The portable U-City: University City now fits in your jacket pocket, thanks to the University City District’s “University City Philadelphia Visitor’s Guide.” The guide, available at the UCD offices, 3940 Chestnut St., and local hotels and merchants, lists the area’s cultural, dining, shopping, lodging and recreational attractions, along with a listing of major events, a map, and information about the universities that give the neighborhood its name.

Bikers wanted: Got a bike? Want to support a great cause? The UPHS Cycling Team wants you to join them for this year’s MS 150 City to Shore Bike Tour Sept. 28 and 29. The two-day, 150-mile trek offers great scenery, refreshments and road support. Register by April 30 and the fee is only $25. For more information, contact Emily Silvis in the Radiology Department at silvis@rad.upenn.edu or 215-662-3024.

Another opportunity to serve: Interested in making a difference in people’s lives both close to home and around the world? The new Rotary Club of University City is interested in you, then. Rotary is a service organization for professionals and businesspeople with more than 1.2 million members worldwide. The first meeting of the new U-City chapter will take place Monday, April 22, at noon at the Palladium Restaurant, 3601 Locust Walk; the fee is $17 per person. To reserve a space, e-mail Frank Hoffman, fhoffman@sas.upenn.edu.

Make book on this: In the works for the former Campus Market space in the 3900 block of Chestnut Street: a new bookstore, Last Word Books, that will specialize in rare books, affordable titles and coffee. Owner Larry Maltz (C’84) will also buy used books at the store. The projected opening date is in the middle of this month.

Wanna buy a piece of a baseball team? Drop a line to Jesse Spector (C’02) in care of buytheexpos@yahoo.com or visit buytheexpos.poptopix.com. Ever since ESPN.com reported in late February on the not-so-tongue-in-cheek effort to save the Montreal Expos from extinction launched by Spector and friends Jonathan Shazan (C’03) and Sebastian Stockman (C’01), nearly 13,500 baseball fans around the world have pledged more than $2.8 million to buy the team. (That leaves them with $97.2 million to go to reach Major League Baseball’s asking price.) The effort will continue throughout the 2002 baseball season.

We’re number 1: For the second year in a row, Penn’s Pathology Department ranked first in the country in the amount of National Institutes of Health funding it receives. The $28 million figure represents a 22 percent increase over the previous year’s level.

Penn in ink: It may be a plain old Penn T-shirt to you, but to New York Times Magazine writer George Spector, it was a tale of how one woman’s trash becomes a poor African’s treasure. Spector followed the journey of a T-shirt that New Yorker Susie Bayer donated to a thrift shop in a March 31 article.