You’ve seen them. Haughtily perched on shoulders, hanging from coat racks, wedged underneath elbows, toted around campus: luxury handbags. And now, many of them are increasingly fake.

Just take a stroll around Rittenhouse Square, bypass the ritzy Coach and Burberry stores, and stop on the street corner, where tanned retailers ply fake sunglasses, scarves, and purses emblazoned with the logos of famous Paris fashion houses.

Why would anyone pay thousands for a luxury handbag when they can get a knockoff for a tenth of the price?

Going fake is now the smart option for cash-strapped college students as well as thrifty Wall Street professionals looking for more cash to burn on those Armani suits or Blackberry handhelds.

Yet it turns not only are most of these counterfeit items ugly, they’re also evil . C’mon you knew there was something shady about buying stuff off street corners.

According to Interpol secretary general Ronald K Noble, the proceeds from that Luis Vuitton fake that you just bagged for $20 on the corner of 14th and Market might be supporting international terrorists. Terrorist groups as infamous as Hezzbollah and FARC benefit from these informal economic transactions…as do crime rings that also traffic prostitutes, child soldiers, illegal weapons, and hard drugs.

On top of all that, we’re dealing with another set of issues when you realize that the uneven stitches on that fake Gucci wallet were produced by malnourished Laotian child laborers.

Sure, the issue isn’t as big of a deal as endowment transparency or divestment for Darfur , but the counterfeit trade is just one link in a larger chain of terror, crime, and blood.

Now, I’m not urging anyone to go out and buy the real thing: paying $5,000 for a bag is sheer
insanity. But be aware that those fakes have a dirty history behind them and choose to buy them online from reputable stores that specialize in producing them. It might cost a bit more, but it’s worth every penny.

Or, better yet, ditch the fads. Buy a bag from Target. Make your own. Find something classy in your own price range. Evading the local crime syndicates in West Philly entails not wearing too much bling around, so trade in that gaudy bag for one that isn’t a carbon copy of all the others.

Off the Beat

Constant construction makes SEPTA such a pain. (Photo by Ryan Leske)

SEPTA blows.

Grime-mired terminals. Iron Age tokens. Rusty turnstiles.

This weekend, take advantage of their cooler twin: NJ Transit.

Yeah, public transit is better on the other side of the Delaware River. And free, too.

Until this Sunday, any student can hop on NJ Transit for absolutely nothing. That’s 752 trips per day on 240 bus routes or 11 commuter lines in America’s largest state transit system.

And you thought Jersey was just a strip of asphalt leading to New York.

Speaking of NYC, NJ Transit offers a service from 30th Street Station to Penn Station. Usually, roundtrip tickets cost around $25. Lucky you. Just sit tight for two or three hours, and you’re in the Big Apple.

Wanna be really lazy? Board Penn Transit and cruise down in style to 30th Street Station. If you have just a day bag that’ll fit on your lap, call 898-RIDE.

Or take the LUCY. With your PennCard, you can ride for free around University City.

Or venture out into the boondocks of New Jersey. They’ve got, um, you know, the Jersey devil and lots of diners. Highway tolls and turnpikes. Even Jimmy Hoffa’s chopped up bits.

But there’s still the problem of getting around Philadelphia. Or around campus for that matter. At about $4 per roundtrip, taking SEPTA once a week comes to around $100 bucks a year.

One word: bike. Cuts travel time in half. Want to get from FroGro to DRL in 5 minutes? Want to punch someone in the face, steal their cell phone, and get away with it?

Bikes are perfect for those hijinks. Boycott SEPTA. Save the environment. Pedal away into the sunset.

You can even ditch the jerks on Craigslist and buy one for cheap at the Neighborhood Bike Works in the basement of St. Mary’s Episcopal Church (right next to Civic House).

Until then, just say goodbye to Philly and its derelict, insolvent transit system in three easy steps:

Click. Print. Clip.

Off the Beat appears every Friday.

Off the Beat

Wahlberg is fast becoming a Philly boy.

Alright, Lord of the Rings fanatics. Here’s your chance to stalk Peter Jackson.

