Dear friends, I was going to wait to post this until I could get my Phila. photographs off our desktop computer. However, our network is being a bit wonky, refusing to acknowledge my laptop’s presence, so I’m having trouble getting my photos. The ushistory.org page has some nice, albeit small, photographs. Of course, if you’d like to see it all these beauties for yourself, and take your own pictures, I know an excellent tour guide. 
It sounds either like the beginning of a joke or a punchline: I love Philadelphia. Always have, always will.
It is a weird, not-always defensible love. People who hate Philadelphia—and there are plenty who do—will remind you of the history of staggering corruption; of the sheer strip of billboarded ugliness that is I-95; of former police commissioner and mayor Frank Rizzo jumping on the ribcages of unruly perps; of that day in May 1985 when Wilson Goode sent the cops to bomb the radical separatist group MOVE from its house on Osage Avenue, which ended with the near-destruction of the entire neighborhood; of the vacant lot/hole on 8th and Market; of that beautiful building on 10th and Chestnut now falling to ruin and being stripped of its copper wiring by desperate junkies; of the smell of the city in the dead heat of August; of that accent, that squashed nasally swallowed vowel accent. I know it all, I understand it all, I cringe at it all, and still I love Philadelphia, the way the protagonist in “Leader of the Pack” loved her juvie delinquent boyfriend: “They told me he was bad, but I knew that he was sad.” I love Philadelphia for completely irrational reasons, the kind that will not change the mind of dyed-in-the-wool Philahatas, or sway any fence-sitters, but they are mine.
When my mom was pregnant with me, she and my dad were living in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, attending East Stroudsburg State College (now East Stroudsburg University). A friend of my mom’s said that she should arrange to deliver me either in New York or Philadelphia, so that I would not bear the stigma of being born in a little whitebread redneck mountain town, even a wb/rn mountain town with a teacher’s college. It turned out that she didn’t have to, though, because as soon as I was big enough to be bundled into a car seat, we were headed down to Philadelphia on an almost weekly basis. My mom and dad both grew up in Philadelphia and my stepdad grew up in south Jersey, so there were always plenty of relatives to visit. In 1991, my mom and stepdad decided that they’d had more than enough of the bucolic charms of the Poconos, and ran screaming back to the big city, where they’ve remained happily ever since. The summer they moved back, I was working for Tower Books and managed to get a promotion that involved relocating from New York to Philadelphia, so I moved in with them for a while. My mom was a sight to see that summer. We would drive into the city, or take the train, to go shopping, to have lunch, to just walk around the city, and her eyes would be bright. “Go ahead and say it, Mom,” I’d say. “I love it here,” she’d reply.
So do I. So does Mary Elizabeth Williams, who wrote this travel essay for Salon back in 1997. I will admit that while I understand Mary Elizabeth’s affection for the strange vibey aspects of the city, I am a bit more sympathetic than she is to the people who come in for the galleries, for the historical sites and for the pretty neighborhoods like Society Hill and the entire length of Delancey Street. I love that there is a place for everyone here, art fans and Art Problems, tourists, the marginally employed, the overemployed, frat boys and anarchists, M. Night Shyamalan and David Lynch (although I’m sure David Lynch would be just as glad to give his place to someone else).
I love those pretty neighborhoods, and the ugly ones, and the inbetween ones. I love the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Mutter Museum, the museum of medical curiosities not for the faint-of-heart. I love the main branch of the Free Library, and the fountain of Leda and the Swan in front of it. I love TLA on South Street, where Lloyd took me on my birthday to see Television, and Chestnut Cabaret, where we saw Bleach, Kingmaker and Kitchens of Distinction on a triple bill. I like the cheesesteaks at Pat’s and Geno’s just fine, but I really love the cheesesteaks at Jim’s on South Street. I used to love the water ices at Jennie’s, but I understand that Jennie’s is long gone. No worries, though; you can’t keep a good water ice stand down. (Rogues and plebeians may call it “Italian ice,” but those of us in the know know that “water ice” is the only correct nomenclature.) I love the Reading Terminal Market, and I know I’m not alone. I love the Bassett’s Ice Cream counter at the market, and the ice cream itself. I love getting breakfast at the Down Home Diner, one of the stomping grounds of Jack McDavid, who used to do the “Grilling and Chilling” show on Food Network with Bobby Flay. Jack is still behind the counter at the Down Home, making some of the best breakfasts in the city, when he’s not at the stoves at his restaurant near the Art Museum, Jack’s Firehouse. He also shops at Reading Terminal, champions the small farms from which he buys the lion’s share of his produce, and waves hello to anyone who calls out, “hey, Jack”—and a lot of people do. I love that whenever my mom buys meat at Ochs’ Prime Meats, and she hands over her credit card, they always ask her, “were your husband’s people in meat?” (Indeed they were; my stepdad’s grandfather and uncle ran a butcher shop in south Jersey.) I love that Saveur magazine put Philadelphia at the top of its annual Saveur 100 list in January, and that its sister magazine in France, Saveurs, ran a travel piece on Philadelphia in March, entitled “Philadelphie: La vie ‘made in USA.’” And I love the Melrose Diner in South Philadelphia, because everybody who knows goes to Melrose.
