12 June 09: INDEPENDENCE PASS
by R Bradley Maule



As the person who organized the Septa Independence Pass project, I wanted to be clear with Steve, Steve and Chris that there were no restrictions, no destinations and no goals other than that each of the four be completely free and unbound in his travels, and we'd meet back nine hours later -- a full day's shift -- and compare notes. I had no philosophical purpose for my own trip, nor much of a geographic strategy. Maybe this was where I went wrong.

I spent a noticeable amount of Saturday waiting, cursing Septa, consulting isepta.org, and eventually changing directions. Not that it was Septa's fault; their schedules are pretty clearly marked. A person with a plan could lay out a full day's itinerary and stick to it without much margin for error. I am not that person.

When I'm traveling at length by myself, I take a connect-the-dots approach, marking out a handful of stops, and however I get there in between . . . well, the journey is the proverbial journey. That doesn't work too well when a regional rail system that runs once an hour on the weekend is a major part of an albeit very loose game plan.

Nevertheless, like the others, I registered a pretty decent experience across a pretty decent swath of the Southeastern Pennsylvania region that Septa covers. The disparity I came across wasn't as flagrant as Steve Weinik's ride on the 23 bus, but it's hard not to notice how different listening to a tired man coming home from the late shift mack on a stripper at a bus stop in Juniata Park (I know she was a stripper because they were discussing the etiquette of tips and singles) is from a stroll from the Main Line's precious R5 across Villanova University's campus on alumni weekend.

But there they are, the places that Septa will take you.



I started my day at Market East Station, where I asked the ticket seller how well the unlimited-ride Independence Passes were selling, thinking they would be as popular as those in New York and Washington. She said, "slowly," and that the eight-ride Convenience Passes were a better seller, because "people who buy these don't need the regional rail." True that, neither NYC's nor DC's day passes afford rides on the LIRR or MARC.

I boarded the Market-Frankford el at 11th Street and headed for Erie-Torresdale, on the east side of which I recently saw a rickety metal bridge over the Northeast Corridor's main trunk. I wanted to check it out, as it appeared to be a pedestrian-only link between Juniata Park, Frankford and Bridesburg, three pretty different neighborhoods, on the map as Wheatsheaf Lane. When I got to the footbridge, I found it was fenced off. I asked a lady who appeared to be spearheading a block cleanup if it was always fenced off and she said, "it's not fenced off." I pointed over to the fence and she said, "now when the hell did they put that up!"

Walking back up Pike Street to Erie Avenue, where I intended to catch the 56 bus across the trolley right-of-way that's still there, I scratched my head at the sight of a rubber toy cockroach. They make toy cockroaches? And people buy them for their kids in Frankford?

After about 20 minutes of shifting my weight between my feet at the 56's bus stop, I saw the 3 bus at the stoplight under the el. The marquee read '33rd & Cecil B Moore'. Laurel Hill Cemetery was one of the checks on my list of potential visits, and 33rd & Cecil B wasn't too far down the road, so I gave up on the 56 and boarded the 3. What a long . . . slow . . . bus. Where the el flies between stations directly overhead, the 3 bus follows its route on Kensington Avenue and Front Street below -- Kensington Avenue and Front Street with their traffic and five-point stoplight intersections. By the time I'd gotten to Broad Street, I'd had enough of the 3 and got out to breathe a little fresh air at Temple.

By this point, it was noon, and I was willing to forego Laurel Hill to get out to the suburbs to see some places and Septa cars I'd never seen. The R6 goes to Norristown, which I hear has a nice courthouse for Montgomery County with a weird 9/11 memorial, and the Route 100 goes from there to Villanova, where the R5 will take you to Overbrook, which has the 10 trolley back into West Philly. OK, let's do that. So I took the Broad Street subway two stops north to its North Philadelphia station, which is between Amtrak's boarded up North Philadelphia station (which is still served by Septa) and the former North Broad Street Station, a greek revival temple designed by Horace Trumbauer and built by the Reading Company in 1928 that's now a low rent office building. The North Broad regional rail station behind it is an unceremonious, empty platform where every train passes through but only two stop. After 20 minutes, watching two trains fly by, and confirming with isepta that I'd be sitting on that platform for 40 minutes, I opted to head back upstairs to Lehigh Avenue, where the westbound 54 bus would take me to Laurel Hill after all.

In the nineteen Lehigh blocks between Broad and 33rd, I talked with an aspiring photographer about my equipment and day on Septa, I heard a guy talking loudly in his cell phone, "he's going to kill that bitch! You gotta talk to him, you gotta talk to him," and at a stoplight near the former Shibe Park, I saw a maybe 23 year old woman wearing clothes showcasing her knockout body, which a man further up the bus noticed too. As the bus pulled away, he ran to the window near me at the back of the bus. Now out of view, he turned to me and said, "oh man I'm sorry, did I block your view? I just had to get me some seconds!"

At 33rd & Lehigh, I got off and walked toward the entrance of the cemetery. Starving by now, the Marketplace at East Falls was a godsend. Crossing Ridge Avenue on foot to get to it was not. Finally across Ridge (which has no stoplights between Hunting Park and Allegheny, so traffic moves fast) and across the parking lot that greets you, I found Monalisa's Fine Mediterranean Cuisine. Mona, a Lebanese retiree who "does this for fun", emphasized that nothing here was fried, not even the falafel, and that I simply must try the baked chicken shawerma. So I did.