The latest movie buzz reports that shooting for Jackson’s film adaptation of The Lovely Bones, will be done on location in Norristown, PA in the suburbs of Philly. Along with its star director, the movie harnesses A-list talent like Susan Sarandon, Rachel Weisz and Ryan Gosling. Plus a full-time crew that will pump serious money into the local economy.

Sounds like a pretty sweet deal.

In fact, making movies in Pennsylvania just got a whole lot easier. This summer, the state passed legislation to deliver $75 million in tax credits to filming crews. A new production studio is slated for construction in the Philly suburbs.

Philly itself was ranked 5th in the country by Moviemaker magazine on its list of top places to make movies. You can even check out what’s shooting around town now.

To a certain measure, Philadelphia is making inroads on the silver screen. We’ve all heard of Rocky (I-VI), Philadelphia, and Witness. Classic movies, often with A-list actors, set in Philadelphia–one even here at Penn. In fact, six films shot in the city have broken the $200 million box office mark.

Yet apart from a few major films and others not worth watching (like the aging Nicholas Cage in National Treasure), Philly today isn’t much of a movie capital.

“It’s an alternative choice with a different flavor from New York,” said Penn Cinema Association chair Andrew Mangano.

To change that, city officials can reel in producers with more financial incentives. We also need to bring back local talent like Will Smith, Bill Cosby, and M. Night Shyamalan.

Shyamalan (of Sixth Sense fame) has shot most of his films around Philadelphia. Right now, in fact, he’s filming his next flick, The Happening, with Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel. It’s set–you guessed it–in the Philadelphia area. Yet Shyamalan has also stated that he may choose to shoot in locations that offer better financial incentives. .

Sure, big pictures create jobs. But we also need something to catapult Philly back into the national psyche as an American travel destination. And what better way than through another Rocky climbing the art museum steps, another Detective John Book trawling for clues around 30th Street Station, and another director taking us on a cinematic joyride through the streets of Philadelphia?

Off the Beat appears on Friday.

Elizabeth’s guilty pleasure

This month marks my half-year anniversary of turning vegetarian. So far, I delight in having a narrower (but often healthier and more environmentally-friendly) palate.

But even thought tofu and beans and soy have entirely supplanted meat in my life I’m not missing out on the culinary scene about town. No restaurant or food truck I’ve encountered has failed to produce a good vegetarian option. And, I’ve unearthed a whole trove of meatless and wholesome places to dine — from the Eritrean cuisine at Dahlak in West Philly to the Cherry Street Chinese Vegetarian Kosher Restaurant. It also doesn’t hurt that these options are easy on the pocketbook.

Less meat also means more room for desert. As an insatiable carb-lover, I’ve replaced meat with chocolate chip cookies and frozen dairy treats. And, by paying more attention to my diet, I’ve become more wary of artificial additives in processed foods. I was horrified to learn that even Special K — that paragon of breakfast health food—contains high fructose fruit syrup (a sugar additive usually derived from genetically modified corn and, therefore, virtually unfound in Europe). And you know something shouldn’t be good for us when it isn’t even good enough for the French.

For me, turning vegetarian marks a shift in thinking about organic, local, non-processed foods. Scrutinizing ingredient labels has increased my paranoia of prepackaged goodies like Twinkies. My rule of thumb is not to eat much of what my grandmother would not have recognized. Beware the unnatural horrors of calcium sulfate, partially unhydrogenated soybean oil, or polysorbate 60. Having said that, I usually cave in and buy a package of those nifty new Rainbow Twizzlers for kicks.

While I’m still attached to my eggs and dairy, it’s also a lot easier than you might think to be vegan in Philadelphia. Vegan cupcakes are all the rage at Whole Foods — the chocolate frosting is absolutely to die for. Gianna’s Grill even markets a vegan cheesesteak. And Fuh-wah’s in West Philly makes a mean tofu hoagie.

Philadelphia’s culinary treasures aren’t just for the omnivores among us. Options abound — explore!

