Trends Reviews and Recaps

This just in from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

“Youthadelphia,” they once called it, a teeming city-within-a-city, housing 1,000 young workers and sailors coming from small towns everywhere to burgeoning Philadelphia.

It was the largest YMCA in the world in its heyday, the 1920s and `30s, the old Philadelphia Bulletin said in 1949 -- a major urban institution, and at times a hip hangout, that is difficult to imagine today.

But at 10 tonight, the Central YMCA will close forever. Built in 1906 at 1421 Arch St., it has fallen victim to failing finances and a radically changed society.

And the Village People heave a collective sigh of despair.