I walked that delicious sandwich off across the 78 acre spread for the dead, the National Historic Landmark on a Schuylkill River bluff that's the final resting place for many a famous Philadelphian -- Biddle and Baldwin, Disston and Deringer, General George Meade and Captain Frank Furness. At Laurel Hill's entrance, Harry Kalas' family had graciously left a guestbook for his fans and visitors of the cemetery to pay their last respects; at his burial place, a temporary headstone had an etched version of Harry in the booth, and a six foot wooden P painted Phillies red marked his grave.

In East Falls, I thought I'd try the R6 to Norristown again . . . only to have isepta tell me that I'd be waiting another 45 minutes. Damn it! I noticed instead that an inbound R6 would be arriving in 10 minutes, and that an R5 heading to Villanova was leaving 30th Street 10 minutes after the R6 arrived. Getting close to 4 o'clock, the R6 was packed with Manayunkers on their way to Center City. The two 30-somethings behind me were talking golf and their brushes with Tiger Woods.

After the switch at 30th Street Station, I stretched out on the seat, my audio intake alternating between Wilco's new album and the elderly couple behind me talking about the Art Museum as the sights of the Main Line rolled by. As I exited at Villanova, a young child squealed with excitement when Amtrak whizzed by, his father clearly having brought him here to see this. The campus was surprisingly bustling; turns out it was alumni reunion weekend, and the campus was a practical open house to a visitor like myself -- St Thomas of Villanova Catholic Church, Dougherty Hall, the Final Four Wildcats' home Pavilion. I just missed the free beer at the Class of '94 tent.

I headed over to the Route 100, the interurban I'd intended to catch in Norristown. Now, I was heading into Upper Darby's 69th Street Terminal. Only thing was, the thing had to stop to pick me up. It's a train platform -- I figure the train will stop there. After ten minutes of standing in the sun, one zipped right on by. Rafael, an Upper Darby kid on his way home from work, asked me if I'd pushed the button. What button? The button that makes the train stop. Oh. You need a button to make the train stop? Duh! I'm a Route 100 noob, I had no idea it was a push-button route, nor had I ever heard of push-button transit. Rafael pushed it for me, and ten minutes later we watched an express car that wasn't going to stop anyway fly by. A good 35 minutes of soaking up rays later, one finally stopped for us.

By the time I got to 69th Street, it was almost time to get back to Market East to meet the others, but with the sun shining now, I wanted to grab a shot of the Tower Theatre. Passing through the vibrant crowd, I saw a group of white Baptist evangelists preaching to an Arab man and a black couple, a mixed, raggedy couple smoking a joint in a cubbie on Ludlow, a group of younger white kids hoping to catch a glimpse of the Decemberists at their tour bus, and the regular black, white, korean and latino shoppers of the district.

Back on the el, I had one last stop to make, at 56th Street, to get a shot of the late day skyline rising distantly above the elevated tracks. Boarding the next inbound train, I heard a voice say "hey, that's the wrong car." Well look who it is, Steve Ives, on his way back to Market East. He was on his own last run, to Penn's Landing to photograph the bus loop. I left the el at 30th Street and switched to the first inbound trolley, just to add one more route to my day's résumé. At the end of the line, Juniper Street, I was ready for a beer.

And back at Field House pub, directly across the street from Septa's 1234 Market headquarters, about 40 steps from the Starbucks where we'd all started our journeys right upstairs from the el and Market East Station, Steve Ives, Steve Weinik, Chris Dougherty and I did have a beer.

Thanks for riding with us this week.

CLICK HERE TO LAUNCH PHOTOS.

There are 40 photos, 7M in total size, so please just give the page a moment to load.

–R Bradley Maule
blove@phillyskyline.com

For more of RBM's work, please visit his web site, phillyskyline.com.

* * *

SPECIAL THANKS TO: Steve Ives, Steve Weinik and Chris Dougherty. Also to isepta for the killer site, and even to Septa for the extremely convenient One Day Independence Pass.

The Independence Pass series is archived HERE.


11 June 09: INDEPENDENCE PASS
by Steve Weinik



Cars are made for destinations. You pick a place and you go there. Public transit is made for exploration. You pick a place and follow a network of asphalt and rail until you get close enough that you can get off and walk the rest of the way. My approach was a little different from that of Steve Ives or Chris Dougherty. For better or for worse, I took virtually no photos while riding Septa or waiting at its stops. My intention was to go to an area and wander.

Here's a set of loose rules that I made for myself:
- Stay within city limits.
- Visit places you've never been, or never explored on foot.
- Cover a lot of ground.
- Ride the 23 from end to end.
- Eat good food along the way.
Here's how it worked itself out:

From 12th and Market I walked underground to City Hall, where I caught the el to Frankford Terminal. The highlight of the trip was a conversation with a 60+ year old man sitting in front of me. We talked about electric cars, flying cars and killing people for a $500 debt. He flashed me a thick wad of hundreds to illustrate his killing people over money story, and as we both got off at Frankford Terminal he left me with the advice "don't get pussy whipped." It was 9:30 in the morning and he was pretty drunk.

From Frankford Terminal I hopped the 58 to my first destination: the Russian neighborhood in the far Northeast. Even as a native Philadelphian, I know virtually nothing about the Northeast and even less about the Russian district. Following the advice of Wikipedia, I got off at Bustleton and Grant and headed north.

