This we know: the James Brown Show begins without James Brown. James Brown, a man who is also an idea, a problem, a method, etc., will have to be invoked, summoned from some other place. The rendezvous between James Brown and his audience — you — is not a simple thing. When the opening acts are done and the waiting is over, you will first be in the hands of James Brown’s band. It is the band that begins the Show. The band is there to help, to negotiate a space for you to encounter James Brown; it is there, if you will, to take you to the bridge. The band is itself the medium within which James Brown will be summoned, the terms under which he might be enticed into view.

The James Brown Band takes the form, onstage, of an animated frieze or hieroglyphic, timeless in a very slightly seedy, showbiz way but happily so, rows of men in red tuxedos, jitterbugging in lock step even as they miraculously conjure from instruments a perfect hurricane of music: a rumbling, undulating-insinuating (underneath), shimmery-peppery (up on top) braided waveform of groove. The players seem jolly and amazed witnesses to their own virtuosity. They resemble humble, gracious ushers or porters, welcoming you to the enthrallingly physical, jubilant, encompassing groove that pours out of their instruments. It’s as if they were merely widening for you a portal offering entry into some new world, a world as much visual and emotional as aural — for, in truth, a first encounter with the James Brown Show can feel like a bodily passage, a deal your mind wasn’t sure it was ready for your body to strike with these men and their instruments and the ludicrous, almost cruelly anticipatory drama of their attempt to beckon the star of the show into view. Yes, it’s made unmistakable, in case you forgot, that this is merely a prelude, a throat-clearing, though the band has already rollicked through three or four recognizable numbers in succession; we’re waiting for something. The name of the something is James Brown. You indeed fear, despite all sense, that something is somehow wrong: Perhaps he’s sick or reluctant, or perhaps there’s been a mistake. There is no James Brown, it was merely a rumor. Thankfully, someone has told you what to do — you chant, gladly: “James Brown! James Brown!” A natty little man with a pompadour comes onstage and with a booming, familiar voice asks you if you Are Ready for Star Time, and you find yourself confessing that you Are.

To be in the audience when James Brown commences the James Brown Show is to have felt oneself engulfed in a kind of feast of adoration and astonishment, a ritual invocation, one comparable, I’d imagine, to certain ceremonies known to the Mayan peoples, wherein a human person is radiantly costumed and then beheld in lieu of the appearance of a Sun God upon the Earth. For to see James Brown dance and sing, to see him lead his mighty band with the merest glances and tiny flickers of signal from his hands; to see him offer himself to his audience to be adored and enraptured and ravished; to watch him tremble and suffer as he tears his screams and moans of lust, glory and regret from his sweat-drenched body — and is, thereupon, in an act of seeming mercy, draped in the cape of his infirmity; to then see him recover and thrive — shrugging free of the cape — as he basks in the healing regard of an audience now melded into a single passionate body by the stroking and thrumming of his ceaseless cavalcade of impossibly danceable smash Number One hits, is not to see: It is to behold.

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“This in some ways signals a huge new day for us in the city of Philadelphia,” said Mayor Street, saying the casinos will be “a huge boost to the waterfront.”

They include some of the most powerful people in Pennsylvania, one of entertainment’s most accomplished artists, and a former state Supreme Court justice.

And now they are the owners of Philadelphia’s two newly licensed slots casinos: SugarHouse Casino and Foxwoods Casino Philadelphia, both on the Delaware River.

Some say their political connections helped them best three other competitors for two available licenses in Philadelphia; others say their individual accomplishments are enough to stand on their own.

Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board chairman Tad Decker said it didn’t matter who the investors were, as long as everyone cleared a background check.

“It was the projects that won, not the individuals,” Decker said yesterday, a day after Wednesday’s decision. “Once they passed character suitability, it didn’t matter at that point who they were.”

Now, each ownership group stands to make about $75 million in profits a year, based on their own revenue projections and assuming a 20 percent profit margin - a fair estimate for the gambling industry, said John O’Neill, assistant professor of hospitality management at the Pennsylvania State University.

