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Heroin with a happy ending; MOMS Demand (gun) Action; Crowded schools; Bistro boomlet & weekend preview

October 5, 2017 / By Caroline O'Halloran / /

What a difference a decade makes.

Hang out with the Tankels’ in their Malvern living room and you’d never know this observant Quaker family was nearly destroyed by drugs.

Teasing and cracking jokes, they clearly love being together. Like the “normal” Main Line family they weren’t – for six harrowing years.

Truly, if walls could talk, the Tankels’ home would scream: of stolen money and pilfered pills, of school expulsions and shouting matches, of multiple car crashes and surprise drug tests, of Visine and baggies, of trust faithfully extended and repeatedly betrayed. All of it fallout from Eric Tankel’s addiction to pot, to pain pills, and ultimately, to heroin.

Six of his close friends died from their addictions.

But Eric, thankfully, is very much with us.

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Filed Under: BODY & SOUL, BUZZ, EAT, PLAY, SHOP, SOUL Tagged With: Body X, Chadds Ford Winery, Cornerstone Bistro, Daylesford Abbey Art Show, Delice et Chocolat, drug addiction, drug rehab, Gateway Shopping Center, gun control, gun violence, heroin, King of Prussia wine garden, Kirkland's, Knauer Performing Arts Center, Lower Merion School District, Lumi Juice, Main Line Antiques Show, Malvern, MOMS Demand Action, Motherest, Paoli Blues Fest, Penn Wynne Elementary School, SAVVY event, school overcrowding, surrey services, Tredyffrin/Easttown School District, Uptown Speaker Series, What to Eat Now

New sexual abuse suit vs. Conestoga – most damaging of all? Plus, Tredici debuts, two Nova bars close in Bryn Mawr; Catholic ed back in Berwyn & much more

June 27, 2017 / By Caroline O'Halloran / /

The Tredyffrin/Easttown School District is absorbing yet another fusillade – this one, an utterly explosive federal lawsuit that, in effect, blames Conestoga, its culture and staff for the months-long sexual abuse of a 15-year-old female student by 67-year-old TV studio aide Arthur Phillips.

Revolting.

To bolster its case, the suit details T/E’s “recent history of sex-related scandals”:

  • School aide/coach Christine Towers’ affair with a 15-year-old male student. Arrested exactly one year to the day before Phillips, Towers is in jail for her crimes.
  • The “No Gay Thursday” locker room hazing allegations that officials attributed to lax supervision.
  • The middle school sexting/cyberbullying charges.

The suit says the three scandals show a “pattern of deliberate and reckless indifference to signs of ongoing sexual harassment and sexual abuse” in the district.

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Filed Under: BODY & SOUL, BUZZ, EAT, PLAY, Uncategorized Tagged With: Ardmore, Ardmore restaurants, Arthur Phillips, Betsy Bartos, Bryn Mawr, Bryn Mawr Village, Catholic school, Conestoga High School, Devon, Devon Orthodontics, drug addiction, Erin's Pub, Haverford, Hummingbird yoga, Maloney's Pub, Recovery yoga, Regina Luminis Academy, RLA, sexual abuse scandal, St. Monica's, surrey services, teacher's aide scandal, Tredici, Tredyffrin-Easttown School District

Carol Burnett pops into Paoli; New Tin Lizard in Bryn Mawr & Locust Lane Brewing; Talking teen depression with DMAX; Carson Kressley sighting and much more

April 11, 2017 / By Caroline O'Halloran / /

A TV icon touched down in Paoli this week.

Shhhhhh.

Carol Burnett paid a hush-hush visit to overjoyed folks at Daylesford Crossing senior living Monday, charming one and all.

Nope, she didn’t know a soul there.

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Filed Under: BODY & SOUL, BUZZ, EAT, SHOP, SOUL, STYLE Tagged With: Beer, Blue Octagon, brewing, brewpubs, Carol Burnett, Carson Kressley, Conestoga Football, Conestoga High School, Conestoga Lacrosse, Daylesford Crossing, Devon Horse Show, DMAX Foundation, Drew Bergman, drug addiction, fashion, Locust Lane Craft Brewery, Malvern, Minding Your Mind, Paoli, Paoli Blues Fest, retail, Sage Senior Living, salsa, senior living, shopping, St. Norbert Church, style, Tate Kienzle, teen depression, teen drug abuse, teen suicide, Tin Lizard Brewing, Tredyffrin Township, Xolo tacos

Luxurious Life Time Athletic, DryBar coming to Ardmore; White Manor Country Club sold; local ‘FADD’ to fight ODs; a Broadway good-bye & more

January 17, 2017 / By Caroline O'Halloran / /

The elite health & fitness company likes the Main Line so much, it’s putting not ONE, but TWO of its mega clubs here.