In my mile or so hike through Bustleton, I found a couple Russian heavy strip malls, browsed a grocery store that sold veal brains, giant cans of wild mushrooms, whole pickled apples and 100 kinds of sausage/smoked fish. I hung around until noon, when a restaurant I'd been eying opened. There I got a deep fried meat crepe and zucchini cakes. Both were good, but a little bland. The only other people in the restaurant were a group of well dressed and surly looking Russian men, drinking vodka and looking generally unfriendly to the idea some jackass with a camera. Heeding legends of the Russian mob, I decided not to photograph them or anything near them. I left my camera in the bag as I waited for my lunch.

After getting my pants covered in crepe grease, it was on to the second leg of my journey. I hopped back on the 58 and rode it to Bustleton and Cottman. From there I walked to Cottman And Torresdale. In my limited knowledge of the Northeast, I think of Cottman Avenue is some kind of divider between lower and upper, greater and lesser . . . something or other. I thought that skirting the border would make for some interesting contrasts and was right. The 2 mile trek made for some good photos.

For Toynbee tile fans, I should also note that there are 4 tiles along that stretch of Cottman Ave. Cottman and the Boulevard, Cottman and Frankford and 2 large ones at Cottman and Torresdale.

The walk worked my appetite back up, so I got on the 70 and rode clear back across the city, briefly into Cheltenham and eventually to the third leg of my trip: Olney. I got off at 5th and Godfrey and made my way down towards Olney Avenue a mile or so away.

I was just south and/or west of the Korean bbq's where I'd wanted to eat, and most of the restaurants I did find were closed anyway. At 5th and Olney I changed up my plans and stopped into a small Caribbean spot for some chicken roti and fresh grapefruit juice. The bread was homemade, the flavor mild but excellent and the in-store DJ a nice touch.

From there, I started down Olney Avenue towards the R8 stop at Mascher Street, but after a couple blocks spotted a 26 and caught that instead. The bus was crowded, but the ride to Broad Street was less than 5 minutes. At Broad and Olney, I hopped the L bus to the top of Chestnut Hill. After a pit stop at the Borders bathroom and culture shock at the ridiculous wealth of the Hill, I was back on my way.

Which brings me to the 23:

Even though I took almost no photos ON the buses and trains, my 100 minutes on the 23 deserves some deeper acknowledgment. Starting in one of the richest neighborhoods in the city, the bus descends into middle class Mount Airy and working class Germantown.

By the time we hit Germantown and Chelten in downtown G-town, the bus was packed and sounded like a party. Music was playing, people laughing, food and drink flowed freely, some dude with no shirt got on . . . The fun lasted to Wayne Junction. Next come the Nicetown and Logan neighborhoods, where the the stability of the northwest begins to lose its grip. Somewhere across Broad and Erie, it drops off a cliff.

I say this reluctantly and as someone with only a tenuous right to judge, but Fairhill is a wreck. Tenth street between Germantown and Susquehanna is like some shell of a former civilization. I say this as someone who's been to every non-northeastern corner of this city. Last week I spent the day at 6th and Indiana and felt a lot of optimism for the West Kensington neighborhood formerly (and recently) known as "The Badlands." But a few days later exactly 4 blocks to the west, I look out a bus window of the 23 at upturned sidewalks, shells of houses, garbage, decay and deserted streets and just about lose hope for the city and for humanity as a whole.

Things improve as the bus rolls up 12th street towards the shimmering decadence of Center City, but the damage is done. I now see Center City as that same post apocalyptic landscape . . . just one covered in a thin veneer of temporary affluence. A rehabbed building can become a shell too easily. The cracks in the corners can and will spread until the building, the street and the entire city is consumed. It takes almost nothing to tip the scales from wealth to poverty to total collapse. The line is thin and easy to cross.

My pessimism eventually gave way somewhere near Washington Avenue. My mood change probably had something to do with the fight against entropy that new blood brings. In upper South Philly, Asian and Central American immigrants have brought plenty of new energy and have wasted no time in putting it to use, rehabbing buildings and opening new businesses.

At 10th and Oregon, just a few blocks shy of the end of the 23, something compelled me to abandon the bus and take a walk around deep South Philly. I was running a little late on the 6PM deadline, but wanted to take one last walk on what was turning into a perfect summer evening. The walk was worth it. At 9th Street, I was hired on the spot to take photos for a new cell phone store and its owner, Stanley. At 10th, I ran into a block party, where people were playing halfball. Honest to god halfball! But I was running late.

The last part of my trip was an unceremonious ride up Broad Street on the Orange Line. At City Hall, I walked off the train and officially closed the circle.

CLICK HERE TO LAUNCH PHOTOS.

There are 40 photos, 9M in total size, so please just give the page a moment to load.

–Steve Weinik
dovate@gmail.com

For more of Steve's work, please visit his brand new web site, steveweinik.com.




10 June 09: INDEPENDENCE PASS
by Chris Dougherty



Safety, Service, Continuous Improvement

Emblazoned on the cards of SEPTA managers is the terse mission statement: Speed, Service, Continuous Improvement -- the last of these three goals bespeaking the perpetually unfinished nature of SEPTA's people moving business. "Continuous improvement" is the bulkier way explaining the state of becoming that the system always seems to be in -- a system always "getting there" or a system "serious about change." But as refurbished stations, brand new Silverliner Vs, a long awaited farecard system and a SEPTA presence on Google Transit slowly rumble into view, it can be said with confidence that some kind of new attitude is permeating the halls of 1234.

