Rowhouse Living

The Constitution or Cheese Fries?

2009-02-18T02:55:24Z

In Philly you don't have to choose! This Saturday we had both. Family was suppose to come visit, and because our niece and nephew are studying the American Revolution in school we thought it would be great to take them to the Constitution Center. It's got some really great interactive exhibits. You can see whether you'd be able to vote in a given state and year, you can wear Supreme Court robes and decide famous cases, and you can be sworn in as President. Plus, they have one of twenty original printings of the document.
]]> But then our brother-in-law and niece got sick and couldn't come. So we went anyway and decided to cap off our Valentine's Day with the Founders by having a nice goopy serving of cheese fries at Ishkabibble's, a grill joint with about five seats and a street-side counter.

While I know a little about the Constitution, I'm a complete newbie when it comes to the cheese fries. They're not really a Northwest delicacy, and I had never had them before a couple months ago. It's been fun trying them out but I won't be having them often, because they're evil good. And what I definitely won't be doing again is combining them with one of Ishkabibble's signature chicken cheese steaks. Yikes.

Speaking of delicious combinations, Gigi finally got to meet her favorite constitutional framer, Alexander Hamilton. He's relevant to a lot of the fiscal debates going on in Washington, particularly the arguments for nationalizing some banks, since he was the founder of the first national bank. But that's not why Gigi was excited to see his bronze likeness. Nope, she's been hot for his mug on the ten dollar bill for years. Apparently his three-dimensional likeness also passed muster...

We're back - with another post about the awesomness that is Philly!

2009-01-08T03:51:49Z

We've had a lot going on recently with another move and the impending arrival of Charles Robert Lamm, so we've been more than negligent in keeping up this space fresh. But now that we're mostly settled in our new place we're ready to start writing again and we've got a lot we want to share with all of you.

But before we get into the serious stuff, the cycle of life and all that, we thought we'd start with a little piece in keeping with the initial purpose of this blog: all that is good about Philly.
]]> yogachild.net. Their website had all the standard stuff to make you feel good about signing up for their classes - soft colors, pictures of beautiful babies, serene mothers-to-be in hip workout gear, testimonials, the whole schliemel.

The only snag is that we can't make it to the first class of the six week course we want to take. So, before we signed up Gigi emailed them to see if it was okay if we missed the first class, or if there was a way we could do a private session to make up for the info we'd be missing out on. We never expected the response we got:

"You have lots of options regarding making up the first class. First of all, please know that if the Eagles end up playing that day, that Beth, who teaches the class that day will be planning on rescheduling that class anyway. We imagine most dads won't be that invested in birth preparation if the Eagles are playing. Besides, Beth is a HUGE fan."

For those of you who aren't NFL fans, the Philadelphia Eagles are in the playoffs and they won the first game on the way to the Super Bowl last weekend. People here are nuts for the Eagles, as evidenced by the city bus marquees' flashing "Go Eagles," the MRI technicians who warned Spencer last year that they might leave him in the machine if they didn't finish with his MRI before the start of the first game of the season, and the fact that a prominent yoga studio considers the 3-4 defense more important than progressive tools for natural childbirth.

Needless to say, we signed up for the course immediately upon receipt of that email! We want our mindfulness yoga birth preparation to be all that it can be, but if a little bit of love for the "Iggles" creeps in, so much the better!

The Romance of History: Ben and Betsy Get it On

2008-06-28T21:05:50Z

Photo by J. Smith for Greater Philadelphia Tourism and Marketing Corporation

In Philly, everything Betsy Ross and Ben Franklin reigns supreme. Take the Betsy Ross or the or the Ben Franklin bridges to get here. Visit the Betsy Ross house (we actually did visit Betsy's residence and learned that she was pretty darn kickass!) or the Franklin Institute (who have recently renamed themselves The Franklin and have just opened an exhibition on pirates--kickass!). You can see, hear, learn and read about these two just about everywhere you turn in Philadelphia.

And this week, you can attend their wedding.

]]>
This isn't even some re-enactment. Oh yeah, these two peeps are re-enactors. They are Ralph Archbold and Linda Wilde, the most famous Ben and Betsy re-enactors in town. But their love is no act.

These two met, fell in love, and decided to get married and will do so on July 3 at 8PM. As part of Welcome America, Philadelphia, a week-long festival that ensures there's tons of American crap going on leading up to the all out patriot fest that is July 4 in Philly (Stu and I will be participating in America's favorite past time by attending a July 4 Phillies game.), Ralph and Linda will tie the knot at Indepedence Hall as follows (from the Welcome America, Philadelphia site):

The Real Wedding of Benjamin Franklin and Betsy Ross
In a public ceremony with Independence Hall as a backdrop, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter will officiate over the nuptials with the Grammy-winner Peter Nero and the Philly POPS providing the wedding march. The couple, attendants and several of their family and friends will don Colonial attire. Afterwards, while the couple enjoys a private wedding reception for their guests at historic City Tavern, the public can stay for the traditional POPS on Independence concert. Independence Mall, 5th & Chestnut Streets.

