à nord, sud, de l'est à l'oest

During the last big snow storm Beth and I managed to get out of the house. We wanted to go see a movie and were headed to the Ritz but realized en route that they were closed. Weak. It always amazes me that AT&T has such a good signal down in the subway.  Instead of the eastbound transfer to the El we made the westbound transfer and headed for the Bridge in West Philly. When we got off the train everything along 40th St. was closed. We crossed Chestnut and all the Indian and Thai places were also closed. My heart was sinking.  I was cold, hungry and was not looking forward to going back home empty handed.

Then we saw people going in and out of Fresh Grocer and we noticed that Marathon Grill was open. I looked down Walnut St. to see that Capo Giro was still open! (I will destroy some gelato regardless of the weather.)  The Bridge was open but the only movie either of us wanted to see was Avatar. We missed the previous one by 30 minutes and the next one didn't start for 2 hours.  I made a quick phone call over to Local 44  and the guy said, "yeah, kitchen is open. we're on our regular schedule."

That was my first visit there. I was pleasantly surprised because, for some reason, I was thinking that their menu wasn't very veg. friendly.  I had a great stew and Beth got the veggie spring rolls and a veggie burger. I don't like to drink too much before a movie (especially a long one like Avatar) because then I have to get up 3 or 4 times to go to the bathroom. I also didn't want to watch a 3-D movie with a buzz. I went with a Yard's Brawler and followed it up with a PBC Joe Porter.  Overall the decor and vibe of the place reminded of the Royal Tavern . On the other hand it felt open and airy. The high ceilings and big windows of Local 44 take away the "big hallway" feeling I get at Royal Tavern.  It's a cool place deserving of the hype.

Avatar was a good movie deserving of the hype.  That was the first time in at least 15 years that I've seen a 3-D movie. I think it made for a better experience overall but after the first 90 minutes of the film it became harder and harder not to notice the large, heavy and uncomfortable 3-D glasses perched on my nose. The special effects were superb. I normally notice when it's used right away. The lines between what was shot live and what is CGI are so blurred with the characters that you don't notice when it's used anyplace else in the movie.

I had heard a lot of talk about the anti-imperialist narrative of the story.  I felt like it alternated between hitting you over the head with anti-imperialism and hitting you over the head with anti-industrialisation. But I also noticed that throughout there was a much more subtle narrative (intended or not) that had a far stronger message about environment, economy, family, community and the notion of nations and states.  After sitting on the idea for a few days I've come to think that a lot of big budget productions are like that so they'll have that mass market, black/white,  good vs. bad,  Hollywood appeal.  So the dudes who want to see a shot-em-up, action/adventure film get what they want and the people who are looking for a movie with a message get what they want.

It was an adventurous day. We went out at 2 pm, while it was still snowing, and didn't get home 'til after 9 when all was quiet and unplowed.

The next morning we got up early and had brunch at Green Eggs. Most of their savory side had meat as a major or minor ingredient and didn't want to mess with "can you hold the sausage ?" for a first meal so I just ordered the stuffed french toast. Holy Crap! Stuffed with ricotta and blueberry and friggin' delicious. Beth had the equally delicious pancakes topped with blueberries, strawberries and creme anglaise. We got there before 11 so we were seated right away. It seemed like a bit of a wait before someone came to the table but once we ordered we were served relatively quickly and otherwise had attentive but unobtrusive service.

Crabgrass Frontier

A new phrase has been coined to describe the ghettoization of the suburbs - Slumburbia.  If you've known me for a while then you've probably heard me talk about it at one point or another over the last decade. It's one of those things that, after a few beers, will really get me going.  The Atlantic ran an article on it about 2 years ago detailing the fallout of the still unfolding sub-prime crisis. Now that the dust is starting to clear there is more data . . . and this op-ed piece from the NYTimes.  The author of the Times article seems to think that 1. people will continue to immigrate to the US (with its failing economy) in record numbers and 2. that they will fill up all of these empty houses in the suburbs and exurbs. I disagree on both points.  Immigrants these day are generally moving to central cities or the inner-ring of suburbs. In the case of Philadelphia that means places like South Philly or inner-ring, suburban places like the Northeast and towns like Upper Darby and Maple Shade.

