Manayunk

Water-main break snarls traffic in Manayunk A water-main break Wednesday afternoon caused basement flooding in nine businesses and snarled traffic in Manayunk. An eight-inch water main ruptured about 3:30 p.m. in the 4400 block of Main Street, said Philadelphia Water Department spokeswoman Laura Copeland. Crews eventually shut off the water, leading to a halt of water service for more than 20 businesses. The 4400 block of Main also was closed to traffic. The department expected to restore service Wednesday night, Copeland said.

"The Year of the Woman" was celebrated throughout Manayunk yesterday as more than 30 businesses, many owned by women, participated in the Second Sunday Festival. Among the performers were Maggi and Friends, who entertained at La Petite Gourmet on Main Street. Maggi (center) is joined by Alicia (left) and E.J. (right).

Artist Ellen G. Haham (right) of New York helps Karen Turney adjust a hat at the fifth annual arts festival along Main Street between Green Lane and Shurs Lane yesterday. The warm weather brought shoppers out to the city's Manayunk section in droves and they selected from furniture, clay, paintings, glass, clothing, jewelry and more. Jazz musicians also kept the fifth annual, two-day festival lively.

It would be an understatement to say parking is tight in Manayunk. And it wouldn't be outrageous to speculate that a free, guaranteed place to park is near the top of many a prospective resident's wish list. At Watermill at Manayunk, a new rental/condominium community at the east end of Main Street, the wish has been granted, and included in the rent. "The garage parking was a huge factor," said Justin Eshleman, 31, a customer-service representative for Pfizer Animal Health.

The Manayunk Cycling Festival began Friday and will culminate Sunday in the First Union USPRO Championship. The festival included stunts and a climb up Manayunk hill.

A trash truck lies half-buried yesterday after crashing into a building being demolished on Main Street at Shurs Lane in Manayunk, police said. The driver, David Arthur Sanders, was charged with drunken driving.

David Bezold browses on Main Street in Manayunk yesterday, where the works of more than 250 artists and crafts people from across the country was on display at the Manyunk Arts Festival. Bezold is looking at some of the works of photographer Gary San Pietro.

The bright lights of Manayunk are likely to get brighter still with City Council passage yesterday of a bill that will establish a special services district there. These districts are all the rage now, enabling commercial areas to tax themselves and use the money for enhanced security, street cleaning and promotion. Indeed, Philadelphia has five districts in various stages of development, from the pace-setting Center City District to Germantown, Frankford, South Street and City Avenue.

It's trendy and hip and chic - the Delaware Valley's newest "in" spot to dine and browse the expensive boutiques and craft shops. And when Main Street in Manayunk finally rose from the grave and became a hot spot, Victor Ostroff says, "No one was more amazed than me. "Who would ever believe that people would come to Manayunk to eat?"

The exhibition of Francis Speight's paintings of Manayunk (the show is in honor of his 91st birthday) is delightful. The dense and handsome colors in the show at Designer's Corner in Manayunk look as if they have thoroughly soaked up the light in that section of the city and are now giving it back. The paintings were done in a relaxed way, yet with lots of dash. They feature wide-angle views of Manayunk's hilly terrain, with its rows of houses on steeply graded streets and its terraced gardens with an Old World look.

Water-main break snarls traffic in Manayunk A water-main break Wednesday afternoon caused basement flooding in nine businesses and snarled traffic in Manayunk. An eight-inch water main ruptured about 3:30 p.m. in the 4400 block of Main Street, said Philadelphia Water Department spokeswoman Laura Copeland. Crews eventually shut off the water, leading to a halt of water service for more than 20 businesses. The 4400 block of Main also was closed to traffic. The department expected to restore service Wednesday night, Copeland said.

Behind the charming boutiques of Main Street in Manayunk sits a crude shell of a building. The property, which runs along the Manayunk Canal on a strip of land called Venice Island, is what's left of a 19th-century textile mill. It's basically four jagged, graffiti-covered walls with no roof and nothing inside — as if someone had started demolishing from the top and worked down, but never finished. "It's pretty gruesome," says Mike Yanofsky, who works on Main Street and was taking an afternoon stroll along the canal's boardwalk when we caught up with him. He noted the nearby construction of a new Venice Island recreation-and-performing-arts center and wondered, shouldn't something be done about this eyesore?

