Chinatown

Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie married Philadelphia resident Tina Lai in a private ceremony this weekend. Lurie, 61, announced last July that he and Christina Weiss Lurie were getting divorced after 20 years of marriage. Lai will have no official role in the Eagles organization. The wedding was attended by family and close friends. "I am happy and excited as Tina and I begin our lives together," Lurie said in a statement. Lai, 39, is from a family that owns restaurants in Philadelphia, including the Vietnam Restaurant in Chinatown and the Vietnam Cafe in University City.

Chinatown is a major tourist attraction. Its wonderful restaurants attract out-of-towners and suburbanites into the heart of Center City Philadelphia. Why, then, do we seem to be doing everything possible to hem it in and make it less convenient? Bad enough the Vine Street Expressway is slicing through the neighborhood, the convention center (if it ever materializes) will be lapping at its shores, and proposed skyscrapers are threatening to overwhelm it - but now, the city has approved relocation of the bus terminal to Chinatown's border.

Thoroughly fascinated children watch the Mid-Autumn Festival in Chinatown last night. The festival was the brainchild of a group of teens who wanted to recreate the Chinese holiday tradition for the elderly.

I could hear the dragon coming from far away. My tiny heart was beating loudly and quickly. As the dragon marched up the street, it seemed to cast a spell on everyone, gathering both adults and little children around it as it cavorted and bullied. I could see the large, menacing smile, the teeth that seemed bigger than my arm. Everything was loud; my ears hurt from the sound of firecrackers. Slightly older Chinatown boys had the courage to run just ahead of the dragon and light firecrackers - one landed nearby and startled me. It was bitter cold, my eyes were watery; I wiped the tears off my cheeks and covered my ears.

SOME GROUP that claims to speak for everyone from Chinatown is protesting casinos because they fear addiction to gambling. Are they saying people in Chinatown must be protected from themselves because they aren't strong enough to take responsibility for their own actions? If this is so, shouldn't they be protesting the stores that sell blunts and 40s of malt beverages in Chinatown? And don't forget all the shops that sell unhealthy Chinese food with all that pork and sauces and MSG. If you want to protest, be inclusive of all unhealthy activities.

To demonstrate that Chinatown cuisine is safe as well as delectable, City Council has decided to dine there next week. Councilman Lucien E. Blackwell announced yesterday that Council members would buy their own lunches Thursday at a Chinatown restaurant to try to counter "bad publicity" resulting from a recent federal food-contamination probe. "We have had a long and glorious history of the Chinese people providing food for the citizens of this city," Blackwell said yesterday.

On Thursday, if they hold to plan, City Council members will lunch en masse in Philadelphia's beleaguered Chinatown. Chinatown is suffering because last month federal inspectors shut down a local food warehouse because of grossly unsanitary conditions. The warehouse reportedly supplied a few of the restaurants in Chinatown. There's nothing like a drumbeat of publicity about rodent and insect infestations at a food warehouse to make folks lose their appetite. And, though there have been repeated official assurances that, yes, it's safe to venture back to Chinatown, business at the eateries there is still in a slump.

THE casino now planned for the Gallery will poison Chinese minds and rob their souls. As a Chinatown resident, I know that, while most people are debating the economic and environmental issues of Foxwoods moving to Center City, I would like to point out some less visible matters that may affect the people living and working nearby in Chinatown. Imagine 50 buses and 20,000 gamblers coming off I-95's Callowhill exit going through Chinatown on 10th Street every day. Imagine drunken gamblers who lost money staggering out of the casino at 2 in the morning looking for a public toilet.

An arrest warrant has been issued for a 24-year-old man on charges of groping a 23-year-old woman and a 12-year-old girl in Chinatown last week. After police released a surveillance video from one of the incidents, investigators received an anonymous phone tip Tuesday identifying Melvin Bulls as their wanted man. Police said Bulls last known addresses were on the 1300 block of Ridge Avenue, 1200 block of South Bonsall Street and 900 block of Hamilton Street. The groping incidents occurred in Chinatown at 4:55 p.m. and 6:25 p.m. Thursday when a man came up from behind the victims and touched their buttocks, police said.

