Speakeasy

At a time when branding is paramount and every wannabe celebrity hopes to be photographed for online viewing, why would a new bar open without signs, advertising, or PR? And who would have the audacity - in this Facebook/Foursquare society - to forbid cellphone use or cameras inside? Welcome to Hop Sing Laundromat at 10th and Race Streets, Philadelphia's most-anticipated secluded barroom, with 12 months of buzz behind it. If blogging is any sign of sizzle, Hop Sing Laundromat has been aflame for a whole year - and that's before it opened, garnering more than 50 combined mentions on local blogs "Foobooz," "Meal Ticket," "Grub Street," "The Insider," and "Eater Philly.

Police have identified two men they believe fired a barrage of gunfire inside a North Philadelphia speakeasy last month, killing three people and injuring five others. Speaking at a press conference last night outside Police Headquarters, Capt. Thomas Lippo said warrants naming Jerome Broaster, 28, and his brother, Cassius, 27, have been issued, charging them with three counts of murder and five counts of attempted murder. The shootings occurred about 2:30 a.m. Feb. 23 in a rowhouse at 2823 W. Huntingdon St. that was used as an illegal after-hours bar. Police said they had been having problems getting information in the probe because of the reluctance of neighborhood residents.

Police remove the body (above) of one of two sisters who died of apparent drug overdoses yesterday in a makeshift speakeasy on 27th Street near Oxford. Relatives (left) mourn the sisters, who were 44 and 31 years old. The bodies were found in the building's basement at about 11 a.m. by someone who had gone in to clean. Police withheld the names of the victims last night. Officers said the abandoned property had once been a barber shop but that it had been used as a speakeasy during the last few months.

It was Thanksgiving morning 1996, and the son of a police captain wasn't looking for a turkey shoot. But when Brian Kirkland, 29, left a West Philadelphia speakeasy last year, he says a guy tried to play chicken with him. Kirkland, of Yeadon, the son of Capt. Lawrence Kirkland, of the 18th District, told a judge that Matthew Webster, 28, challenged him to a fight and then pulled a gun. Then, said Kirkland, "I pulled mine," and started shooting. Webster was hit three times and was killed, said Assistant District Attorney Randolph Williams.

Rupert Brintley never had a chance in life, his lawyers said. Attorneys Fred Goodman and Dean Owens said Brintley, 25, has a high IQ, and insisted he has "the potential" to make something of himself. But as a child, Brintley lived in a drug house, watched his parents get high, was physically abused and ignored, the lawyers said. When he became a teen-ager, Brintley began living in abandoned houses and cars. Finally, Brintley, of Erie Avenue near 13th Street, sought refuge in a drug gang.

A witness to the Feb. 23 speakeasy shooting that left three dead and five wounded has corroborated police evidence against two brothers accused of murder. Delays had raised the possibility of release for Cassius and Jerome Broaster, whom Deputy Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson once called among Philadelphia's most dangerous criminals. At a preliminary hearing Wednesday, Municipal Judge Francis Cosgrove set arraignment for July 31. The Broasters were arrested in April in connection with the shooting at a rowhouse on the 2800 block of West Huntingdon Street in North Philadelphia that was operated as an illegal after-hours bar. Their hearing was delayed for the third time last month at the request of Assistant District Attorney Carlos M. Vega because of difficulty in getting a key witness who was in federal custody on drug charges.

Philadelphia Housing Authority Police Officer Tyrone Carter finished work at midnight Saturday and called his wife to say he was on his way home. He never got there. The 28-year-old officer stopped at a speakeasy on Old York Road near Wyoming Avenue in Logan. At 5:16 a.m., the five-year veteran was murdered outside the speakeasy - shot in the back by an unknown killer. Carter's pistol, which he usually carried off-duty, was missing. Two brothers also were wounded inside the late-night spot, situated below Logan Groceries.

While police and prosecutors say they are still compiling details about how two Downingtown teens ran what police say was a makeshift speakeasy in a local barn, students from throughout Chester County say it was no secret to them. They say, the speakeasy, which was shut down by police in December, was becoming something of a suburban teen hot spot. "People I knew were starting to go when it got busted. It was becoming something that not just Downingtown kids were going to," said Adam McElhenney, a senior at West Chester East High School.

Grudgingly, it's hard not to feel a little admiration for the business acumen of two Chester County teens who allegedly opened a tightly organized barn-based entertainment operation in Upper Uwchlan Township. Police said the two 17-year-old boys managed to find reliable product supply lines (which police ought to track down and cork). Inside their borrowed barn, they posted price lists and set up seating areas for drinkers or gamers. They couldn't advertise, so the assumption is that word-of-mouth testimonials increased the operation's success.

Swarms of police surrounded an Upper Holmesburg housing complex yesterday during the dramatic arrests of two brothers who police say killed three men inside a North Philadelphia speakeasy during a continuing drug battle in February. Two other men, possibly brothers as well, were also arrested on charges stemming from a violent string of crimes involving two drug gangs, police said. The arrests, highlighted by a two-hour standoff with scores of police, began about 3 p.m. and culminated at 5:15, when the last of the suspects, his hands over his head, surrendered after police had fired several rounds of tear gas through the windows to force him out. Acting Police Commissioner Sylvester M. Johnson called the suspects "the worst people in the city as far as violence is concerned.