I’m usually too busy daydreaming about summer break or contemplating how I’ll survive finals to think about raising a family. Teething, potty training, and securing paid maternity leave are the farthest things from my mind.

A decade from now, however, it may matter to me that the United States remains the only nation in the developed world without paid maternity leave .

Not only do women sacrifice their earnings to spend time with their children, they also risk damaging their future careers. According to a Cornell study , moms (and especially single moms) make much less than fathers or unmarried women.

In addition, America’s daycare system is often poorly equipped to handle the needs of working mothers. Rising fees and crowded centers have made it harder for new mothers to leave their children in daycares. This pressure has been exacerbated by familial norms that load mothers with most of the childcare burden. As a result, working moms face fewer childcare options as well as stiffer penalties for leaving their jobs to care for families.

Fortunately, help is on the way. Pennsylvania lawmakers are working to protect women from disclosing their familial or marital status to potential employers ( House Bill 280 .) While the bill will not achieve perfect workplace parity, it takes a small step toward better working conditions for women.

For working moms out there, this bill might be the perfect Mother’s Day present.

Smooooooth criminal. (Bastrop Middle School)

It’s late. I’m walking back through the security check at Lower Quad Gate when I collide with a Specta Guard. She stops me. What’s that in your bag? She’s pointing to a suspicious aluminum can that could be beer. I pull out my V8 .

While I escape, the girl behind me unzips two pieces of luggage. It’s like airport security sans the fancy see-through-underwear technology .

Such are the wonders of nocturnal Quad bag checks, when guards who aren’t equipped to detect alcohol on the underage Penn body resort to other means — namely, backpack pat-downs and profiling. Thank God I’m Asian and female.

In any case, I feel unfairly targeted for a cause that’s ultimately futile. No matter how much they check, alcohol always comes in. In fact, they don’t even check that much. I could have easily sneaked in something under my coat. And unlike with library bag checks , students entering the quad are often entering their own places of residence, where they might expect a little more privacy. Especially for students who are 21, the bag checks hark back to those old days of living at home with the parents.

To curb drinking, it might be more effective to beef up monitoring programs like FlingSafe , which patrols the Quad to ensure safety during Fling. In addition, a lot of underage drinking completely bypasses the Quad and occurs elsewhere on campus namely in frats and other college houses. If students plan to get drunk, they will do so. But often in venues that are not monitored and are, consequently, less safe.

Don’t get me wrong. We shouldn’t just let students carry in armfuls of alcohol willy-nilly. SPEC already gets enough flak for bacchanal, underage drinking. However, the measures now in place do a poor job of restricting alcohol use and do so at an inconvenience to the rules-abiding part of the population.

Instead, save the money that goes into nearly two weeks of bag checks and put it towards campus security during the weekend of Fling.

They’re everywhere. Stuffed into every nook and cranny, slotted under doorways, stashed into mailboxes, stacked on tabletops, pinned against bulletin boards, taped to bathroom stalls, and flung in fistfuls into the afternoon crowds streaming down Locust Walk. Post-it size to life-size. Plain or laminated. Flyers, the perennial campus decor at Penn.

Given this inundation of pocketable messages, Penn increasingly suffers from a surfeit of paper — and poor recycling capacities to handle it. Despite our efforts to promote a green campus, most of these colorful leaflets either end up in the trash and are shipped to the landfill,many simply litter the campus and clutter our living spaces.

Thankfully, the UA is promoting an electronic calendar initiative that will feature all campus events on one central, customizable calendar. It’s penance for the corny, now moldering campaign ads we have to put up with each year — some of which are still hanging on my house bulletin board. (Note: if you put it up, take it down).

You’d think, with the rise of the internet, that flyering would have died out. Yet it hasn’t. Across the country, newspapers and advertisers (especially spammers) have adopted new media and now offer electronic versions which cuts down on printing and distribution costs.

But let’s turn our focus back to campus. Think of all the alternatives out there: Chalk is infinitely more creative. Reusable banners are much more practical. Shouting messages is more compelling. Email is less resource-intensive. So why are flyers still around — and so pervasive?