The article raises another good point - one I discussed with some neighbors recently - that this mess was caused, in part, by the idea that everyone should be a homeowner.

My neighborly discussion began because some non-profit group is trying to build a 120-bed halfway house (on the 1400 block of Snyder Ave.) for people recently released from the prison system.  My position was, "we have enough of this crap already with the mentally ill and recovering addicts. I know it needs to go somewhere but we have enough. Some other neighborhood can take their turn." Then I said something like, "we really need to figure out just how many institutional beds this neighborhood can handle." My neighbors insisted that it wasn't quantifiable.  I called BS.  It might take more resources than the three of us have but it's definitely quantifiable.

I mentioned something about home ownership and my one neighbor said that he disagreed with the assumption that neighborhoods can only be good when most people own their homes. He's right. Go to NYC or even Center City, where most people rent and you'll find thriving neighborhoods where crime is low and the streets are clean. My initial assumption was to throw some European cities in there for good measure but it's actually not true. I knew rates of homeownership in Western Europe were comparable to those in the US but I didn't expect it to find it in so many European cities. For comparison the rate of homeownership in the US is about 67%, in Philadelphia it's 65%, NYC is 31%. In France it's 63% but in Paris about 30%. In Spain it's 85% and in Barcelona it's 68%.  The Netherlands as a whole and Amsterdam are both around 55%. This is sort of surprising to me because Barcelona is like NYC or Paris in that it's largely a city of walk-up or high rise apartments. One would expect Barcelona to follow the pattern of housing tenure in NYC or Paris but instead it has fewer renters than rowhouse cities like Amsterdam or Philadelphia.

Having lived in and around NYC from 1978-1992 it wasn't always Sex & the City and Disneyfied Times Square. It was way worse than it is in Philadelphia these days. And don't go too deep into the boroughs because you probably won't like what you see there today either.  Manhattan and much of Brooklyn has cleaned up in the way that it has in part through sweeping demographic changes over the last 20 years but largely through countless Special Services Districts.  The rates of homeownership in  NYC hasn't changed much. The difference is that there's now a hidden tax that pays for what, in European cities, are basic municipal services. People don't think they're paying for it because it's usually funded through the neighborhood business community but the costs are always passed on to the consumer. Europeans don't need BIDs or SSDs to have successful neighborhoods and shopping districts because the services are already funded through their sales and use taxes.

The rate of homeownership in Philly is slightly below the national average but near the top in terms of big cities. We can look around this city and compare neighborhoods where the number is more than 10% above or more than 10% below the average and you find strong corollaries with most of the hallmarks of a stable neighborhood.  Even within my neighborhood we can find sharp distinctions between blocks with high rates of ownership vs. those with high rates of renters.

I'm not anti-apartment. I just think that it's reasonable and fair to say- in a country, in a state, in a city where nearly 2/3 of households are owner-occupied - that the number of rental units in our neighborhood should not exceed 50% of total units.

I also think it's fair to point out that the State aimed to save money by "privatizing" a lot of social services. The social workers dealing with the parolees are still getting paid the same.  The State saves a lot of money by externalizing the other costs. For instance, since they're not in jail anymore the State isn't paying guards to watch them. Now it's on us.

When the federal government, vis-a-vis Ronald Reagan, defunded the mental health system a lot of states responded by closing down their mental hospitals. In and of itself it's not a bad thing. There were a lot of people in those hospitals that really didn't need to be.  The problem is that most of these hospitals were in rural or exurban areas and when they shut down and simply let people walk out the front door they didn't stay in those rural or exurban areas. The suburbs wouldn't allow outpatient facilities so they wound up in big cities, sleeping on the streets. In fact up to 50% of the homeless on streets in big cities are mentally ill.  That should be intuitive to any one who passes panhandlers on a daily basis.

In the case of ex-cons, I'm not anti-guy-made-a-mistake-now-he's-trying-to-get-back-on-his-feet. This neighborhood could probably support 24 of those beds in a rowhouse here and a rowhouse there. Stick the another 24 beds in Gladwyne and see what Allen Iverson and M. Night Shyamalan have to say about it.

