My Half-Assed Attempt at a Travel Blog: Philadelphia (During COVID)
So I’ve been traveling a lot in the past year. Mostly because the world went to Hell, several people I know have died, my career’s in the crapper and I don’t want to die from COVID Omega realizing that I’ve spent my entire adult life in New York City. By suggestions from a couple friends and family, I’m trying out my hand at doing a travel blog. Forgive me if this is not my forte as trying to travel for Instagrammable moments and bragging about my life will turn me into the kind of vapid influencer that I hate in this world. But I promise to do my best with my acidic sense of humor to go with it. So, let’s get started.
Back in late April/early May of 2021, I was in the dumps. Having been sentenced to work in customer service for the bulk of the pandemic, I finally quit a job I hated after finding a better-paying job… still in customer service. After spending enough hours dealing with the imbecilic troglodytes that we like to call customers, I had enough, quit on the spot and started to notice my severe signs of burnout. After spending a full year of the pandemic trapped inside my apartments in New York City, I needed a vacation. Preferably in a place where telling total strangers to go fuck themselves won’t have negative reprecussions on my life. So I decided to hop on a bus and ordered an airbnb in Philadelphia.
For those who don’t live in any of the three cities, New York City, Boston and Philadelphia are more or less sister cities in terms of culture, although Philly is known for having the most “attytood” of the bunch. When the country was founded, they were three of the biggest ports in the United States and Philadelphia was originally the country’s first capital as well as where the National Bank of the United States was headquartered. Within fifty years, however, the capital was moved to Washington D.C. and the Bank of the United States was systematically destroyed by President Andrew Jackson.
While NYC remained the center of culture in America and Boston has a lot of legacy from the Kennedy dynasty and the Boston Miracle, Philly never really remained on the same level of national prominence. This has cultivated a very “fuck you” type of burning resentment over the centuries. In case you’re still not getting at what I’m saying, let me put it this way. In NYC, our most celebrated and iconic Mayor is Fiorello La Guardia, a prominent New Dealer who helped lift the city out of the Great Depression and destroyed corrupt political machines. Philly’s most iconic Mayor is Frank Rizzo, a 6-and-a-half-foot-tall fat guy that used to beat up minorities and violate his constituents’ constitutional rights. This is the city that started several riots after their home team won the Super Bowl against their division rivals. Philadelphians once booed Santa Claus at an Eagles game and pelted him with snowballs and batteries. In other words, there’s a reason why It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is set in Philadelphia.
So, either way, I went down to Philadelphia in late spring of 2021. This meant that we were finally getting out of winter and the weather was turning for the better. It also meant that 50% of the city was still shut down and that you had to eat most of your food outside. Even if it was raining. Which it was fairly often.
Let’s get to the good stuff. Philly is one of the best cities in America in terms of museums. Like I said, the city’s highlight reel stopped happening in 1836 and they love to lean into the old colonial style. Independence Mall is an entire neighborhood dedicated to the founding of America and is definitely on the itinerary for anyone coming to this city. Other cool museums include the Naval Museum (which is set on a decommissioned battleship), the Magic Gardens (technically more of an art piece but still cool) and the Eastern State Penitentiary (one of the oldest prisons in America). There’s a few others that I didn’t get to see due to weird hours because of COVID such as the Museum of the American Mint and the Quaker Museum. There’s also Elfreth’s Alley, one of the oldest streets in America (houses built in 1703) that people still live in. And down the street is apparently a still-operating bar that Presidents George Washington and John Adams used to drink in called the City Tavern that was, again, closed due to coronavirus though I shudder to imagine what those scumbags will try to charge you for a beer.
Food-wise, Philadelphia is pretty solid. I am contractually obligated to mention the Philly Cheesesteak, which is the city’s most famous sandwich. So quick little take about how I travel: when it comes to the famous tourist traps of a lot of places, I’m not opposed to going to tourist traps but if it’s too much of a hassle, I’m not really willing to do it either. This is basically my overly-long and roundabout way of saying that I did not go to Pat’s or Gino’s to get a cheesesteak and just went for Sonny’s on Market Street. (For similar reasons, I did not see the Liberty Bell. Not that I was opposed to seeing it, I was just opposed to standing in line for a half-hour to see it.) And, honestly? The cheesesteak is decent. It’s just a big, greasy sandwich that will give you a food coma for 6 hours but I don’t get the big hype.
Philadelphia-style pizza is fucking horrendous, though. I realize that coming from New York City, I’ll probably be a pizza snob no matter where I go but, still, Philadelphia could do to learn a thing or two. The problem is that they make their sauce very sweet so it’s basically like eating some cheesy, greasy candy. It’s as terrible as I make it sound. That aside, you can get most cuisines in Philly, with a particularly solid Chinatown, and the bar food is amazing. A couple Philly dives offer mozzarella sticks the size of sausages and Buffalo wings that are almost the size of your head. Not exaggerating.
Speaking of bars, that allows me to segue into nightlife or, rather, the lack thereof. I’m probably going to do another travel blog if and when I return to Philly again for another weekend because this excursion was Philadelphia during the times of COVID. This took place during that in-betweener state we were in circa 2021 where businesses were allowed to open, they just got weird with it. Basically, when I went to some dive bars, I couldn’t really chat with some of the locals since all of the stools were 6 feet away from the nearest patron. I did get to go to a COVID party, hidden at a speakeasy in Center City, though I bailed pretty quickly since my paranoid ass was afraid that the party would get raided any second and I would have to spend a night in the clink (I may or may not have been very drunk when this piece of reasoning went through my brain).
