse...

THE MARKET STREET saga is, without question, one of the most depressing chapters in Philadelphia's long, checkered history. Six people were killed when a haphazardly-demolished building collapsed on them June 5 in Center City. A grief-stricken city inspector who had examined 2136-38 Market St. several weeks before it fell onto a Salvation Army thrift shop took his life - a life that included a wife and a young son - Wednesday night. But the whole thing got even darker yesterday, as the Nutter administration and NBC10 argued over the last words that the inspector, Ronald Wagenhoffer, spoke before he put a gun to his chest and pulled the trigger.

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.

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.

I EXPECTED gal pal Ronnie Polaneczky's Wednesday column on "Topless Moira," the seminaked stroller, to be titillating. I expected snark. So did Ronnie, she confessed, but steered away from pointing and giggling after 30-year-old Moira Johnston explained why she walked around staid Rittenhouse Square with her breasts exposed. Sort of Skin in the City. What I got was "if men can do it [go topless] women should be allowed to do it, too. " Nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah-nyah. For me, men shouldn't go around Rittenhouse Square shirtless either.