Even our beloved Mayor is getting in on the act! Or should I say non-act.

Only in Philadelphia my Northwestern friends, only in Philadelphia.

As a fun aside, a friend of mine who is a genius pastry artist is providing the wedding cake for the historic nuptials.

Check this out:

And then check out her flickr page for more amazing baked goods Whipped Bakeshop.

If Ben and Betsy's marriage is half as good as Zoe's baked goods, their historic romance will last well into the future!

A Giant Baby with Five O'Clock Shadow on New Year's Day? It Must be the Mummer's Parade in Philly!

2008-06-15T22:22:32Z

If you're wondering what to do for the upcoming NYE, read on and learn why you should be planning on ringing in the New Year in Philly!

]]> Mummer's Plays, the Mummer's Parade is a seven mile long parade that starts in South Philly and heads north into Center City (downtown). The parade is a huge party, a contest for large cash prizes, and a celebration of longstanding Philadelphia neighborhoods and ethnicities. Some Philly natives informed us before we went that that many of the groups that participate are based on old neighborhood fire brigades and are therefore strongly tied to particular sections of Philadelphia, which explains the sense of family and community that came across with many of the groups.

Groups that participate spend a good chunk of the year coming up with themes, designing costumes, and based on how tipsy everybody was at ten in the morning, figuring out the best way to stash a keg on the back of their float.

There are four divisions: Comics, Fancies, String Bands, and Fancy Brigades. This year we only watched the Comics, because it was cold out and that one division took about 2.5 hours to go past our corner; the whole parade can last six or seven hours. The comics tend to choose current event or satirical themes and were really in it just to have a good time.

Next year, we'll go check out the Fancies and the String Bands, which are focused on much more elaborate costumes and music respectively. As we left we got to hear the String Bands coming up the street and they sounded awesome; bluegrass bands, New Orleans style jazz bands, all crammed onto flatbeds and rocking out.

The Fancy Brigades build such elaborate costumes that they no longer participate in the parade, they instead have a competition inside the convention center. We didn't get any photos of them, but the amount of effort they put into their performances is pretty amazing. From the local TV broadcast:

And a Creative Commons licensed photo from inside the Convention Center by Freakapotimus:

Excessive Heat Warning?

2008-06-06T16:22:55Z

I guess this is the beginning of our first full summer in America's northernmost subtropical city. I'm also guessing I'll need some new socks by the end of the summer.

Best Political Poster Ever?

2008-06-04T14:37:09Z

This post is a little off-topic from our regularly scheduled all-Philly, all the time programming, but the photo in question was taken about 6 weeks ago around 14th and South Street in Center City, Philadelphia.

]]>

Cheese Steak? Mmmm!

2008-05-20T23:31:54Z

Alright, this is the post y'all have been waiting for...

and courtesy of our good friends Liza and Chris we get to up the ante via the adorable Desmond opening wide for an american wit' onions and peppers. After all, having friends in town is always a welcome opportunity for us to visit our favorite cheese steak joint, Jim's Steaks. (Consider that a strong hint to those of you who have yet to make your Philly travel plans...)

]]>
So ordering at Jim's is a little like ordering from the soup nazi from Seinfeld; technically easy but still stressful. Except the employees at Jim's don't yell at you when you mess up, they just silently glare at you. While this all probably sounds a little unpleasant, there are two mitigating factors. First, it adds to the whole atmosphere by creating a subculture of sandwich ordering. Once you figure it out you feel like you're king of the world. Until you screw up and tell them it's "to go" instead of "for here" like I did. Second, this strict approach has to be understood within the context of Philly as a SERIOUS sandwich town. As Liza and Chris discovered you can get a pretty awesome italian sandwich with salami, cappicola, and prusciutto at any of those crappy corner mini-marts that on the west coast are only used for dire ATM emergencies and cigarettes. And your sandwich will not only be made with care but it'll be swaddled so tight you'd think you were walking out of the joint with the baby Jesus under your arm. So that's the thing really: the staff at Jim's, like the rest of the city, aren't surly they're just really into sandwiches. Well, some of them are pretty surly. Gigi's actually made it a mission of hers to get the toughest of the bunch to smile one day. The dude's gotta a jaw that could be used to break up concrete. I don't think it's gonna happen for her.

