🚉 SEPTA secure for another two years

🎶 Why South Street Is a Party Destination

While Old City is the place to go for a taste of Philly history and tourist friendly activities, South Street is the place you’d take your visiting friends for some entertainment and countercultural experiences. The corridor’s festivals, bars, and clubs have long enabled artists to get their start and visitors to connect with Philly’s creative community while having a good night out. This is the second episode in our series on South Street.[🎧 City Cast Philly]

• Related: Listen to the first episode of our South Street series before part three releases tomorrow. [🎧 City Cast Philly]

🚆 SEPTA Avoids Cuts for Two More Years

SEPTA aims to restore all service by Sept. 14 after PennDOT approved the transit agency’s request to use $394 million in capital assistance to fund operations. However, Pennsylvania is still lacking a state budget to fund other services and this is not a permanent fix to SEPTA’s funding woes. [WHYY, 🎧 City Cast Philly]

• Related: In other good SEPTA news, the Regional Rail’s Chestnut Hill East Line is back on the tracks. [NBC10]

🍽️ Center City District Restaurant Week To Return Next Year

If you’re planning your dinners this month around fall restaurant deals, you may need to adjust your plans. Center City’s Restaurant Week is going back to a once-a-year promotion. The Center City District points to other programs it’s focusing on, like Open Streets, and suggests Restaurant Week is better suited to the slower, post-holiday months. [🔒 The Inquirer]

• Related: Even though CCD Restaurant Week is skipping its fall season, there are plenty of outdoor dining options to explore with great food, drinks, and atmosphere. [🎧 City Cast Philly]

Cosmo Baker, a legendary Philadelphia DJ who’s been behind the turntables since he was a teen, has seen Philly’s creative fabric unfold through the decades. Baker sat down with City Cast Philly to discuss his career, South Street as the bedrock for Philly’s rich subcultures, and where all of that stands today. Part of this conversation is featured in the second episode of our podcast series on South Street.

This conversation has been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

How did you find that your thing would be DJing?

”DJing parties for me was great because it allowed me a certain amount of control. It allowed me to share what it is that I wanted to share with people in terms of ‘you really should listen to this Gang Starr record, you should listen to this Tribe Called Quest record.’ But it also gave me the safety and the comfortability of being in my own space, in my own zone. As a 15-year-old kid, that's what I was doing. And then I've never really gone back.”

What was your earliest memory on South Street?

“Before I was DJing, I was spending a lot of time on South Street because of my mom's store that was there … I was just getting into skateboarding at the time and I said, ‘Mom, you should open up a skate store.’

“ It was called Spike’s Skates…It was a pretty big thing in the sense of not just the development of skateboard culture in general, but also as to like the way that people would congregate in and around South Street at that time. It was the epicenter of skateboarding culture in Philadelphia. Legitimately, it would be hundreds and hundreds of kids that would come to Spike’s Skates on a Saturday and a Sunday and would spend their entire day there. And it was a community.”

Do you feel like Philly’s struggling to maintain hip-hop?

“ No, I don't. I think hip hop is something that changes. I think that the aesthetics of it change. I think that the artistic elements and the fabric of it may shift.

“ Philadelphia's got a really vibrant hip-hop community and I totally think that it's continuing on. Hip-hop is a culture and that’s 50-plus years at this point. It’s been the dominant pop culture for a good third of that time.

“ It's part of the responsibility of us as Philadelphia artists and musicians and people who love not just the culture, but the city itself, to make sure that we continue to foster what may be something that would supplant us.”