Living Here in Allentown
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LIVING HERE IN ALLENTOWN BEYOND THE RED DOORS Red Door Publications Allentown, PA Copyright © 2005 by Red Door Publications. All rights reserved. Red Door Publications is a recognized student organization at Muhlenberg College, in Allentown PA. Photos as credited Send correspondence to: Red Door Publications Muhlenberg College 2400 Chew Street Allentown, PA 18102 Printed in the United States of America ABOUT THIS BOOK When in Allentown, do as Allentonians do. Need some help? We’ve assembled a fool-proof guide to get you started. Written by college students for college students, Living Here in Allen- town picks up at the edge of campus—the world beyond the Red Doors. We show you around your new hometown, from its greasy spoons to its drive-in theatres. The book was born out of frustration. Most Muhlenberg students confine themselves to campus. The brave make it as far as the strip malls off Cedar Crest Boulevard, but few of us ever leave the West End. Downtown Allentown, in particular, hardly regis- ters in the Muhlenberg mind. The guide is meant to change all this—to burst the infamous “Muhlenberg Bubble.” The book took shape in a fall 2004 Muhlenberg College course, “Print Production.” You could say that this guide—Living Here in Allentown—is the 21 students’ final project. Editors, researchers, graphic designers, food critics, publicists, ad salespeople—we were all of these over the course of a semester. We liked it enough that we’ve formed a group, Red Door Publications, to update the book and to work on new projects. We wandered the city—tasted the soup at the Shanty, rode the Dorney Park roller-coasters—so that you, too, would venture be- yond the Red Doors. PRODUCTION STAFF MICHAEL CODY ANNE-MARIE LEISER SHANNON SOLHEIM CHRISTIN CULOTTA KAITLIN KARA STAPLETON BETH GORDON MACCALLUM EMILY STOLARICK MICHELLE HEIN PAMELA PHELPS JANETTE TUCKER MEGHAN HORNER SARA ROSOFF MELANIE KATE HULLFISH RACHAEL SCOTT ZACHARIADES PHILIP JOHNSON BENJAMIN SHAW KRISTEN ZIEGLER RICHARD KIMOWITZ LACIE SMITH CONTENTS MUHLENBERG PICKS 7 LIVING HERE IN ALLENTOWN 11 DINING 19 NIGHTLIFE 49 OUT & ABOUT 63 SHOPPING & RESOURCES 95 7 MUHLENBERG PICKS , NIGHTLIFE , , SHOPPING , Banana Joe’s Another Story Cannon’s California Gold J.P. O’Malley’s Pub C. Leslie Smith Rookie’s Dave Phillips Music & Stonewall Sound Ye Olde Tavern The Good Buy Girls Mish Mash Technicolor Salon , OUT & ABOUT, , DINING , The Banana Factory Bellisimo Bushkill Falls Damascus Cedar Beach Park Grille 3501 Civic Theatre La Mexicana Grill Dorney Park La Placita The Great Allentown Fair Lo Baido’s Jim Thorpe Louie’s MusikFest Philosopher’s Stone State Theatre Syb’s West End Deli Shankweiler’s Drive-In Turkish Restaurant Trexler Memorial Park Wally’s 8 BEST OF... ADRENALINE RUSH MAKEOUT SPOTS ♦ Dorney Park’s Steel Force Roller ♦ The back room at Hary’s (p. 53) Coaster (p. 87) ♦The ferris wheel at Dorney Park ♦ Riving rafting on the Delaware (p. 87) (p. 86) ♦ The “kissing bridge” in Little Le- ♦ Camel Beach at Camelback high Parkway (p. 79) Mountain (p. 86) ♦ Lost in the Bear Junction Corn ♦ Paintball at Skirmish USA (p. 86) Maze (p. 91) ♦ Hot air balloon ride (p. 88) ♦ Sigma Phi Epsilon Dance Floor FIRST DATE SPOT CHILL-OUT SPOT ♦ Bellisimo (p. 22) ♦ West Park in the spring (p. 81) ♦ Picnic in Trexler Park (p. 80) ♦ Gazebo in the Rose Garden (p. 78) ♦ Shankweiler’s Drive-In (p. 76) ♦ Pool at O’Malley’s (p. 55) ♦ All five wineries in the Lehigh Valley Wine Trail (p. 90) ♦ Bushkill Falls (p. 82) ♦Bluegrass at Godfrey Daniels (p. 52) ALCOHOL SELECTION BEST MUNCHIES ♦ J.P. O’Malley’s (p. 55) ♦ Stooges (p. 57) ♦ Stooges (p. 57) ♦ Chicken Lounge (p. 51) ♦ Bethlehem Brew Works (p. 50) ♦ Parma Pizza (p. 36) ♦ Cannon’s (p. 51) ♦Yocco’s (p. 43) ♦ Federal Grill (p. 27) ♦ China King (p. 44) 9 BEST OF… CULTURE SPOTS FAMILY OUTINGS ♦ MusikFest (p. 68) ♦ Dorney Park (p. 87) ♦ Civic Theatre (p. 71) ♦ The Great Allentown Fair (p. 65) ♦ Banana Factory (p. 75) ♦ Historic Bethlehem (p. 89) ♦ Allentown Art Museum (p. 69) ♦ Jim Thorpe (p. 89) ♦ Allentown Symphony Orchestra ♦ Allentown Farmers Market (p. 73) (p. 106) PHOTO OPS LEND A HELPING HAND ♦ Muhlenberg Bell Tower ♦ Sixth Street Shelter ♦ Canal Park (p. 78) ♦ Just for Kids ♦ Jim Thorpe (p. 89) ♦ Perfect Fit ♦ Rose Garden (p. 78) ♦ The Caring Place ♦ Hawk Mountain (p. 83) ♦ Casa Guadalupe INSOMNIA EMPTY YOUR WALLET ♦ Dunkin’ Donuts (p. 44) ♦ Salomon’s (p. 109) ♦ Croc Rock (p. 52) ♦ Grille 3501 (p. 29) ♦ HamFam (p. 29) ♦ Wegman’s (p. 107) ♦ The Charcoal Diner (p. 29) ♦ Technicolor (p. 113) ♦ Wegman’s (p. 107) ♦ Federal Grill (p. 27) LIVING HERE IN ALLENTOWN 12 llentown, to an outsider, is Some of the storefronts were empty, all Billy Joel lyrics. But when it’s true. The department stores, in- you’re really living here in cluding Hess’s, were shuttered