Pour one (medium passionfruit bubble tea) out for our homies the Boba Bros— today is their last day of business. The Penn students had a good run, starting back in October 2010 by making their own homemade bubble tea and getting their product picked up and sold through TBowl. Bubble tea fans, it’s not the end of the world. We’ll always have Paris Beijing.
Look around you: 2012 is here! Guys, it’s here! And while we’re all celebrating the coming of a new year and all the neat scrapbooks we’ll make in the coming months, it is once again the time to reflect on the passing of 2011 and those campus classics that went with it:
Philly Diner
Deceased: October
Cause of Death: Unclear. We smell a conspiracy afoot.
Survived By: Nothing as of yet
In Memoriam: That wailing sound still ringing in your ears is the collective shriek of the SDT sisters who lost their fave drunchie hangout right outside their chapter house. We totally sniffed out PhiDi’s decline over a year ago, but the surprise of its overnight death still cuts deep.
Let’s get down to business: everyone poops. Most poops are average. Unremarkable. Sometimes you take amazing poops that overwhelm you with such relief you enter a momentary state of bliss. And then…there’s awful poops. Ones that make you curse yourself for eating at Chipotle. For the third time this week. Or maybe it was those two venti coffees you had this morning. Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what foods actually caused those toilet travesties, so we’ve developed Out Of The Button: The Definitive Guide To Sourcing Your Poops to Penn Campus Eateries. Just match your poop to the pictures below and develop a roadmap of places never to frequent without a bottle of Pepto Bismol. Let’s get crackin’.
Kiwi: If you’re a froyo pro, every cup is a perfectly swirled work of art. And life imitates art, right?
Everyone’s been all a-tizzy about TBowl serving Boba Bros, but then out of nowhere Beijing was like, “yo, we have bubble tea too!” And they have flavors! And it’s only $2 (for now, anyways)!
So now we don’t know what to think. Which neighbor is better? TBowl has the authentic plastic-wrap top. Beijing is cheaper, but also it’s Beijing so we don’t really trust it even if it’s apparently, um, also Boba Bros.
There’s only one thing left to do– let you decide! Tell us which you like better, and feel free to defend your choices in the comments.
Update: Beijing bubble tea is not Boba Bros as previously stated. Tipsters, stop leading us astray!
March is well upon us, and while for many this means the start of March Madness season, for others it’s a time to pretend to be a fan of basketball and pick your favorite team based on uniform colors. But we can all agree that we shouldn’t restrict this competitive spirit to college basketball, and, well, brackets are pretty fun. Presenting: Penn Madness! We’ve made a bracket featuring our favorite (and smelliest?) Penn celebs and hotspots, and winners will be chosen based on the results of your votes in polls that will appear throughout the week. Get it? Awesome. Check out the contestants team predictions after the jump!
Categories and Team Descriptions:
Restaurant We’re Most Hype For
TBowl: The successor to Taglio, TBowl will feature Asian food and hopefully not always be empty and close ridiculously early.
Sweetgreen: Another fast casual restaurant, Sweetgreen actually seems really good! Like Saladworks, but with more selection and better salads.
Prediction: Even though we’re excited for ORGANIC TEAS, RICE BOWLS and BUBBLE TEA!!!, Sweetgreen sounds like something University City has been missing for a long time.
For many of us, post-Spring Break readjustment to the cloudy hum drum of campus is just so hard. A quick plane ride back to Philly separates sunny, boozy bliss with the routine of life as a college student — there’s too much work, too many familiar faces, and dear ol’ Penn looks just a little bit duller.
Good thing, considering these difficult, sunburnt days ahead of us, that the most dramatic campus transformation is perhaps the least surprising: Taglio, the always-empty Italian-style pizza joint from the people behind the beloved Gia Pronto, is officially no more. And while we mourn the loss of a really great place to spend quality alone time, we can’t but be excited about Marco Lentini’s next concept for the spot. TBowl! Rice bowls! Bubble tea (RIP)! Gia goes Asian fusion!