Stroll

Dan Roitman's company is called Stroll , a most ill-fitting name. From a growth perspective at least, Stroll's evolution has been anything but a leisurely pace. Born 12 years ago in a Maryland dorm room, the Center City company is an impressive display of the potential of any small business, though perhaps in the extreme. In just the last year, its revenue has exploded from $17 million to $40 million, with another doubling expected by the end of 2012. Profit growth was 400 percent last year, Roitman said.

SEPTEMBER is not only back-to-school time, but a time to get back to all those things you've promised yourself to do, like spending more time working out and being healthy. A great way to give yourself a kick start and help the parks at the same time is by joining the first annual Walk for the Park. This Sunday at 9 a.m., join your fellow park-lovers on the Art Museum steps. This walk is special: It starts at the Art Museum and travels down the Ben Franklin Parkway to JFK Plaza and back to Eakins Oval - a view of the Parkway most of us get only through the windshield of our cars as we commute home.

A student strolls across a bridge on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania yesterday, taking full advantage of a beautiful fall day. Another pretty fall day is expected today.

You have "global positioning systems" for an expedition to the North Pole, "triptiks" to tell you how to drive to Disney World and soon you'll have 275 "diskmaps" to get you around Center City. The diskmaps - pizza panlike pieces of aluminum with a green background - are being complemented by 220 directional signs. They were unveiled yesterday at 12th Street between Market and Filbert. The system, known as Walk!Philadelphia, is being installed by the Center City District as part of its two-year streetscape improvement project.

Mayor Nutter took a walk in the park Saturday to promote Philadelphia parks. It was the start of a series of citywide programs to highlight Philadelphia's commitment to teaming with community groups to maintain the bounty of its 25 parks and recreation centers. Joining Nutter for a stroll along the Marshall Trail in Cobbs Creek Park were Deputy Police Commissioner Richard Ross and Parks and Recreation Commissioner Michael DiBerardi-nis. Nutter said preserving Cobbs Creek was a shared responsibility for the city and community.

D AN ROITMAN, 34, who lives in the Art Museum area, is the founder and chief executive of Stroll. The company has an Internet-based marketing platform that sells audio language-learning products. Stroll has 160 employees and is based at 16th Street and JFK Boulevard. It's one of the fastest-growing companies in the city. Q: How did you come up with the idea for Stroll? A: I started marketing professional-development products, and one subset was language learning. We focused on that, and the business took off in 2002.

Lately, I haven't been sleeping well. I turn in late, and wake up early - usually feeling energetic, but also a little uneasy. Could be the change of seasons. Or perhaps the angst of being on strike and unpaid when I'd rather be into week three of my fall semester duties as a professor at Temple. Part of my restlessness arises from a sense of foreboding that comes with the knowledge that this city - this regional community, to all who would trash Philadelphia and isolate themselves from its distress in the safety of the suburbs - is in troubled waters and that the hard times are getting worse.

More than 10,000 people around the region will take a fitness-inducing midday stroll Wednesday to mark National Walk @ Lunch Day. Half of them will be walking laps around Rittenhouse Square. Will it make much of a difference? Not if the walkers are looking to lose weight fast. An average person walking at an average pace for 30 minutes a day, five days a week, would need about seven weeks to expend the 3,500 calories that equals one pound. But there is a bigger point, said Gary D. Foster, director of Temple University's Center for Obesity Research and Education, who reluctantly did the math because there is a broader message in this: "Walking is a fantastic thing to do. Because it improves your health.

Twenty-four years after he killed two police officers and paralyzed a third with a bullet during a Good Friday shoot-out here, a Vietnam veteran was granted a small slice of freedom yesterday by a Superior Court judge who has been monitoring his confinement at Ancora Psychiatric Hospital. Under Judge Patricia R. LeBon's ruling, James T. Carhart, 46, will be permitted to stroll the grounds of the Winslow hospital for 30 minutes a day unescorted, according to Jack Smith, spokesman for the Burlington County Prosecutor's Office.

Pssst. Hey, you. Yeah, you. You say you've already taken the elevator to the top of the Washington Monument. You've been through the Air and Space Museum. You've shopped in Georgetown. You've walked up the Lincoln Memorial steps, and through the Holocaust Museum. You've eaten at all the ethnic restaurants. You've toured the White House, and stood under the Capitol Rotunda. You've got, you think, no reason to do another tourist thing in this world- famous city. Well how about a stroll in the square - Lafayette Square - to hear some juicy tales of murder, mayhem and intrigue?

The Daily News Pet of the Week is Gideon, a 9-year-old shar-pei mix at the Pennsylvania SPCA. Gideon is gentle and loves to take leisurely strolls. He is house-trained and neutered, has his current vaccinations and comes with a month of free pet insurance. Through June, he's available free. For more information on Gideon, contact the PSPCA, 215-426-6300, stop by 350 E. Erie Ave., or visit the website at www.pspca.org .  