Perhaps it the lack of a centralized electronic way to publicize activities. Groups use PennPortal, DP ads, or Facebook invites. Or maybe, out of sheer sentimentality, we still love our old-school bulletin boards and the Locust Walk tradition. But this is kind of silly. We all dodge the flyers on Locust Walk. What makes the daily spectacle great are the people and the live boom box music that animates the scene.

Most importantly, we risk inundating students with too much paper — too many calls for attention printed on armfuls of brightly colored scraps. In the age of environmentalism and electronics, let’s save some trees by becoming less reliant on paper.

Bridge to nowhere. (Penn Almanac)

Oh, the Bridge . Oh house of “cinema de lux” that sits cozily between Marbar and the Rotunda. I don’t care if you go out of your way to make the interior decor look nouveau and sleek. You don’t fool me. Any given Friday, a generic blend of pop thrillers, gory horror, and low brow comedies grace your screens. Your assigned seating scheme screams grade school, and your movies bore me to tears.

Since Penn booted its rival Cinemagic off the campus two years ago, the Bridge has reigned exclusively over University City ticket sales. Since then, college audiences (and our University City neighbors) have been forced to watch the crappiest films for top-of-the-line prices.

And it’s not just the quality of some of the films that irks me — it’s the Bridge’s unflinching adherence to mediocrity. I mean, this is the theater that didn’t play Babel , a repeated Oscar nominee. I don’t need the silly amenities — I mean, who uses wifi in a movie theater? And my derriere doesn’t need plush leather seating.

What I do need is quality independent cinema — not generic big budget films. And unless I plan to hightail it down to the Ritz , I’m pretty much out of luck in that department. Of course, the Bridge does occasionally cave in and screen a few movies for the Philadelphia Film Festival, but its year round offerings of innovative films are scarce.

And what about all the Bollywood fans out there? Come on. When was the last time you saw a foreign film playing at the Bridge? We probably have more private showings of Honk Kong action flicks and Bollywood hits than any other square mile in the city. Walk out into West Philadelphia, and you’ll see several Indian or Pakistani grocery marts offering their own video rentals. If a market exists for foreign films, then our local movie theater should take advantage of it.

Places like International House and groups like the Penn Cinema Association have stepped in to fill the gap. DVD rental places are ubiquitous on campus. As the only movie theater servicing University City, the Bridge should cater to the diverse tastes of university audiences.

Republican Presidential hopeful Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., takes part in a meeting of the Joint Task Force on Media and Childhood Obesity (AP Photo/Dennis Cook).

You can stop fussing over the freshman fifteen. According to new research, it’s actually more like the freshman five . And though five pounds really won’t kill anyone it still feels like it will. I’m not even close to overweight, yet I fear those five pounds of flesh all the same. And that’s what drives me to the haul my butt to the gym every so often.

What about the whole cerebral aspect of college life, you ask? Who cares about a little extra squish, Isn’t college about pining away over Shakespeare and Euler’s Theorems in an ivory tower? Well, no.. Cast an eye over to the skinny girls on the Stairmasters, and it’s pretty evident that many of us go to Pottruck to impress others, not because we’re clinically overweight. In fact, 34th Street satirized this phenomenon using the new mot juste, “ Hottruck.”

Yet — healthy eating quibbles aside — people are starting to take the villainization of obesity too far. Not only is obesity the silent killer, but fat is the devil. Gluttony, after all, was one of the seven deadly sins.
In fact, we’ve imbued the sin of obesity with all sorts of moral undertones. How can we stuff our faces when children are dying of malnutrition in the third world? Politicians rail against childhood obesity, and health centers lament the obesity epidemic that is sabotaging the national waistline. Schools tried sending out “ obesity report cards” to tip-off parents. And then, to add greenhouse gases to injury, a study proclaimed fat people require more fuel to travel and therefore contribute to global warming , the rising of world sea levels, and extreme weather phenomenon. Ouch.