To inspect the system with the freedom of an Independence Pass is to experience a great organism that through great effort has become greater than the sum of its seemingly disjointed parts. While most wouldn't care to know it, to ride the system in an afternoon is to experience a bewildering array of predecessor systems knitted deftly together under great duress. I rode on a City-owned Broad Street Subway car into stations from the 1930s, I rode on buses that have navigated the same routes since they were trolley cars operated by the Philadelphia Transportation Company, I rode on trolleys people still call "the Red Arrow", I rode on multiple unit regional rail cars purchased in the 1960s by SEPTA's ancestor agencies, and my rides terminated at great stations (now Transportation Centers in SEPTA parlance) that through massive capital infusions stitch car and bike and bus and rail to the periphery of the city and region.

And as Steve Ives said yesterday, there's more to the popular misconception that SEPTA is the transportation choice of last resort. The SEPTA that I saw was, and is continuing to become, the SEPTA envisioned by the pioneering 1970s chairman James McConnon, "a total transit complex" for all people -- from Yale to jail. I can personally say that some SEPTA managers see transportation as a right and the speedy and safe movement of people on buses, cars, trolleys as a question of social equity. While it has become sport to malign the system, the intransigence of its managers, the feistiness of its unions and the sometimes deplorable condition of its stations -- all of these flaws emanate from the Frankenstein nature of the system's creation and a lack of dedicated funding. Recently, though, SEPTA's management seem to have taken their collective heads out of the foxholes to look farther into the future to plan a system not just for moving people to existing sites but to new places where people want to go. Managers have taken an inheritance and begun to make it their own.

SEPTA's new responsiveness to the public bodes well -- it should give us all a sense of ownership that this thing is ours to mold and fashion. It should give us an enthusiasm to participate in the great task of moving a city. What follows is a record of one day's participation.

CLICK HERE TO LAUNCH PHOTOS.

There are 40 photos, 16M in total size, so please just give the page a moment to load.

–Christopher R. Dougherty
christopher.r.dougherty@gmail.com

For more of Chris' work, please visit his web site, The Necessity For Ruins.


9 June 09: INDEPENDENCE PASS
by Steve Ives



O! SEPTA, most beloved of Philadelphia institutions.

It takes a special person to spend an entire Saturday traversing the city via bus, train and trolley without some sort of issue to work out. In my earlier days, I used to take day trips to New York simply to ride the subway and I was fairly normal - then.

This weekend's Independence Pass excursion gave me an opportunity to just sit, watch and listen to a SEPTA Saturday. A motorcyle rally in Frankford. Casual racism at Bridge & Pratt. And daytrippers - endless hordes of people just going into the city for the day. Anyone who believes that SEPTA is a broken organization, purely used by those without another option hasn't taken the time to see what the system looks like on a day when travel is, for most people, quite optional. I saw buzzing terminals, packed buses, a rainbow of faces in the crowds. It was particularly interesting to see how busy life was under the Frankford El. Despite the constant shadow and less than bucolic surroundings, Kensington and Frankford Avenues were abuzz nonetheless - all the activity of a suburban mall (or a beachfront) spread along miles of brick and asphalt.

You can get a good impression of city by riding it's transit system and there's certainly a lot to be told about Philadelphia by spending an appreciable amount of time riding SEPTA. Every scrap of pretense is stripped away and all one gets is an honest impression of a city's people, their thoughts, their plans and their opinions of where they live. And I hope you get a sense of that from these images.

CLICK HERE TO LAUNCH PHOTOS.

There are 40 photos, 4.4M in total size, so please just give the page a moment to load.

–Steve Ives
phillytrax@aol.com

For Steve's archives, please see HERE.


8 June 09: COMING ATTRACTIONS



Back at the end of March, Septa announced that they would be rolling out a brand new One Day Independence Pass, a $10 pass ($25 for a family of up to five) that's valid for a full day on all forms of Septa's transit -- regional rail, subway, el, trolley, bus, all of them. The new pass differed from the existing $6 Convenience Pass, which was only valid for eight rides and did not include any regional rail use. A previous $5.50 Day Pass, the subject of a December 2004 Philly Skyline photo essay, was valid for unlimited rides on all forms of transit except regional rail, which was allotted one ride.

The new Independence Pass is good for everything, including a partnership with Center City District that allows for rides on the Phlash. A singular side note is that trips originating from the New Jersey stations (Trenton, West Trenton) incur an additional $5 fee.

Septa brands the Independence Pass, more or less, as a way for suburbanites to spend a day at Philadelphia's tourist sites:
A family, for example, can board a Regional Rail train in Lansdale, connect with the PHLASH bus at Suburban Station for a trip to the Zoo and then return to Center City for dinner before taking the train back home.
(If there was a regional rail station at the Zoo, which can absolutely be done, a suburbanite's day would not involve a ride all the way to Center City just to transfer to a tourist bus. By the way.)

While suburbanites and their children very well may be boarding in Lansdale and heading to the zoo with a stop at the Spaghetti Warehouse on the way home, I thought the Independence Pass was good cause for a good project carried out by good people with a good eye (and a good reserve of patience). On Saturday morning, I met with The Necessity For Ruins' Chris Dougherty, dovate.com's Steve Weinik, and Philly Skyline resident Septa expert Steve Ives, whose archive recently got a much needed makeover.

Our starting point was 9am at the Starbucks in the Marriott, directly across the street from Septa's 1234 Market headquarters and right upstairs from Market East Station. From there, the wind -- and Septa -- would carry us wherever it would carry us, each one going his own way with a single deadline of meeting back up at 6 at the Field House pub, at the top of the stairway from Market East Station. We'd depart and reunite at the same location, a full and individual shift of riding Septa and photography in between.