So, bereft of bars and having already seen a ton of museums, I chose to dabble in some urban exploration. And this is where Philadelphia shines. Philly is a gorgeous city to get lost in. It’s this nice little blend between New York City’s sort of grid-like pattern but still having a lot of side alleys and interesting architecture. The University of Pennsylvania campus is especially amazing. It’s a gigantic enclosure that dominates a large chunk of the city and it can take you over an hour to walk from one end to another. You could conceivably spend all 4 years of college on that campus without ever actually leaving it. Once I realized I wasn’t going to find some new friends to get drunk with, I just had a great time decompressing by walking around the streets of Philadelphia.
The last two things to mention about the city are the public transportation and the bad parts of town, both of which conveniently tie into each other for this next story. First off, while Philadelphia has a pretty robust public transportation system in that you can get to almost anywhere in the city you want to (as well as the neighboring cities of Trenton and Camden), it is pretty annoying. Philly has two public transit systems owned by two different companies: the SEPTA and the PATCO, the latter of which connects Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The problem is that the PATCO goes pretty deep into Philly and it’s not entirely clear looking at the subway map which line is part of which system. In other words, you might be trying to transfer at a station but find out that you’re paying twice because you didn’t realize you were changing systems.
Also, the SEPTA and PATCO are terrifying and sketchy as all Hell. Remember, I’m coming from NYC. Think about how ratty and dirty the MTA stations are. The SEPTA is miles worse than that. It’s genuinely hilarious hanging out on Market Street (the big tourist area in Philly where all the shops are) and then hopping on the subway and seeing the world of difference. Descending the stairs is like stepping down into the underworld as you get to encounter the “real” Philadelphia. Step onto the platform with the low blue lighting that makes it look like a tomb and people watch the pair of skinheads smoking cigarettes on the platform while a pile of drug addicts are passed out in the corner, murmuring in tongues. One enterprising entrepreneur even came up to me to offer to sell me some crack.
Since I had run out of museums and wanted to check out other parts of Philly besides Center City and University City, I decided that for a laugh, it’d be fun to check out the Four Seasons. In case you need a quick refresher of recent Philadelphian history: during the 2020 election, Rudy Giuliani hosted a rally for President Trump’s re-election campaign at Philadelphia’s Four Seasons. Due to some bizarre clerical error, they ended up hosting it at the Four Seasons Landscaping Company in Holmesburg, which was right next door to a crematorium and a sex shop. At first, I went for a lark. After about 5 stops on the SEPTA, I realized I was being that obnoxious dipshit who does stuff “for da ‘gram” and did some soul-searching. Since I couldn’t find anything, I decided to just commit to visiting the Four Seasons since I had nothing better to do and I can check out another part of the city.
This ended up taking a good chunk of the day. I don’t know if you know this but Holmesburg is pretty close to the city limits in Northeast Philly and Philadelphia is much bigger than it looks on the map. While it’s not in a bad part of town, you have to go through a bad part of town to get there and that’s when I discovered just how bad a bad part of town can be. See, here in New York, we had the good sense to actually give our ghettos genuinely menacing names such as Brownsville and Hunt’s Point. And if you just keep to yourself and don’t bother anyone, you’ll usually be fine during daylight hours.
Philadelphia, by contrast, has much more pleasant names for its bad neighborhoods, such as Kensington and Strawberry Mansion, to lure morons to the city’s wonderful open-air drug markets where you’ll get catcalled by local junkies. DO NOT go to a bad part of Philadelphia. Contrary to what The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air may have told you, muggings are usually a bit more involved than getting lifted up and spun around a few times. Having to transfer from the SEPTA to a bus stop in Kensington is an experience I could go the rest of my life without ever having to repeat.
But, eventually, yes, I did get a picture of the Four Seasons Landscaping Company. And, yes, it is right across the street from a crematorium. Though, contrary to popular belief, the sex shop is not next door but a little further up the street. It’s also not even that good.
And last but not least, let’s mention the most wonderful thing about Philadelphia, the attytood. Even with half the city shut down, the City of Brotherly Love still provided plenty of quality vignettes from meeting interesting strangers. Like I said, for one thing, you guys do frightening better than we New Yorkers do as I was more concerned for more safety in my ten minutes in Kensington than I have ever been in my ten years in New York City. My airbnb host was a local artist who spent an hour complaining to me about how crappy Mayor Jim Kenney is. I had a Lyft driver who was an aspiring stand-up comic educate me on the finer points of the differences between West Philadelphia and North Philadelphia (West is the Fresh Prince, North is Fat Albert, Northwest is supposedly not half-bad). I once saw a man come charging out of an apartment and screamed up the stairs about how he’s going to call the cops at his unseen friend. My favorite story is this:
I was walking around University City at about 10:30 at night on a Saturday, completely minding my own business, when I came across a man swearing up a storm into his cellphone. He was saying words that would make a sailor blush to who I presume was either his wife or girlfriend. I kept my distance on the opposite side of the street but apparently to no avail for he slammed his phone down, ending the conversation and rounded on me. The following conversation took place from ten feet away:
MY NEW BEST FRIEND
(to phone)
YOU FUCKING CUNT WHORE, I HOPE YOU ROT IN HELL!
(slams phone down, turns to me)
MAN, CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS FUCKING SHIT?!
ME
Yeah, I know, man. Girls can really put you through the ringer sometimes.
MY NEW BEST FRIEND
YEAH!
(anger immediately melts away)
Anyway, have a good night, man.
ME
Yeah, you too.
God bless Philadelphia.
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