Boldface Aug. 3: A.D. Amorosi rounds up the local gossip

Roger Daltrey and Joan Jettbackstage at the KimmelCenter for the Teen CancerAmerica concert. /
Tesh Parekh, IWP Photography

Fresh from turning Festival Pier into a sandy oasis for Live Nation Concert, Groundswell Design Group quietly and without advance PR reconfigured the landscape of Camden’s Susquehanna Bank Center. The new Ben Franklin Plaza Gardens at SBC is serving 96 craft beers on draft, “the most of any venue in the country,” says Live Nation’s James Sutcliffe. Groundswell also did Michael Schulson’s new, always packed Independence Beer Garden.

The end is near for Tangier, the decades-old neighborhood bar at 18th and Lombard that owner Jack Roe sold to the Old Nelson family of deli operators. Tangier’s Facebook says it all: “We will be providing ‘food, drink and shelter’ until Aug. 4, as long as we have not run out of beer and liquor,” wrote Roe, echoing his bar’s catchphrase.

After dining at Il Pittore, The Who’s Roger Daltrey — along with Philly-born rocker Joan Jett — packed the Kimmel Center for his Teen Cancer America charity. Along with raising upwards of $250,000, Daltrey announced that the new cancer wing at CHOP, which will house a TCA space, will be built by July 2015.

FringeArts founder Nick Stuccio unveiled the lineup for this year’s Fringe Fest and introduced chef/restaurateur Peter Woolsey, whose La Peg brasserie is scheduled to open Sept. 5, the same day the festival kicks off.

Beck’s opening act at the WXPN Xponential Music Festival, the rocking teen band The Districts, just signed a label deal with Fat Possum Records (after recently getting their equipment stolen in a van robbery and receiving new instruments courtesy of Gibson Guitars). In unrelated news, there was a Forrest Gump impersonator running loose at Xponential who has been getting very popular with the WXPN set.