Our first Life Time – a scratch-built, 140,000 sq. ft. whopper with a “resort-like” outdoor pool and waterslides – will debut in June on Swedesford Rd. in Tredyffrin. (Life Time’s calling it King of Prussia, but the map says it’s Wayne, if only by a hair.)

And just announced: our second Life Time will be in Ardmore – an exclusive “diamond” level club (a notch above KOP’s “onyx premier”) in the former Macy’s building, one of two Grand Dames of Suburban Square. (The tall Times building is the other.)

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Filed Under: BODY & SOUL, BUZZ, EAT, PLAY, SOUL, Uncategorized Tagged With: Ardmore, Berwyn, Bobby Flay, Broadway, Chopped Jr., concert, Concert Golf partners, Conestoga High School, country clubs, Dan Schmidt, department stores, drug addiction, FADD, fitness clubs, Food Network, health, health and fitness, Here We Wait, Heroin overdose, Jeremy DeFelice, Jersey Boys, King of Prussia, Life Time, Main Line, Marty Snyder, Meredith Antoian, Music in Memory, musical theater, Nectar, New Leaf Club, overdose, Patrick Feury, Peter's Place, Rosemont, Ryan's Hope, Ryan's House, Sara Moyher, Sara Schmidt, Suburban Square, Tredyffrin, Wayne, web TV, Wendy Monaghan, West Elm, White Manor Country Club

Election aftershocks, T/E drug use/mental health update, Wayne’s new BYOB, Firepoint in N. Square & more

November 15, 2016 / By Caroline O'Halloran / /

No matter how you voted, you have to feel sickened by the reported assault of a black female student by a group of white male students on Villanova’s campus last week.

Here’s what reportedly went down: The young woman was walking through the SEPTA tunnel around 9 pm Thursday when a group of guys en route to an off-campus formal approached and knocked her down, shouting “Trump! Trump! Trump!” The student’s face and head hit concrete. According to her friend, she was badly shaken, suffered nausea, vomiting and dizziness and was reluctant to report the attack at first.

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Filed Under: BODY & SOUL, BUZZ, EAT, Uncategorized Tagged With: Alex Hardy, Andy Talley, ARCH, Ardmore, At the Table, BYOBs, campus unrest, Deneen Marcel, drug addiction, eyebrow shaping, Eyelash extensions, Firepoint Grill, Jim Wahlberg, Lower Merion police, Main Line, Mark Wahlberg, Mark Wahlberg Youth Foundation, Newtown Square, Old Guard House Inn, poke, PokeOno, presidential election protests, racial attack, Radnor police, Restaurants, Tara Buzan, teen depression, teen drug abuse, to the Table, Tony Compolo, Tredyffrin/Easttown School District, Union League, Villanova basketball, Villanova University, Villanova Wildcats, Wayne, Wayne Art Center

Murder in Berwyn; Another life lost to addiction; Radnor’s new Harvest Seasonal Grill & more

June 23, 2016 / By Caroline O'Halloran / /

It’s not often that violent crime comes knocking on the Main Line’s door.

But last week’s brutal murder in Berwyn reminds us that evil can strike anywhere, anytime.

Police are investigating the homicide of a 62-year-old woman in Daylesford Estates, an upscale Toll Brothers’ development that sits between Routes 252 and Route 202 in Tredyffrin.

On June 17, a relative came to check on Denise McDonald Barger and found her beaten to death inside her home.

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Filed Under: BODY & SOUL, BUZZ, EAT, PLAY, SOUL Tagged With: Berwyn, Caron Foundation, Conestoga Football, dining, drug addiction, Escape games, Hazing, King of Prussia, murder, recovery, Tredyffrin Police, Villanova

Villa & Shipley alumna/author J. Knoll comes clean about the gang rape in Luckiest Girl Alive, plus other brave souls & a mansion worth saving

April 12, 2016 / By Caroline O'Halloran / /

We all thought Villa Maria and Shipley alum Jessica Knoll was living the dream.

Her debut novel, the Gone Girl-esque thriller, Luckiest Girl Alive, was an award-winning bestseller.

Lionsgate optioned the movie rights with Reese Witherspoon (!) to produce; Knoll wrote the screenplay.

Her publisher – Simon & Schuster, no less – green lit a second novel, due to drop in spring 2017.

Noll had made it in magazines, too, landing coveted senior editor jobs at Cosmo and Self.

Oh, and she was attractive and happily married, too.

At 32, she was, well, the luckiest girl alive, right?

No and yes.

Two weeks ago, Jessica Knoll dropped a bomb.

She published an essay admitting for the first time that the horrific gang rape in her novel was based on her own experiences.

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Filed Under: BODY & SOUL, BUZZ, SHOP Tagged With: Amtrak crash, antiques show, drug addiction, Heroin overdose, historic preservation, Jessica Knoll, Loch Aerie, Luckiest Girl Alive, Shipley School, Villa Maria Academy

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