Welcome to the latest exclusive monthly tips for our subscribers!

It's time again for our monthly BSR in the Wild update! The first Friday of every month we bring you our hottest tips on what's on our radar, through three sections: Find Us!, Neil's Nod of the Month, and Recommended Reading. September means Fringe and season openings but also many other arts events! Our team is hustling around the city to bring our cultural scene to you. If you’d like to help us kick off our 2024-2025 season coverage, a donation of $10 or more directly supports our writers. We’ll mention some Fringe shows below, but for your main coverage on that, visit our site for Alaina's top picks, including a special roundup of shows in South Philly. What are you seeing in your neighborhood?

Find Us! is exclusive subscriber tips on which events and exhibitions our staff is heading to in the coming month. There's a lot happening, this month as always, and we love to provide these tips.

Neil's Nod of the Month is a look forward to the upcoming BSR story or review I'm most excited to read.

Finally, Recommended Reading is a quick, subscribers-only tip to connect our past pieces we've run with our ongoing issues -- this week's is a heavy, important one.

If you're enjoying this series, let us know! And don't forget, as a reader you can support our writers in multiple ways. The ranks of our Local Media Champions are growing. Want to join them? Send an article to a friend. Check out our latest Stories and Reels on Instagram. Are you caught up on our podcast? Feel free to email me with your own September picks!

Read on for September's inside scoops.

Sincerely,
Neil Bardhan
BSR executive director

Neil caught a preview of Noah Max Levine’s Fringe show “Noah’s No-Show Show” alongside Philly comedians Kai Bobbi & Jim O'Donnell

Find Us!

As usual, you'll see some familiar institution names alongside new ones. We cover a wide range of experiences in our region. Read on, and be sure to tell us what you're seeing this month.


FIND ALAINA
Rally & March for No Arena in the Heart of our City
WHEN: Saturday, September 7, 2024 at 1:00pm ET
WHERE: Philadelphia City Hall, Broad & Market St., Philadelphia
WHY: A coalition of Chinatown leaders and activist allies continue to oppose the plans for a Sixers arena at the site of the Fashion District (or Market East, for us Philly old-timers). Throughout the country, Chinatown communities have rallied to fight development projects that push them out of their homes and businesses. Philly’s Chinatown is one of the only ones left, and locals fear that the Sixers plan would be a repeat of many similar developments across the country, including a sports arena in Washington, DC, that have proven detrimental to these communities. The crowd size at a 2023 Save Chinatown rally far exceeded predictions in local media, and now the city has another chance to show up as City Council weighs new studies on the plan’s economic and cultural impacts, with initial legislation on the plans expected this fall.

Our team may work remotely, but we know how important it is to connect in person when we have the chance. Here’s Alaina with longtime BSR theater and music critic Cameron Kelsall after a summer brunch in South Philly.

FIND NEIL
Tell Me A Story at Case Comedy
WHEN: Tuesday, September 17, 2024 at 7:30pm ET
WHERE: Upstairs at Abyssinia, 229 S. 45th St., Philadelphia
WHY: The Philly comedy and storytelling scenes are busy! Emily Epstein White hosts a showcase this month upstairs at Abyssinia as part of the ongoing Case Comedy series, part of Free Fringe Philly. If you catch this show, you’re going to get to see me perform a piece about my younger days! Mistakes were made, lessons were learned, and we all came away laughing about it.

Kristopher Jansma in conversation with Laura Spence-Ash
WHEN: Thursday, September 19, 2024 at 7:00pm ET
WHERE: Barnes & Noble, 3535 US Highway 1 Suite 400, Princeton, NJ
WHY: Kristopher Jansma is a friend of mine from college theater days, and he’s recently released a new novel, set in The Netherlands during World War II. I’ve read half of it so far and am pleased to see him in nearby Princeton for a bookstore event.

Taylor Tomlinson: Tries Out New Ideas
WHEN: Friday, September 20, 2024 and Saturday, September 21, 2024
WHERE: Helium Comedy Club, 2031 Sansom St., Philadelphia
WHY: I first got to know Taylor Tomlinson through the podcast Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out. She grabbed me instantly and I’ve been keeping an eye on her since. My eagle-eyed friend Jillian noticed back in February that Tomlinson is going to be in Philly with new material this fall and we hopped on the tickets quickly. Good thing we did: these shows are sold out!

Speaking of sneak previews, here’s Neil with Catie Gainor, owner of the new cookbook store Binding Agents, which officially opens this October in the Italian Market. The shop welcomed customers for a special preview during August's Philadelphia Bookstore Crawl.

Neil's nod of the month:

Even from where I sit, I don't always learn much about what's going on in the Philly fashion world, unless a local designer competes on Project Runway. Luckily, later this month, writer An Nichols will share with us her findings on Philly Fashion Week and also FatCon, a conference all about fat justice and fat fashion happening this October.

Recommended Reading

As I write this, we're just a few hours after of a school shooting in Georgia. At least four people are dead. A Reuters article notes, "The shooting was the first of the new school year in the U.S." and that phrase is disturbing. After the horrific 2022 school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Anndee Hochman, who teaches elementary schoolers herself, reflected on how young fourth graders are. We keep watching our children die at school from gun violence. We've done this for decades. Will it ever stop?