For Philly politics wonks, yesterday was like a double-decker taco: Thick and gooey — some might even say, uh, slimy — on the outside, crunchy and heartburn-producing on the inside. The crunch, of course, is that Sugar House and Foxwoods are now realities and no longer merely psychic boner bills for those that wish to destroy us, and our way of life. And holy God, that burns like hell. However, the oft-underappreciated goo in yesterday’s crazy-crazy was the sound of two men shitting their pants yesterday for decidedly different (though casino-related) reasons: Frank DiCicco, City Councilman for the First District, and Vern Anastasio, the dude who wants to take his job, and in point of fact, well could. These are the differences: DiCicco is old-style Philly City Council all the way. Is he dirty? Meh, who cares, everybody’s dirty, it’s what makes this the last great city in Russia, because that’s not even the point.

So I Guess the Casino Hearings Were a Complete Sham After All

I’ve been an activist and a reporter in various capacities for about 15 years now. In other words, I have spent the last 15 years of my life trying to stop rich people from screwing over poor people.

One of the things I have learned is that there are an incredible number of ways that rich, powerful people screw over poor people. They cheat us. They steal from us. They sue us. They take our homes. They pollute our air and water. They lie to us. They lay us off. They fire us from our jobs if we try to unionize. They scare us into thinking we have no power. They control us any way they can.

There are, in fact, an infinite number of ways by which rich people screw over poor people. But never, ever, once, in the last 15 years, have I seen anything as egregious as what happened this week.

The awarding of two slots licenses to Foxwoods and Sugarhouse over the most extreme community objection, the worst and most haphazard planning and design, criminal penalties levied against Foxwoods for illegal campaign contributions, and on and on, meant one thing and one thing only: that the rich and the powerful do not give a damn about the people who live on the Delaware River, and they never have, and they were lying to us along when they pretended to be listening.

Like many of the other people who worked on this, I spent hours in Gaming Board hearings, organizing protests, getting signatures, etc. Although all the casinos had powerful political interests connected to them, there were degrees. By far, the two most directly tied to State Sen. Fumo – who wrote the gaming law – were Foxwoods and Sugarhouse.

It was great that we had all those nice hearings.

It was great to see all the fantastic work done by NABR and the ILA and Anne Dicker and Vern and Mike and Matt and PennPraxis and Inga Saffron and the homeowners of Pennsport and the homeowners of Fishtown and the Trump architects who redesigned their entire casino to accomodate community input and that one amazing Pinnacle architect from some unknown European country who very obviously had no idea how dirty our politics are and thought this was actually a … merit selection process.

It was great. Really fun.
We had yet another great big happy civic debate that was completely irrelevant, because our politicians just don’t care.

They were going to do it no matter what we said.

What the Gaming Board said on Wednesday is that they are going to built slots parlors on the river whether we like it or not. They are going to take our homes from us under eminent domain whether we like it or not. They are going to build a new onramp to 95 right at the corner of Reed and Delaware whether we like it or not.

It was rumored that Frankie Dicicco told one of the South Philly civic associations a long time ago that it was going to be Foxwoods and Sugarhouse, a done deal. I don’t know if Frankie actually said this, but I think for many many months a lot of us were afraid that the rumor was true (since he would know) - that it really was a done deal all along.

The people who live in these neighborhoods don’t have a lot. Most of us, if we own anything, we own our homes, and the connections to our neighborhood and our families.

[. . .]

If any of us have learned anything from the casino battle, there has been one horrible, miserable, aching truth that overrides it all.

It is that the people who are supposed to be protecting our city have betrayed us, and do not care about the wishes, hopes, future, or needs of the people who live here.

The people of Philadelphia were completely alone in our fight against the casinos. Our elected officials did not care about us.
Our city council.
Our state delegation.
Our mayor! Our mayor!!!!
None of these politicians stood up against the casinos.

These people, corrupt and wizened and greedy as they are at the top of whatever towers they live in, feel not the burden of responsibility – they feel not the desire to serve – they lack even the most basic human emotion that holds us here with our families and our friends – they have turned their back on their own home, and sold out their family, and betrayed their own people.

They are unfit to serve. They are unworthy of this city. They have betrayed us all.

And as far as I am concerned, they are no longer Philadelphians.
They should just pack up and go.

But people like that don’t leave easily.
We’re going to have to run them out of town.