When Michael Vogel was studying architecture at the University of Pennsylvania, he would spend a lot of his free time building things in the school's furniture-grade wood shop. Ten years as an investment banker, first in New York and then in Philadelphia, did not dull the Elkins Park native's interest in woodworking. "I tried to get access to woodshops regularly, but always found closed doors," Vogel said. The shops he approached would cite wear and tear on the machines, or insurance concerns, or that Vogel would be getting in the way as reasons to shut him out. The alternative was signing up for classes at a woodworking school, thus having regular access to a shop, but his schedule would not allow him to commit to, for example, certain set hours every Monday night.

IN  12-STEP meetings, there's a "no cross-talk" policy. After a member says his peace, the group responds, "Thanks for sharing. " No one comments any further. After listening to families at St. Bridget's School describe their meeting with the Philadelphia Archdiocese to ask that their school remain open, I'm wondering if they stumbled into a 12-Step gathering instead of an appeals hearing. Because the response they've gotten to their respectfully expressed concerns is, basically, "Thanks for sharing.

Does the late painter Francis Speight, our most dedicated observer of the 1930s and '40s Philadelphia cityscape, have a true successor today? Two local painters, either of whom might aspire to that lofty post, are Larry Francis and James B. Williams. In solo shows at Gross McCleaf, their recent work is now on display. Francis, a Southwest Philadelphia native, is widely known for painting his urban landscapes on site, whether at Rittenhouse Square (including a recent commission for a European to take home as a remembrance of the city)

The paper mill on flood-prone Flat Rock Road in Manayunk, one of the oldest industrial sites in Philadelphia, has changed owners at least half a dozen times since the 1970s. It's facing yet another reorganization. Current owner Sun Capital Partners Inc. , the Florida-based buyout firm coheaded by Marc Leder , one of the new owners of the Philadelphia 76ers , in 2008 made Manayunk its corporate headquarters for a reorganized group of paperboard and packaging plants called Paperworks Industries Inc. Boss Thomas Garland said last year he expected the company would keep growing, under Sun's ownership and with financing from PNC Bank , for three to five years at least.

Sallen Woewiyu Jr., an effervescent senior at Penn Wood High School in Delaware County, explained why he routinely gets on the No. 113 bus after school . . . makes a short hop from Lansdowne to 69th Street Station in Upper Darby . . . transfers to the No. 65 bus going to 30th Street Station, then gets picked up by a van that takes him to an indoor soccer facility in Manayunk. And why he reverses the commute afterward, getting only a bus token for his troubles, traveling with several other Penn Wood students.

The scream of chainsaws and power drills echoed through the streets of Manayunk on Saturday afternoon for the second annual Manayunk on Ice Festival. Some of the competition's best ice carvers entertained the crowds with their precision cuts and detailed displays. Main Street was lined with the tents of 15 participants who came from across the region and as far away as Pittsburgh, Long Island, and Chicago to compete for a $2,000 first-place prize. Competitors were graded on a long list of categories from technical skill and finished appearance to first impression and attention to detail.

Blocks of ice were transformed into images of love along Main Street in Manayunk Saturday. Thousands strolled along the street to watch as master ice sculptors created frozen symbols of "Passion" in honor of Valentine's Day like giraffes, their necks wrapped around each other; cupid sitting on the moon and hands with one placing a ring on the other. The event, the second annual "Manayunk On Ice" Pro Ice Carving Competition and Winter Family Festival, opened with an ice bonfire on Friday and will continue on Sunday with a Master Ice Sculptor Invitational from noon to 3 p.m. Ice-carvers will create original works around the theme of "Obsession.

Ice in winter is often seen as a major nuisance, but the Manayunk on Ice Festival offers it as entertainment and celebration. The first festival brought more than 20,000 visitors to Manayunk over three days last year, and organizers anticipate 30,000 this year. It starts Friday night and continues through Sunday along Main Street. This ice-carving competition/ice exposition is free, family-friendly and an antidote to the cabin fever that usually strikes at this time of year, even during a relatively mild winter.