Holiday weekend in Philly

Happy Independence weekend from Philadelphia, the cradle of liberty, the City of Brotherly Love, the City That Loves You Back, and shoves you back if you walk around with a chip on your shoulder. I'm at the Latham Hotel, at 17th and Walnut, a short walk from the place where a bunch of guys got together 232 years ago and hammered out the foundation of the nation we enjoy today. Tomorrow the city will mark that day with the solemn rites the founders doubtless intended: a raucous parade, and many thousands of dollars worth of fireworks, and quite a few drunken fat guys running around shirtless.

Center City hasn't changed much in the last two and a half years. The traffic is as dense as ever, the sidewalks are still crowded with slim hipsters in black and denim, conversing on cell phones with identical people a few blocks away. With the exception of one new skyscraper, the skyline remains quite familiar. It's not like Montana, where every time you go back there are new mansions crowning old hillsides, to the detriment of one's view and one's memories. It's not like Kansas, where the center of every city has withered away and one Wal-Mart looks much like another. The charm of an old city like this one is its past and permanence, and the shadows cast by its massive structures. You get used to the fetid aromas rising from the subway vents.

Still, it can feel odd walking around a place you used to live, seeing it as a tourist rather than resident. You're not quite so footsure at crosswalks, you feel slightly rubish to be carrying a camera. You realize that your clothes do not project sophistication. Sitting in a bar, you are reminded that drinks here cost about twice as much as they do in Wichita. And so does everything else. It has a way of moderating your consumption.

Tonight we dine with friends, taking the train out to leafy Chestnut Hill where we used to lived. Tomorrow, a long walk in the Wissahickon, where the wife and I logged many miles preparing for the annual Broad Street runs. This isn't really a sentimental journey -- we haven't been gone that long -- but it's interesting seeing our old haunts with new eyes.

Comments

Peter Rozovsky said…
You know, I recently took a train to leafy Chestnut Hill and strolled along the Wissahickon. Philadelphia just might be a good place to visit.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
July 5, 2008 at 11:07 PM
Dave Knadler said…
Then again, we went bowling at the Lucky Strike and I was barred from entering by the taciturn young man at the door because "we've had problems" with hats. Now we arrive at the solution to Philly's homicide problem: Don't get rid of guns. Get rid of hats.
July 6, 2008 at 9:26 AM
Peter Rozovsky said…
That is the funniest thing I am likely to hear all day. Could you have concealed a weapon in your hat? Was your hat of some gang's colors? In any case, it appears that bowling was better off before it became cool.

By coincidence, I recently finished a crime novel, part of which consists of a protagonist's musical recollections of his youth in Montreal, including the group Men Without Hats.
==============
Detectives Beyond Borders
"Because Murder Is More Fun Away From Home"
http://www.detectivesbeyondborders.blogspot.com/
July 6, 2008 at 11:51 AM
Dave Knadler said…
It was a short-billed hat of neutral khaki and devoid of gang insignia. But maybe such headgear has been linked to spontaneous violence in Philly. In view of that possibility, I was happy to stash it in my wife's bag.
July 6, 2008 at 4:30 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sleuths are only as good as their sidekicks

Image
I recently read the much-lauded Wash This Blood Clean From My Hands , by French author Fred Vargas, and like many others found it quirky and engaging. Her deft writing left me happy to have found another series character to follow: Commissaire Adamsberg. But that's not what this post is about. I've decided that others do a lot better job with reviews than I do, and I hate laboring over my shallow insights only to find later that I've echoed what everybody else said a long time before. (And yes, I can hear you saying: "But that's never stopped you before." True enough. Nor will it now.) So, short version: Wash This Blood is a good book. Buy it. But for all the talk about it being "eccentric" or even "kooky," it does share one key device with nearly all other detective fiction: the sidekick. Adamsberg's reliance on gut instinct and intuition is sharply defined by the hard-nosed, scientific approach of his second in command, Capitaine ...
Read more

A farewell to copy

Image
On Friday I walked out of a newspaper building as an employee for the last time. During the stroll to the far end of the parking lot, I did a brief review of my career. Here's the high point: I've worked at newspapers that have won Pulitzer prizes. And the low point: None of those Pulitzers were won while I was working at the newspapers in question. Hey, I'm sure that's just bad timing. Of the half dozen papers I worked for, the best was the Philadelphia Inquirer. The worst was the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont. When you enter the cavernous newsroom of the Inquirer, you pass by a wall festooned with pictures of reporters and editors who have won Pulitzers. It is a measure of my love of journalism that when I looked at these pictures, I usually reflected not on the prize-winning stories they reported, but on the clothes they were wearing. Look at them: All these gifted journalists, photographed at the very apex of their careers, and most of them are dressed like t...
Read more

Wall Street and Willa Cather

Image
I've been reading My Antonia , Willa Cather's 1918 novel about growing up on the Nebraska prairie. It's a beautiful book, poignant and uplifting, full of characters who reflect the truth of life in all its joy and pain. It's also an instructive portrait of the time in America when explicit toil was required for mere survival, never mind success. I've been reading it against the background noise of Wall Street's collapse, men and women on CNN droning gravely about the consequences of greed, and the need to ensure that the greediest of all do not, in the end, go broke. It's a complex issue. It takes someone like Yale business student David Bledin, writing an op-ed for the Washington Post, to put a human face on the unfolding tragedy. You think you have it tough; think what it's like for Masters of the Universe-in-training who now rue the rigors involved in chasing a seven-figure salary: "... once I could afford to splurge on a Zagat-rated "$$$...
Read more