29 | June | 2011 | NoisyRoom.net

The two young women were sitting at a window table inside the Max Brenner restaurant on 15th Street, near Walnut, sharing chocolate fondue after some shopping.

The streets were vibrant. The weather was nice.

“The city had a good vibe,” remembered one of the women, Maria, who requested her full name not be printed.

But their night on the town was about to become frightening.

Heading their way was a pack of teens roving through Center City after leaving a North Philadelphia music festival.

They were part of about 100 or more young people who had left Saturday night’s event, police said, committing a series of violent assaults and robberies, including one against Maria, 25, of North Philadelphia, and her cousin Cecilia, 29, of Havertown…

…About 10 p.m., Maria said, she saw a shirtless teenager run past the restaurant.

“He was running in the middle of the street and looked like he was running away from someone,” she said.

Maria tucked away her phone and wallet, which had been sitting on the table.

She grew up in Brazil, she said, and was more street-smart than her cousin.

Before she could tell Cecilia to put her cell phone away, another teen reached through the window and snatched it.

Maria ran out after him.

She was on the sidewalk, starting to scream “thief,” she said, when someone from behind punched her in the jaw.

She said she turned, jaw throbbing, to see the girl who had hit her standing with five other teens. “What are you going to do?” she said the girl who had punched her yelled.

The teens were laughing, she said. “They were fearless. It seemed like they weren’t taking anything serious.”

Maria ran into another restaurant and called 911.

From: The Watcher’s Council

Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a blogging group consisting of some of the most incisive blogs in the ‘sphere and the longest running group of its kind in existence. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one written by themselves and one written by someone from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council. Then we vote on the best two posts, with the results appearing in this space on Friday.

This week’s contest is dedicated to my favorite gang of troublemakers, The Founding Fathers.

Council News:

This week, Maggie’s Notebook and Capitalist Preservation took advantage of my generous offer of link whorage and earned honorable mention status.

You can too! Want to see your work appear on the Watcher’s Council homepage in our weekly contest listing? Didn’t get nominated by a Council member? No worries.

Simply head over to the ‘Contact Me’ page at Joshuapundit and post a link to the piece you want considered along with an e-mail address (which won’t be published) in the comments section no later than Monday 6 PM PST to be considered for our honorable mention category, and return the favor by creating a post on your site linking to the Watcher’s Council contest for the week.

It’s a great way of exposing your best work to Watcher’s Council readers and Council members, while grabbing the increased traffic and notoriety. And how good is that, eh?

So, let’s see what we have this week…

Council Submissions