Heaven help me, I even love that oddball nasally Philadelphia accent, that of the squashed vowels. Steve Lopez, the former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist turned novelist, has a great scene in his novel The Sunday Macaroni Club, in which the newly-arrived-from-Boston assistant district attorney gives a secretary a coffee order, and the secretary asks her, “Do you want that in a starfame cup, hon?” Flooded with frustration and homesickness, the a.d.a. runs to the women’s room, locks herself in a stall, and holds her head in her hands, chanting to herself, “sty-ro-foam, sty-ro-foam, sty-ro-foam” until she feels grounded and fit to reenter the office again.
While the city has plenty to recommend it, and I will be pleased and happy to show it off to anyone who wants to visit, I will allow that my affections may not be completely transferable. I love Philadelphia because, simply put, I fell in love down there, and thus even the darkest, saddest, chronically-broke-and-underemployed-bookstore-clerk memory still has a warm amber-and-rose patina about it. To me, this city is love.
The summer I moved back in with my parents, I was not thrilled to be back in Philadelphia, although I was glad that I wasn’t moving back to the Poconos. I had been in New York for two years, laid off from a job I loved, trying to live on minimum wage and failing, spiralling deeper into debt. Come help us open our new store, said Tower. You can be the children’s book buyer. You can work in the record store for the summer if you’d like. Thus it was that I found myself at 23, living in my parents’ new house, working at Tower Records, feeling like I’d had one chance at a shiny interesting New York City life and I had failed at it, failed myself, failed my parents, failed, failed, failed. I was tedious company that summer.
Shortly after I’d moved, my friend Val came down from New York to visit me. We trooped around the city, ending up at Sassafras Bar on Second and Chestnut, which became on that day, and remains to this day, my favorite place in Philadelphia to while away an afternoon. Tin ceiling, white lights, dark and cool in the summer, dark and warm in the winter, kind yet unobtrusive service, small but perfectly-executed menu, menschy bartenders, and the most beautiful tile on the walls, mottled green, blue and brown, the exact color of bruises. The women’s room is on the second floor of the building, up a flight of stairs. It’s a huge bathroom, almost the size of the whole first floor, complete with deep, claw-footed bathtub. The first time I went in there, I saw a languid, recumbent figure in the tub. “Oh! I’m sorry!,” I cried, startled. She didn’t move. On closer inspection, I discovered that the bather was a mannequin. She sat in the tub for years, startling countless female patrons. One day she was gone. “What happened to our friend?” my mom asked the bartender. It turned out that she gave up her head to a local art society’s Bastille Day celebration. I appreciate the sacrifice, but I miss the weird little frisson she brought to my every trip to the bathroom.
After that first trip to Sassafras, Val and I, fortified by several perfect vodka gimlets, decided to visit the Tarot reader next door, just for giggles. “You will have two daughters and one son,” she announced. ("Shows you what she knows,” I said to Val later. “I’m only having one, tops.” “Maybe you’ll have triplets,” she said.) “And you will marry someone who is in your circle. You may not know him now, but he is present in your life.” ("She must be kidding. I don’t want to marry anybody I know right now.” “Maybe you’ll meet someone while you’re here,” said Val. “Don’t be ridiculous. Who am I going to meet in Philadelphia?")
Lloyd showed up in Philadelphia eight months later, having moved from Seattle, transferred from Tower Books in Bellevue, Washington, to run shipping and receiving for our store. Within a month, I was in love. Within six weeks, we were shacked up, living in sin, on love and cheap food, drinking dollar beers at McGlinchey’s, going out to breakfast at Diner on the Square off Rittenhouse Square, sitting in Washington Square Park, fingers interlaced, staring at the similarities in our skin tones. Within six months we were engaged; within a year we were married at First Unitarian Church on 21st and Chestnut. Since we couldn’t get away for a honeymoon, we dropped some cash on the bridal suite at Hotel Atop the Bellevue on Broad Street. We didn’t change out of our wedding clothes before leaving the church, mainly so we wouldn’t have to schlep my ginormous and impractical wedding gown around. This turned out to be a smart tactical move. If you ever want to be treated well at check-in, show up in the Full Wedding Monty. You will practically be handed champagne and foie gras as you turn over your credit card. Our window had a clear view of the statue of William Penn atop City Hall. A local artist had designed a giant Phillies cap for Billy P, in honor of the Phils’ confounding our expectations and making it to the World Series. We turned the game on and watched to the fifth inning, when ignominious defeat was all but inevitable. “Well, that’s about enough of that,” I said to Lloyd. “What should we do now?”
Last October, almost 10 years to the date after that wedding, my no-longer-baby brother and his beautiful and excellent girlfriend were married at Arch Street Presbyterian Church. The weather was warm and beautiful for October. The trees in Rittenhouse Square were still in bloom. The air smelled pretty and green. I saw friends and relatives I hadn’t seen in years. It was a weekend made for a wedding, a weekend made for me to feel goofy with love. I love Philadelphia. Always have, always will.