Tommy Rowan

3 weeks ago | mahoningmatters.com | Tommy Rowan

Actor Jack Nicholson sauntered onto the Los Angeles stage wrapped in a black tuxedo on March 28, 1977, and stood before an auditorium of Hollywood's brightest and beautiful to present the final award of the evening: best picture. He listed off the five nominees: All the President's Men, Bound for Glory, Network, Rocky, and Taxi Driver. And then he opened the envelope at the 49th Academy Awards, and leaned into the microphone.

3 weeks ago | inquirer.com | Tommy Rowan

Actor Jack Nicholson sauntered onto the Los Angeles stage wrapped in a black tuxedo on March 28, 1977, and stood before an auditorium of Hollywood’s brightest and beautiful to present the final award of the evening: best picture. He listed off the five nominees: All the President’s Men, Bound for Glory, Network, Rocky, and Taxi Driver. And then he opened the envelope at the 49th Academy Awards, and leaned into the microphone.

1 month ago | inquirer.com | Tommy Rowan

In about a minute, Veterans Stadium was outta here. “The Vet,” then a gutted bowl of concrete, crumbled inward and became a pile of shattered cement and mangled steel at 7 a.m. on March 21, 2004. The wind carried a cloud of thick, brown dust east toward Citizens Bank Park, which the Phillies opened fewer than two weeks later, and officially christened as their ballpark of the future.

1 month ago | inquirer.com | Tommy Rowan

Systems of lottery have been a touchstone in the fundraising playbooks of civic leaders at leastas far back as the 15th century. But in Pennsylvania in the early 1970s, those systems were most successfully utilized by the mob. The mafia’s illegal “numbers” racket by 1972 had an estimated annual gross north of $300 million, The Inquirer wrote. So when Pennsylvania leaders considered a lottery as a potential source for new revenue, it was hard to argue with the upside.

1 month ago | inquirer.com | Tommy Rowan

If you wanted a good cheesesteak in Philly in the early ‘90s, your options were limited to places with names like Pat’s or Bill’s or Jim’s. Imagination must skip a generation, or a few. Among this crowded field of monosyllabic dudes and their small pool of quibbling suppliers stood all 5-foot-2 of Marlene Frusco. She had other names for those guys, most rhyming with brass or plastered. “You had to be tough with all of them,” Frusco, her age “forever 39,” said by phone last week.