a.d. amorosi A classic study in hip. A former club kid who had seen Bowie, Alice Cooper, Mott the Hoople and Roxy Music play by the time he turned 12, 33-year-old a.d. (ne Angelo Domenic) has done bookings and promotions for clubs like Revival, Trocadero and Katmandu. Now a columnist for City Paper, Pulse and Magnet, and an all around man-about town. Floss Barber This 47-year-old interior designer works out of a penthouse studio in the AIA building at 17th and Sansom. A few years back Interior Design magazine named her firm best bank and financial-office design for its work on Jefferson Bank on City Line Avenue. She likes involving community artists in her designs. Myra Bazell One of the major stars of the Philadelphia dance community. Along with Katherine Livingston and Eric Schoefer, Bazell, 33, co-founded the Scrap Performance Group two years ago. Her dance incorporates the vocabularies of hip-hop and break dancing and she has made a name for herself touring Europe over the past two decades. Very on top of trends -- was among the first to shave her head. Among the reasons why she lost the locks: She identifies with the bald eagle. Wendy Smith Born A 43-year-old transplanted Manhattanite who co-owns Metropolitan Bakery. Former partner in White Dog Cafe. With pastry chef James Barrett, the permanently behatted Born founded Metropolitan in 1993, thus bringing European-style bakeries and great bread (think of San Francisco Sourdough, Chocolate Cherry and Olive Thyme) to Philly Active in the hunger-relief organization Share Our Strength. Philippe Chin The 33-year old Paris-born chef/owner of Chanterelles cooks sans toque, avec jeans, cowboy boots and shoulder-length hair. Rides a '66 Harley painted with renderings of lotus root, ginger, lemongrass and water chestnuts (in homage to his Chinese heritage and inventive French-Asian cuisine). When he's not cooking for Philadelphia Society at his restaurant or New York foodies at the James Beard House, he's helping the community by organizing charity dinners and teaching convicts in a rehab program to cook. "Nature Boy" Bob Denney Denney, who says he's "21, again," booked and promoted for Revival and helped put it on the alternative rock map, introducing bands like the Pixies and 10,000 Maniacs to the Philly scene. He continues to shape club life here: When the Knave of Hearts restaurant was wringing its hands over what to do with the upstairs space in 1994, he came up with the concept for the super cozy nightspot Love Lounge, where he DJs on weekends. Even Denney's parents and eight siblings call him "Nature Boy," a name from his high-school days. Cheryl Dunye The 30-year-old filmmaker's almost-completed first feature, The Watermelon Woman, just won the award for best gay and lesbian film at the Berlin Film Festival. The Temple grad wrote, directed and starred in her debut film, shot on location in Philadelphia, including scenes in the TLA video store at 18th and Spring Garden and a cameo by Camille Paglia playing herself. Mikel Elam Cooler than cool. A local artist and former Miles Davis sidekick, Elam, 32, was Davis' personal assistant for six years, taking care of details from booking the jazz legend's shows worldwide to buying his clothes. Now Elam spends his time creating expressionistic, mixed- media paintings that explore spirituality. Greg Giovanni The 36-year-old writer, director and producer at Big Mess Theatre, which he co-founded in 1989, fell into playwriting because he didn't want to pay royalties to stage others' work. Giovanni makes sure that Big Mess retains the extravagance of its drag-show origins. "He single-handedly makes up for what Philly lacks in literary heroes," says fellow hipster a.d. amorosi.

Rennie Harris Innovative dancer who is making waves by bringing hip-hop into theaters with his company, Rennie Harris Pure Movement. "There's nothing new about hip-hop," says Harris, 32, who's been doing it since 1973. "It's nothing more than traditional African dance, kept alive by race memory." He has performed at New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music and Washington's Kennedy Center as well as local venues like the Painted Bride. Kathleen Hughes Better know to legions of drinkers and rockers as "Mom," of the bar Sugarmom's. She's easy to spot: Look for the 40-year-old sitting at the bar with bright green and fuchsia hair. She also lives in what she calls "the oldest band house in Philly," a place simply knows as "Mom's House," at 6th and Kater, where rock bands passing through town have crashed habitually for the last 12 years. "Soundgarden visited, back when they were touring in a little van," she reminisces. "And just the other night, this ska band from Milwaukee knocked on my door and asked if they could stay over." Steven and Ann Lagos The owners (he's 38, she's 41) of Lagos, the jewelry store on 17th Street, have been a major force in international jewelry design over the past two decades but have remained big promoters of Philadelphia. Their designs are sold around the world and are omnipresent in the pages of magazines like W, Vogue and Vanity Fair. You've seen their bijoux on the likes of Lucille Ball, Elton John, Carly Simon and Whitney Houston. Jim Lesser Lesser, 25, reinvented Philly's concept of cool when he opened the nightclub Milkbar in 1994. Instantly, it was a wild success, but Lesser had other ideas: Six months later he closed the club, redid the place and had a grand reopening, all because he didn't want to get stale. The recent opening of 111, his after-hours club at the Bourse, bolsters his image as a mover and shaker with his fingers on the pulse. G. Love A Philly phenomenon. The 23-year-old singer/wongwriter/teen heartthrob of G. Love & Special Sauce, a