🏁 Escape the Linc | Morning Newsletter

Good morning, Philly.

Getting out of Lincoln Financial Field after an Eagles game can be a slow-moving nightmare. Inquirer staffers raced by car, bike, rideshare, and public transportation to find the fastest route.

And Philadelphia’s violent Mafia power struggle of the 1990s is chronicled in a Netflix docuseries out today. Read on for a primer, told through reporting from that period by The Inquirer and the Daily News.

— Julie Zeglen (morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)

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Getting out of any event at the South Philly sports complex is a harrowing experience. That goes double for Eagles games, when nearly 70,000 fans are trying to exit the Linc at once. Besides my own tried-and-true method of getting ahead of the masses — leaving early — what’s the most efficient route out?

For the sake of journalism, four colleagues and I agreed to put ourselves through mild torture via a race from Xfinity Gate to Dalessandro’s in Roxborough. We took off by foot a few minutes after the Oct. 5 Broncos game ended, then each traveled by a different mode:

🚕 Sports reporter Ariel Simpson hailed an Uber.

🚇 Graphics editor John Duchneskie took SEPTA.

🚗 Breaking news reporter Henry Savage drove from the Q lot to I-95.

🚲 Interactives developer Jasen Lo rode his bike along MLK Drive.

🚙 And this newsletter editor drove from FDR Park to I-76.

Was voluntarily inserting ourselves into postgame swarms of disappointed Birds fans more than a little stressful? Yes. Did I take the competition far too seriously, resulting in an end-of-race sprint from my car to Dalessandro’s? Unfortunately, also yes.

See who won — and if you’re guessing, you’re probably wrong.

Netflix’s Mob War: Philadelphia vs. The Mafia is out today. The docuseries chronicles a bloody 1990s power struggle in the local La Cosa Nostra through the eyes of investigators and former crime family members who were there.

Throughout the decade, the violence led to several high-profile deaths and criminal trials, and a new mob leader in the city.

Reporter Nick Vadala explains how the mob war unfolded in the news more than 30 years ago.

Further reading: In the ’90s, mob boss John Stanfa didn’t have a nickname. The Daily News tried to change that. And a South Philly native was a central Mafia figure who now says he regrets ever having joined. Meet hitman-turned-informant John Veasey.

P.S. Another Philly-tied production begins streaming this week: Allen Iv3rson, the former Sixers star’s new Prime Video doc.

The Rev. Carolyn Cavaness has become something of a celebrity in the last year. She is the first woman pastor of Mother Bethel, known as a hub for Black activism and the oldest church property in the United States to be owned continuously by Black people.

Another Pennsylvania politician is releasing a memoir, this one in January. Who is it?

A) Gov. Josh Shapiro

B) State Sen. Vincent Hughes

C) Treasurer Stacy Garrity

D) District Attorney Larry Krasner

Think you know? Check your answer.

🗺️ Making one big map of: All the Philly-area locations you can see in the first season of Task.

🫴 Understanding, kinda: The “six-seven” meme’s maybe-Philly origins.

🌲 Pretty sure that: Delco is not ... rural.

⚽ Wanting in on: The United States’ continent-wide bid for the 2031 women’s World Cup.

🏥 Considering: How frontline workers can drive change to stop emergency room violence.

Hint: Place in Montgomery County

FONTINA GROWTHS

Email us if you know the answer. We’ll select a reader at random to shout out here.

Cheers to Afrah Howlader, who solved Tuesday’s anagram: Point Breeze. A once-crumbling church in the South Philadelphia neighborhood is being preserved as a brewery and community space.

Wishing you an easy Wednesday. I’ll be back with you tomorrow.

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