Tag Archives: Philadelphia

My Time at TLA Video

The past ten years were host to the great­est chal­lenges and joys of my life. I start­ed the decade as a tough-mind­ed grad stu­dent at the New School for Social Research. Some­where along the way I turned an unpaid hob­by into a career. Crazy, huh?

In between times, I made the best out of under­em­ploy­ment, teach­ing myself about movies dur­ing a stretch as a video store clerk. I fell in love with film at TLA Video’s store at 4th and South Sts. The store closed ear­li­er this month. Need­less to say, it was a Philly insti­tu­tion that will be sore­ly missed by any­one who set foot in it.

I feel for­tu­nate to have worked with the peo­ple who made TLA Video a safe haven for cinephiles here in Philly. I can’t tell you how many cus­tomers thanked us for sim­ply being the loy­al oppo­si­tion to Block­buster. We knew who Wim Wen­ders was when the big box stores bare­ly car­ried for­eign titles. Sure, it was a low-pay­ing retail job, but at least it had a mis­sion and a clear iden­ti­ty. We were going to offer the sort of movies Block­buster edit­ed out of exis­tence, whether that was for­eign or adult or what­ev­er. TLA was every­thing Block­buster wasn’t.

The road got rock­i­er when Net­flix start­ed to bul­ly brick and mor­tar. When I think back to my time there between 2003-05, I swore I’d nev­er go to Net­flix. It lacked imme­di­ate grat­i­fi­ca­tion, I thought, dis­re­gard­ing all those times I went into the store only to dis­cov­er the movie I so des­per­ate­ly want­ed to see was cur­rent­ly rent­ed. I thought the mail was just a clunky way to deliv­er movies. How wrong I was. Cus­tomers loved it and we watched our busi­ness dwin­dle even in Net­flix’s ear­ly days.

I think the peo­ple who worked at TLA made it the insti­tu­tion it was. I was intro­duced to more off-the-wall movies by my co-work­ers than I have been in 3+ years as a Net­flix cus­tomer. Every­one had their area of exper­tise and our reg­u­lar cus­tomers sought out those of us they trust­ed most when they need­ed to see some­thing, but weren’t sure what to rent. It was a joy to help peo­ple find new and inter­est­ing movies to watch, and a greater plea­sure to dis­cuss them when they returned. It was the only thing we could offer that the com­put­er and it’s Amazon.com-esque rec­om­men­da­tions couldn’t.

Ulti­mate­ly, con­sumers chose con­ve­nience over that lev­el of cus­tomer ser­vice. Oner­ous late fees and the has­sle that came with them were enough to kill off the brick and mor­tar biz. Trust me: we hat­ed those argu­ments as much as you did! The brick and mor­tar busi­ness tried to accom­mo­date this cus­tomer with ter­ri­ble results. There was no price point that would work for a com­pa­ny with the sort of over­head TLA had.  What made TLA Video spe­cial will ulti­mate­ly kill it off. The video store will not die with dig­ni­ty, but rather a slow, lin­ger­ing death at the hands of Net­flix, Red­box, and the mot­ley offer­ing from your cable provider.

When TLA laid me off in 2006, I was hurt most because I real­ly believed in what they hoped to accom­plish. It still hurts. I’ve watched help­less­ly as they’ve laid off many of the peo­ple who made the com­pa­ny great. I’ve since moved on and am very hap­py where I am, but I still miss the ide­al TLA rep­re­sent­ed, even if it set a stan­dard no busi­ness could live up to in today’s economy.

I think what’s strangest of all is how I will strug­gle to explain what a video store was to my son when he asks about the jobs I’ve held. Are knowl­edge work­ers at the shal­low end of the jobs pool des­tined to go the way of the milk man?

I Ran My 2nd Philadelphia Marathon

Want a marathon pro tip? Have a race plan. It’s the only way you’re going to live to tell the tale.

You know what I did wrong this year? I did­n’t have a race plan. Unlike last year, the world inter­vened, mak­ing it hard­er for me to train at the lev­el I did in 2008. It rained fre­quent­ly and hard. I had a beau­ti­ful baby boy. I came down with a bad head cold at the end of October.  Yes, I did the best I could con­sid­er­ing the cir­cum­stances, but when I caught a cold after a few too many runs in the Octo­ber rain com­bined with a baby who’s just learn­ing to sleep on his own, marathon train­ing kind of goes out the window.

What was the out­come? A com­plete­ly respectable 3:35 marathon. I did­n’t set the world ablaze like I did last year when I ran a heart­break­ing 3:13 and just missed qual­i­fy­ing for Boston in my debut, but I man­aged to main­tain my dig­ni­ty and come in with a time most ama­teur run­ners would kill for. I’m not ashamed of that.

I am ashamed of how stu­pid­ly I ran. I met my friend Pat at the start. He was shoot­ing for a 3:40 time, and that sound­ed rea­son­able to me after tak­ing so much time off. I wish I could’ve main­tained that out­look for more than a mile. I took off hell-bent for the 3:30 group just as I hit Delaware Ave. I felt good! I fig­ured I might just uncork a decent run! I was in for a surprise.

