Flower Shop

This Christmas, there will be no poinsettias, no wreaths, no bouquets or centerpieces flying out the door of a family flower shop a block from where I live, in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia. Its doors shut two weeks ago. It's the economy, right? Well, not entirely. There's much more behind the disappearance of the neighborhood florist. Christmas was once a rainmaking holiday for family florists. I know: My pop was a Philly florist for 50 years, first in a tiny neighborhood called Paradise, and then in Roxborough.

The Upper Moreland Zoning Hearing Board has voted unanimously to give Goodman Properties the variances it needs to build a flower shop at 1115 N. Easton Road. At a hearing Thursday night, the board granted the Jenkintown development company variances permitting a larger sign, a smaller back yard and a reduction in the number of parking spaces required by local zoning. After the hearing, Bruce Goodman, a spokesman for Goodman Properties, said construction was expected to begin in April.

Music is abloom among the petunias and geraniums at Pennypack Flowers in Bustleton this summer. For Tony Cinkutis, this blossoming of music is a chance to "give something back to the community" that has supported his family's business for 60 years. Cinkutis, 40, is sponsoring free under-the-stars concerts every Tuesday - weather permitting - between 7:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. at the Pennypack Flowers Culture Center. The concerts are played from a bandstand and large gazebo erected outside the flower shop at Bustleton Avenue and Fulmer Street.

A two-alarm fire that destroyed a Bustleton flower shop and nursery Friday night "wiped out 15 years of hard work," owner Anthony Cinkutis said Wednesday. But Cinkutis, 39, vowed to rebuild the business. Meanwhile, the city Fire Marshal's Office continued its probe of the fire at Pennypack Flowers Inc., 9708 Bustleton Ave. A fire department spokesman said Wednesday that the origin of the blaze still had not been determined. The fire, reported at 7:35 p.m., quickly engulfed the one-story and three- story structures occupied by the business and a residence occupied by Cinkutis and forced the evacuation of the adjacent Plaza Apartments.

Delaware Valley Wholesale Florists bills itself as one of the top distributors in the country, importing flowers from Israel, Mexico, the African or Asian jungles and other exotic locations around the world. From the King Protea - a Hawaiian species that bears a close resemblance to Audrey II, the people-eating star of Little Shop of Horrors - to Thailand's dendrobium - a cluster of small purple and white orchids - the Sewell Townhsip company has access to nearly every species known to man. "There are literally hundreds of flowers out there and millions of variations," said Bonnie Dewey, the spokeswoman for the company.

Angered by commercial encroachment on residential areas, members of the Somerton Civic Association have decided they are going to fight. After checking the balance in the association's treasury - $3,731.33 - the 45 members at Tuesday's meeting voted unanimously to underwrite the costs of a zoning fight against a flower shop at 746 Byberry Rd. The property is zoned residential, but the owner is seeking a variance. The flower shop, which reportedly has been offered for sale as a commercial property at a price of $339,000, is one of four such intrusions in the neighborhood, according to civic association president Mary Jane Hazell.

Col. Dan Alleva will be selling the contents of a local flower shop tomorrow, including all types of vases in china, glass, pottery, wood and more, brass and tin ware items, baskets, topiaries, urns. Also being sold is a large selection of prints and framed artwork, including works by Chester County artist Dane Tilghman, and many unframed color plates by internationally acclaimed wildflower and naturalist watercolor artist Maryrose Wampler of Bloomington, Ind. You'll find photography, both black and white and color, up for bid, with subjects ranging from Princess Grace Kelly and family, President Truman, President and Mrs. Eisenhower, President Kennedy with Bishop Sheen, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Pete Rose and others.

It looks like Christmas in the horticulture shop at the Center for Arts and Technology Brandywine Campus. The annual student holiday flower show and shop is now open to the public. In addition to a display of holiday arrangements created by students in the horticultural program, holiday arrangements using fresh evergreens, wreaths and poinsettias are for sale. The show will be from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. today and 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. tomorrow at the school, 1635 E. Lincoln Highway in Coatesville.

Joseph D. Sayres, 67, of Richboro, who founded a flower shop in Juniata Park almost by accident, died Wednesday of cancer in Doylestown Hospital. Born and raised in Swampoodle, Mr. Sayres attended school through the eighth grade. During World War II, he was an auto mechanic in the Army, serving in Hawaii. After the war, he worked for Origlio Beer Distributors for 19 years. When he was laid off in 1968, he began selling cut flowers on a street corner at Front Street and Hunting Park Avenue.

Russell L. Medinger, 84, of Wyndmoor, who owned and operated a flower shop in Chestnut Hill for 45 years, died Sunday at the Ambler Rest Center. Mr. Medinger was active in the business community, working to improve the Chestnut Hill shopping district by providing parking lots, restoring buildings, lining the street with plantings and promoting holiday events with parades, decorations, flower shows and the like. A slender man with a black mustache and an ever-present black derby, Mr. Medinger was a Chestnut Hill fixture, tending his flower shop at 8430 Germantown Ave. When his health declined in 1987, the shop closed.

