it's what you want to know
The Tredyffrin and Conestoga communities are mourning yet another young life tragically lost.
Tyler McCloskey, 22, died of an apparent heroin overdose over the weekend.
Tyler was the younger brother of Reilly McCloskey, the 2010 Stoga grad/photographer who only a few weeks ago shared his own addiction struggles with SAVVY Main Line.
Hey, Adults: you failed the kids in your care.
That was the bitter takeaway from an impassioned public meeting on hazing at Conestoga High School Monday night.
The school district called the pow-wow, seeking input on ways to handle the football hazing scandal that’s roiled top-rated Stoga since the Chester County DA announced juvenile assault charges against three senior players and a separate school district investigation uncovered hazing that goes back years.
What school officials got instead was an earful: an ardent defense of ousted head coach John Vogan and his staff and a lot of lip about how adults – from the DA to the district – had let kids down.
First, some seriously scary stuff.
A guy wearing a creepy Halloween mask appeared at the foot of a woman’s bed in her Strafford home (100 block of Crestline Ave.) around 1 a.m. last Saturday, bound her with duct tape, then ransacked the place, taking her car keys, jewelry, radio and ATM card. After the invader threatens her with what looks like a stun gun, the woman gives him her ATM pin code. Creep hops in her car and hits up the Devon Square Wells Fargo ATM machine, where this nightmare-clown photo was snapped.
Reilly McCloskey is clear-eyed. At last.
An addict through his teens, Reilly, 23, is clean and sober, his vision fixed and in focus, the grayscale blur of his Conestoga days turned radiant.
And like Dorothy in Oz, Reilly is relishing every last pixel, capturing them with his Canon D in all their Technicolor glory.
Indeed, the first show of his photography (“Interaction of Color” at Bryn Mawr’s New Leaf Club through March) is an explosion of hue and light.
A celebration of seeing. For the first time.
Wayne is getting its first whisky bar and pub. The Goat’s Beard, a hit since it opened in Manayunk a few years back, will open in the old Xilantro space on N. Wayne Ave. in May.
Owners are Wayne guy, Sean Coyle (whose family owned the old Binni & Flynn’s in Gateway), and biz partner Michael MacCrory.
Expect the same locally sourced pub menu, small-batch craft cocktails and no fuss vibe. Xilantro went dark last week.
Take every notion you’ve ever had about yoga, then flip it – like your best downward-facing dog.
What do you get? Bulldog yoga.
Debuting its flagship this Friday, Feb. 19 in stunning space in the new Villanova Center, bulldog aims for Top Dog status. If it hits the bull’s eye, it will become nothing short of the SoulCycle/FlyWheel of yoga.
A breed apart AND a breed above.
A new H-O-T spot for your restaurant radar: Maya.J.
After cooking his way ’round the world, Main Line native Craig Wilson has brought his sizzling sauté pans home.
Lucky us.
Open since Feb. 3, locals are flocking to Wilson’s Maya.J in Manayunk. (The ‘Yunk being where the Main Line schleps when we’ve had enough Estia chips already).
The eastern Main Line is pouring into the 100-seat BYOB in the former Mel’s Italian in Belmont Hills. (Even Mel himself showed last weekend to toast a pal’s 70th!)
The draws: rustic Italian fare and allegiance to owner Beth Amadio, the Penn Valley mom whose last culinary caper, Homemade in Narberth, closed in 2014.
“People really love Beth and missed her excellent food at Homemade,” says Nicole Dresnin Schaeffer, one of many FOBs dining at Cotoletta last Saturday night.
Savvy, eh? Not about candles, apparently.
Until yesterday I had no idea that most scented candles are toxic. That the “petro-soot” given off by paraffin candles is as carcinogenic as diesel fumes or secondhand smoke. That the “natural fragrances” in most aromatherapy candles are synthetic and have no healing properties.
I saw the light after a chat with Berwyn gardener, Anglophile and home cook extraordinaire, Sandy Dalby, hands-on proprietor of A Charmed Garden, a line of organic candles, sprays, soaps and such.
Over the years I’ve bid on and “won” a fair share of charity auction prizes. Among the more memorable: a week on St. Martin, a finish-line box at the Preakness, and a cocktail party on a terrace overlooking Rittenhouse Square.
But nothing quite compares to the prize I won at WXPN’s spring fundraiser and claimed last weekend: a speaking part in a movie in New York City, all expenses paid.
(Little known fact about me: All things being equal, I’d rather be acting. I took acting lessons as a kid and have belted out show tunes for years – lustily, if not always tunefully. Another fun fact: Indiana Caroline is almost always game for adventure.)
