Walnut Street

If you haven't strolled along Walnut Street in Center City for a while, you're in for a pleasant surprise. With each passing month, the street gets more appealing: The shop windows, building facades and restaurants suggest a downtown that's on the way up. That will seem even truer when two important anchors on the street - the ground-floor shops in the renovated Bellevue and the Rittenhouse condominiums on Rittenhouse Square - open for business....

On a mission of botanical mercy at Penn's Landing, Juan Ramos crosses the Walnut Street walkway on his way to water flowers. Nature may do the honors today, courtesy of a thunderstorm.

Police are advising motorists that a parade marking the move of the Philly Pops from 260 S. Broad Street to new offices at 1518 Walnut Street at noon today could disrupt traffic in the area. The parade will consist of about 50 people, including Peter Nero, musicians from the Philly Pops and a group of Mummers. Police there will intermittent closures on South Broad Street and on Walnut Street from about noon until 1 p.m.

Police recovered a badly decomposed body from the Schuylkill River near University City Friday afternoon, police said. The body was pulled from the west side of the river in the vicinity of Walnut Street late in the afternoon by the Philadelphia Police Department Marine Unit, police said. No further information was immediately available.    -Robert Moran

Forget about driving on the 1600 block of Walnut Street from dawn to dark on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Monday. From 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day, it's going to be used in the making of a mob movie, "Dead Man Down," which began shooting around the city a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps star Colin Farrell, Terrence Howard and Noomi Rapace (of Sweden's original "Dragon Tattoo" movies) will be seen outside Urban Outfitters, Alma de Cuba or the Apple Store. Occasionally, nearby 17th Street and Walnut from 17th to 18th may also be off-limits.

A police officer looks into the Aion Manufacturing Co., on Walnut Street near 7th, where an employee was hit on the head yesterday by a man with a gun, police said. The incident occurred shortly before 11 a.m. Police said the gun fired when the woman was hit and the would-be robber fled empty-handed. The woman, Annette Cohen, 35, was treated at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

Joseph Bonavitacola and Richard Petrone weren't exactly novices when, in 1984, they opened the Viking Pastry Shop on Walnut Street. They already ran a thriving bakery in Ardmore and had every expectation that they could replicate that success in downtown Philadelphia. They were wrong: the Walnut Street branch stumbled along for about three years before the partners beat a retreat to the 'burbs. "My sales were OK. It was just that my rent was killing me . . . Frankly, I don't see how a small retail bakery could make it in that location," Bonavitacola said.

Saturday Rolling on the river Saturday is Delaware River Day at Penn's Landing, marking the start of summer, traditionally when hundreds of boaters put their vessels in the water. Free River Day events are planned noon to 6 p.m. at the landing's marina behind Independence Seaport Museum on Columbus Boulevard near Walnut Street. There will be free tours of the McFarland, one of four oceangoing hopper dredges owned by the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. Delaware River Day Tug Fest, from 2 to 3 p.m., will be off the South Quay at the marina, and it will include the McAllister Tug, the Moran Tug, the K-Sea Tug, and the Tug Jupiter (2009 winner for "best decorated")

Forget about driving on the 1600 block of Walnut Street from dawn to dark on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Monday. From 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. each day, it's going to be used in the making of a mob movie, "Dead Man Down," which began shooting around the city a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps star Colin Farrell, Terrence Howard and Noomi Rapace (of Sweden's original "Dragon Tattoo" movies) will be seen outside Urban Outfitters, Alma de Cuba or the Apple Store. Occasionally, nearby 17th Street and Walnut from 17th to 18th may also be off-limits.

Police recovered a badly decomposed body from the Schuylkill River near University City Friday afternoon, police said. The body was pulled from the west side of the river in the vicinity of Walnut Street late in the afternoon by the Philadelphia Police Department Marine Unit, police said. No further information was immediately available.    -Robert Moran

Police are advising motorists that a parade marking the move of the Philly Pops from 260 S. Broad Street to new offices at 1518 Walnut Street at noon today could disrupt traffic in the area. The parade will consist of about 50 people, including Peter Nero, musicians from the Philly Pops and a group of Mummers. Police there will intermittent closures on South Broad Street and on Walnut Street from about noon until 1 p.m.

THESE DAYS, "dinner and a show" invokes images of takeout sushi and an on-demand movie. But there was a time when it meant an elegant evening at a restaurant with a decidedly grown-up atmosphere, where folks seated at linen-covered tables were entertained as they dined. That's the bygone realm that's been revived - with a modern twist - at Walnut Street Supper Club, which opened right before New Year's at 1227 Walnut St., for 35 years the site of the landmark Portofino Italian restaurant.

Seven months of work on the Walnut Street Bridge Gateway Project are to begin Monday, the city announced Sunday. That means the north sidewalk and adjacent travel lane on the bridge over the Schuylkill will be closed starting Monday. The federally funded project involves Walnut Street from 23d to 30th Streets. Sidewalks will be widened and there will be improvements to lighting and signs. Bicyclists will be asked to detour the work area by taking 23d Street to Lombard Street to the South Street Bridge to 33d Street.

As Amanda Wolff prepares to sit in the audience of Dancing With the Stars Tuesday night, she still can't believe her good fortune: One of DWTS 's four semifinalist couples will wear a studded black ensemble that she dreamed up. "I'm really excited, I can't believe all this happened in two weeks," said the apprentice costume designer at the Walnut Street Theatre. In late October, Wolff, 22, entered a DWTS contest that asked would-be designers to submit sketches for   costumes.

Oh, the ironies of life, they are many. In Speaking of Tongues, at Walnut Street Theatre's third-floor Independence stage, they are unstoppable - so many ironies pour forth, they begin to feel normal, and the play waters itself down. After a smartly written first act about the marital indiscretions of two couples - Tongues is by Australian playwright Andrew Bovell, screenwriter for the film Strictly Ballroom - the play moves on to consider the people these folks connected with in passing.

Sometimes you just have to take sides. And in the best tradition of newspapering - oops, multi-platform journalism - I stand with the underdog. So consider a few words of support for a man who's been dead 187 years: composer Antonio Salieri. My support is in the name of accuracy. For years after seeing Peter Shaffer's 1981 drama Amadeus on Broadway, I figured Salieri for a fool, a betrayer, and little more. In Amadeus - which opened Wednesday in a classy, meticulously conceived production at the Walnut Street Theatre - Salieri becomes a devil who sees the brilliant Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart as his rival, his better, his nemesis sent by a God who has betrayed him, and his own quest for fame a cover for his lack of musical talent.

In an intensely active professional-theater town - where some weeks see a half-dozen openings and one show in four is a world premiere - an oldie but goodie from America's longest-running theater has seized the day. Fiddler on the Roof , the Walnut Street Theatre's final mainstage show of the season, swept the nominations announced Monday for the 16th annual Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre, the region's professional theater honors....