Over the past several months, a number of readers have checked in with us, inquiring about 17-19 N 2nd St., a vacant building in Old City. We originally took note of this double-wide building over a decade ago, relatively soon after Synapse Cafe shut down in one of the commercial spaces. We remember passing by the space as the months passed, watching a leftover stack of Philadelphia Weeklies slowly fade due to exposure to the sun. And the building remains vacant all these years later.

Red and empty

The property was purchased by John Primiano back in 1996 for $174K. The two historically designated buildings sit on almost 2,500 sqft of land and have almost 6,000 sqft of interior space. We’d have guessed even more. Mr. Primiano owns a couple of other properties around town, notably a huge (over…

Watutsi II, located at the northwest corner of 45th and Locust Sts. in West Philly, is for sale for a mere $635K. The sale includes a ground floor bar/restaurant and an upstairs that needs serious renovation. The building is quite large, and the listing boasts of the possibility of multiple apartments upstairs. The intersection has two popular local standbys, with a Green Line location on the southeast corner and Abyssinia on the northeast corner. A business that replaces Watutsi II would have no shortage of customers from University City and Spruce Hill.

There she is

The bar was closed about six weeks ago, after neighborhood complaints to the councilwoman’s office led to Liquor Control Enforcement being called in. It’s not the first time the location or the owner has had trouble or been…

Brian McManus, the music editor and a contributing food writer at Philadelphia Weekly, has a 168-page paperback in the works. Philadelphia’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the City of Brotherly Love is a compilation of McManus’ seasoned experience helping people to “find out where to get wasted after visiting the Liberty Bell” (there’s something about national treasures that just makes me want to shotgun). McManaus came here in 2006 to not the most warming welcome, but has solidified himself as a man of journalistic and musical clout (we think; blog comment areas can be a battlefield) and a man who knows the dark and yeasty smell of a good dive bar. He spent one year going to 100 of Philly’s dives and came out, blinking into the light, one liver short and one book strong.

“To me, dive bars are like pornography: hard to define, but…