At a time when branding is paramount and every wannabe celebrity hopes to be photographed for online viewing, why would a new bar open without signs, advertising, or PR? And who would have the audacity - in this Facebook/Foursquare society - to forbid cellphone use or cameras inside? Welcome to Hop Sing Laundromat at 10th and Race Streets, Philadelphia's most-anticipated secluded barroom, with 12 months of buzz behind it. If blogging is any sign of sizzle, Hop Sing Laundromat has been aflame for a whole year - and that's before it opened, garnering more than 50 combined mentions on local blogs "Foobooz," "Meal Ticket," "Grub Street," "The Insider," and "Eater Philly.

Saturday-Monday Young minds can explore This weekend is the Hagley's Invention Convention that will allow young people to invent, explore, examine, experience, and get excited about science and engineering. Events are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Sunday and Monday at Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington. Children can build an invention using familiar household items such as cereal boxes, paper towel rolls, oatmeal containers, and more. The Hagley patent office will be present to give young inventors patents for the inventions they make in the Create-an-Invention workshop.

A Strawberry Mansion woman has been charged with murder in the beating death of a 64-year-old grandmother and her dog. Markita Blackwell, 34, of the 2500 block of North Natrona Street, called police Feb. 2 and said she had found Melva White, known in their neighborhood as "Ms. Poochie," severely beaten in a rowhouse in the 3200 block of West Arizona Street. White's dog had been beaten to death. Blackwell, in fact, beat White, who died Monday night, and killed her dog, Pup-Pup, homicide Capt.

Few cities roared in the 1920s and early 1930s like Philadelphia under Prohibition. It was a era of gangland executions, widespread corruption among police and judges, and rampant alcoholism - the opposite of Prohibition's intentions when the 18th Amendment barring the sale, manufacture and transport of alcohol was ratified in 1920. At bars today, a few may raise a toast to mark the 75th anniversary of the repeal and consider that for but a few hours and two time zones, Pennsylvania might warrant Utah's place in history as the state whose ratification of the 21st Amendment officially killed Prohibition.

The sign, at a glance, is as archetypal as it gets, neon-red and aglow in the postindustrial night that settles dark as a raven on silent North 13th Street, south of Spring Garden. It seems to float like a thought bubble near the shuttered Ottens Flavors factory, with only one thought: "BAR," it says, nothing more. This is the latest sign for a corner tavern now called the Prohibition Taproom, just weeks into its fifth? sixth? tenth? incarnation. (It was Zips once. It was the tough Carriage House Cafe, because it's across the street from the stables for the tourist-carriage horses.

Casinos Atlantic City Hilton Boston at the Boardwalk, Atlantic City; 609-347-7111. www.hiltonac.com . Legends in Concert. $30. 2/4 2 pm. 2/5-2/7 7 pm. Speakeasy. $25. 2/4 7 pm. Bally's Atlantic City Park Place & the Boardwalk, Atlantic City; 609-340-2000. www.ballysac.com . Six. $25. 2/2 7 & 10 pm. 2/3-2/7 3:30 & 7 pm. Borgata Hotel & Casino 1 Borgata Way, Atlantic City; 609-317-1000. www.theborgata.com . Dennis Miller. $45. 2/1 9 pm. Comedy Stop at the Trop Brighton & the Boardwalk, Atlantic City; 609-822-7353.

TOMORROW IS the 74th anniversary of the end of Prohibition, a day beer makers would like you to mark by raising a toast tonight - Brew Year's Eve - to the end of America's 13-year, 2-month, 22-day drought. Call me a Prohibition-denier, but after a few hours with some yellowing 1920s newspaper clips, I'm beginning to wonder if the city ever really stopped drinking. Reading those old news stories, you get the impression that someone forgot to send Philly the memo, you know, about that whole 18th Amendment thing.

Writer Beth Kephart, who lives in Devon, has won the Speakeasy Prize for poetry. Kephart is the author of two memoirs inspired by lessons learned when her son, Jeremy, was diagnosed with pervasive development disorder, which is linked to autism: A Slant of Sun: One Child's Courage, which was a 1998 National Book Award finalist and one of the Salon Best Books of the Year; and Seeing Past Z: Nurturing the Imagination in a Fast-Forward World....

Atlantic City wants to become Las Vegas East. But as its casinos strive to duplicate the celebrity restaurant glitz and faux-sky malls of Sin City, saving a 93-year-old institution like the Knife & Fork Inn has become all the more important. Sure, the old Knife & Fork was probably one of the last restaurants in America that served lobster thermidor without smirking. But restoring the restaurant and its distinctive white stairstep Flemish facade to epicurean relevance was a matter of preserving one of the last authentic morsels of the city's own culinary history.

A Strawberry Mansion woman sued the city, police, and District Attorney's Office yesterday, contending she was ambushed and shot after police repeatedly questioned her as a witness to a 2002 speakeasy shoot-out that killed three and wounded five. The civil-rights lawsuit by Monica Latoya Cherry was filed in federal court. It says she was shot in the head and seriously wounded on March 30, 2002, after police and prosecutors made it clear in the North Philadelphia neighborhood that she was a possible witness against brothers Cassius and Jerome Broaster.