🔑 Behind glass | Morning Newsletter

Happy Friday! It will be a cloudy one, with high temps in the low 70s.

Philly shoppers are familiar with the locked glass encasing medicine, diapers, and even toilet bowl cleaner at their local drugstores. The practice is spreading in the suburbs, too, as retailers like CVS and Target claim a rise in theft is to blame. It’s driving some consumers to avoid them by shopping online instead.

And in Democratic presidential primary, most write-in votes in Philadelphia weren’t for people. We have the story on why that signals success for the “uncommitted” campaign.

Here’s what you need to know to start your day.

— Julie Zeglen (morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)

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Body wash, toothpaste, socks — you might find any number of items locked up behind glass in your local Rite Aid or Walgreens. The rise in retailers’ use of antitheft cases is making for a shopping experience full of “friction,” as a Wharton professor told consumer reporter Erin McCarthy.

🔑 It’s not clear how widespread retail theft really is. Data tracking is unreliable, and chains are not forthcoming about how often it occurs in their stores.

🔑 Seeing the locked items can have the unintended effect of making consumers feel less comfortable: “It just makes me feel like ‘Damn, crime must be increasing,’” one shopper told The Inquirer about a recent experience at a Delco Walmart. “People will steal anything if they need air fresheners behind glass.”

🔑 McCarthy explains why some area shoppers are turning to Amazon and other online retailers to avoid the locked cases.

In deep blue Philadelphia, the campaign to write “uncommitted” as a protest vote against President Joe Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza seems to have taken hold.

Philly election officials said they would count any write-in votes marked “uncommitted” as void, since Pennsylvania law states only votes for people must be tallied. And in the 2024 primary election, the vast majority of write-in votes cast by Democrats were marked void.

How many wrote “uncommitted”? We can’t be sure exactly. But of 16,216 write-in votes, more than 90% were voided — a huge surge from 2022. Write-in votes also made up 10% of the presidential primary vote in Philadelphia, while they made up less than 1% of the citywide total in 2020.

Where did write-in votes come from? Progressive enclaves such as University City and East Kensington led the charge. One West Philly ward saw its write-in share increase by nearly 50% from 2020 to 2024.

Who got named? Non-voided names written in by Democrats included former President Donald Trump, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, and a certain recently retired Eagle.

The Inquirer’s Katie Bernard and Aseem Shukla break down the results, interactive map included.

Welcome back to Curious Philly Friday. We’ll feature both new and timeless stories from our forum for readers to ask about the city’s quirks.

This week, reporter Michelle Myers has a new explainer on how Jewelers Row came to be. After all, as a reader asked: Wouldn’t it make more sense for competing businesses to be more spread out?

The explanation involves a Founding Father, a 19th-century commercial district focused on craftsmen, and a play at branding synergy. Here’s the full history of what’s now the city’s hub for engagement ring shopping.

Have your own burning question about Philadelphia, its local oddities, or how the region works? Submit it here and you might find the answer featured in this space.

This museum and its workers have finally reached a settlement in the contentious, yearlong dispute over pay raises called for in their 2022 labor contract.

A) Institute of Contemporary Art

B) The Barnes Foundation

C) Philadelphia Museum of Art

D) The Mütter Museum

Think you know? Check your answer.

🦅 Hoping: The Eagles season turns out as well as, or better than, our sports writers’ game-by-game predictions.

🎸 Anticipating: Bruce Springsteen’s Road Diary doc chronicling his current tour with the E Street Band.

🪿 Wondering: What Wally Goose thinks about all this Canada goose hate.

This Philly-based service delivers beer, snacks, and other products on demand.

OFF PUG

Email us if you know the answer. We’ll select a reader at random to shout out here. Cheers to Lisa Morina, who solved Thursday’s anagram: Hopeworks. The nonprofit in Kensington and Camden is expanding to give more young people training and work experience in tech.

The annual Ride of Silence, which follows a route from City Hall to the Art Museum, honors Philadelphia cyclists killed or injured by motor vehicles.

Thanks, as always, for starting your day with The Inquirer. That’s it from me this week. I’m spending today celebrating my birthday (!) and finally checking out Middle Child Clubhouse’s Thousand Island Lounge. See you Monday!

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