years A Allentown, you forget about ago. A moat of parking lots has cut the Top 40 caricature. You can’t help off nearby, tired-but-resilient it, once you’ve ventured beyond 23rd neighborhoods. and Chew. But we liked it on Hamilton—we liked True, the Allentown we found when the terra cotta gargoyles on the old we left campus has its closed-down Americus Hotel. We liked people- factories. The city’s riverside Bucky watching at the sidewalk tables of the Boyle Park, for instance, sits in the Federal Grill. We even liked the Great shadow of the abandoned brick-and- War Store, martial kitsch and all. copper Neuweiler Brewery—our own Tintern on the Lehigh. From the There’s no Best Buy on Hamilton Eighth Street Bridge, we took in the Street, nor any other big box parasite. impossibly vast Mack Truck assembly Wal-Mart and the rest—Chi Chi’s and plant, now idle on the bank of the the Old Country Buffet included—laze Little Lehigh. If this is post-industrial supine along MacArthur Road in decay, it’s pretty damn picturesque. nearby Whitehall Township. MacAr- thur, for all its breath-stealing ugli- In Joel’s “Allentown,” it’s not just the ness, could be anywhere, Phoenix or brick majesty that gets ignored. A White Plains. The far West End of couple of blocks up from the Eighth Allentown is the same blend of Office Street Bridge is the Old Allentown Depot and Friendly’s. historic district. Here we walked along blocks of restored 19th century row- None of this would matter—the homes, stopped in for $1 pastelillos screaming billboards, the half-off at Brisas Del Caribe and then home- signs—if Sleepy’s and Petsmart were- made gelato at Lo Baido’s. Just down n’t cause to Hamilton Street’s effect. the block, we hung out with the There’s a larger story here—the gut- smoking hipsters at Cannon’s, a faux ting of American cities for discount dive across from Iglesia Pentecostal toaster ovens—but for now we’re de Betania. content to appreciate what’s left. Forced to choose between MacArthur Down on Hamilton—the city’s main and Hamilton, we’d take post- town) (Library of Congress, Library and Map Collection) Map Collection) and Library Congress, (Library of town) Overleaf: 1762 map of(later Northampton Town Allen- street—we watched the Lehigh Valley industrial “decay” every time. Gay Men’s Chorus croon at Philoso- pher’s Stone, an overlarge café wedged between a pawn shop and a he Lehigh Valley wasn’t al- discount jeweler. (No Starbucks here.) ways coke and steel. Long before Carbondale and Iron- We walked up and down Hamilton, T ton got settled, a prominent refreshed by the mix of garish awn- colonial jurist named William Allen ings and carved-stone facades—none selected the bluff above the conflu- of it market-tested nor climate- ence of the Lehigh River and Jordan controlled. We paused at the foun- Creek as the site for his new town. tains in front of the new, glass-and- The year was 1762. chrome PPL building, adjacent to its older 22-story Art Deco sibling. A The plateau had been an Indian hunt- brewpub and lofts are going up ing ground. (“Lehigh” itself is an an- across the street, we were told— glicization of the Indian Lechawaxen, though at the time the eclectic side- which roughly translates to “free to walk traffic was life enough. roam.” Ironies abound.) Ever since 13 England’s Charles II “deeded” the fu- now know as the Lehigh Valley. ture state to the Penn family in the 17th century, the Native American As recently as 1962, in a volume to claim to this corner of the “New commemorate the city’s 200-year World” was—to use a euphemism— anniversary, the land grab was still disputed. One particularly loathsome being blamed on Native American footnote to the whole land heist hap- naiveté: “The Indian had a feeling for pened here, around what would be- common ownership of all the land, come Allentown. and it was very hard for him to under- stand the idea of private ownership. In 1737, a couple of decades before In fact, this was one of the basic prob- Allen’s town-hunting expedition, Wil- lems which plagued the red men in liam Penn’s sons decided that the their relations with the white man.” lands to the north of Philadelphia should be opened for settlement. William Allen, then Pennsylvania’s Their scheme to convince area Indi- Chief Justice, named his brand-new ans—the Lenni Lenape—gets remem- village Northampton Town. bered as the “Walking Purchase.” (“Allentown” wasn’t formally adopted Here’s why: The Penn brothers found until 1838.) In 1767, Allen gave his an old treaty giving settlers the land son James the town and the land “as far as a man can walk in a day and around it as a wedding gift, and the a half.” The brothers hired, for their younger Allen soon built a hunting “walk,” famous athletes who “walked lodge “retreat” on a height overlook- hard”—hard enough to reach all the ing the Jordan, known as Trout Hall.