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Published: January 17th 2009
It's around five when we arrive. The station is grand looking with high sealing and pillars. Quiet except for a few passengers making their way to or from trains and homeless guys stretched out on the benches, hiding out from the cold for a while. A cab takes us to the Independent Hotel at 1234 Locust Street at the corner of thirteenth. For once the diver seems to take a direct route and we arrive quickly for only eight dollars and change. We take the elevator up to the second floor where the reception is and check in. The room is very masculine with strong dark wooden furniture and a big soft, bouncy bed. We are fatigued from our day on the train and do not fancy venturing out onto the cold night. I order some food and smoothies from The Pita Pit, an environmentally friendly fast food joint with biodegradable corn cups, organic food and free range vegan burgers. We watch a miserable film called Reservation Road about a kid who is killed in a hit and run. It's a bit of a tear jerker but well done apart from a few plot twists that fail to suspend disbelief. Suffice to say I have to watch a couple of episodes of Family Guy before I feel my emotions have stabilised enough to go to sleep.
We wake up late. It seems that our body clocks have moved around and now feel that ten thirty is a good time to rise. Having already missed breakfast we take it slowly and wander out around midday. I had seen the sun shining onto snow free streets from my hotel window and decided to venture out without long johns, thermal top, scarf or gloves. This was a mistake but once we had hit the street I could not be bothered with the rigmarole of returning to the hotel room and getting dressed again. We pushed on and failing to make sense of the subway map we decide to walk across town past the impressive State building with huge statue of George Washington on top imposing himself on the city. As we looked up as his statue it appears to be moving the wrong way against the sky, my brain is confused by what my eyes are seeing and I have to look away and back several times before concluding that I am never going to reconcile the strange visual effect and walk on. We continue down a wide road that cuts diagonally across the normal grid layout of the streets and Avenues towards the Art Museum and oh the joy when I realise that the steps leading up to it are the very ones that Sylvester Stallone ran up in Rocky. I feel like a kid again and cannot resist the temptation to sprint up the steps. I turn and look back down the road at a great view of the city framed by two fantastic statues of topless horse women fighting demons with spears at the foot of the steps. I then notice two more tourists running up the steps the one is filming the other with a hand held camera whilst singing 'The eye of the tiger'. Several more people do their Rocky impression before I reach the foot of the steps and turn to the left to have my photo taken in front of the Rock statue. We walk on around to the left of the Art Museum and along the bank of the river Schuylkill towards Fairmount park, the largest green space in Philadelphia and look forward to a nice walk in the park. It's very cold I nose is red, my ears burn and my chin is numb but I am enjoying the walk and scenery. A road runs alongside the river and anxious to get away from the traffic we look for a way into the 'Green Space'. There is a map on a sign post that indicates a route through the middle of the 'Green Space' past a lake. We follow it's instructions and cross the road following a cobbled road under a bridge to a blind corner. We feel a little apprehensive as it looks like just the kind of place you would find some one shooting up or sniffing glue. We round the corner to find no one there but a railway line blocks our path and rather than walk along side it we double back a little confused. I spot some steps leading up the bank to our left and reason that the map must have meant us to follow them up the back and around over the bridge and on to the lake. When we get to the top of the steps we are confronted by a large intersection. We walk alongside it, around and over the bridge past some boarded up houses and graffiti ridden buildings. This is not the walk we were looking for. We decide to see what is around the next corner rather than go back as we both hate going back, it's almost like admitting you are wrong. As we come around the bend I spot a sign announcing Fairmount Park and feel a bit of relief that we have found our way back on track. We pass a golf range and then a Disk Golf Course where people are throwing frisbys from 'teeing off' points towards and into metal baskets some distance away. Lou thinks that it is the most pointless game that she has ever seen but I am a little disappointed that I do not have a frisby as I would love to have a go. We walk on but the park never seems to settle into what I would consider a pleasant green space. Roads continually criss cross the fields that are dotted with lonely trees it is neither a nature reserve or well landscaped. It is green but not the pleasant land I hoped for and strangely not pedestrian friendly more a park that you drive through. We walk up towards a house at the top of a hill to get out bearings. It turns out to be the an old manor house turned into a museum of some rich bloke who made a fortune from pirating French and Spanish ships. We can see the river and wind our way down the hill towards it under a bridge passed a sleeping human who is sat upright completely covered by an old tatty sleeping bag. The creature leans on a shopping trolly full of bags and rags. We cross the road and walk back along the river continually being over taken by the many young joggers, who look like students.
