Tastykakes

For Shanice Johnson, 17, it's a place to help her prepare for college. And for Emma Henderson, 70, it's a place to buy her favorite Tastykake goodies at discount prices. For their North Philadelphia community, it's a sweet deal to have the new Tastykake Thrift Outlet Store at a former bank in the 2200 block of Venango Street. The store, which opened yesterday morning with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, features shelves stacked high with boxes of Tastykake delights, such as Butterscotch Krimpets, Kandy Kakes, and chocolate cupcakes.

I'm 47. My life is probably about halfway over, and I no longer feel like everything is possible. Yet there are wonderful things about being middle-aged, namely the knowledge that what I like doesn't define me and that I have the license to be hypocritical. I recently went to the farmers market and bought a container of black bean tofu - and an oversized, over-iced chocolate cupcake. That was my lunch. I enjoyed my main course and dessert equally. The innate blandness of the tofu made way for the richness of the cupcake's vanilla icing.

WE HAVE a name for the idea of selling naming rights to the Pennsylvania Convention Center. And it's not a very nice one. Earlier this week, Mayor Street floated the idea as a way to make up the shortfall of arts-and-culture funding. He suggested that maybe as much as $5 million a year for the arts could be generated from selling the naming rights to a corporation. Our first instinct on hearing this was to think of all the funny, ironic or cutting names that we could come up with.

There is a new Philadelphian, living right in my home in Swarthmore. It doesn't happen very often, I'm sure. To be a Philadelphian, you usually need to be born here. My wife, Kris, grew up in the outer reaches of Pennsylvania, near Erie. Out there, all the children are taught that Philadelphia is that big, dirty city, with the cracked bell, that strong-arms all the tax dollars from Harrisburg. I lived in Erie with my wife for several years. As far as I can tell, the tiny city by Lake Erie has the lake, epic amounts of snow, and lots of cloudy days.

As a child, Karen Schutz loved Tastykakes. She'd peel off the sugar icing of a chocolate cupcake and shove it into her mouth, before devouring the rich interior. So Schutz, 42, couldn't quite grasp what the makers of Tastykakes were thinking when they told her in January they planned to create a health-conscious, low-carbohydrate snack. It was a priority. And it was her job to make it happen. Pronto. America was in the grip of a carbohydrate revolt. Dozens of companies already had launched about 600 low-carb products to meet the hopes of an overweight society.

Tasty Baking Co. launched 23 direct-delivery routes in Western Pennsylvania and Ohio last week as part of its strategy under chief executive officer Charles Pizzi to boost sales. The costs associated with this expansion and other projects are expected to push the company in the red for the third quarter, the Philadelphia baker of snack cakes and pies said yesterday. In recent years, Tasty Baking had expanded distribution by piggybacking on other companies' trucks. For example, Snyder's of Hanover pretzel bakery had been delivering Tastykakes in the area between Pittsburgh and Cleveland since the late 1990s.

Ottawa Mayor Bob Chiarelli can already taste the butterscotch Krimpets. Not so fast, said Mayor Street, who expects to sample BeaverTails for the first time. BeaverTails are hot pastries with cinnamon, chocolate and apple toppings. Chiarelli and Street have a friendly wager on the Eastern Conference semifinal series between the Flyers and the Senators: Tastykakes for Chiarelli if the Flyers lose, BeaverTails for Street if they win. Last year, when Ottawa eliminated the Flyers in the first round, Street paid up. "I want to put my order in for more chocolate and butterscotch Tastykakes this year," Chiarelli said.

CHARLIE PIZZI has been scarfing up Tastykakes all his life. He started with lemon pies. And during his 13 years as president and chief executive officer of the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce, he progressed to a schedule of "doughnuts in the morning, Krimpets in the afternoon and a chocolate cupcake at night with ice cream. " Now Charles P. Pizzi will be taking over the entire Tasty Baking factory. Starting Oct. 7, he'll be president and CEO of Tasty Baking Co., leading a national expansion of the Mid-Atlantic region's biggest source of snack cakes.

They sell Philadelphia cheesesteaks but put the sodas in Chicago Bears cups. As they say back home, whaddayagonnado? With the big playoff game against the Eagles just two days away in a town that's wild for the Bears, Dean and Michael Markellos have to go with the flow. It's a collision of worlds for the two brothers from Upper Darby. These were kids who used to sneak out of the house when they were visiting their aunt on Ninth Street just so they could go to Pat's Steaks.

Here, in Jan Elmy's recent nature morte, we see the fading afternoon light draped across her subject matter, clearly employing the chiaroscuro techniques first mastered by Caravaggio, though their perspectival stillness owes more to that effulgent Dutch master, Jan Vermeer. The work in question: Kandy Kakes Go Way Out West. It's a still life of a coffee cup, a coffeepot, a spur, and a half-eaten Peanut Butter Kandy Kake. "I took that bite out of it myself," the artist says proudly.