funk-based, hip-hop inflected bluesy band, is the son of a partner at Pepper, Hamilton, & Scheetz. The band's 1994 debut album, G. Love & Special Sauce, got instant national airplay; they draw a crowd wherever they go. Paul Mojica The 22-year-old makeup artist/model/drag queen has modeled for American and European magazines, but his real passion is makeup, which he discovered at the tender age of 15. He pushes the limits with it since, as he says, "Life is colorful. You have to express it in color." As for cross-dressing, he says: "You're more powerful in drag. People are more willing to hear what you have to say -- because when you're in drag, you're the entertainment." Kim Montenegro This 22-year-old fashion designer has her own eponymous clothing line. Her creations have a sexy rock 'n' roll/motorcycle mama look, the kind you've seen in local shops like Xog and Zipperhead. You've also seen her designs on drag queens, rock stars, models and Playboy bunnies. Currently, she divides her time between here and Fort Lauderdale, where she's working on a line of accessories for her brother's Harley-Davidson dealership. Reese Palley Made his wad in 1978, when he bought 27 acres on the Atlantic City boardwalk and resold them to Bally less than ten days later. His gallery in A.C. showed Yoko Ono's work, and he was a client of Dali's. He spent 15 years sailing the world in Unlikely, a 46-foot cutter. The 74-year-old wore all balck -- the mark of a true hipster -- until marrying his current wife, who insisted he become "less sepulchral." He opened Romania's first ad agency and recently sailed a boatload of supplies to a synagogue in Santiago de Cuba. Joe Rey and Geri Radin These co-owners of A.C.M.E. Art Dept., Inc., a full-service art shop, specialize in television commercials and music videos. Niney percent of their work is filmed out of town, mostly in New York; Rey, 28, and Radin, 29, build sets in their shop here and assemble them on site. They've done videos for everyone, including the three smash hits from the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack by Brandy, Whitney Houston and Mary J. Blige.

Amy Salit As a producer of NPR's Fresh Air, Salit, 44, controls important cultural sluice-gates, deciding what topics will make it to the intellectual mainstream. Thank Salit for the range of the show's subjects, from Jimmy Carter to Art Spiegelman to horror-flick insect trainers. Constantly out and about -- you might catch the Lubock, Texas, native in jeans at Khyber Pass. Evan Solot Composer, arranger, trumpet player and head of the jazz department at University of the Arts, he like to stretch generic boundaries and will spice up a classical piece with jazz, hip-hop and salsa accents. When he's not composing for the likes of jazz greats Stanley Clarke, his former student, and Michael Brecker, you might find the 51-year-old Solot blowing in the orchestra pit at the Forrest Theatre. Currently producing an album for the Psychodynamics, an all-psychiatrist rock band out of South Carolina. (Listen for their song "Queen of Denial," which Solot is co- writing. Charlie Szoradi Szoradi, a 29-year-old architect, had a vision of renovating some of Philly's poorer neighborhoods. So after studying urban development at Penn, he and his partners, sculptor Kate Bartoldus and glassblower Steve Stormer, bought a cheap, 23,000-square-foot converted Baptist church full of trash at 8th and Girard. The result? The Hut, a gathering spot for artists and architects, as well as a great place for parties and First Friday events like fashion shows and film festivals. The idea is to pool the resources of different craftspeople and create an art district a la SoHo. Aaron Werner and Kurt Wunder Werner, 33, works at HMV Records; Wunder, 29, tends bar at Khyber Pass and Silk City Lounge. But once a month, both don their best vintage-suit- and ruffled-tuxedo-wear and host what is perhaps the single hippest event in town: the Rat Pack Cocktail Party at Silk City. They know swing and Big Band like nobody's business; if they weren't so young, you'd think they'd been personal friends of Sammy, Frank, and Dean. Josh Wink Perhaps the best-known DJ from Philly, a virtual unknown in Philly. Wink, 26, made a name for himself here at the clubs, then went on to make his own mixes. He's been on the charts worldwide -- and last year hit number one in the U.S. with his dance single "I Am Ready," released under the name Size 9. At the recent International Dance Music Awards, Wing won Best Newcomer of 1995. He currently has his own label, Ovum Recordings, with the other hippest DJ in Philly, King Britt. Though Wink travels a lot, he's based here to promote local talent. "I want to bring a scene back to Philadelphia," he says. Burnell Yow! and E.A. Alexander Yow!, 45, and Elizabeth, 40, form an artistic partnership: He's primarily a visual artist, she's a composer for musical theater. The two tied the knot in style last summer -- they flew to Vegas and took their vows at the Graceland Wedding Chapel with an Elvis impersonator as celebrant. She's best known for her work on Another Kind of Hero, about Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, staged at the Walnut Street Theatre in 1992. Yow!, whose idea it was to punctuate his name, exhibits his surrealist/intuitive images regularly at the Show of Hands Gallery on Pine Street. Jackie Zahn She has the greatest ear for music around, with an uncanny ability to call the hits well in advance. Zahn, 30, could do A&R work for some major label, if she so chose, but instead she's a buyer for the hippest music store in town -- Third Street Jazz and Rock. She occasionally guest DJs on WKDU, the Drexel station. -By Sabrina Rubin. Research assistance by Benjamin Wallace