Dairy Queen

The Easttown Zoning Hearing Board has denied a variance application by Louis Mattera Sr. to add a solarium to his Dairy Queen at 420 Lancaster Ave. in Devon. At the board's meeting Tuesday, Daniel Coval Jr., Mattera's lawyer, cited a need for additional space. But board members Thomas Wood, David Huggler and Ruthann Graf unanimously denied the application because, they said, the applicants had failed to show a hardship that would require the 10-by-24-square-foot addition. "There is no hardship described in the sense required for a variance, and I don't believe that the additional space requested is minimal," board Chairman Wood said.

The four red-white-and-blues that fly in front of the Dairy Queen on South Sproul Road are there because its ice cream is as American as apple pie and motherhood, says owner Al Parks. Laura Miele, a mother of four, could not agree more. When she was growing up down the street, eating take-out ice-cream sundaes, Blizzards, Peanut Buster parfaits and milk shakes was part of her childhood. Now, her children are hooked. That's why Miele and other ice-cream eaters in the township are angry that the tiny store, a local fixture since 1959, will be torn down in the spring and replaced with an Arby's restaurant.

Fine day for a treat. Anthony DiPlacido of South Philadelphia went for it, indulging in a "Hawaiian Breeze" at the Dairy Queen in Devon during yesterday's lunch break. He works at Sport Toyota in Devon.

This week, I reached out for Dairy Queen's blue-plate special, the one and only Chicken Strip Basket. Here's the blueprint: four fried chicken strips, each about 1 inch wide and 4 inches long, a heap of french fries, two pieces of buttery Texas toast and a small cup of dippin', drippin' gravy. Total calories: 860. Fat grams: 42. Instead of Beanie Babies or Jurassic Park figures, Dairy Queen should give away little dolls dressed in hospital gowns. Eat five Chicken Strip Baskets and they waive your application fee for the heart-transplant waiting list.

Kenyon Martin's return from his second suspension was overshadowed by another comeback, the one Kerry Kittles has been putting on all season. Kittles, the former Villanova star, scored 16 of his 18 points in the third quarter and the Nets made Martin's return from a two-game suspension relatively unexciting by beating the visiting Los Angeles Clippers, 108-89, last night. "He seemed to be getting better and better," Nets coach Byron Scott said of Kittles, who missed all last season following his fourth surgery on his right knee.

The moment that altered Catherine Gilbert Murdock's life arrived in a dream. "Most of my stories do," she says, sipping tea in the airy kitchen of her Wayne home. Murdock saw a high school girl, a football player, gazing across a field at the boy of her dreams who, as it happens, was the quarterback for the opposing team. So she began to write. "And it only took 26 chapters to get to that moment," Murdock says. The result is Dairy Queen (Houghton Mifflin, 275 pages, $16)

Zagat doesn't only rate fine dining. Its latest survey, conducted online, tallied opinions about all sorts of categories of fast food. The new titleholder for best burger was Five Guys, which has more than 20 locations in the Philadelphia area. Other winners: Best milkshakes: Dairy Queen. Best fries: McDonald's. Best coffee: Starbucks. Best grilled chicken: Chick-fil-A. Best fish: Long John Silver's. Best salads: Panera Bread. Best steak: Outback Steakhouse.

The ceiling buckled above her, glass blown out from a window covered the floor, and Sue Stewart spent yesterday navigating the basement stairs at Grove Pharmacy by candlelight to scour paper files for customers' prescription records. "The flashlights that we ordered Friday haven't been delivered yet," said Stewart, who worked with no computers, no cash registers and no air-conditioning. "We're doing our best, you go back to the system of the good old days," Stewart said cheerfully.

Coasters as notes Silicone Coaster Notz protect furniture surfaces and are beautiful in the bargain. From Modern Twist, they come in a variety of patterns. We especially like the frosted Birds 'N Trees design. Style them as personalized placecards or jot down wine notes using a ballpoint pen, then simply wipe clean. Food trivia your game? Foodies will enjoy testing their knowledge of the people, places, culture and history of food with this fun trivia game. Try this quick quiz: 1. What queen comes from Joliet, Ill.?

