City Paper

HE WAS basically a West Philly kid who never really forgot the life of the corners and the playgrounds and the camaraderie of the streets. But Steve Fredericks rose from that environment to become one of Philadelphia's best- known sportscasters, who raised sports broadcasting above the ordinary with his wry humor and his erudition. "Live," he'd open his "Sports Line" show, "from the palatial, but not overly ostentatious, studios of WCAU Radio . . . " "That's not normal sports language," said Bob Gelb, Steve's producer at the time.

The 15-year-old City Paper, an irreverent weekly that distributes 95,000 free copies, has been sold to Montgomery Newspapers Inc., for about $4 million. Bruce Schimmel, who founded the City Paper with a $15,000 stake in 1981, will leave his job as editor and publisher and join Montgomery Newspapers as a consultant, said Arthur W. Howe, Montgomery Newspapers' president and publisher. "This newspaper made me a millionaire before I sold it," said Schimmel, 43. "Success is sweet, but it really gets kind of boring.

City Paper, the free weekly paper, said it would publish an article tomorrow conceding that a backstage interview with the star and director of the New York show Freak did not take place as presented. In last week's issue, freelance writer Jim Gladstone wrote that he had met with actor John Leguizamo and Freak's writer-director, David Bar Katz, at the Cort Theatre in Manhattan after a preview performance. Leguizamo was not present, said news editor Howard Altman. His quotes were taken from a published work and patched into dialogue with Katz, Altman said.

Run your eyes around Bruce Schimmel's corner office in the Chancellor Building on S. 13th Street, command center for the 39-year-old co-founder, editor and sole owner of the City Paper, and a new style of interior design comes to mind - Alternative Citizen Kane. The old Royal typewriter on the windowsill glares down at the Macintosh on his desk, a kind of journalistic conscience. A worn photo of the Center City weekly's boss, shaking hands with Mayor Goode, shares wall space with atmosphere items: an anti-Reagan cartoon and a Peace calendar.

The owners of a Fairmount nightspot yesterday sued the City Paper and one of its sources, charging that the newspaper defamed the club two years ago by publishing allegations it was racist because of a bartender's remark to two black customers. In the suit, filen in Montgomery County Court, Peter Kelly and Charles Abdo, president and secretary/treasurer of the corporation that owns the North Star Bar, 2639 W. Popar St., seek more than $50,000 in compensatory and punitive damages.

Contending he was libeled, State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo has sued the publisher of the City Paper and one of its editors, Howard Altman, over a recent column about Fumo's role on the Board of City Trusts. Fumo's lawsuit objected to Altman's use of language in the Nov. 14-20 issue of the City Paper describing the board as a "goon squad" that is "controlled by" the senator. The suit also cites Altman's characterization of the board's Stephen Girard College Trust as Fumo's "$230 million toy chest," which he uses "as private monopoly money with no accountability to anyone.

The City Paper, a Philadelphia alternative weekly started with $15,000 in 1981, is set to be sold today for about $4 million to Montgomery Newspapers, which publishes a chain of suburban weekly newspapers. The City Paper would become the 22d publication of Montgomery Newspapers, a Fort Washington company that publishes 15 community weekly newspapers such as the Ambler Gazette and Main Line Life, along with a half-dozen specialty publications such as Art Matters and Philadelphia Golfer.

When Albert C. Barnes was calling the shots, the door to his incomparable hoard of modern masterpieces was relatively open to the poor, and closed to the privileged. James Michener, the author, figured this out only after he was denied entry on three occasions. The fourth time he posed as a barely literate Pittsburgh steelworker. Access granted. Well, Barnes is long since dead, and now that the elites have his collection, the time apparently has come for the poor to get out. Instead of slumming it to get in, the city's powerful are clearing the slums, lest the presence of homeless men and women offend patrons of the new and supposedly improved Barnes Foundation, set to open on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in May. The official story is that the new ban Mayor Nutter announced last week on the outdoor feeding of homeless people has nothing to do with the Barnes.

The editorial staff of La Salle University's weekly newspaper, the Collegian, spent Wednesday evening plotting a mildly subversive act. For more than a week, they had been negotiating with officials at the private Catholic university over a potentially embarrassing article about a business management professor. Vinny Vella had the story first. (Click here to read the Collegian's story and here to read an editorial about the the Collegian staff's relationship with administration.)

A homeless man tries to keep warm on a grate at 18th and Ludlow streets while reading the City Paper yesterday. The big chill is to continue with a not-so-high today of 26 degrees and a low tonight of 18.