Remember last fall when you stood in line for a half-hour to eat dinner at your favorite Chinatown restaurant? Well, you won't have that problem now. Chinatown's restaurateurs gathered yesterday at a news conference to plead with the public to resurrect the healthy business conditions that prevailed there until a scant 11 days ago. That's when deputy U.S. marshals padlocked the New Eastern Food Co. warehouse on Westmoreland Street near...

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.

With taquerías and other conspicuously non-Italian businesses proliferating in South Philadelphia's Italian Market, should the neighborhood be renamed for the sake of anthropological accuracy? The answer is the same whether you're a Sicilian or a Sinaloan: No . The Daily News' Helen Ubiñas raised the question in a recent column, arguing that these days, the neighborhood's name "just doesn't reflect the reality of the street. " As she pointed out, the collection of businesses occupying the historic curb market along South Ninth Street has steadily become less Italian and more Asian and Latino, particularly Mexican.

A quick-acting Philadelphia detective caught two suspects who allegedly pistol-whipped and robbed a 58-year-old man late Friday afternoon in Chinatown, police said. Around 5:30 p.m., the man was attacked inside a rental property he owns in the 1200 block of Vine Street, said Lt. John Walker of Southwest Detectives. The victim was forced into the basement, where he was beaten with a .357 caliber pistol and forced to strip to his underwear. Detective Rob Conway was driving down Vine Street returning from an investigation when he spotted the victim, who was outside and screaming for help.

THIRTY-FOUR years ago, Sarah McEneaney was a young art-school graduate who bought an old building on a gritty industrial stretch of Callowhill Street, because the price was right and she wanted a home with studio space for her artwork. Back then, "it would be busy during the day and, at night, it would be desolate and kind of scary," she said. But the neighborhood slowly grew busier as Chinatown inched northward and developers built condos, she added. City officials now plan to chart that change.

Lai Lun Mark's smile is as beautiful today as the day she won the title - Miss Chinatown, 1964. "A lifetime ago," she said and laughed during an interview. Flashbulbs popped as she accepted the winner's trophy in the Grand Court of Wanamaker's department store, crowned by no less than Richard M. Nixon, then planning a comeback campaign for the presidency. A week later, Mark, 20, became the white-caped centerpiece of a boisterous Chinese New Year parade, chauffeured through Chinatown in a red Ford Galaxie convertible, waving to crowds that stood five deep on the sidewalks.

Robert Moy was a king of Chinatown ticket-fixers, according to federal authorities, even advertising his surefire services in the newspaper. "Tackles the traffic ticket," said an ad in the local China News Weekend, "and guarantees no points or fewer points. " The day after being indicted on charges that could send him to prison for years, Moy was open for business on Friday, running Number One Translations on the second floor of a building at 926 Winter St. Two giant stone Foo Dogs stood out front.

THE ASIAN Arts Initiative, a community-based arts center in Chinatown, has always encouraged local residents' involvement. AAI's latest project, the Social Practice Lab, continued that practice by inviting artists to solicit input for neighborhood art projects from local residents. There's plenty of challenge in the stark, industrial areas on Chinatown's northern edges. Artist Ben Volta and Gayle Isa, executive director of Asian Arts Initiative, recently met with PECO, for instance, about the huge electrical substation between 11th and 12th streets near the old viaduct.

THERE'S SOME truth to the joke that Jews like to take in Chinese food and a Woody Allen movie on Christmas Eve, to get away from all that. This year, Allen has denied his tribe a new opus. But look-alike comedian Ross Bennett is ready to make Christmas Eve escapees laugh while you nosh, as star of the Moo Shu Jew Show, sponsored by the Gershman Y. Actually returning for the fifth year, this multicourse Chinese feast plus comedy show will be landing at a new Chinatown location, Ocean Harbor Restaurant, 1023 Race St. Also serving up the yuks are Lenny Marcus - a funny bunny who recently debuted on "The Late Show with David Letterman" plus standup comic/author Joel Chasnoff, whose material (and book The 188th Crybaby Brigade)

I recently revisited the site of my first great travel adventure - after a half-century, almost to the day. The destination of this foray into nostalgia and rediscovery was San Francisco. Why I had allowed a full 50 years to go by without returning to one of America's most beautiful and appealing cities is not easily explained. I had lived outside of the United States for several decades, and once back on the East Coast I was busy with other concerns. Still, San Francisco had always remained in my memory as a fabulous place.