The overweight and their advocates, however, have struck back. Universities are starting to adopt fringe curriculum, dubbed “ fat studies ,” to examine the political and social implications of being overweight.
It’s no secret that fat discrimination exists, notably how fat girls sometimes get picked last for image-crazed sororities. Psychology studies have revealed how fat kids are often picked last as friends in recess or as employees in the workplace.

There’s a myth that fat people have no self-control. Hey, we can’t all be like that Subway dude . But that theory is just a myth: obesity is not a moral crises or a failure of self-restraint. Instead, it can often be a matter of genes or a sign of depression. It’s not easy being fat. Rather than continuing the stigma, it’s better to focus on promoting physical health.

The obesity debate has cleaved society into two unhealthy camps, embracing the underweight and scapegoating the overweight. New stories crop up about skinny runway models dying alongside stories highlighting the surreptitious emergence of binge eating as a coping mechanism for stress.
In a world centered on extremes, learn to embrace the middle. Eat that cupcake and go out for a stroll while you’re at it. Start to embrace your curves.

One of the greatest art heists in history is happening under the noses of Pennsylvania state officials. The art vandals are none other than trustees of the Barnes Foundation, who plan to transfer over $25 billion worth of artwork from a suburban Merion home to the bustling avenues of Philadelphia.

But first, a little background on this controversy that’s rocking the local arts scene.

Back in 1922, philanthropist Alfred Barnes (who graduated from the School of Medicine in 1892) built the Barnes Gallery to house his expansive personal art collection and develop art education programs. Today, the collection contains over 2,500 pieces from around the globe, painstakingly gathered and arranged. It’s a must-see for any Renoir /a>
lover, housing over 180 pieces from the French master, more than five times as many as you’ll find in the Metropolitan Museum of Art
.

Seventy years later, Barnes Foundation trustees petitioned to overturn the stipulations in Barnes’ will and move the collection to Center City. Plans have been solicited for a new museum on the corner of 20th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, rendering the Parkway
an art lover’s mecca.

Foundation trustees claim that the move will allow the museum to stay afloat financially. In accordance with Barnes’ will, the collection is only open to the public three days a week and pieces are not permitted to go on tour. Courts in Lower Merion have limited the number of visitors allowed weekly to 1,200, giving rise to a cumbersome reservation system.

Faced with these fiscal woes as well as strained town-gown relations, the trustees intend to move the collection by 2009 or early 2010. Several area charities have helped the Barnes raise $150 million for the move, and the state legislature — backed by Governor Ed Rendell — has approved over $100 million
to support the transition.

Many argue that the museum is not accessible enough to visitors. Fixing this problem, however, doesn’t require the strain of a full-fledged move to Philadelphia.

For instance, a shuttle could run directly from the Philadelphia Museum of Art to the Foundation, which is really only 5 miles away. In fact, the collection is already serviced by train and bus from the city. It’s actually faster
to travel from PMA to the Barnes, than from PMA to the Liberty Bell.

In a recent op-ed in theInquirer,,Nancy Herman, a member of the “Friends of the Barnes organization,” recommends maintaining the current museum while building a new museum at the Parkway site. The new museum would house visiting modern art exhibits and a small part of the original Barnes collection.

Most importantly, however, a new museum will damage the artistic integrity of the original. Art critic Peter Schjeldahl of The New Yorker has deemed the structure “a work of art in itself . . . Altering so much as a molecule of one of the greatest art installations I have ever seen would be an aesthetic crime.”

Henri Matisse painted a magnificent mural on site in the entrance gallery. And the surrounding twelve acres of garden are a horticultural masterpiece. As an Impressionist haven, the gallery is refreshing in the spareness of its labels–giving only the name of the artist with each painting. No fussy critical interpretations, no nonsense. The gallery bears the curatorial mark of its namesake through the peculiar arrangement of diverse pieces of art, interspersing Pennsylvania Dutch hardware with Titian oil paintings — an intimate experience lost in a dominant landscape of large art galleries.

Keep the Barnes as it is. Moving the collection to Philly would be like shipping the cheesesteak to California. You can take the artwork out of the Barnes, but you can’t take the Barnes out of the artwork.