What we love about Jim's is the quality of the meat -- sliced thin and then chopped up on the grill. One would expect that the meat would be cheap but it's surprisingly good and really the key to the success of the sandwich. Since you order from the guy working the grill you get to watch it cook up right in front of you. And if you order whiz then you get to watch him dip into a massive can of cheese whiz with a big rectangular metal spatula and slap a nice glob of processed "cheese-food" onto your bread. Gigi and I prefer American to the Whiz or "wiz.". We find the wiz sinks into the bread too much. Provolone is also tasty, but to my mind it's a little high-falutin' for a cheese steak. American is a perfect balance culturally between provolone and the whiz.

After all that, the only real important decision left is what to drink. Cheap American beer goes quite nicely, of course. However, I have to say I've become a convert to Dr. Brown's Black Cherry as the perfect accompaniment to a cheesesteak. It's got the perfect amount of zesty sweetness to play off the meaty, cheesy, grilled flavor of the steak. And I think they just look good together:

So make your travel plans for the summer cause we're gonna be spending our saturdays checking out other staples of the Philly food scene. Our next outing is to Tony Luke's for their infamous Roast Pork and Broccoli Rabe sandwich. We hear it's amazing and as evidence we went to our first Phillies game last week and the line at the Tony Luke's stand in the stadium was at least 250 people long before the first pitch.

The City of Brotherly Love is the City of Pedestrian Disregard

2008-05-14T00:05:58Z

Let it be stated, for the record, and for those who don't already know this, I love walking. Shoe, weather, and distance permitting, I will always opt for my feet as my favorite mode of transportation. And I'll permit many shoes, some crazy weather, and a whole lot of distance before I even think of not walking somewhere walkable. And of course, my definition of walkable, is to some, questionable. And to further hammer home the point of my love for walking that knows no boundaries, in sixteen years of working and three cities of residence, I've never had a job I couldn't walk to and it's not a track record I ever plan to break. Suffice it to say, a city's treatment of pedestrians is of extreme importance to me.

]]>
Let it be stated, for the record, that Philadelphia is the WORST city for pedestrians I have ever set foot in. And I've set foot in many cities but let's stick to to three I've actually lived in so we can compare and contrast.

In Seattle, pedestrians are revered, exalted to god-like status. They are cared for and catered to. They are looked after and looked out for. They are the only population in the city allowed to be visibly angry; in a land where it is unacceptable to hurt anyone's feelings, it is perfectly acceptable to verbally attack a driver should he inadvertently roll into the crosswalk while slowing down for a red light. One would think this would be the city of my walking delight, however, I must admit that Seattle drivers' concern for pedestrians became tedious after twelve years, if not downright dangerous. As a New Yorker, I take great pride in my ability to cross a street against the light and nowhere near the crosswalk. I know how to take care of myself in the road so if the drivers take care of their business, I'll take care of mine and ensure that they won't hit me while I stand on the yellow line in the middle of the street. No can do in Seattle. I can't tell you how many ten car pile ups I almost caused in the Emerald City because as soon as a driver saw me in the middle of the street, he would slam on his breaks, totally unaware that I might have the ability to wait for cars to pass before I made my way across.

Not so much in New York. Pedestrians are, to quote Hedwig and the Angry Inch, "reviled, graffitied, spit upon" (well, not really graffitied and spit upon, but they are reviled and the rest just stresses the hatred). No one wants to slow down for pedestrians in NYC and everyone wants to honk and yell at them even when it's their light. But there's an understanding that beneath the anger, everyone knows what they're doing. And if nothing else, hating pedestrians means that at very least, there's an awareness of them. Anger towards something is an acknowledgment of that thing's existence.

And therein lies my problem in Philadelphia. Pedestrians are neither loved nor hated. They are completely and utterly ignored. As a pedestrian in Philadelhia, I am totally invisible.

I cannot begin to tell you how many times I've come this close (and this close means really, really close, like my thumb and forefinger are really, really close together close) to being mowed down in a cross walk during my right of way because the drivers never, ever look at pedestrians. They don't even turn their heads towards you when you yell things at them like "My light, asshole!" or "Stop sign dickhead!" or "Holy crap you almost fucking took off my legs!" They just keep on driving like you're a transparent ghost who doesn't walk the earth, but merely floats above it for only the special and insane to see.

Of course, I walk to work every day. And of course, I talk to my mother every morning on the way to work. You can call her right now, right this very minute, and ask if every time we talk (Monday through Friday at exactly 8:39AM), I start shouting about having almost gotten plowed into while crossing the street.

There are three cross walks in particular which are most troubling. One is at the corner of my street.