There were no rules or requisites. Each person could ride as many or as few forms of Septa's vehicles as desired. There were no assignments; photos of trains, people, buildings, signs, rivers, animals -- it was all acceptable.

Would the four of us make it through the day without any trouble? Would we be hassled by sensitive bus drivers? Overzealous transit cops? Hustlers on 52nd Street? Would any of us actually ride all of Septa's forms of vehicle? Visit all five PA counties they cover?

Stay tuned.

In the next four days, we'll be rolling out our respective efforts, one per day. Steve Ives, Chris Dougherty, Steve Weinik, and R Bradley Maule will each exhibit a day's worth of travel on Septa, in a uniform format: 40 photos with simple captions and a companion written essay to tell their tale of the day. It begins tomorrow.

Watch the closing doors.

–B Love



8 June 09: Awash in voices



by Nathaniel Popkin
June 8, 2009

I've spent the last two months wandering, loitering, dancing. Above all, I've been listening -- to some four centuries of voices; to ideas and inventions, to observations and recriminations, to stories of love and stories of horror. The journey began in pre-history, passed through a remarkable Lenape meditation called the Prophesy of the Four Crows, and forward to:
I'm from Phila with a Del but not the Rio
Well, I'm guessing here is like exactly where the Phi go
Now, we got the Phila-Del-Phi why not top it off with an A?
The Philadelphiadic rhythmatic way I'm straight from Philly
Silly but rugged then a hillbilly
Just like I said before I sport my skully when it's chilly
My cap is from The Lay Up, my bows from The Gilly
The Roots, is out to blow up like a clip from out the milli
or the oo-wop, I do drop, gizzantic, the crew wop
From out the darkest field I goes to pick the funk crop
You can't deny the props so stop before your fronts
get loosened, introducing, The Roots y'all.
In between, a cacophony. A Swede named Rambo, Quaker power broker brothers named Lloyd, Pastorius, Preaching-Dick and Benezet, James Dexter and Joseph Read, Paine and Peale, B. Ross and Dinah, a slave, Polly Haine and Israel Israel, Girard and Hercules, James Forten and Fanny Kemble, William Still and Joseph Leidy, Anna Broomall and Voltarine, Tanner and Whitman, Leo Ornstein and Bessie Smith, Crystal Bird Faucet and Jimmie Foxx, Salvatore Sabella and Tony Mammarella, Gillespie and Goodis, Maggie Kuhn and Isaiah Zagar.

Philadelphia's story is vast, complex, beguiling, and painful. It's being retold -- and all the cliché and reductivist narrative jettisoned -- through a project tentatively called America's First Great City. It's the brainchild of Sam Katz. In the last year he's galvanized just about every institution and player in Philadelphia's sprawling history industry to participate in the project, which has as its core a documentary film for national and local audiences. Under Katz's guidance, the Fairmount Park Department of Parks and Recreation historian Rob Armstrong and I led a team of writers, historians, PhD candidates, clergy, scholars, and researchers to collect people and stories that help us to understand the city. The task was made particularly rewarding because of the amount of new scholarship conducted in the last two and half decades. Synthesized, it's a tantalizing panorama.

History adds dimensions to our own flat plane of existence. Applied to a city, it makes every corner a hot link to somewhere. Now, more than ever, when I walk I hear voices, I peel layers. The voices are humbling. So many have come before us; they've grappled, dreamed, imagined, reacted, fought, accused, demanded, and observed, just as we do. Oh, the dreamers -- Penn and Benjamin Rush, Richard Allen, Joseph Willson, Caroline LeCount, Siegmund Lubin, Presper Eckert, and Lily Yeh -- forced to endless compromise. We can't help but see parallels among eras, ideas, proposals; we can't help but recognize our own hopes, our own words, repeated, endlessly, back in time.

–Nathaniel Popkin
nathaniel.popkin@gmail.com

For Nathaniel Popkin archives, please see HERE, or visit his web site HERE.
For The Possible City, please see HERE.


8 June 09: ON THE DELAWARE, live in Phishtown



Man oh man. As live music goes, this past weekend was possibly the best I've ever seen in a single push in Philadelphia:
• FRIDAY: David Byrne at the Mann Center, Doves at the Troc, Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction at the E Centre

SATURDAY: The Roots Picnic at Festival Pier (check out BriHo's photos of The Roots and Public Enemy performing together HERE), Northern Liberties Music Festival at Liberty Lands Park, Best Fest at Clark Park, Decemberists at the Tower, Art Brut at JB's

SUNDAY: PJ Harvey at the Troc, ?uestlove spinning at the Piazza, and . . .
Phish's return to Philadelphia at the E Centre.

As someone who went to 23 of their concerts from 1996-2000, including the monumental two day, Y2K New Years Eve show at an indian reservation in the middle of the Everglades, their music holds a pretty solid place in my life's soundtrack. After their hiatus in 2001-02, it just wasn't the same, for me anyway. I still caught them when they came through Philly and watched the "final" show at Coventry in 2004 at the simulcast at the Riverview Theater . . . and that was just awful. With Trey Anastasio as visibly fucked up as he was and the band just not clicking, in spite of the sentimentality and nostalgia of the event, the 20 year run ended on a particularly sad and sour note.

