Monday, Aug. 07, 2000

The Other Streets Of Philadelphia

By Melissa August, Val Castronovo, Rachel Dry, Daren Fonda, Michael Jackson, Ben Nugent, Michele Orecklin, Julie Rawe, John Rosenblatt, Josh Tyrangiel, Alexandra Wolfe

The G.O.P. convention in Philadelphia this week has been planned down to the last balloon-drop. However, there are some attractions that won't make many event planners' schedules. Here's an inside guide for go-getting G.O.P.-ers:

1 VENERATE the Reagan legacy by checking in on Nancy's and Ronald's old footwear (and that of Mamie Eisenhower too) at the Shoe Museum

2 DEMONSTRATE about the death penalty at the corner of 13th and Locust, where death-row inmate and liberal icon Mumia Abu-Jamal exchanged gunfire with slain police officer Danny Faulkner

3 CONTEMPLATE as you gaze at a tumor removed from the jaw of President Grover Cleveland, and the thorax of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, at the Mutter Museum

4 MASTICATE on the pesto grilled Brie at the White Dog Cafe. Try not to snicker at the liberal peacenik literature or the eatery's rep for "award-winning cuisine and social activism"

5 POSTULATE what life would be without a housekeeper at the Insectarium, which features an exhibit modeled on a kitchen stocked with 100,000 live cockroaches

6 RECRIMINATE at Oxford and 26th streets, site of the recent videotaped police beating of carjack suspectThomas Jones

7 CELEBRATE the Mario Lanza Museum--just because it's there