D AN ROITMAN, 34, who lives in the Art Museum area, is the founder and chief executive of Stroll. The company has an Internet-based marketing platform that sells audio language-learning products. Stroll has 160 employees and is based at 16th Street and JFK Boulevard. It's one of the fastest-growing companies in the city. Q: How did you come up with the idea for Stroll? A: I started marketing professional-development products, and one subset was language learning. We focused on that, and the business took off in 2002.

IF I HAD MY WAY, and I seldom do, the new speaker of the Pennsylvania House, solely on the basis of his name, would be Erie state Rep. Ryan Bizzarro. It would be fitting and fun for "Speaker Bizzarro" to wield the gavel in a chamber I like to call "the place where good ideas go to die. " I chatted with Bizzarro this week. He's a 27-year-old Democrat who worked for the Erie County Convention Center before winning election in November. When I ask how much grief he gets as a pol whose name's Bizzarro, he says, "Not a lot at all," noting that his name is well-known in Erie, where his extended family has deep roots, including in local businesses, a restaurant and a sports legend.

TALK TO high-wire daredevil Nik Wallenda and you can't help but think of the iconic line from "The Treasure of Sierra Madre. " Except you hear Wallenda saying, "A tether? I don't need no stinkin' tether. " Thursday at 3 p.m., Wallenda, who last month thrilled a worldwide audience with his tightrope stroll above Niagara Falls, will commence a 1,300-foot walk 100 feet above the Atlantic City beach between the Atlantic Club and Tropicana casinos. As far as he's concerned, what's most important isn't what he'll be doing but how he'll be doing it: without the kind of safety device ABC-TV forced him to use during the Niagara Falls event.

Dan Roitman's company is called Stroll , a most ill-fitting name. From a growth perspective at least, Stroll's evolution has been anything but a leisurely pace. Born 12 years ago in a Maryland dorm room, the Center City company is an impressive display of the potential of any small business, though perhaps in the extreme. In just the last year, its revenue has exploded from $17 million to $40 million, with another doubling expected by the end of 2012. Profit growth was 400 percent last year, Roitman said.

More than 10,000 people around the region will take a fitness-inducing midday stroll Wednesday to mark National Walk @ Lunch Day. Half of them will be walking laps around Rittenhouse Square. Will it make much of a difference? Not if the walkers are looking to lose weight fast. An average person walking at an average pace for 30 minutes a day, five days a week, would need about seven weeks to expend the 3,500 calories that equals one pound. But there is a bigger point, said Gary D. Foster, director of Temple University's Center for Obesity Research and Education, who reluctantly did the math because there is a broader message in this: "Walking is a fantastic thing to do. Because it improves your health.

If the idea of an evening outing along eatery lane appeals, consider trekking to the next Baltimore Avenue Dollar Stroll, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Sept. 1 in University City. Launched two years ago, the Baltimore Avenue Stroll shares some similarities with Night Market - both feature bands, D.J.s, crowds, gourmet food trucks, and specials at the local eateries. In fact, the most recent Baltimore Avenue Stroll coincided with the Mount Airy Night Market, on Aug. 4. But Night Market, sponsored by the Food Trust, and the Baltimore Avenue Dollar Stroll, a project of the University City District, are pals, not competitors, says Lori Brennan of the University City District.

Take a hat, lather on the sunscreen, and lose the flip-flops - this year, the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education has decided to make you hike to its annual summer outdoor sculpture exhibition. It's an unchallenging ramble along the center's Widener Trail, as it turns out, through lovely, sun-dappled woods, open meadows, and an unexpected pine grove, with birds and other wildlife your only company. Even better, the show, "Facts and Fables: Stories of the Natural World," is the first one I've seen here (or at the center's Second Site, a former farm located a mile or so away)

"We have one more stop before heading back to Izmir," said Ahmet, our tour guide. I was surprised, because I was ready to go back to the hotel. We had been touring the Turkish countryside for 10 hours, and my sweaty clothes and the dirt between my toes were making me very cranky. A shower was calling me and I needed a tall glass of cold water. No historical site or shop could be worth visiting at this time of day. I glanced at Amy, my college-age daughter sitting next to me in our chauffeur-driven car. I rolled my eyes, but I didn't say anything because I didn't want to insult the driver and our guide with my refusal.

MONTREAL - "To me, Montreal is eating, drinking, and shopping," summed up a Canadian friend before my first trip to the island city, where French is the official language but food is (unofficially) the language of love. Priorities ordered for me, I set my top objective for my weekend stay: to get to Montreal's hotter-than-ever restaurant Garde Manger to sample the lobster poutine, a variation on the artery-clogging Quebec staple consisting of french fries, cheese curds, and gravy. An episode of Iron Chef America , in which Garde Manger chef Chuck Hughes defeated Bobby Flay, had just aired in Canada; Hughes had rallied after the show's cohost, a Toronto native, admonished him for a defeatist attitude.