I caught up to the 3:30 group by mile 5. I still felt great, but that’s prob­a­bly because I was­n’t pay­ing any atten­tion to my wild­ly fluc­tu­at­ing splits. I sud­den­ly believed that I could catch the 3:20 group by, say, mile 12. And thus end­ed any chance of me recov­er­ing any sem­blance of a race plan.

What hap­pened from that point for­ward can be summed up pret­ty eas­i­ly. I took the fly and die approach. I ran very hard right up until about mile 18, where­upon I real­ized how dif­fi­cult the next 8 miles were going to be. Ordi­nar­i­ly, I run 8 miles an hour. Last Sun­day, I found myself walk­ing and jog­ging just to be sure I would fin­ish the run. I learned a hard lesson.

I crossed the fin­ish line in agony, but I fin­ished. I also real­ized that the OCD lev­el of dis­ci­pline that I brought to my first marathon is a must if I’m going to achieve that sort of suc­cess again. Am I dis­cour­aged? Not at all. I’m invig­o­rat­ed. I’m excit­ed to train hard this win­ter and I plan on enter­ing some spring races. Bring it on!

I Biked the Strike

I biked the SEPTA strike last week. It was­n’t the romance Philly Bicy­cle Coali­tion might have you believe. In fact, it was down­right dan­ger­ous for any­one who tried to nav­i­gate the traf­fic-choked streets.

How about a recap? There is no safe, reli­able route from any­where north of Spring Gar­den to Cen­ter City. The exist­ing bike lanes are insuf­fi­cient dur­ing nor­mal traf­fic and were com­plete­ly over­whelmed by the strike. The num­ber of cars and cyclists was staggering!

My tra­di­tion­al route to work became a war­zone. I usu­al­ly find my way down 17th from Spring Gar­den. This was nuts. 17th was a park­ing lot filled with uncer­tain angry dri­vers, but I had no choice. Philadel­phia needs ded­i­cat­ed bike lanes that pro­tect rid­ers des­tined for Cen­ter City.Con­tin­ue read­ing “I Biked the Strike”

I Ran the Philly Distance Run

When I ran the Philadel­phia Dis­tance Run last year, it was a tremen­dous relief just to be able to run at all. I’d spent the bet­ter part of a month suf­fer­ing from seri­ous ten­dini­tis in my right ankle and had­n’t even been able to run the week before the race. For­tu­nate­ly, the rest did me good and I was able to run. I fin­ished with 7:58 splits. I ran about half a minute faster than I expect­ed to run and felt great about it.

This year I haven’t had any of those set­backs, but I was still uncer­tain about my goals for this race. Should I take it easy and treat it as a prac­tice run? Should I push myself and try to hit the 7:15 pace I need to qual­i­fy for Boston in Novem­ber? I met up with Kris­ten ear­ly yes­ter­day morn­ing think­ing that I’d do the for­mer. My mind was made up, or so I thought. I did­n’t want to be dis­ap­point­ed if I tried to hit marathon pace and failed. This was a fail­safe.Con­tin­ue read­ing “I Ran the Philly Dis­tance Run”

Why I Love Where I Work

I know I’ve been talk­ing a lot about beer and the music indus­try here, but I want­ed to stop for a moment to talk a bit about my work. Since I got back from my long over­due trip to Den­mark, I’ve been invit­ing bands into the Com­cast Cen­ter for inter­views and ses­sions in our lounge, CIM City. Last week, I had Mastodon in to talk about their new album, Crack the Skye. This week the Ther­mals came in to talk about their new record, Now We Can See, and they were nice enough to play a few songs, too! It’s been some­thing of a life­long dream real­ized and it would­n’t have been pos­si­ble with­out being sur­round­ed by peo­ple who weren’t only will­ing but excit­ed to work on projects like this. It’s impos­si­bly cool!

It’s also intense­ly reward­ing. I’ve been thrilled to talk to bands I love in a free­wheel­ing inter­view style that real­ly cap­tures their per­son­al­i­ties and brings fans clos­er to them and their music. I can’t wait to share clips from both shoots with you!

What else have I been up to? I’m get­ting back to writ­ing more often now that I have a great intern help­ing me with the day-to-day issues at comcast.net/music. I’d love to get back where I was before our last crop of interns left, when I was writ­ing some­thing every day that could be fea­tured some­where on the music page. It’s a chal­lenge to pro­duce mate­r­i­al that real­ly res­onates with an audi­ence that’s grown accus­tomed to a steady diet of gos­sip, but when artists like Bruce Spring­steen are plagued by Tick­et­mas­ter, there’s a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak out about the ways in which the music indus­try is still pun­ish­ing fans at the very moment they should be falling over them­selves to please them.

Last­ly, I record­ed my first voice-over yes­ter­day. This, too, is some­thing of a life­long dream. Peo­ple have been ask­ing me if I’ve thought about doing radio for years, so when I got a chance to read for a forth­com­ing web series on Fan­cast, I leapt at the chance. It’s a real­ly fun con­cept that gave me a great oppor­tu­ni­ty to read in my best Movie­fone voice, which I don’t do near­ly enough these days. I’ll be sure to post that here when it goes live. I’d love to hear what you think.

None of this would be pos­si­ble if I weren’t sur­round­ed by great peo­ple who are will­ing to take a chance on pro­duc­ing the sort of music con­tent I think appeals to peo­ple who love music…like me!