Fishtown

David W. Sale Jr., the 22-year-old killed outside a Phillies game Saturday, had worked for a North Wales chemical company for a year and was a "good employee and friend of many people," the company says. This weekend, the friends who remembered Sale as cheery and hard-partying will gather to bury him at a Souderton church. "I'm never going to find anyone even close to him as a friend," said Dan Curran, 22, of Lansdale, who had Phillies season tickets with Sale. The two, friends from their North Penn High School days, used to take road trips to Pittsburgh, attend country-music concerts, and share other adventures.

NOT MANY PEOPLE can go shopping and emerge from the store with a cart full of goods having either spent only a few cents or with the store actually owing them money. Marge McDermott could. At least, that was the story she told. She was a fanatic coupon-clipper, and by the time she finished delivering her coupons to the cashiers, her bill was negligible, or nonexistent. And Marge loved it. She enjoyed shopping so much that she was at two stores in Port Richmond the day before she died Saturday at age 92. She lived in Fishtown.

A 23-YEAR-OLD Wissinoming man turned himself in to police and was charged Wednesday in connection with the hit-and-run of a 10-year-old girl who suffered a broken leg. Charles Mulhern is accused of hitting Sarah Givens with a Denali SUV as she started to walk across Memphis Street at York in Fishtown about 2:15 p.m. March 7. In a bizarre twist, two days later, Sarah's 14-year-old sister, Kylie, was struck by another hit-and-run driver about...

Michael Dorris, a kid from Berwyn, met an Ohio lad named Michael Santoro in the culinary program at Johnson & Wales in Providence, R.I. Ten years and many moves and jobs later, the Mikes are working together. Their joint venture, the Mildred , opened this week at 824 S. Eighth St. (267-687-1600) in Bella Vista. Previously, it was the acclaimed James. The open dining room has a romantic yet open feel. Though both guys are seasoned chefs since their 2004 J&W graduation, Santoro (whose last stop was opening chef at Talula's Garden)

For the last few years, Fishtown residents have dealt with increased speculation about slots parlors being located a few blocks from their homes. While it is possible that none of these locations will be chosen by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, the people of Fishtown and other communities are looking at ways to minimize the impact any development would have on our neighborhoods, streets and families. Traffic concerns have dominated almost every public forum in which slots parlors have been discussed, and developers have attempted to allay our fears with studies that discount the impact that these gambling venues will have on our small, one-way streets.

George Leisenring was 26, a German immigrant living alone in Fishtown, working as a blacksmith, when President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for volunteers to defend the nation's capitol. Virginia had just seceded from the union. Leisenring boarded a train at Broad Street and Washington Avenue with 1,200 others on April 19, 1861. Lacking both uniforms and arms, the regiment made it only to Baltimore's President Street Station, where a mob of secessionists attacked its train. Leisenring, stabbed in the back and side, became the first casualty of the Civil War from Pennsylvania.

Residential garages in Philadelphia have long been both the envy of neighbors (a designated parking spot!) and the bane of urban-planning types (they're block-killers that disrupt the streetscape!). Lately, though, ambitious home buyers are seeing street-front garages as something different: opportunities. Across Philadelphia's developing neighborhoods, creative individuals with reverence for the city's industrial past and willingness to embark on expansive remodeling work are transforming former garages - often priced at a fraction of finished residences - into homes with loftlike living areas, custom workspaces, and, yes, even a parking space or two. Jennie Shanker, 47, a Fishtown-based sculptor, converted a 150-year-old carriage house-turned-machinist's garage into her workshop and home about nine years ago. "It was a complete and total shell - and in a way, that was the beauty of it," Shanker said.

WHEN I FIRST heard that the Nutter administration would be cutting certain public libraries, I automatically knew the ones in the African-American communities would be targeted first (exception of the Fishtown branch). Mayor Nutter clearly understands the consequences behind challenging the Philadelphia Eagles' multibillion-dollar football stadium, which owes the city $8 million, or targeting the Mummers Parade, which are both white-folks recreational establishments. But because this mayor has developed a slave-master relationship with the white community in this city, his tenure will forever be in a form of psychosocial obedient debt to them for electing him. Unfortunately, resulting in the cutting of urban libraries where young African-American children go to access resources is no concern to this psychologically trained "Happy Negro" mayor.

In Philadelphia, it's been demonstrated that you can take the boy out a River Ward, but you can't take the River Ward out of the boy, no matter what his biological age. Which is why River Ward Doco - now Doco of the Daily News - was assigned this story. Three of Philadelphia's most colorful River Wards are linked like sausages, better known as Fishtown, Port Richmond and Kensington. Each has its own personality, but they're more alike than not, because their rowhouse character was shaped by the early industrialization, when Philadelphia was the workshop to the world.

A deeply offensive comparison I found the commentary "Film's dystopia rings familiar" (Friday) deeply offensive. To compare President Obama's administration, which is trying to bring better health care to all of our citizens and to prevent banks from using our savings in very risky financial deals, to a regime that requires children to kill each other is beyond the pale. It is on the same level as those who have called Obama a Hitler. The author seems to have a searing personal hatred for Obama, not a reasoned argument against his policies.