This crosswalk doesn't seem to exist for any driver. Everyone barrels through it at 40 miles an hour minimum, even though it's a residential area and there's a stop sign. I don't even get the courtesy of a California stop, you know when drivers pretend they're going to stop for a stop sign but their wheels really never stop rolling. That would be awesome. Then I'd have a shot. I get nothing at this crosswalk except agony and what I'm hoping will be ongoing safety.

The other two troublesome crosswalks are two laners, as in an intersection of two one way streets, but each street has two lanes that have to stop at the same time allowing the two lanes of traffic from the other street to proceed.

It's similar to the chaos of a four way stop in Seattle where drivers are so damn polite that everyone keeps waving everyone else to go first until they all go at once. No one in Philly is that polite so it's just a mess of cars who have no idea who got there first but no one wants to wait for the other drivers to make their move. Needless to say, no one's checking for pedestrians in this scenario.

Don't even ask how I manage to get across twice a day, once on my way to work and once on the way to the gym. And let me add that the intersection near my gym is home to a Whole Foods parking lot.

I'm quite certain that every Whole Foods parking lot in every city in the U.S. of A. is Dante's tenth ring of hell, so you see what I'm getting at here. Two streets + two lanes + two stop signs + Whole Foods parking lot = DANGER. However, we all know how obsessive I am about getting the to gym, so there is no amount of steel, gas at $3.62 a gallon, or speed of a two ton car that will keep me out of this cross walk.

Oddly enough, however, today, on the way to work, in the two lane crosswalk, someone waved me across. I almost couldn't walk, so amazingly shocked was I. I just about burst into tears and thought for a minute about asking the gentleman to roll down his window so I could give him a hug. I thought better of such actions and waved back ever so politely.

Too bad the guy in the lane next to him wasn't on board with the polite game plan and almost bowled me over. So much for brotherly love.

Talkin' the Walk (MS)!

2008-05-05T00:27:58Z

Despite predictions of thunder storms, Gigi’s two hours worth of nightmares from 6-8AM concerning how best to dress for precipitation and low temperatures, and Stu’s anxieties regarding the warmth of his sweatpants and their lack of back pockets, we couldn’t have asked for a more perfect morning for our first MS walk ever.
]]> Philadelphia Art Museum, which is at the end of our street.

In typical Stu/Gigi fashion, we were an anal retentive wreck at the check-in tent over whether or not we had brought the right paperwork. We had brought absolutely no paper work at all and noticed many people checking in with neatly filled out forms and envelopes (isn’t this the digital age?). Fears were laid to rest when Stu spied my name on the big list. Thanks to all of your help, we got to check in as VIPs for raising over $1,000 each! We raised $2,245 to be exact! Yay all of YOU!!

With our Walk MS t-shirts in hand, we checked out the scene for a bit and Stu took fab shots from atop the Philadelphia Art Museum steps.

Gigi threatened to run up and down said steps several times post-walk in order to make up for missing her regular gym work out that morning...

In that vein, earlier in the morning, Gigi confessed her lifelong dream of training for something with Burgess Meredith so that she could have him tell her "You're gonna eat lightning and crap thunder!"

Soon, Gigi's time for daydreaming was over and we lined up with the masses for the start of the walk. We gathered near the podium at the starting line, at which point Gigi decided that we had a chance to WIN the Walk MS! (Note from Stu: I guess Gigi just assumed she was gonna beat the folks in wheelchairs and the babies in strollers.)

This smiling face certainly belies the competitive heart that lies within:

And here's Stu in pre-race form (Note from Gigi: Stu obviously doesn't understand that everything is a race!):

Gig's dreams of conquest died quickly, but here you can get a sense of how many walkers were with us. A pretty impressive and inspiring sight.

The throngs ahead...

...and the masses behind.

You can't tell from these photos, which were taken close to the starting line, but the walk was along Fairmount Park (our neighborhood is called either Fairmount or Art Museum), which is the largest urban park in the country. The sun came out soon after the start and we enjoyed a wonderful three mile walk in the park, and were treated to orange slices, cups o' water, granola bars and port-o-potties at the turnaround point!

Once again, we want to thank everybody for making this possible. It was a great experience and we look forward to doing it again next year!

Meet Our New Mayor!

2008-04-25T01:44:20Z

[Preface to this post: we actually wrote this a couple months back when the political landscape was just a wee bit more lighthearted than it is right now, and the writing reflects that. We thought about holding it back given that the subject of the post weighed in on the primary process here in Pennsylvania pretty heavily. But we decided that instead of writing a ponderous political tract we'd play up the human element which seems to be missing from the campaigns and stick to the focus of this blog, which is all things Philly. Plus, while Gigi and I both know where we stand with regard to the candidates, we're all gonna have to make nice come November and what better way to get that dialogue started than with a Mayor who raps...]