HE WAS basically a West Philly kid who never really forgot the life of the corners and the playgrounds and the camaraderie of the streets. But Steve Fredericks rose from that environment to become one of Philadelphia's best- known sportscasters, who raised sports broadcasting above the ordinary with his wry humor and his erudition. "Live," he'd open his "Sports Line" show, "from the palatial, but not overly ostentatious, studios of WCAU Radio . . . " "That's not normal sports language," said Bob Gelb, Steve's producer at the time.

When Albert C. Barnes was calling the shots, the door to his incomparable hoard of modern masterpieces was relatively open to the poor, and closed to the privileged. James Michener, the author, figured this out only after he was denied entry on three occasions. The fourth time he posed as a barely literate Pittsburgh steelworker. Access granted. Well, Barnes is long since dead, and now that the elites have his collection, the time apparently has come for the poor to get out. Instead of slumming it to get in, the city's powerful are clearing the slums, lest the presence of homeless men and women offend patrons of the new and supposedly improved Barnes Foundation, set to open on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in May. The official story is that the new ban Mayor Nutter announced last week on the outdoor feeding of homeless people has nothing to do with the Barnes.

Did Philadelphia seem back on track this week? Did the tap water taste better and the brotherly love seem brotherlier? Then it must have been because City Councilwoman Marian Tasco at long last emerged from retirement, mercifully ending the chaos that had set in while we were deprived of her leadership. Before Tasco returned to her position high atop the payroll, the city had endured some bleak, dystopian days - two of them, to be precise. But now our short municipal nightmare is over.

The editorial staff of La Salle University's weekly newspaper, the Collegian, spent Wednesday evening plotting a mildly subversive act. For more than a week, they had been negotiating with officials at the private Catholic university over a potentially embarrassing article about a business management professor. Vinny Vella had the story first. (Click here to read the Collegian's story and here to read an editorial about the the Collegian staff's relationship with administration.)

It's good to see Mayor Nutter move to end the DROP program. Too bad it took a decade and yet another study, this one costing $80,000, to determine the city can't afford this pension perk. City Council should follow the mayor's lead and approve his legislation to end the so-called Deferred Retirement Option Plan. Any measure that is passed, though, will likely grandfather in the six Council members signed up to receive DROP payments next year ranging from $200,000 to almost $600,000.

MAYOR Nutter basically said to heck with taxpayers: "$17 million more in cuts - but that's all. " Well, that's not good enough, Mr. Mayor! Surely there are further cuts that can be made without compromising public safety, but does the mayor have the stomach for them? How many millions of tax dollars are wasted every year? Look no further than the city's broken pension system (Deferred Retirement Option Plan in particular) to find a significant cause of our financial woes. Just a few weeks ago, the City Paper did a story on DROP, calling it a "Billion $ Boondoggle.

It is bad enough that a handful of elected city officials have abused the pension perk known as DROP. But now there is more compelling evidence of an even bigger drain the plan is having on Philadelphia's already wobbly pension system. A lengthy story in the City Paper last week detailed a number of red flags regarding DROP, short for Deferred Retirement Option Plan. The plan has cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and provided little to nothing in return. The firm that helped the city establish DROP has run into legal trouble in other cities.

TWO DOORS lead off Jackson Street into a large South Philly warehouse. One door leads the visitor to descend into the domain of the long-running Fright Factory attraction; through the other, one wanders into a maze of eerie rooms that at first glance wouldn't seem out of place downstairs. "Bad things happen here; the biggest magic trick of the night happens in here. " Director Madi Distefano ticks off the litany of scares yet to come as she power walks through the still-under-construction labyrinth that will scare and entertain audiences as "Haunted Poe. " "Dark hall, spooky sounds, things on the wall, live cockroaches, scary things and surprises . . . " Most of those are essentials to any haunted house (though even the most intense probably wouldn't want to muck about with live cockroaches - which, rest assured, will be safely ensconced behind glass)

From: Sheridan, Phil So I'm leaving the ballpark last night about 12:30 or so and I get into a line of cars turning northbound onto Broad Street. There were people high-fiving and just wandering around looking stunned. I saw this one young guy tapping on windows of cars and I figured, as I pulled up, that he was just communing with everyone. Instead, he was trying to get a ride for himself and his two friends. Here, the three of them were part of a group of Temple students who sprinted out into the night after Lidge struck out Hinske and just kept going.