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We came into this mid-name change so it was a choice of having to spend more time and money trying to change it again or just going with what was already in place. So it completely turned me off of any sports. I even had custom made curtains that had the logos of every team in the league. My room was filled with football paraphernalia, my bedsheets, and pillowcases, bedspread. When I was young, my mom and grandparents ruined sports for me. But no, I have to say that I never expected to own a bar this early in life, especially one named Jocks. I’ve always had a bucket list of things I wanted to try. I’ve always known that I would own a business, actually multiple businesses, I just was never sure what they would be. I was quiet, I kept to myself a lot, but I was always willing to help people out.Ĭould you have imagined that you’d grow up to own a bar named Jocks? The school has been around since 1893 and that was the first African-American teacher! So what were you like as a little one? I hear you, I was the president of the Black Student Union and we helped get the first black teacher at Radnor. Yeah, and growing up I only had one black teacher in elementary school, none in middle school, and one in high school. There was a principal they didn’t like and I remember overhearing one of those parents saying, “Watch what I do, he’s outta here next week!” and sure enough the following week, that principal was gone. If they said they wanted something to happen, it would happen. I went to school in Bluebell and it was apparent that certain parents from the ‘other’ side of the neighborhood ran the school. The township around us was Republican, but our little enclave was the main Democratic concentration in the area. It was a minority-majority in our little section, if that makes sense. Was Pennlyn very diversified? I grew up in the suburbs of Wayne and it was pretty conservative out there, in other words predominantly white.
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He’s the reason why we were able to purchase Jocks. I attribute my success to my grandfather. I spent a lot of my time in Ambler, which was the closest “large” city, so it was a popular spot for school kids. If you didn’t have a car you weren’t going anywhere because there was one bus, one train and that was it. There were literally only two streets leading into the community and two streets out. Penllyn was a very small little community.
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I come from a small family I have four sisters.
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No, I’m actually from the suburbs of Philly, from a little town called Penllyn near Ambler, PA. Hi, Ken Lowe, Jr., and congratulations on becoming a new bar owner here in the city. is excited about welcoming patrons into Jocks, his new place on Chestnut Street, however long it takes. It takes a lot of gumption to stay positive when opening a bar in the midst of a pandemic, but Ken Lowe, Jr. If that’s the case, then this week’s Portrait must do a lot of dancing. The Urban Dictionary describes it as “someone who figures that taking a step backward after taking a step forward is not a disaster, it’s more like a cha-cha.” Merriam-Webster describes an optimist as a person who tends to be hopeful and confident about the future or the success of something.