One of the inevitable things that happens when you move is that you compare the new against the old, the unknown against the known. We were here twice before we actually moved and both of those times we were way too caught up in the issues involved with moving across country to make any kind of assessments about the city itself. But once we had officially moved to Philly the comparisons began to run amok at an almost breakneck pace. "Where the hell is all the coffee?" "Ohmigod, look, it's an actual transit system!" "I wonder if the Schuykill river is cleaner or dirtier than the Tualatin? Will I be able to smell it from a good distance on a hot summer night like the legendary river of my youth?" And while there is the distinct possibility that unnecessary or unfair comparisons could be made as we evaluate our new home, I do think that the process is both unavoidable and highly important. Let's face it, where we were framed so much of what we thought we knew and now that whole framework has changed. The key is to make sure that this learning process is a non-judgmental exercise that accepts all the distinctions between the old and new homes equally. And as Gigi and I write about our new home and what sort of trouble we're getting into here I hope that we'll always adhere to that notion. Except for this post.
]]>
The evidence:

1) His name is Michael Nutter. Mayor Nutter just rolls off the tongue.

2) He's "West Philadelphia born and raised," just like the Fresh Prince. (Don't worry, that won't be our only Fresh Prince reference on this blog.)

2) A devout watcher of perhaps the awesomest cop show ever, The Wire, Mayor Nutter called HBO and set up a special live screening of the series finale at City Hall and got a bunch of the series' stars to attend. While some may consider this a sideshow to the important issues of Philadelphia, I think it takes serious cajones for the mayor of a city with a sordid history of corruption to promote a show that takes on those same issues in a similar city (Baltimore) and consistently points to city government corruption as deeply interwoven with the crime that is depicted. Plus, The Wire rules and as thin as this argument is, it's nice to know the Mayor's got some taste.

3) We saw him buying vegetables at our local Whole Foods late on a Friday night. We were picking up ice cream and generally getting ready for an evening in and there he was debating the virtues of "organic" kale versus "conventional" kale with his security detail.

4) This campaign video featuring his daughter Olivia apparently won him the election:

5) On his inauguration night he did Hank's section of "Rapper's Delight" while the dude from The Roots was running the turntable. The DJ messes up the beat early on so if you want you can skip ahead to the 1:00 mark where the song actually starts. Check it out:

Philadelphia Freedom

2008-04-14T00:53:43Z

(Our obligatory first post, wherein we also explain the blog's Red, White and Blue theme)

A little over eight months ago we set out across the country in our beat up white Subaru station wagon to move from Seattle to Philadelphia. The journey itself was awesome, and we'll probably do a post or two on some of its more interesting aspects, but the really crazy part was the destination, and we recognized this long before we got there. During those long hours in the car we would enter into a rhythm that involved long periods of silence. It wasn't a problem; it was more a by-product of two people who already knew each other really well settling in and enjoying a journey. The silence was not complete, however. Every couple hours one of us would invariably feel the need to shout out, "Philadelphia? Really?". Or, in our more lucid moments one of us might make a more nuanced statement: "I can't believe we're fucking moving to Philadelphia!"

]]>
But we don't want our constant amazement at our newfound residence in the City of Brotherly Love to be mistaken for disappointment; we love it here. What's not to love when we've got the LOVE Park?!

Considering how all of this was so new to us, we started this blog so that we could share the love that is the Sixth Borough and spread the joy that is life in Philly (cream cheese). On the pages of Rowhouse Living we hope to keep in touch with our friends on the left coast whom we miss A LOTLOTLOT, and share a little bit about our new home town (so everyone will want to move here!). Look for many more posts about things like cheesesteaks, eccentric Philly culture, and anything else that seems new or interesting to us.

Vis a vis the title of this post, wherein we explain the patriotic color scheme: the first time we walked around Philadelphia we noticed Old Glory flying from every third rowhouse in every neighborhood. In retrospect, this makes perfect sense given that Philly is home to the Constitution, resting of place of Betsy Ross, and where Apollo Creed felt completely comfortable in this get-up:

Before making that realization, our initial response was obviously founded in some kind of Bush-Cheney ptsd because we feared we'd moved to a place where displaying the flag means "you're either with us or against us." We now know better. The flag flying in Philly means nothing more than "Hey, the founding of our country and the writing of the Constitution is pretty cool!" It's the first of many lessons we expect to learn here and while we've yet to invest in our own flag, may our blog wave proudly!