The Five Spot: The Best Local News Segment I’ve Seen Maybe Ever

Also: An Alicia Silverstone poison fiasco, a sword heist, and more

The Five Spot is a weekly Friday roundup where I rank and riff on my five favorite things from the week. Most of the entries will be about film and TV, but there might also be ones about weird local news or sandwiches I ate or anything else, really. The whole thing is an exclusive for paid subscribers, so if you want to read the top four entries, you can do that by upgrading…

Off we go.

FIVE: I must go to Tokyo

This is a segment that aired on the local Philadelphia ABC affiliate this week. It aired on 6abc, specifically, which is known as Action News and which I note here for both accuracy and as an excuse to link to its theme song, which goes so much harder than it has any reason to. But I do need you to watch this segment. It’s honestly awesome, and not in the way I usually say local news segments are awesome, which usually involve more silly thefts and/or loose animals. This is just a wonderful piece of television.

The whole thing is about a Japanese couple, Kosuke and Tomomi Chujo, who are obsessed with Philadelphia to the degree they opened an authentic cheesesteak spot in Tokyo. He works the grill, she makes the bread from scratch, and they’ve traveled to Philly twice in the last five years to taste and study the art of the cheesesteak. She does the whole interview in an Eagles t-shirt that says “Go Birds.” And then she says “Go Birds” when the Eagles come up in the conversation. I love these two very much.

On one of their trips to Philly, in 2023, they met Action News journalists Matteo and Nick Iadonisi at an Eagles tailgate and hit it off. The two journalists had always wanted to go to Tokyo and so they set this up and got a camera and turned a dream vacation into the coolest and sweetest damn thing news story you can imagine.

Every quote in the interview is great. The pride and excitement on their faces burst through the screen, especially when Kosuke is showing off his Philly bric-a-brac, which includes everything from a Rocky tattoo on his calf to tributes to the local sports teams to a wall of buttons and stickers that leads to this statement.

Kosuke and I are not so different, after all.

Anyway, I just really wanted to share this with everyone I know and this seemed like an efficient way to do that. It really is very cool. I am biased because I live in Eastern Pennsylvania and have a Pavlovian response to the phrase “Go Birds,” but there’s a universal aspect to this all, too. It’s a nice reminder that the world, while sometimes big and scary and daunting, can also be a small little place where you can bond over hoagies with some nice people in a parking lot and end up halfway around the globe at their restaurant a few months later talking about defensive ends who play on the football team you like.

I am very proud of and happy for everyone involved here. I am including myself in this list. It would have been exhausting to text this link to each and every one of you one at a time. I would have done it if I had to, but this worked out much better.

FOUR: Alicia Silverstone did not swallow poison, actually