In the five years since then, Trey was famously busted for drugs (pills) and the band members' respective side projects kept only the interest of the hardest of hardcore fans. Five years post-Phish, it came as little surprise when they announced early this year that they'd be reuniting for a few nights at Hampton Coliseum, after which it was apparent they were lining up a summer tour. There's a lot of money to be made from touring, especially when tickets are $50 (before service fees).

In the two weeks leading up to last night's show in Camden, I fired up some memories in an attempt to locate the spirit I remember from a decade ago. Apparently the band did the same thing, because wow, it was FANTASTIC.

It's easy for music snobs to write off Phish as noodling hippie crap, or worse, a lesser Dead, but to each his own. When that band is on, they are on. And they were on last night, so on that when they came out for their encore after two raucous sets, Trey asked the crowd, "are you guys in a hurry to get out of here?" The response to which was, of course, a very loud, "NOOO."

All told, Phish rocked Camden for three hours (including a half hour encore) on an absolutely perfect night for an outdoor concert. A killer sunset over a Philly Skyline, a sweet river breeze, a Ben Franklin Bridge that seemed to change colors with Chris Kuroda's stage lights, and a full moon over the port of Camden water tower just embellished the sentiment. There were no aggro a-holes, there was no one talking through the whole show, and security stayed pretty well out of everyone's way. I knew it was going to be a good night when the first thing I saw after entering the amphitheater was a dunk tank with a girl in a Mets jersey. (You better believe I nailed it on the first throw.)

Sincerely from one of your sorted hometowns: welcome back, Phish. Trey Anastasio grew up a Flyers fan in Princeton and took guitar lessons in Burlington, and both Page McConnell and Jon Fishman were born in Philadelphia. Their affection for the Spectrum is such that they've never bothered to play the Wachovia Center.

Since 1989, Phish has played the Delaware Valley 35 times: six times at 23 East Cabaret, now Brownie's, in Ardmore; once each at the late Chestnut Cabaret (38th & Chestnut), Haverford College, the Chameleon in Lancaster, the Keswick in Glenside, Lehigh University's Stabler Arena and the late Civic Center (West Philly, replaced by the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine); two nights at the Tower; four times at the Mann; eight times at the Spectrum; and after last night, seven times at the Sony Blockbuster Entertainment Tweeter Susquehanna Bank Center at the Waterfront.



What a difference ten years makes -- $26 for general admission in July 1999. I didn't remember that show being especially great, but the band must have since they made it a part of their Live Phish official bootleg series. I do remember the incredible view of the bridge and skyline, the Hyatt then under construction just under the setting sun.

In June 2009, Phish is just getting going on their reunion summer tour, probably the first of many as we all grow older. If the Camden show, my 29th, is any indication, it's off to a blazing start, and heading into a weekend at Bonnaroo alongside Bruce Springsteen, Wilco, Al Green, Merle Haggard, Snoop Dogg and others, it's only going to get hotter.

–B Love

* * *

PHISH, E Centre, Camden, New Jersey:

SET ONE: Chalk Dust Torture, Fee, Wolfman's Brother, Guyute, My Sweet One, 46 Days, Lizards, The Wedge, Strange Design, Tube, First Tube

SET TWO: Sand, Suzie Greenberg, Limb by Limb, The Horse → Silent in the Morning, Sugar Shack, Character Zero, Tweezer

ENCORE: Joy, Bouncing Around the Room, Run Like an Antelope, Tweezer Reprise



5 June 09: SKYLINE INSPECTION ADDENDUM
The two I forgot to include yesterday



Two real quick postscripts to yesterday's inspections. Both of these were taken from the comfort of a cushy train seat, the first one Septa's R7 to Trenton, the second one the upper deck of the New Jersey Transit northeast line to New York Penn Station.

The one above is a ceiling ad that's seen on a lot of Septa's regional rail cars, advertising its R1 line as an alternative to driving and parking at the airport, or taking a flat-rate $28 cab ride. $5.50's not a bad fare at all, and it drops you at whichever terminal you're going to, but they could stand a little more room considering people traveling by air usually have a lot of luggage.

The skyline in the graphic ranges from Independence Hall to City Hall to the 80s towers, both Liberty Places, Mellon Bank Center and the Commerce Square twins. It doesn't have any of the recent towers, but that's OK because there's a Jetsonesque ribbon of train flying around the buildings, and the poster's lined with clip art planes, which I actually like. I'm up in the air about up on the ceiling ads, but as posters go, I dig this.

Just when I thought Septa's graphics team couldn't possibly be any dumber, they go and do something like this . . . and totally redeem themselves!



Then there's this one, which has also appeared on Septa's regional rail cars. This ad for Drexel's online school was at the Elizabeth station in north Jersey, perhaps an inspiration to commuters trudging through the daily grind from all the way out in Elizabeth.

While they probably could have waited for a clear, sunny day, it's the newest skyline photo I've seen on any ads, with not only a completed Comcast Center and Residences at the Ritz-Carlton, but also an under-construction 1706 Rittenhouse Square, which hasn't even topped off yet.

It's new, it's nifty, and it's neat-o. Drexel Dragon HIGH FIVE!

–Bleh Oof


4 June 09: SKYLINE INSPECTIONS,
Summer Jam Edition



Now, I may be crazy, but I know this graphic here existed. The JPG on my hard drive has a timestamp of May 19, but I can't find it online now.

