(upbeat music) - The city of Philadelphia knows a thing or two about love.

- It's monumental letters, L-O-V-E.

- The Cupid crew is on the job making sure seniors know they're loved.

- Hi, hope your day is already bright.

- Plus, here's your chance to find your friend a date.

My friend is one of the best people that I know.

And I was like, "I'll present you!"

You Oughta Know is at Love City Brewing in the Callowhill section of Philly.

And love is in the air.

Welcome to Pitch A Friend.

My name is Melissa and I'll be your emcee for the evening.

Hey everyone, happy Valentine's Day weekend.

If dating apps aren't your thing, this might be.

Melissa Schiffke shares her fresh take on meeting people in real life through Pitch a Friend.

Pitch a Friend started in Philadelphia, which I love, but explain what Pitch a Friend is.

- Pitch a Friend's an opportunity for folks to do PowerPoint or Canvas slide presentations of their single friends at different bars and breweries across the city to advertise them as a potential dating match for somebody else.

It's cold outside, I know, but I have quite the wonderful person that you guys could warm up next to.

His name's Arjun.

Everybody kind of talks about what their friends looking for, what are some of the best qualities, some testimonials about it.

We've had people come up with some very interesting themes, whether it's flight attendants doing the in-flight presentation, or we've had folks sing a pitch, or like rap a pitch.

It's just really cool to see the creativity.

That's him getting a pedicure somewhere.

He's clean.

And when I hurt my knee, who was the one picking me up and carrying me?

Arjun.

The idea for Pitch A Friend, how did that come about?

Yeah, so I'm from the startup space, so I own an ed tech startup that I did a lot of pitching for.

The idea of applying this to the dating scene was just kind of a fun idea I gave to a brewery that's in my neighborhood.

Thought it would just be a fun application with a little bit of humor and just to be a silly way to get people talking again in real life.

And one other thing that I thought was cute, you do a Pitch A Pet sometimes too.

Yeah, we partner with local shelters.

AcctPhilly has been a great partner of us and we feature a different dog that's available for adoption for folks who are looking for more immediate companionship and loyalty.

Pitch a friend has grown significantly outside of Philadelphia.

For sure, we started in 2022, now we're about 55 cities across 10 countries doing events.

And is this for all ages?

Because I think some people think this is a young person's thing.

We pitch anywhere from 21 up into 67.

And so we do some age-specific events as well.

We do events specific for the LGBTQ+ community.

That's really important for us.

And also Pet Parents or Nerd Nights and some other different themes to really help make people match.

And all your events are at different local bars.

So you are supporting local businesses.

We rotate it each week to a different neighborhood in Philadelphia.

So we can connect with folks all around the city.

We heard about this just kind of through the grapevine via social media, TikTok, and we just thought it seemed like a really fun event.

I think just dating nowadays can be a bit hard, and so she kind of expressed some interest in wanting to do this, and I was like, "I'll present you!"

Reasons why you should date Alexa Anati.

First of all, she's hot.

If you want to come and be pitched, you do have to sign up in advance to pitch your friend, and then you submit the presentation, usually one to two days prior to the event.

It's free for our events to attend them, if you want to just come and check out presentations.

The vibe is just people celebrating how awesome their single friends are, but we just want to get people talking again and making new connections.

You may think that because she is on a club team, historically full of lesbians, that she sleeps with her teammates.

She does not!

Alexa is the kind of person that makes you want to be a better person.

And I think everyone should want someone like that in their lives.

Hearing the perspective of the friends, I think that's super important.

A lot of people don't even know their best qualities when they're pitching themselves.

So hearing what their friends are saying about them also is a great confidence booster.

The second portion of our event is always an open mingle time where we encourage people to be making connections.

To learn more, go to Pitch-a-friend.com/Philly.

From one bar to another, this time in Wilmington, where Nick's Pizza Parlor and Bar is pouring Valentine's cocktails and bringing the love.

Nick's Pizza Parlor and Bar in Wilmington, Delaware blends old-school nostalgia with food that is totally rad.

And for Valentine's Day, they created some elevated cocktails for the lovebirds.

Let me introduce you to Eddie.

Today we're gonna be making the Pretty in Pink Spritz And Dan.

Today we're gonna make the Can't Buy Me Love.

Valentine's Day you got the whole strawberry theme, chocolate-covered strawberries, strawberry shortcake.

Everyone loves spritzes.

We're first gonna start with a wine glass and a freeze-dried strawberry and sugar rim.

We're gonna grab our in-house strawberry vermouth.

Do about three ounces of that in there.

We're gonna grab some Tintero Sparkling Rosé.

And last but not least we're gonna top with some club soda.

This is our Pretty In Pink Spritz.

Can't have Valentine's Day without a chocolate themed cocktail so we're starting off with espresso cinnamon rim.

Add an ounce of mezcal and we're gonna add one ounce of house infused Chipotle tequila and then a little bit of house Mexican chocolate syrup and then finally a little bit of espresso give that a shake.

Ready to drain into an Nick and Nora glass.

Top with a little pepper for you.

And that's the "Can't Buy Me Love."

Delicious pizza and some cocktails?

This is my kind of Valentine's Day.

Cheers!

Cupid, draw back your bow.

Cupid is aiming his bow at hearts that might feel a little lonely this Valentine's Day.

You are cherished and loved in all ways.

Happy Valentine's Day, AARP.

Hope your hearts are touched with happiness because you are loved.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Hello, friend.

Just wanted to wish you a happy Valentine's Day and happiness every day.

Love, AARP.

Hi.

Hope your day is already bright.

Last year was the first time that I'd done a Valentine's Day visit.

There's a lot of loneliness.

For seniors, people start to disappear.

It's very important to make that connection where folks see that someone cares just a little bit or a whole lot.

That's very important.

Love, peace, and happiness always.

Happy Valentine's Day from AARP Cupid Crew.

Cupid Crew is a national initiative where AARP collaborates with Witch of the Lifetime and it was designed with the older population in mind to bring joy to them during Valentine's Day.

The aging population is impacted the most with isolation.

Here are the postcards for us to work on it.

Having volunteers across the nation going on Valentine's Day to not only senior centers, but community organizations, churches, groups to deliver flowers and the cards that they handwrite that make a huge difference for them.

We have a fun day putting the flowers together, taking the flowers that don't look that good because we don't want to bring dead flowers to the older population in our communities.

And then when we group then we start doing the cards and we're writing messages that are coming from the volunteers' hearts.

I picked this particular program because it gave me the opportunity to go out and extend an olive branch of kindness to the people in the nursing homes.

It fills my heart with a lot of love and happiness to make someone else happy.

So it makes me happy when other people are happy as well.

Cupid Crew tugs at my heart.

Your loved one is in a nursing home and you know that you can't be there during the day.

It made me think about when my mother was there and I couldn't be there and that there were people that would come in and bring joy to her and give her flowers.

You can't put a value on it.

Now that I am retired, I want to be that person for those people because someone did it for me.

We want to celebrate your life.

We have a rose to give you as a token of our appreciation and respect.

Know that AARP is there for you.

My parents both were in nursing homes and when people came it just absolutely lifted their spirits and especially when giving them something like a rose is very special.

For all of us to remember that you can be seen, that you can feel that you are seen, that you are loved, and that you make a difference.

It's one of the most recognizable pieces of art in the world.

Philadelphia's love statue celebrates 50 years in the city of brotherly love.

There are so many monuments in this city that are fascinating to me, but it's the love statue that makes me feel like there's a sense of belonging.

One of our absolute favorite monuments in the city of Philadelphia is the love statue.

There's so much history to the statue that gives us insights into the power of public art, but also the power of participation and how we make monuments and monuments make us.

We think of the Love statue as one of the most prominent landmarks in the city of Philadelphia.

It started as an artistic design by Robert Indiana on a holiday greeting card for the Modern Museum of Art in 1961 and actually made its premiere here in Philadelphia at the Institute for Contemporary Art over at Penn's campus in 1968.

It appeared on a postage stamp in 1973 and the kickoff for that was actually held at our Art Museum.

For the Bicentennial in 1976, Robert Indiana loaned the city of Philadelphia a love statue.

It was meant to be here for two years to be situated on JFK Plaza.

People in the city loved this and when it went away, went back to the gallery in New York, the city kind of was in uproar and it took Fitz Dixon, who was a sports team owner and a member of the art commission, paying the artist and his gallery to bring it back to have it be situated here in perpetuity and it became an official part of our public art collection.

A hundred years ago, city officials drastically remade what we now know as the Parkway.

But over time, that place has changed and it wasn't until the Love statue's appearance in 1976 that we kind of got our exclamation point, as if it was commissioned just for us.

And I think that's part of what has made it so powerful.

In some ways it's very straightforward.

It's monumental letters, L-O-V-E, in red, green, and a purple-y blue.

But it's that O that's tilted, that's leaning.

It's kind of like love in Philly.

It mirrors us, the ways that we love, the ways that we gather, the ways that we think about both our public spaces and one another.

And there actually are variations on this statue in places all over the world, and even in Philadelphia.

There's one on the Penn campus, there's an Amour statue down the parkway that was dedicated as a part of Pope Francis' visit here.

But the love statue as a piece of art has stood the test of time.

We're at the 50-year mark being a part of this city, but it is the way that Philadelphians and visitors gather around the statue to mourn, to protest, to celebrate.

We have to hold the complexity and the weight of this place.

There is love and there is hate.

There is home and there is displacement.

I don't know if everyone feels that on the tip of their tongue every time they see it, but you feel it.

You know it.

Because to live in this city, to live in this world, is to contain all of what love means.

The way that love is challenging.

The way that love is beautiful.

We're the city of brotherly love and sisterly affection.

It acknowledges what we're striving for.

It's a monument to us right here in the heart of Philadelphia.

Another way to say I love you is with flowers.

Leigh Florist Design in Audubon, New Jersey is budding with excitement about the beautiful arrangements they're making for Valentine's Day.

Hi, I'm Denise.

This is Leigh Florist.

We are a local shop in Audubon, New Jersey, and we're gearing up for Valentine's Day.

Every day, flowers are coming in early in the morning.

We're prepping them, processing them, hydrating them, getting them ready so that we can make bouquets, make vase arrangements.

(upbeat music) - Of course Valentine's Day, red is the classic, love, passion.

We also sell a lot of peach, orange, excitement.

Yellow is friendship, loyalty.

We also do mixed dozen roses because people can't choose their favorite.

(upbeat music) We really focus on like other flowers with the roses, like snapdragons, lisianthus, but also tulips are really popular and they're American grown at this time of year.

And we really try to prioritize working with local vendors, local growers.

We work with Meetsha Chocolates, they're in Haddonfield.

We gather all the supplies needed.

We have a little bit of greenery that we start with a base to an arrangement, and then we start pulling the flowers together, the layers, the lines, the focal flowers to create the designs.

For the last 15 years, we have been offering flower preservation.

We can preserve one rose.

We can preserve an entire bouquet.

We frame them.

We can press them.

We do 3D.

And it's something that's really taken off for us.

We are preserving flowers right now.

We take them.

We dry them in silica gel so a lot of times they can keep their texture and that really nice depth that you see in your flowers.

If you have anything you want to maybe keep from a Valentine's gift, we can always preserve something like that as well.

(upbeat music) - When someone receives flowers, it's really special for them because the flowers bring out emotion.

But I think people just generally feel special and they feel happy to have flowers in the house.

- Love receiving flowers and the idea of preserving them.

While you're looking for a date night idea, let's head to the movies with Patrick Stoner for this week's Flicks.

We should call ourselves lightning and thunder.

So you be lightning and I be thunder.

Yeah.

Song Sung Blue stars Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson.

I did Hugh in part one.

This time it's Kate and the writer-director Craig Brewer.

First I wanted to establish what they were not trying to accomplish, which would of course be impressions of the real-life couple, and instead would be, as she put it, interpretations.

Let's talk about the difference between doing impressions and acting a character that really existed.

It starts with kind of like what I have to do as a writer.

Really the person that I looked to for inspiration was Mike Sardina.

And that takes us to you.

You had to do that.

Somebody once said that doing an impression, the difference is you put like a straw hat, but you're not the straw hat.

You need to bring yourself to it.

Now you're not doing an impression.

What of you did you bring to her reality that you probably studied in some detail?

Oh, so much.

Actually, so much in this, in terms of like essence and life goals, right?

Like, I think I strive and understand Claire's strive for joy and light and finding, as Craig put it, puts it, sunshine.

I share that with Claire.

I feel, I live life that way.

I want to live, I choose to live life that way.

And then the joy of singing, what happens when, when you sing and you love to sing or you have to sing and there's nothing else, there's, there's nothing else that brings you that kind of set, like sense of peace or comfort.

When it comes to sort of the acting part, my dad was telling me this story about Spencer Tracy and this young kid goes up to him on the lot.

- My favorite actor, by the way.

- Oh, well, I mean, one of the greatest.

But this kid goes up to him on the lot and is just like, I just, I love you, you're my hero, and I wanna be an actor, and you know, and do you have any advice?

And he said, yeah, don't ever let them catch you doing it.

And I was like, that's the best.

Don't ever let them catch you acting.

And that's it.

Like, that's the goal.

That's the goal is to for it to be as honest and as effortless feeling as possible, even though you're putting so much of your heart and soul into it.

And that's what's known as the perfect answer to.

A wonderful question.

Thank you both so much.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

So good to see you.

No Valentine's Day is complete without chocolate.

And in our next story, artistry goes into every beautiful bonbon, or should I say, good, good.

I was a pastry chef for 20 years, born and raised in Chicago, kind of a late bloomer, went to culinary school at a later age, got into the hotel industry and immediately found my niche in pastry.

Almost 10 years later, we have a retail store, it's been open a year.

I'm where I belong, in this best neighborhood in the city, surrounded by the kindest, most supportive residents and visitors.

If you're a Leo, you understand this predicament.

We are pretty technical, precise human beings that are regimented, and this is a craft that is extremely regimented.

We're making lines with white chocolate on a polycarbonate mold.

From start to finish, any one step could leave you with a product that could either go in the garbage or not turn out precisely.

All right, we got a suit up.

Get ready to spray.

We're spraying two colors.

The first color we use is sheer and iridescent.

We're trying to get more sparkly shine on the heart before we put a solid color behind it.

Put a mask on so we don't breathe in any of the particles.

Now we're ready to start the next color.

Here's our final work.

You can see now it's much darker, the saturated purple.

We'll wait for this to set up, and then we'll go make our chocolate shell.

I appreciate aesthetics.

And whether it's the bonbons or the colors or my branding, I put a lot of thought into every combination.

We use many different types of chocolate and choose, almost like a pairing, the right chocolate for the right ingredient.

[music] Now we've made a shell that we're going to fill with two kinds of filling.

The first one is peanut butter.

We mix peanut butter with a combination of milk chocolate and salt.

[music] Let's make the second filling.

This time we're gonna have the addition of heavy cream and butter.

This is milk chocolate ganache.

Once we fill it, then we'll be able to cap it off with more tempered chocolate.

We use a little piece of acetate to put on the back.

It creates a shiny piece of chocolate on the back of the candy.

We're just gonna make sure that we have very tight contact.

And that's it.

In the freezer it goes.

I think it is evident from aesthetics, colors, all choices are well thought out.

We have over a dozen varietals of candy bars.

We have the Philly Bar, which is our number one selling bar in the store.

We have bonbons.

Generally, we have 17 to 21 flavors to choose from.

And caramels, wrapped caramels, salted caramels.

We have holiday specials.

So this year we have three different types of hearts.

It's ready.

We just have a lot.

Every time you come in, you'll be sure to find something different.

Here we go.

Acetate off.

See how the back is shiny?

Chocolate makes people happy.

There's no doubt about that and who doesn't want their sweetheart to be happy?

Everybody loves chocolate.

Chocolate really does make people happy.

Good Good Chocolate sent me this beautiful heart and I'm sorry, not sorry, but I have to break it.

Oh, so good.

I'm going to enjoy this, but that is our show for tonight.

Happy Valentine's Day.

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