The Rivers Family Flaunts Its Legacy Status
(07/31/09 6:07am)
Via the Inquirer, we hear that Joan Rivers is already lobbying to get her tween grandson into Penn.
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Via the Inquirer, we hear that Joan Rivers is already lobbying to get her tween grandson into Penn.
Today the University asserts its backbone, showing us that students can only urinate on a statue so many times before they have to face the consequences. A tipster writes that Sir Ben "is being moved to outside Steiny-D as we speak from its original spot near the compass." We never thought we'd see the day. Will this more visible location deter urination? Developing...
About this time last year, we were WTF-ing at the news that Logan had been rechristened "Cohen Hall." You'll recall that it even made the Styles section! We've had a year for the news to sink in, and you know, whatever, Penn has dollar signs in its eyes, did we really expect the university to behave like anything other than the higher ed hustler we all know and love?
Photo by Mustafa Al-ammar
UTB fairygodmother Tali just gchatted us with a most disconcerting City Paper link: Marathon Grill owner Cary Borish, manager Nick Maldonado and contractor Mike Parsell have converted U-City's MarBar into Panda Bar, a new bar and music venue. Aesthetic changes include the addition of high-backed booths and vintage-style wallpaper. Food- and drink-wise, expect a largely American craft draft lineup and a bar menu with shareable eats like pierogies and Kobe sliders. The first performance for the 3,500-square-foot, 350 capacity space is scheduled for Sat., June 20; R5 Productions will soon start handling the booking. We sure didn't see that coming! End of an era! Whither the NSO hotspot? Post your favorite MarBar memories in the comments.
Tipster Chris wrote in to tell us that Google's Street View team has been spotted on Locust. And what a mensch, he took pics too!
We find it frankly mystifying that Greenwich preppies still exist in this day and age -- we hoped that the recession's silver lining was that it had done away with all that madras and seersucker. But alas, as the New York Times's Choice blog points out, preppies are resilient, and they need to know what color polo shirts to wear to their college interviews. Help is available, we learn, in the form of fashion shows for admissions interview looks at Greenwich's Rugby by Ralph Lauren store.
Listen up, Kerry Golds, this could be you in four short years: onetime Street editor and '05 alum Grant Ginder can officially update his already-impressive resume to include his new novel, This Is How It Starts, which is out in bookstores this week. Ginder was featured on Daily Intel yesterday, where he plugged his book and sadly made no mention of Penn. Good thing we never forget a Streetie! (We don't, um, actually call ourselves that though.) The book, per Amazon, is "about how far one postcollegiate idealist will go to be an insider in a town that is unyielding in what it will take from a person in exchange for granting him a margin of knowledge and power." Sounds juicy -- we would expect nothing less from one of our own.
Since we just extorted you to send us tips, we should probably share some of the ones we've been meaning to share for the past few weeks. It's round-up time, bitches. Restaurateur Stephen Starr has set his sights on DC. What are we gonna do tonight, Stephen? Same thing we do every night, try to take over the world by opening yet another luxury asian-fusion pretentierie, this time in our nation's capitol. The Ivy League sucks at sports? Whatever. Bikes beat cars, and also make you look more badass, which is why we've taken to walking around with one of our pant legs jauntily rolled up. J/K you can't really roll up gaucho shorts. (But they're badass in their own way.) Supreme Court lady-in-waiting Sonia Sontomayor's brother Juan Sotomayor did a fellowship at CHOP. According to the right wing site we saw this on, that's grounds for smearing him. That pinko ivory tower educated bastard. Some delirious old man wrote in to Princeton's alumni mag to complain about the preponderence of women overruning his fair alma mater. Penn's women's ultimate frisbee team tied for fifth place in the nation. Rock on, ladies. And just for the lulz: a tipster wrote in to tell us that www.pod.com belongs not to the 36th Street sushi mecca, but is "a blank webpage except for a large picture of a badger/skunk/beaver." We kind of love that.
Loyal readers, you've probably noticed that UTB updates have been sporadic since finals, but we'd like to reassure that we're still here, ready and willing to help you procrastinate. On that note, we've got a few housekeeping-type announcements:
From zero to sixty in two-ish weeks, Capogiro sure got its act together quick. The store opened today! Just in time for...well, nothing, because everyone just went home for the summer. Still, though. Gelato!
Amy Gutmann conferred seniors' Penn diplomas yesterday morning, but Smoke's patrons had the chance to earn an even more exclusive diploma at the 40th Street institution. Check out one of the certificates below, which the owner was handing out last night (this one belongs to a UTB housemate):
One grad's funny mortarboard message -- the graduation version of fling bling -- made the front page of today's New York Times and page two of the Wall Street Journal. According to our sources (read: according to our merciless stalkage of a friend's gchat status), the identity of said mystery jokester is (former) senior Nate Weiner.
UTB hears that Dev Patel (of Slumdog Millionaire fame) bucked celeb tradition last night, skipping Pod and heading instead to Distrito. Apparently he's in town filming M. Night Shyamalan's latest, The Last Airbender. Did he enjoy Distrito's constant loop of scenes from that ridiculous movie where Jack Black plays a Mexican monk/wrestler? 'Cause trust us, it gets funnier after a few sangrias.
Less than twenty-fours left, '09ers. A parting gift from our esteemed Food & Drink editor, Eliza:
Penn has an official Commencement Twitter, and as much as we love A. J. Snyder (said Twitter's most prolific contributor), we will be tweeting it ourselves, @underthebutton. Tune in for tonight's College graduation ceremony (John Legend!) and tomorrow's Commencement ceremony (Eric Schmidt!).
When we heard about the senior class board's "Last Chance to Cuddle" party, we were all, "psssh, as if I'm going to send Brett Perlmutter a list of my crushes." Based on past class board debacles involving user submissions, we guessed that the information would not exactly be secure. But then everybody started talking about the stupid cuddle party, and we were like, "fine, fine, we'll check it out." We visited the page, realized that if you start typing in your e-mail address and get a prompt to complete it that might mean that someone has already entered your name, and immediately became transfixed by the tantalizing possibility that someone might have a crush on us! So we opened up the excel spread sheet where we keep records of all our crushes, calculated the top ten using a complicated formula that incorporates height, future earning potential and number of Facebook friends, and submitted the top ten. Now we're just crossing our fingers for a match. To all the dummies that submitted Gmail addresses rather than webmail addresses: we find your inability to follow directions endearing, see you at the concurrent "Last Chance to be Rejected" party at Ben & Jerry's Friday night?
Apparently we've got a lot to learn before we can claim to understand the Drexel psyche. We thought we had a pretty peaceful co-existence with our neighbors to the north. Sure, we might have turned our noses up at them because we have a higher average SAT score, but we never would have guessed that so much arbitrary resentment lingered among the Drexel student body. Until an e-mail landed in our inbox that, well ... basically aims to comfort Drexel students who are feeling sad that we have tents and they don't. Really. The provost sent it out. You'll just have to read it to believe it, because we have nothing else to add.
We really don't want this to be true, but we heard that several people have spotted mice in the library today. That's your cue to put your shoes back on, barefoot studiers.
Finals have been kicking our collective ass, but the news never sleeps. Here's all the dish you need, in convenient digest form: