South Philadelphia - A Lengthy, Loving Rant
Written: Jan 14 '02 (Updated Jan 15 '02)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: History, convenience, culture
Cons: Parking and the cancers of blight and indifference
The Bottom Line: I left my heart in South Philadelphia...but the Parking Authority ticketed me and someone spray-painted it.
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| mothermeatloaf's Full Review: South Philadelphia |
Don't read this.
It's more for me than for you, anyway. It's cheap therapy.
But if you must, pull up a chair and block out some time...
What happened?
I've lived here all my life.
It never used to be this way.
Don't get me wrong. South Philadelphia has enough historical landmarks to choke Benjamin Franklin and enough places to eat to choke everyone else! There are bookstores and theaters and bars and antique shops and little pieces of stonemasonry time seems to have forgotten. Little poetic treasures.
But what happened?
Neighborhood blight has spread like cancer. The days of the old women in the Italian and Jewish ghettos cleaning their pavements and miniature porches are as faded as the weather-beaten, hand-painted signs of stores long closed.
Abandoned cars, like dead cattle, rot in the road. They occupy parking spaces that are already at a premium in the overcrowded neighborhoods. The neighborhoods were always overcrowded, but not every family always owned 2 cars and an SUV.
Small businesses stand like old egg shells, yellowed and hollow, seemingly never having existed at all.
The Philadelphia Bureau of Tourism has put together a lovely 60 second travelogue showing historic Old City, perhaps my favorite place in Philadelphia, as well as a segment of south Broad Street, since dubbed The Avenue of the Arts. These places are lovely and rich and vibrant. They are certainly well-maintained, but to think Philadelphia, once the cultural epicenter of the United States, has been reduced to these two small expanses of asphalt hurts me to my soul.
Let's take a walk, shall we? I want to show you an example. We'll leave from my house.
I live on historic Ninth Street (unfortunately pronounced NIGHNT by the locals), the same street made famous by Mario Lanza, about a mile south of 9th and Wharton, the southernmost fringe of the world-renowned "Italian Market."
We walk north, up ninth.
I quote the "Italian Market" because the majority of the Italians have sold their roadside stands to hard-working Asian immigrants who long to carve out their niches in a demanding new world. I see them shivering, hands slapped red from the bitter wind, smiling at passersby, and presenting their wares. It's a hard, wonderful life for them.
Sure, it's still the same street Sylvester Stallone jogged down in Rocky.
Sure, Pat's Steaks still stands as a mirror sentry to Geno's Steaks as does the endless debate over whose sandwiches reign supreme.
But in Rocky, he didn't have to jog around broken bottles and dodge wind-blown trash and Mario Lanza didn't need to fear robbery at gunpoint while riding in his horse-drawn cart.
Who do we blame for this street pollution?
No one.
Everyone.
There was a time when neighbors would gather together and clean up even the most vile messes. It was as much a chance to commiserate as it was to show pride in one's neighborhood. Such meetings were functional social gatherings that have gone the way of the Dodo Bird and the Passenger Pigeon.
The tenets that once made South Philadelphia great are extinct, the vestiges worn like masks across the faces of the elderly.
Even organized crime once followed a code.
There's no more code. No one looks out for anyone else here anymore. People are all about themselves. By way of civil disobedience, many of us who remember what once was try to breath life into the limp ghost of what once was and perhaps therein lies the glaring fault in my logic. Perhaps I should just shut up and move on. But I can't. I 've always lived here and it never used to be this way.
I've been stabbed and beaten here. I've been one of the countless burglaries and vandalisms the affluent gawk at on TV's larger than my row home. But I love this city and that's why I hate it so much anymore. It is an unrequited love. "The City That Loves You Back," my rumpus maximus.
Let's go.
Our backs to the sizzling center of the cheesesteak universe, we head south on 9th Street, back to my house. On the way home, we pass a score of boarded up family-owned businesses, long-since gobbled up by insatiable conglomerates. Video Village was swallowed whole by Blockbuster. Rita's Deli and Convenience Store was wiped off the map by Subway. Old Man Pop's is a memory since Rita's Water Ice came to town.
The money spent here stayed here and wasn't funneled off to some corporate headquarters in White Plains or New York. South Philadelphia was self-sufficient. We were an island nation and were happy.
Sour grapes, you say?
Yes. Indubitably.
Bigger is not always better. Change is not always progress. Sometimes change is merely lateral. Change for the sake of it. The business community has grown but has lost its soul. It has become sterile and antiseptic. Store managers are forced to say "Welcome to ____." It's in their handbooks. See how quickly any one of these bigger and better businesses offer you a line of credit or are willing to let you run a tab until payday.
South Philadelphia was always abut knowing the people who ran the businesses by their first names, and not because you read them on a plastic "Hi! My name is ________" tag.
Today, people on the same block barely know each other.
Nor do they even care to.
What has happened?
If this is the price of progress, I want a refund.
I don't mean to paint the city that has raised me, for I am one of its countless sons, in such awful hues. There are parts of Philadelphia that I'd like to trade for nothing on this earth. Places like:
Warmdaddy's, one of the finest jazz and blues clubs, at Front and Market Streets
Primo's Hoagies, the most magnificent sandwich shop this fat man ever had the good fortune to find, at 15th and Ritner Streets
Napoli's Pizza, for no other reason than the fact that they are one of the few places in the country that continue to make panzoratties (a deep fried pizza pocket, of sorts) and do it so well, at 7th and Christian.
Old City, the entire area is steeped in history. Just sitting along the cobblestone walk most likely walked by Benjamin Franklin himself is enough to give me chills.
Then there are the Theater of Living Arts, the Masonic Temple, South Street, and the list goes on.
You may think this rant applicable to many cities worldwide, but there's never been another Philadelphia. There never will be. If the 50's were the feel good generation of the twentieth century, then (South) Philadelphia was the feel good city of the millennium.
But I don't know how much longer I can live here. I don't know how much longer I can go on leading such a double life. I don't know how much longer I can continue to pay the highest city wage tax and car insurance. I don't know how much longer I can watch the equity in my house slip below the horizon because my neighbors are careless or live under the guidance of an inept mayor. I don't know that I want my daughter growing up in a city whose local paper is half sports and half crime log or attending schools that operate daily on the brink of disaster. I don't know how much more of myself I am willing to sacrifice to principles and ideals no one else believes in anymore. I just don't know. There are so many reasons I want to stay and so many reasons I have to go.
It'll be a bitter divorce.
But I'll miss her all the same.
Recommended:
Yes
Best Suited For: Families
Best Time to Travel Here: Dec - Feb
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Epinions.com ID:
mothermeatloaf
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Member: Michael Picardi
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Reviews written: 109
Trusted by: 144 members
About Me:
The road back to regularly reading, writing, and rating is a winding one...I'm trying!
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