Daniel J. Carboni, 89, of Holmesburg, a florist and father of 13, died at home Tuesday, Feb. 28, of heart failure. Mr. Carboni grew up in Holmesburg with five older siblings. After completing eighth grade, he dropped out of school and held a series of jobs, including working on a pig farm and a chicken farm, his daughter Kathleen Heron said. During World War II, he served in the Navy as a signalman aboard the destroyer escort William T. Powell in the North Atlantic. Before shipping overseas, he married Mary Hartwell.

Margaret Mary Hilferty Coyne, 90, of Lansdowne, who owned Pappas Flowers in Suburban Station for 30 years, died of heart failure Tuesday, Jan. 3, at home. Mrs. Coyne began working at Pappas after graduating from West Philadelphia Catholic High School in 1939. In 1960, she became proprietor of the shop. She enjoyed the daily interaction with her commuter customers, including bank and insurance company executives who hired her to decorate their buildings at Christmas. She also did floral arrangements for weddings, and early in her career gave flower-arranging demonstrations at the Philadelphia Flower Show.

A Northeast Philadelphia woman was sentenced to 11 months in federal prison today for her role in a scheme to kidnap her estranged husband to extort money from him. Yudeka Valdez, 35, of Oakfield Lane near Kismet, claimed her husband was a drug dealer and felt he was being too stingy with living expenses. That included his failure to provide her with adequate funds to meet monthly payments on her Mercedes SUV, a court document said. Valdez, who pleaded guilty in January to one count of attempted interference with interstate commerce by extortion, enlisted two men to assist her. Unbeknownst to Valdez, one of the men was a DEA undercover agent and the second a DEA informant.

In the mid-1990s, the World Wide Web was relatively new and just beginning to be appreciated by businesses for its e-commerce potential. To many, the Internet was still a great unknown and a source of anxiety. Thus, the name that Mia and Tracy Levesque chose at the time for their Web-design company: Yikes. It's a five-letter word the couple are uttering with regularity these days over their own anxiety. "This is the riskiest thing we've ever done," Tracy Levesque said, sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of a $1.1 million construction project in full sawdust-laden progress.

Patrick Kelly can't imagine what it's going to be like Wednesday when film crews show up at his flower shop to shoot a scene for a movie, starring, of all people, porn starlet Bree Olson, NSync singer Joey Fatone, and Danica McKellar, i.e. Winnie Cooper from the long-running TV show The Wonder Years . "They'll be coming at about 6 or 7 a.m," said Kelly, owner of Stein's, a Mayfair fixture officially known as Stein Your Florist Co. McKellar...

For the fourth time in five years, Kenny Chesney has a date to play Lincoln Financial Field. It's a ways out: June 18, as he headlines with Zac Brown Band , and Billy Currington and Uncle Kracker will open. Tickets ($25 to $200) will go on sale Nov. 20 through Ticketmaster and PhiladelphiaEagles.com. Chesney's three previous Linc dates were sellouts. He took a break from the stadium tours this year to cut an album and produce The Boys of Fall , a documentary about high school football.

Ron Mulray describes his flower shop as "an everyday, bread-and-butter kind of place," and it's true. You don't see many like this anymore. At the moment, Mulray is gearing up for prom season, catering to a mostly traditional clientele. A few years back, there was a rash of goth girls, with dyed-black hair and chain-link tartiness, wanting their roses and carnations spray-painted black. Generally, though, requests for prom flowers at Mulray's Philadelphia Flower Co., a family business in the city's Parkwood section since 1987, have followed one trend to another with comfortable convention.

Feed me! That's what the bloodthirsty, other-worldly plant named Audrey II implores, then demands, in Little Shop of Horrors. Well, she got what she asked for. Two of the region's smaller professional stage companies - Theatre Horizon and 11th Hour Theatre Company - have banded together to produce the musical, and they've not only heartily fed the maniacal plant, they've re-seeded and carefully tended the show itself. Their gleefully sassy production puts a fine point on every caricature it draws and treats each song by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken like a show-stopper.

Is your nose gay? You laugh. That's good. Means your nose is happy. This is the origin of the old-fashioned term nosegay, a small bouquet of flowers and herbs that was worn, carried or elegantly tucked into a lady's decolletage as a fashion accessory or an antidote to the stink of everyday life. "They used to strew herbs on the floor in the old manor houses to freshen the air. Nosegays were used similarly," says Eva Monheim, a horticulturist and senior lecturer at Temple University Ambler.

This Christmas, there will be no poinsettias, no wreaths, no bouquets or centerpieces flying out the door of a family flower shop a block from where I live, in the Roxborough section of Philadelphia. Its doors shut two weeks ago. It's the economy, right? Well, not entirely. There's much more behind the disappearance of the neighborhood florist. Christmas was once a rainmaking holiday for family florists. I know: My pop was a Philly florist for 50 years, first in a tiny neighborhood called Paradise, and then in Roxborough.