I'm starting this round of inspections with this one because, hopefully, it can only get better from here. No offense to its creator, but it's really bad. It's an outdated silhouette of the skyline (though props for the rarely used Walt Whitman Bridge view), and it's choppy and pixelated and MS Paint-y at that. And it was, at least briefly, the image used by the Philadelphia Office of Emergency Management -- the alertest and readiest bunch of bureaucrats in the city. At least you'd hope so, right?

For an alert and ready bunch, they're not so alert on their skyline accuracy, nor are they very ready to just get out and take some new photos. While that first graphic seems to have disappeared, what's in its place in the many many places for you to get alert and ready . . . FOR THE PANIC . . . is not much better.

Seriously now -- shouldn't an office of emergency management have a single, one-stop shop for consumer-constituent alertness and readiness? Mayor Nutter's in-touch-with-the-younger-crowd bit has gone a little overboard, I reckon. For the Philly OEM, we have . . .

The City Managing Director's Office of Emergency Management's official web site, with a pre-Comcast Art Museum view of the skyline

phila.alertpa.org, which I think is where I screencap'd that above image but which is now just black

alertphila.com, which appears to be a collaboration of the Police Department and Center City District to . . . do the same thing the OEM does, but via email/cell/text? Whatever the case, the image there is a circa-90s evening view from the Aramark Building that I think was one of Bob Krist's for GPTMC, but which was replaced by THIS around the time Residences at the Ritz-Carlton's crane was being dismantled. (Bee Love you are hardcore about some mundane skyline stuff.)

Philly OEM's Blog

Philly OEM's Facebook

Philly OEM's Twitter

Philly OEM's YouTube channel
Now, maybe I'm being an old fuddy-duddy about this, but that's just too much shit to keep up with and be truly alert and ready. But my favorite of all of Philly OEM's options has got to its Myspace.



Ladies and gentlemen, Ready Philadelphia, as seen from the Hudson River. I think we can all forgive Septa for fixing its Philly Beer Week gaffes when we see the Empire State Building on a City of Philadelphia web site.

* * *

All right all right, enough about the Emergency Management office. Let's check today's mail and see what summertime brochure has arrived . . .



Not bad, not bad. It's recent, with its Comcast Center and its Murano. But . . . mann, it's the view from the Plateau.

C'mon Mann Center, you've got a decent lineup this summer -- David Byrne (tomorrow night), Tom Jones, Herbie Hancock, John Legend, the Orchestra -- and you even use the tagline "music with a view". So what's the deal using a view that's not your actually-pretty-awesome view? We'll forgive the misplacement of the skyline in the interest of the mailing's design feng shui, but sheesh . . . just step up to the top of the hill and snap a photo instead of googling "Philly Skyline".

Or drop me a line and I can do it for you. Prices negotiable.

* * *

You know who rocks a good Mann view? The Roots, that's who.



Speaking of great lineups, the second annual Roots Picnic is at the Festival Pier this weekend. The legendary Roots Crew, the legendary Public Enemy, TV on the Radio and local faves Santigold and Asher Roth will be among those taking the stage down on the Delaware. You can learn all about it at okayplayer, where the above graphic moves to the beat with a Mann Center view of the painted skyline out yonder. It's an artistic interpretation and the splashy-frame-thing obscures what would be Comcast Center anyway.

Ev. Ry. Bo. Dy. Touch this illa fifth dynamite. C'mon!

* * *

Completing the Philly Skyline Musical Skyline trifecta, we come to this brightly colored bit of viral marketing Philebrity spoke of last week. In the time since, it's come to light that the "she" who was coming home is Central Bucks West's Alecia Moore, known to her legions as Pink. (Or, god forgive you if you actually write it this way, "P!nk".)

At least I guess Pink has the legions to fill the 20,000 seat Wachovia Center as the headliner. (Her guest is the Ting Tings, who last played Philly at the Starlight Ballroom.)

It's also come to my attention that P!NK has not been among the celebrated birthdays on Philly Skyline, The Calendar, 2007, 2008 or 2009. Should she be? I mean . . . I suppose she's famous, but she's from Doylestown. That's sorta Philly, but she didn't get famous until after she moved to Atlanta to sing in an R&B group, after which she branched out on her own on LaFace Records. On the other hand, she met her future husband at the 2001 X-Games in Philly, sooo . . . I dunno. Should she be?

At any rate, she'll be celebrating her 30th birthday in September, and a few weeks after that she'll be playing in her "home" Philly, at the Wachovia Center. Good for you, Pink. And I gotta say, that's a nice looking skyline graphic you've got there.

* * *



Here we are at another skyline graphic that's changed since I snagged it. According to timestamps, these side by side CBS3 screencaps were made on May 28. Apparently cbs3.com has revamped its site in the six days since then, cos I can't find them now. As I recall it, the left graphic, with Comcast, was on the station's homepage, while the double-Bell-Atlantic on the right was on the individual news story pages.

I guess that's old hat now though, as there are no skyline graphics on the site except for the ones in the little video newscast -- which do not have Comcast and which have Bell Atlantic photoshopped out in favor of One Logan Square. Hey, it's your network, do to the skyline whatever you will, but don't think there aren't those of us who'll notice . . . or who won't do squats while watching the forecast. WTF?



PS: Hey Pat, it's been too long, love -- gimme a call and let's do lunch!

* * *

Aaaaand of course, we conclude this round of Skyline Inspections with the disclosure that we, Philly Skyline, are too up for critique. I've taken a lot of photos recently, but the most recent one of the skyline is this one from down Citizens Bank Park way, where my man Ryan Howard is yet again up with the bases loaded, this time against the Florida Marlins.