Charles A. Frush, 85, who reported and edited for The Inquirer from 1961 to 1993, died of pancreatic cancer Tuesday, Sept. 11, at his home in San Antonio, Texas. In 1968, the Pennsylvania Newspaper Publishers Association gave him its award for best sports story of 1967 for his report of the Pennsylvania State University victory over Syracuse University in football that season, son Charles A. Jr., said. Besides covering the 76ers at various times, Mr. Frush covered the Eagles, his son said, noting "a vivid memory of walking over Franklin Field after Dad emerged from the press box after having covered a game.

BELLEFONTE - "Isn't anybody else cold?" Joe Amendola asked at one point, standing at microphones set up in front of the courthouse steps, about halfway through a news conference that might have lasted an hour. It might have lasted longer than an hour, but I'm not sure because I left. The attorney for Jerry Sandusky was right about at least one thing: It was cold. Inside the Centre County Courthouse, the whole thing didn't last much more than a minute; oyez, oyez - sidebar, over.

BELLEFONTE, Pa. - Curious townspeople lingered outside the Brockerhoff House early Tuesday morning, sipping coffee, eating breakfast pizza, and trying to digest the incongruity of it all. "This will soon be gone," said one woman in a red school crossing guard's vest as she aimed her cellphone camera at the Centre County Courthouse, "and I want to make sure I get a picture. Otherwise no one will believe me. " Her lens was focused across Allegheny Street, where the shop windows were elaborately decorated for the holidays, at the media army occupying the courthouse square.

BELLEFONTE, Pa. - Curious townspeople lingered outside the Brockerhoff House early Tuesday morning, sipping coffee, eating breakfast pizza, and trying to digest the incongruity of it all. "This will soon be gone," said one woman in a red school crossing guard's vest as she aimed her cellphone camera at the Centre County Courthouse, "and I want to make sure I get a picture. Otherwise no one will believe me. " Her lens was focused across Allegheny Street, where the shop windows were elaborately decorated for the holidays, at the media army occupying the courthouse square.

Zagat doesn't only rate fine dining. Its latest survey, conducted online, tallied opinions about all sorts of categories of fast food. The new titleholder for best burger was Five Guys, which has more than 20 locations in the Philadelphia area. Other winners: Best milkshakes: Dairy Queen. Best fries: McDonald's. Best coffee: Starbucks. Best grilled chicken: Chick-fil-A. Best fish: Long John Silver's. Best salads: Panera Bread. Best steak: Outback Steakhouse.

It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. Brat Productions artistic director Michael Alltop read an article in the New York Times describing the release of 650,000 AOL users' search logs, and the seed for the group's new production, User 927, was germinated. The play's title is also AOL's anonymous ID number for its most notorious seeker, someone whose three-months-long catalog of depravity is breathtaking in its scope. (One of its tamer examples: Judging by several consecutive search terms, one can assume s/he may have contracted mange in a highly unorthodox manner.

Coasters as notes Silicone Coaster Notz protect furniture surfaces and are beautiful in the bargain. From Modern Twist, they come in a variety of patterns. We especially like the frosted Birds 'N Trees design. Style them as personalized placecards or jot down wine notes using a ballpoint pen, then simply wipe clean. Food trivia your game? Foodies will enjoy testing their knowledge of the people, places, culture and history of food with this fun trivia game. Try this quick quiz: 1. What queen comes from Joliet, Ill.?

The moment that altered Catherine Gilbert Murdock's life arrived in a dream. "Most of my stories do," she says, sipping tea in the airy kitchen of her Wayne home. Murdock saw a high school girl, a football player, gazing across a field at the boy of her dreams who, as it happens, was the quarterback for the opposing team. So she began to write. "And it only took 26 chapters to get to that moment," Murdock says. The result is Dairy Queen (Houghton Mifflin, 275 pages, $16)

Trying desperately to perfect the curly tip on a soft-serve cone, Mark Cuban licked the remains of another failed effort from his finger tips and handed the messy treat to an excited 3-year-old boy. A lick later, the kid dropped it. That was about the only thing that went wrong yesterday when the billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks worked 2 hours behind a Dairy Queen counter in Correll, Texas. The company's offer came in response to Cuban's assertion that he wouldn't hire Ed Rush, the NBA's head of officiating, "to manage a Dairy Queen.