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Surprise! It's Jon Bon Jovi-underground

Rock-n-roll heartthrob drops in on subway concourse shelter he helped open

SOME OF THE PEOPLE in this city feeling like they're living on a prayer were given anything but bad medicine when Jon Bon Jovi showed up yesterday.

In town to chair a board meeting with members of his nonprofit, the Jon Bon Jovi Soul Foundation, the hunky rocker paid a surprise visit to Project HOME's Hub of Hope - a drop-in homeless center in SEPTA's Suburban Station.

"Our Soul Foundation, working with Project HOME, helped procure this space," Bon Jovi told me at Hub of Hope, where those less fortunate can come in for a break from the cold and grab a cup of coffee.

"We were in our second year running, and now we're just entering our third."

Karen Orrick, project coordinator for Project HOME, said Bon Jovi has been a longtime supporter of the organization.

In April of last year, Project HOME partnered with the rock star to open a 55-unit, permanent supportive-housing complex called the Jon Bon Jovi (JBJ) Soul Homes, in Fairmount.

It was Bon Jovi's first visit to the satellite shelter that his organization helped hatch, and beneficiaries of the volunteer services there seemed happily gratified.

"The people who are involved in his Soul Foundation have been really instrumental in helping the Hub open here," Orrick said.

Mindy Tanney, who was in the subway concourse when Bon Jovi was exiting, fanned herself with a napkin after she snapped a photo with the singer.

"I've been dying to see him in concert," she said. "I'm just so excited! He's very cool and seems down to earth."

Flyers' gals do good

As part of the annual "Building Hope for Kids" initiative - a Philadelphia Flyers charity - members of the Flyers Wives club recently revealed the results of months of effort: They made a newly remodeled home possible for a local 4-year-old who was diagnosed with leukemia last year.

Zander Casanova, who lives on Belden Street near Benner, in Northeast Philly, received a total renovation of his family's home by Flyers sweethearts Crystal Corey, girlfriend of Wayne Simmonds; Laurence Dionne, girlfriend of Sean Couturier; Nicole Warnecke, girlfriend of Jakub Voracek; and Hannah Dalalva, girlfriend of Pierre-Edouard Bellemare.

The big reveal was Sunday at the Casanova home.

More like out of 'View'

Joy Behar, former sassy co-host of ABC's "The View," was spotted Saturday about 7 p.m. at Buddakan, Atlantic City (The Pier Shops at Caesars), sources say.

The comedian, writer and actress was said to have dined with a party of six in the Opium Den inside the restaurant and slipped out before she was spotted by gaping fans.

Sources within the Stephen Starr establishment say that she left to make a rare, one-night-only appearance with Al Pacino at Caesar's Circus Maximus Theater (2100 Pacific Ave., Atlantic City).

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