We head back to the hotel to freshen up. It's cheese and wine night in the lobby so we help ourselves to a glass and a few cheese cubes on the way out. The TV is showing Bush's last press conference as president this instigates a discussion between another guest and the receptionist who basically cannot wait to see the back of him, amazed that he ever got re-elected for a second term. To walk a few blocks to Chris' Jazz Cafe where we pay a five dollar cover to get in and watch pretty good jazz band playing Miles Davis like jazz. I eat a delicious Salmon on mash and we share a bottle of wine. We then down a couple of cocktails and I finish off the evening with a beer. We both regret this the next morning as we struggle with hangovers to get out before one am.
We head down to Pine Street to the Underground Railway and Civil War Museum stopping on the way for breakfast. When we arrive at 805 Pine Street we find a skip outside a building with windows blacked out and notices of intent to fix gas and electricity there. No sign of a museum anymore. So much for the gophila.com top ten museums to see in Philadelphia. We decide to walk on down to South Street and see what we will see.
It starts off slow and drab but soon warms up at first with African hairdressers and Rasta head shops then with sex shops, tattoo parlous and shop fronts offering mystic readings and potions. We walk past a couple of lots that are covered in a deranged arrangement of colour, broken mirrors and junk stuck into and onto walls. It's bazaar and amazing. It turns out to be an artist's garden. We pay three dollars each to go in to http://www.philadelphiasmagicgardens.org/history.php Isaiah Zagar's Magic Garden. There is a basement, several rooms and the garden all covered in colour and mirrors. Illustrations of the artist depicted with four arms, three on the left and one on the right are a recurring theme. There are images of Indian gods, naked female forms and crazy patterns everywhere. Writing interrupts and is interrupted by the abstract patterns. 'Art is the centre of the real world' and 'These are my imaginings that would not settle into a form' and 'Paint something today' and other texts. There is not a inch of continuous space for the eye to settle. The garden is a maze using coloured concrete mirror adorned walls, with bottles and bike wheels jutting out and toys and trinkets hanging down and broken pottery all higgeldy piggeldy up and down and every where. Steps go below street level and the wall is decorated up to the roof. The eyes are assaulted by this joyful, hippy confusion. Sometimes the walls have broken mirrors sometimes it's glass so you are not sure if you see a reflection or through to another passage. It's quite disorientating but a pleasure to be lost in. Probably the best three dollars I have spent in the US.
We leave and walk on through the DIY culture shops of South Street past many Irish Bars, restaurants, cloth shops and record stores. It's DIY, counter culture road reminding me a little of Camden.
We go to the Ritz theatre to watch Slum dog Millionaire which we throughly enjoyed and I can heartily recommend I hope it wins awards it certainly deserves to. We finish off the evening with a delicious curry at Lovash served by a balding Indian American from San Francisco who is very friendly and we enjoy some banter with him. He makes some comment about my receding hairline and I am tempted to half his tip but resolve that he was probably just trying to make himself feel better about his own follicle challenged head.
The next morning we get up and leave the hotel with a good forty minutes for the ten minute taxi ride to the station. However we hit lunch time rush hour and are forced to abandon the taxi with ten minutes to departure time and struggle two blocks with all our bags. We make the train and head to Pittsburgh the temperature seems to drop with every mile. We pass some beautiful, half frozen lakes. The landscape gets more and more covered with snow it is beautiful but we are not looking forward to the coming artic cold front that we are rushing headlong into.
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Ian Kenworthy
non-member comment
“Originality is nothing by judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.”
Look I realise you're supposed to be enjoying yourselves, but there is still a distinct lack of photgraphic evidence for your travels. I loved your description of New Orleans it was much more positive than my memory of the place, have you got any photos from inside the bars you went to? My trip on the Mississippi reminded me of a stag do where we were couped up in a canal boat that chugged around central Birmingham for four hours. We were treated to views of disused factory walls and abandoned railway sidings. The booze ran out after a couple of hours, we were told we couldn't smoke and the novelty of throwing the buffet at people on the tow path wore off soon after. The mood was lifted towards the end, however, as a lucky shot with a mushroom volauvant prompted a low speed escape, lasting several minutes, from a man brandishing his half drunk bottle of strong cider and shouting obscenities. It was touch and go at first as it looked he could catch us and possibly attempt to try and get on board, but fortunately he had to stop quite often to get his breath back giving us a precious few seconds to widen the gap. To give him his due he kept going even when it was clear he was never going to catch us. Why we ever went to New Orleans as we both hate jazz is beyond me. We saw the cemetery and a 'voodoo temple' which were both interesting, but didn't really justify the 17 hour traveling time. We went on a tour to a plantation that was really beautiful, but the whole slavery aspect had been almost completely erased and questions were brushed aside leaving an awkward silence and a hurried move to the next point of interest. You've really honed your writing style over the last few weeks. I was worried after the Boston blog entry as you seemed to have turned into a guide book writer. Did you use one to when you wrote it, because if Thanks for the email about the book unfortunately it wasn't white