Don't laugh, I'm being serious here. And don't think I'm trying to backhand Paris either; [m] and I honeymooned in Paris, and the experience left me an unabashed Francophile.
Anyway, we decided to take a weekend trip to Philadelphia to celebrate 3 successful years of being married to each other. Our reasons for choosing Philadelphia were:
1) It is close enough to fly (relatively) inexpensively and quickly
2) We like big cities where you can do lots of stuff without a car
3) Neither of us had spent any time there
We stayed in Center City, a few blocks from City Hall. We ate at the recently-opened Distrito, a Mexico City-style "tapas" place that is, in a word, unfuckingbelievablygood, at the excellent-but-perhaps-a-bit-overblown-due-to-celebrity Morimoto, and at a charming modern Mexican place called Lolita where, thanks to Pennsylvania's famously arcane liquor licensing, you can't order a beer but you can bring your own bottle of tequila and they will provide you with pitchers of fine concoctions with which to mix it. Also, we ate cheesesteaks for breakfast Saturday morning and found some very good dim sum on Sunday in Chinatown.
So how is Philadelphia like Paris?
1-As already alluded, there is excellent food to be had all over town, from street vendors all the way up through haute cuisine and everything in between.
2-Great beauty is interwoven with centuries of urban grit, pretty much everywhere. (OK, most of the scenery on the train ride out to the airport is just grit. But it's that way in Paris, too.) Art and artists everywhere you look.
3-Attitude; both Philadelphians and Parisians are (unfairly, I think) known for being unfriendly, even rude, especially to outsiders. I can honestly say that this was not my experience in either place, and in fact, I thoroughly enjoyed talking to the people we met in both places.
4-The Philadelphia Museum of Art is so ridiculously disorganized it is hard to believe that it isn't run by the French.
5-The airport and trains are very dated, but they get you where you need to go.
6-I find both cities chaotic in a way that I find genuinely endearing. This is difficult to explain, because it reflects my own (perhaps odd) sensibilities about such things, but I enjoy the general upheaval and random encounters you can experience in places like Paris and Philly (and Portland and Durham and [parts of] Tucson) that are the very things places like Thousand Oaks, Cary, and Peachtree City are specifically designed to prevent.
Bottom line: I think Philly is a great, and massively underrated town. If I had to pick a place to live in the Megalopolis, it'd be my first choice.
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and don't forget - we also gorged ourselves at naked chocolate.
which also reminded me of paris in it's briskness.
Fascinating blog -- thanks for writing it! I love the detailed and creatively noticed observations. I'm curious: if Philadelphia is your first choice Megalopolis, what are your second and third choices. And what are your no-thank-you-I'll-pass cities?
Like any number of people, I often wonder, "If I had to move, where would I go?"
A longtime Durhamite friend moved to Baltimore last year, and she says that much of it is everything that Durham likes about itself now, or hopes to be in the near future. (It's no accident that Durham developers keep turning to Baltimore for people and plans -- from the DBAP architecture to the American Tobacco expansion.)
In the early 90s (when I was in my mid-twenties, I thought that Atlanta would be a great natural next place to be -- Hotlanta with its expanding economy, warm weather, etc. etc. I'm glad I didn't go.
I've been traveling the US for a couple of months, and of course I always feel like I'm trying different cities on to see how I'd like living there, longterm. I've spent a week or more in Salt Lake City, Denver, Portland (OR), and San Francisco. Will have similar time in Claremont (of Los Angeles) and Phoenix before I make it back to Durham.
Thanks Phil!
In the Megalopolis (which I would consider as DC-Boston) my 2nd and 3rd would probably be Baltimore and then DC (assuming I could afford to live in NW, NOT out in the 'burbs). I used to entertain notions of NYC but nowadays it seems like too much trouble, too economically exclusive, and too much of a police state. (DC is probably only slightly better in this regard). I like Boston fine, but I find it hard to get excited about it as a place to live.
I grew up in Atlanta, left in 1999. I have no desire to go back, but if I did, I would want to live in Decatur or somewhere in that general direction from downtown/midtown, and I would only venture out of the city limits to see my family (who still live on the south side).
No thanks, never: I'd have to say Phoenix (LA if they drained the Pacific and took away all the good food) and Vegas. I'm sure there are others, but I've managed to avoid them so far.
Portland, OR, is probably my favorite town overall. I loved Tucson for the 7 years I lived there and would go back in a heartbeat.
seems everybody who knows portland is in love with it.
RW may be a little perturbed at your disregarding chicago, though.
i think,largely, we are attracted to that which we did not grow up in.
i grew up in L.A. hate it with passion, and anything thats attached to it, or reminds me of it.
i favor the smaller towns as soul enriching, the type of place you grew up in. strange, i feel more 'at home' in ft smith, or the henry county of 20yrs ago, than i do in the urban environments i grew up in.
i enjoy the random encounters without the general upheaval, i guess. and the small cities are full of random strangers who would rather not be.
example: back in henry, about 1990, in walmart looking for a coyote call. some random johnny just led me to his truck and gave me one that worked well for him, and he had an extra, and showed me how to use it. right there in the parking lot.
or the guy that pulled over assuming i needed a ride to town after seeing me walking down hwy 155. (i did)
got the same ride, different stranger, on the way back.
this would never happen in LA.
My omission of Chicago is only for a lack of exposure (aside from layovers at O'Hare, I spent about 30 hours there 10 years ago...and had a great time!) I'm pretty sure I'd dig it...
I think your points about being drawn to something different than what you grew up with are valid...at least among certain, contrary personality types... ;)
I should also add that there is a certain kind of street level chaos in Philly that is above and beyond what I would expect out of most big cities...for example, stores in all kinds of neighborhoods blast music out the front door onto the street. All kinds of music , too, including classical.
I'm pretty sure they don't put up with that in post-Giuliani New York (or at least not in Manhattan) for example.
Regarding the place-of-origin non-affinity, I used to assume the opposite was true: whatever you grew up with became the thing you needed. In my case (hometown, Asheville: before it got hip), what I came to always need was terrain, lots of lush greenery, and a southern climate.
But talking this through with other folks over the years made me throw out the theory. Lots of people have no love for the climate or surrounding they grew up in. People just like what they like, and we hope for all concerned that they get there sooner rather than later.
BTW, I lived in Chicago suburbs in the winter of '93-'94. Chicago is awesome. But not for me except for a few months a year.
One night when it was going to a record minus-22 F, I thought it would be interesting to go outside, in the nude. But the minus-22 wasn't going to happen until around 4 a.m., so I settled for minus-11 at midnight. Had to use my blow dryer to melt the ice off the sliding glass doors so I could open them. Stepped onto the porch. Lasted, I think, 6 seconds. The sub-zero snow hurt my feet much faster than the air hurt my skin, and I hopped back inside in a hurry.
Kept all my body parts, though.
:-)
Flying into Philadelphia is a trip - I'll say that much.
I think it's variable. I've lived in DC and Chicago and that's about it. I could get used to DC, and had some real great friends there. But now when I'm away from Chicago, I miss it. I think it's more comfort zone than anything else. I enjoyed seeing other places till I got to be 50, then it was like; and...? Appreciate other towns, but I can't think of another place I'd rather live than Chicago.
Well unless we're talking the Caribbean or something...
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