All Around Beauty

1. Best all around wax including eyebrows:  Effie Xidous – Ettore Salon and Spa at the Marriott Hotel. 1201 Market Street. 215-928-9010. She’s only there Wednesdays through Saturdays.
2. Best Hair, especially for non-hideous-SDT-stick straight blowouts:  Eduardo at Vanity Salon: 1126 Walnut Street 215-925-2211.  Goodbye, flat SDT-head and hello, Veronica Lake…
3. Best manicure/pedicure:  Nowhere. Save your money and go to New York.

Sushi (ie Food)!

4. Best Gelato:  Capogiro – 13^th and Sansom. Truly, it’s the best.
5. Best cheap, non-pretentious sushi eatery and take-away: Sansom Street Sushi Delight, on 20^th and Sansom.
6. Most inauthentic, yet very pretentious sushi/hangout spot which tries hard to imitate NYC-chic but ultimately fails miserably: Pod.
7. Best spot for NYC expatriates who are too cheap or lazy to train it up home to get a genuinely pretentious sushi/hangout experience: Pod.
8. Best sushi/hangout spot for NYC expatriates who aren’t too cheap or lazy to cab it downtown: Morimoto.
9. Best dinner/post-dinner hangout place for those who gave up on faux-pretentious dining experiences in Philly and who seek genuine Philadelphian cuisine and an appropriate casual-cool mise-en-scene:  the 34^th street Sansom strip.  Shout out to the White Dog bar menu and New Deck for keeping it real.   

Le Style

10. Best chic, trendy (and vintage) boutique: Echochic – 17^th and Sansom. It’s the only boutique in Center City Philadelphia to carry L.A.M.B. and Sass and Bide slim-leg denim.
11. Worst on-campus trend less obvious than the Ugg boots/miniskirts combination: flare leg/boot-cut jeans.  Get rid of them. Cut them all into Bermuda’s, and then get your soon to be toned butt (see number 12) over to Echochic to pick up some slim leg jeans.

The “Bod”

12. Best way to get your butt and thighs small enough to look good in those slim-leg jeans: Pilates.
13. Most life-changing non-academic experience at Penn:  Pilates. With Kimberly Ruf.
14. Best non-academic building on campus:  Pottruck. Especially the Pilates Studio.
15. Best fashion trend to try once your life (and body) has changed because of Pilates: leggings.

Shop ‘til you drop!

16. Most fun and exciting shopping venue that might just be more awesome than Echochic:  Off Fifth – the Saks Fifth Avenue outlet store in Franklin Mills Mall.  So it’s leftovers from last season.  But for classic, (heavily discounted!) Tod’s and Gucci handbags – it’s worth it.
17. Best place for non-designer-dud freaks to get cool shoes and sneakers:  Ubiq – 16^th and Walnut – next to Diesel (where you can pick up their “Live Straight Leg” Jean).
18. Best place to buy all of the above if all these places ultimately fail - and you’re too lazy to Amtrak your now-toned Pilates butt up to NYC: Shopbop.com. Also highly recommended for procrastinators or those with a severe case of Senioritis.

Food Glorious Food

19. Best on-campus eatery for whiny and snobby Tri-State area expatriates:  Gia Pronto. 
20. Favorite café that’s more chilled out than Gia: Metropolitan Bakery.  Maggie, Green Line Café is a bit too “out-there” for the riff-raff.
21. Favorite outdoors spot to chill with said-coffee or custom-made salad:  Perelman Quad, on the steps.  Or on the benches in front of the library.  Don’t sit on the grass. It stains.
22. Best lunch food for those sick of overpriced café's:  Magic Carpet.
23. Best food source in Philly for those who don’t like to buy custom-made salads or eat from food trucks: Trader Joe’s.

The Penn Frolic

24. Most interesting building at Penn:  Williams Hall.  Multicultural, multi-lingual, diversity, café-culture: everything Penn lacks, all in one place! 
25. Least interesting building at Penn:  Huntsman.
26. Best looking building at Penn: Fine Arts Library. It is uber-quiet, yet its lights are way too dim for proper alertness and studying.   
27. Penn’s ugliest architectural decisions: Anything built during the 50’s and 60’s.  Stiteler, Steiny-D, DRL, McNeil. 
28. Best example of what Penn academic buildings should look like:  College Hall.

Oh, Yeah, Classes: 

29. Best academic experience in the College: any history class. Especially those in College Hall.
30. Best department in the College:  History.
31. Best History Professor in the College: I would like to graduate.  Email me. Ringa@sas.
32. Most useful Penn resource for choosing classes outside of the outstanding history department:  Penn Course Review. And a good College advisor.
33. Coolest class I EVER took at Penn that I found off of the Penn Course Review:  Beginning Sitar I with Professor Allyn Miner

One Last Building Rant

34. Best example of College cheapness:  Second floor of College hall – half of it is renovated and half of it is not.  I guess the graduate student lounge and Professors Granieri, Hackney, and Breckman et. al aren’t as cool as the History Department’s mailboxes.
35. Best demonstration of how a good College department got stuck with a bad building: the Music Department.
36. Most impressive demonstration of College non-cheapness: the Bennett Hall renovation.  It looks and smells great.  Although, I wish they could have relocated the bathrooms so they’re not so goddamned far down the hall.  And why on earth do they smell like airport restrooms?

On that note…

37. More annoying bathroom situation than Bennett Hall:  Van Pelt.  Is it really necessary to trek all the way downstairs and then squeeze between the lockers and the study desks just to pee?
38. Best bathroom to pee in for those who are standing near the button:  Second floor, College Hall.  Check out the handicap bathroom on the renovated side.  It’s huge, private, and it has great natural lighting. And there are enough hooks to hang all your stuff.

The Wild Wild West

39. Best free musical programming at Penn, but worst soundproofing:  the Rotunda.  Dynamic. Diverse. Best of all – free.  But goddamn I want to fucking kill them when they don’t shut up at three in the morning (I live right behind them). 
40. Number of times Amanda has called the police to get the Rotunda to shut up:  three.  Ok, four.
41. Number of times the Rotunda has actually shut up because of Amanda’s phone calls to the police: never.
42. Shadiest spot at Penn.  Corner of 40^th and Spruce after 10 PM.  Or the extremely well-lit walkway next to The Rotunda.

Self-actualization at Penn (read: sex and organized religion):

43. Shadiest Penn fantasy:  Having sex in the stacks.  In the BM or DD sections.
44. Best place to have sex at Penn:  Not the Button.  Try the stacks.
45. Worst myth at Penn that’s almost as bad as having sex under the button:  Living in the Quad freshman year.  Freshmen: live in Hill House.  It’s got camaraderie, social solidarity, and a dining hall on the premises! Wait, what’s that? Postmodern communist-style architecture is ugly?  Fuck you. Don’t be so superficial. 
46. Most intimidating building at Penn which also possesses the best dining hall food:  Hillel. 
47. Best, or worst Jewish singles scene at Penn, and in the country, after Manhattan’s Upper west Side: Hillel, Friday night services.
48. Best four years of your life: Pe-wait. No. High school. No, wait. Penn.
49. Most over-emphasized and irritating statement ever made by a Penn alumnus to an almost-graduated senior: “College is the best four years of your life, so enjoy it while you can.”
50. Most under-emphasized statement ever made by a Penn alumnus to an almost-graduated senior: “College was great, but moving from Stinky Philly to NYC is even better.”