If 3/4 of the metro population live in the suburbs. 3/4 of these beds should be in the suburbs. Most of the junkies running around on Market and Filbert are there because 1. that's where the methadone is and 2. most of them are from the suburbs and that's where the train stations and bus terminals are.  At some point they become part of the city's homeless problem because they lose their house or apartment and/or can't afford to keep going back and forth. I'm not suggesting that the city doesn't have more than enough homegrown addicts to go around but if you hang around 10th & Filbert or 8th & Market and listen to the conversations you know most of those people had problems long before they wound up in Philadelphia. I'm also not saying that we should turn away people who need help just because they're driver's license says Montgomery County but at the same time we aren't a dumping ground for everything suburbanites think they're too good for.

And how else have the suburbs enjoyed 60 years of supremacy? By taking the good (along with a lot of state and federal money) and then sending or trapping the bad stuff (like incinerators and prisons) in places like Camden, Norristown, Bristol, Chester, etc, etc.  But the gravy train has ended and court rulings like the Mt. Laurel Decisions make it harder to site the bad stuff in the city.  Now high energy prices - in neighborhoods that are 30 miles from the nearest employment center - in an economy where employment centers are shrinking spell big trouble.

It's going to take a long time for a lot of suburban people to come around to the idea of metro revenue sharing . . . and I think by the time they do the big cities will be in a position to say, "No thanks."

Holy Shit!

I googled "Holy Shit!" expecting to find a link to the Against Me! song of the same name. Imagine my surprise when I instead see a picture of Keith about to chow down on a soft pretzel. More surprising is that it's on Sara's flickr stream. Way more creepy is that google offered it as from my "social circle." 

I've spent the last week trying to decide whether or not I want to drop this habit.  A lot of my posts were personal in nature and it read more like a journal than I liked. I wasn't sure where I was going with it and if I was going to have enough time to keep up with it. I thought about just cutting my losses. I decided instead to refocus . . . and change the name.  Fans of the "Let's Go" travel series will know where I'm coming from.  I'm going to be posting a lot more about planning & transportation - but maybe with a more Philadelphia focus.

I'll still have personal anecdotes and the occasional rant about the Phillies. 

So, here we are. Well, here I am again after having my cursor on the delete button a few days ago and here I go with another 'journal' post. In all likelihood you're reading this blog in reverse chronological order.  I'll give you the short-short.  We visited a midwife, two birth centers and a Pennsylvania Hospital based OB. We're going the midwife route. Or, in the words of Talib Kweli - "we went the hospital route, we know what they all about."  

We were at the midwife's office last week and she busted out the little doppler fetal monitor and boom. there it was. for a split second. the heartbeat. holy shit! Having never heard it before and having never seen one of those doppler devices before I still recognized the sound right away.  The midwife kept moving the doppler around trying to pick up the sound again and occasionally you could hear the echo of Beth's heart as a pretty slow and steady - psshew . . . psshew . . . psshew. Then there it was again. El Niño. It almost sounded like our dishwasher on the rinse cycle. It was really fast and strong and loud and kinda awesome. Our dishwasher is not awesome. It is fast, powerful and incredibly loud.  Before that moment it was all kind of abstract. The baby - not the dishwasher. Hearing the heartbeat was the "oh shit, there really is something in there and in a few months it's gonna want to come out."  The only thing close to that feeling is like getting a call back after an interview. "I got the job! I start on Monday! Oh shit. I start on monday!? I now have 48 hours to master Illustrator, Sketch-Up and ArcGIS." 

Speaking of really being in there, there was a little confusion as to the due date. The usual signs and symptoms didn't support a September 3rd due date. Oh, it's showing, y'all just haven't noticed yet or were too polite to ask.  It turns out that August 11th is more like it. That would make today the end of week 14. According to one baby book that would make the little nugget about the size of a lime.  Come back in 2 weeks and we'll have an avocado.  

Sorry, I can't really let the term "baby book" enter any part of my brain without immediately thinking of that scene from 'Knocked Up'  and, unfortunately, the best video I can find is an amateur reenactment. It's a good thing I own the DVD.