Frisco

This week's Adopt-a-Pet at the Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society is Frisco, a 1- to 2-year-old pit bull-terrier mix. Frisco is obedient, intelligent and eager to please. He knows how to sit and walks well on a leash. To adopt Frisco, contact PAWS, 111 W. Hunting Park Ave., at 267-385-3800. Please provide his tag No. A05359741 when inquiring. A $40 fee includes sterilization, vaccines, and micro-chipping. Philadelphia residents pay $8 more for a dog license.The adoption fee for cats is $40 and additional $5 for the cat carrier.

After years of neglect, Salem Methodist Episcopal Church in Tredyffrin, which dates to the early 1800s, and the parsonage, cottage and schoolhouse are being restored and converted to single-family houses. For about 100 years, families walked to church and school there before the church was closed around 1927. On Sunday, the Salem Homes, which are being restored by Charles F. Line of Wayne, were the site of an old-fashioned fruit and ice cream festival. More than a dozen former church members and school students returned to see the renovations and reminisce about old times.

She came waddling into my office, a heavy-jowled woman who had to weigh at least 250 pounds. To my amazement, she stood in front of my desk, opened her mouth wide and began singing in an ear-shattering soprano voice. "You looooose," she sang. "You lose, it's over, it's all over, the end has come, doom, doom, doom, gloom, gloom, gloom . . . " I jumped up and demanded to know who she was and why she was in my office. "That should be obvious," she said. "You have heard the expression: 'It is never over until the fat lady sings.

SEATTLE - Cliff Lee is headed out of Seattle and a first base prospect with a ton of power potential is on his way in. The Mariners capped a whirlwind 24 hours of wheeling and dealing on Friday afternoon by shipping Lee to the Texas Rangers in exchange for first baseman Justin Smoak, Class AA pitchers Blake Beavan and Josh Lueke and Class AA infielder Matt Lawson and cash in excess of $2 million. Seattle also shipped relief pitcher Mark Lowe, a Texas native from the Houston area, to the Rangers.

BERKELEY, CALIF. COPS NAB ESCAPEES AFTER 'FRISCO' REMARK Two escapees from a Utah prison blew their cover by breaking an unwritten local law on acceptable nicknames for San Francisco. Anthony Scott Bailey and Eric Neil Fischbeck both said they were from "Frisco" when questioned by University of California officers who found them sleeping on campus Monday. Use of the name - loved by tourists but loathed by residents - set off the alarm bells that their prison break didn't.

Col. Billy Mitchell, the bombastic aviation pioneer who shot himself down with his mouth in 1925, returned from the grave last week to try to unsully his reputation in the latest session of a local tribunal that is a kind of cross between The People's Court and the Way Back Machine. This session of the Court of Historical Review and Appeals, like most of the 51 that have preceded it, was called to right an ancient wrong. And to have a good time. And not necessarily in that order.

1. Give 'em a mettle: The Steelers were manhandled by the Eagles and Giants, so rallying to topple the Cowboys was especially sweet. So was winning despite only 71 yards rushing. They could still gain the conference's best record. 2. Back to Tony Nomo: Everytime Dallas is at a crossroads, the stud QB seems to gag. One TD, three INTs is NOT why Dallas signed him to a 6-year, $67 million deal. 3. Dis-Gusting display: OK, the Vikings are 8-5 and lead the NFC North. But they barely edged the winless Lions and lost QB Gus Frerotte, who hurt his back.

A reporter from a San Francisco paper phoned to ask if Chicagoans were as aghast as the residents of his city because Mike Ditka had hit a female football spectator in the head with a wad of chewing gum. I told him that, no, I hadn't noticed any Chicagoans hyperventilating. "Well, it's very big news here," he said. "It's on Page 1 and being treated very seriously. " That didn't surprise me. Californians, even those who go to football games, are more sensitive than those of us who live in America's sootier cities.

On paper, "The Presidio" must have sounded great. Think of it: team two hot properties, Mark Harmon and Sean Connery (especially hot now that he's an Oscar winner), in a hot genre, the mismatched cop picture. Throw in a love interest in the person of Meg Ryan, sign up an experienced action director, Peter Hyams, and set it all in the eminently picturesque locale of San Francisco. On film, "The Presidio" stinks. Well, maybe "stinks" isn't the right word. This film is too bland and predictable to emit any smell at all. The Presidio is a large military base within the 'Frisco city limits.

The battle lines, by now, have been clearly drawn out, laid down and all but repeated into exhaustion. The upstart 8-7 Vikings against the big, bad, 13-2 49ers. Nobody's choice against everybody's. The team with a chip on its shoulder vs. the team with shoulders that could carry a mountain. At least, that's the thumbnail version of today's game, in what promises to be a dark, damp Candlestick Park (Channel 10, 4 p.m.). But can the Vikings really beat the 49ers? If they can narrow the game down to a couple of key player matchups, the Vikings feel they could just slip away with an upset.

SAN FRANCISCO - The nice thing about your hometown team winning a championship is that you can retreat inside your home when it gets too crazy. The bad thing about being in someone else's hometown when it wins a championship is that your home is in the middle of crazy. Such was the plight of the traveler attempting to return to his hotel after viewing Game 5 of the World Series at the Civic Center Plaza on Monday night. Among the hazards to maneuver around were, in no particular order, popping champagne bottles, excited panhandlers, large bonfires in the middle of intersections, excited panhandlers, second-hand marijuana smoke, aggressive offers to partake in firsthand marijuana smoke, increasingly aggressive and excited panhandlers, much, much more secondhand marijuana smoke, and several men trying to kiss you. "Tonight, everybody in San Francisco is gay," one such man screamed as he danced past the bonfire with a champagne bottle in one hand and something lit in the other.

One hundred and five years after their New York predecessors came to Philadelphia for this city's first modern postseason experience, the Giants are back. That 1905 World Series, in which John McGraw's New Yorkers defeated Connie Mack's A's, touched off a fierce and often bitter rivalry between this city's two baseball teams and the feisty Giants manager. The feud, like the fortunes of the two Philadelphia teams, eventually faded and by the late-1950s both the A's and Giants had relocated westward - the A's to Kansas City in 1954 (and later to Oakland)

SEATTLE - Cliff Lee is headed out of Seattle and a first base prospect with a ton of power potential is on his way in. The Mariners capped a whirlwind 24 hours of wheeling and dealing on Friday afternoon by shipping Lee to the Texas Rangers in exchange for first baseman Justin Smoak, Class AA pitchers Blake Beavan and Josh Lueke and Class AA infielder Matt Lawson and cash in excess of $2 million. Seattle also shipped relief pitcher Mark Lowe, a Texas native from the Houston area, to the Rangers.

Inside the magnificent palace of commerce that was once the First Pennsylvania Bank, diners in pinstripes order prime porterhouse steaks or sip espresso martinis at the sinuous Del Frisco's bar. Average tab: $90, including $48.95 for that 24-ounce porterhouse. Outside the building, men in polo shirts, most of them owners of local construction companies, hand out fliers that say: "Enjoy your meal. When it comes time to pay, please ask the General Manager why the bills for construction remain unpaid.

The absurdity of blowing $100-plus-plus on a steak dinner in the depths of a near-depression is apparently not as absurd as it sounds. You wouldn't know the country is spiraling into a historic economic funk after witnessing a few meals at the new Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steak House. Literally hundreds of diners have been churning each night through the columned grandeur of its red-draped dining room, mowing down $89 rib steaks and $195 bottles of wine (Del Frisco's "sweet spot," according to its wine director)

SWAT teams and sharpshooters took over a corner of 11th and Somerset Streets in North Philly for two days of drama last week. And this coming week, look out for the steak-out unit.   It's all for Law Abiding Citizen , the thriller being filmed in town with Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler .   Christian Stolte (guard Keith Stolte in Prison Break ) plays a man wanted for the murder of the wife and daughter of Butler's character. In scenes filmed Wednesday and Thursday, Stolte was holed up in a house on the 2800 block of North 11th Street that was ringed by cops, including detectives played by Colm Meaney ( Star Trek: The Next Generation )

1. Give 'em a mettle: The Steelers were manhandled by the Eagles and Giants, so rallying to topple the Cowboys was especially sweet. So was winning despite only 71 yards rushing. They could still gain the conference's best record. 2. Back to Tony Nomo: Everytime Dallas is at a crossroads, the stud QB seems to gag. One TD, three INTs is NOT why Dallas signed him to a 6-year, $67 million deal. 3. Dis-Gusting display: OK, the Vikings are 8-5 and lead the NFC North. But they barely edged the winless Lions and lost QB Gus Frerotte, who hurt his back.

At a capacity of 556 over three levels, Del Frisco's Double Eagle , opening Friday at 15th and Chestnut Streets, will be Philly's biggest steak house. The centerpiece of the main floor is a 34-foot wine tower that can hold 2,484 bottles - and that's only about a third of the restaurant's potential wine storage. There are bars on the main floor and the mezzanine. Mezzanine? Old-timers may not remember one in the historic Packard Building, now known as the Grande, which was the train station in the M. Night Shyamalan flick Unbreakable . Del Frisco's (1426-28 Chestnut St., 215-246-0533)

This week's Adopt-a-Pet at the Philadelphia Animal Welfare Society is Frisco, a 1- to 2-year-old pit bull-terrier mix. Frisco is obedient, intelligent and eager to please. He knows how to sit and walks well on a leash. To adopt Frisco, contact PAWS, 111 W. Hunting Park Ave., at 267-385-3800. Please provide his tag No. A05359741 when inquiring. A $40 fee includes sterilization, vaccines, and micro-chipping. Philadelphia residents pay $8 more for a dog license.The adoption fee for cats is $40 and additional $5 for the cat carrier.