RyHo became the all time Phillies leader in grand slams over the weekend, moving past Michael Jack Schmidt, which Mark tells me he did in a measly 71 plate appearances, compared with Schmidt's 197 career plate appearances with the bases loaded:
Ryan Howard: 71 plate appearances, 19 hits (.297 avg), 3 doubles, 8 homeruns, 68 rbi, 1.046 OPS.

Mike Schmidt: 197 plate appearances, 54 hits (.331 avg), 9 doubles, 3 triples, 7 homeruns, 155 rbi, .913 OPS.
"19 hits with the sacks juiced, 8 of them ding dongs." Mark Adams, that's the sentence of the day. For that, you've just won yourself a Philly Skyline RyHo Salami Skyline!



–B Love


3 June 09: ON THE DELAWARE
In the first town in the first state



Under the Ben Franklin Bridge, on Pier 11 (which may or may not some day be a public park), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has a tidal gauge, measuring the daily rise and fall of the Delaware River. That station is exactly 100.0 miles from the river's exit at the Atlantic Ocean. That exit, the mouth of the Delaware Bay, is an invisible line traced from the tip of Cape May, New Jersey to Cape Henlopen, Delaware, pictured here.

The white bar in the middle is the northern tip of Cape Henlopen's peninsula distinguishing the Delaware River and Bay from the Atlantic Ocean, a dune of sand that's the tallest between Cape Hatteras and Cape Cod. Out past the breakwater is a transatlantic bound ship that departed one of the Delaware Valley ports. The cylindrical concrete structure is a relic of World War II, when the US Army established Fort Miles on the cape. From 1939 to 1941, the army built eleven of these observation towers on the Delaware side and two on the Jersey side to protect the ports of Philadelphia, Camden and Wilmington against enemy attack. One of them, called simply the World War II Observation Deck, is 94' tall and is open to the public.



From the top, you're afforded a 360° view, south to Rehoboth Beach, east across the horizon of the Atlantic, northwest into the Delaware Bay's interior, northeast to Cape May 17 miles away, west across the former fort which is now Cape Henlopen State Park, and just across the treetops, the little town of Lewes.

Lewes, Delaware -- pronounced "lewis", not "lose" -- is probably most familiar to us as one half of the Cape May-Lewes Ferry (Summer of the Delaware, vol. 22), but its history is the oldest of all non-native establishments in the Delaware Valley.

In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano became the first European to explore the east coast of the future United States, including a pass around the Delaware Bay. (In the thirty-some years before that, Christopher Columbus had explored the Caribbean, but only the islands and the coasts of Central and South America. Leif Ericson and the Vikings had explored the northeastern parts of modern Canada and Greenland around 1000 AD.) Verrazzano, who is commemorated by a plaque on the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk, described the natives he encountered:
These people are the most beautiful and have the most civil customs that we have fund on this voyage. They are taller than we are; they are a bronze color . . . the hair is long and black and they take great pains to decorate it; the eyes are black and alert, and their manner is of the ancients . . . they have all the proportions belonging to any well-built men. Their women are just as shapely and beautiful.
This passage is from the introduction of Frank Dale's excellent Delaware Diary, Episodes in the Life of a River (Rutgers Press, 1996.) The first chapter of the same book is titled "Nasty Little Village" -- an early English description of the town we now know as Lewes.

In 1609, as the English had already settled Jamestown, the French had Québec and the Spanish were settling the Caribbean and South America, the Dutch laid claim to New Netherland -- an area encompassing the modern Connecticut, Hudson and Delaware valleys -- to establish and exploit fur trade with the natives. Henry Hudson, an Englishman, was hired by the Dutch East India Company when he claimed he could find the northwest passage to Asia. He did not, but he did determine that the Hudson (New Netherland's "North River") was more navigable and therefore useful to the Dutch than the Delaware ("South River"), which was shallower and required smaller vessels. As such, the Dutch made Manhattan their center of operations.

Their South River did not go untouched, though. The Dutch explored as far north as Burlington Island and the Schuylkill (which, as we know, is Dutch for "Hidden River"). Meanwhile, in 1610, English naval officer Samuel Argall, who was later responsible for the kidnap of Pocahontas, developed the shortest route of travel between the kingdom of England and the Virginia Colony, at the time governed by Thomas West, Lord De La Warr. On one such travel, Argall passed into the sparse bay and named it for the governor; Delaware is how the bay, and the river that flowed into it, and the Indians that inhabited it, would all be designated by the English.

It was in 1631 that the first permanent settlement in the Delaware valley took shape. At the mouth of an oyster creek they named Hoornkill after a village in the Netherlands, the Dutch set up the town of Zwaanendael -- "valley of swans" -- for the purpose of trading, farming and whaling. There is now a Zwaanendael Museum in Lewes (pictured at right), built in 1931 for the settlement's 300th anniversary and modeled after the town hall of Hoorn in the Netherlands.

According to Delaware Diary, the Dutch colony's governor had a Lenni-Lenape beheaded for stealing a Dutch coat of arms, and the tribe retaliated by killing all of Zwaanendael's 30 inhabitants and destroying its buildings. While the little town at the mouth of the bay remained a trading post, it was not resettled until 1663, the name changed to that of the creek, Hoornkill. It was the next year that it became the nasty little village again.

In 1664, Peter Stuyvesant surrendered the Dutch colony he governed to the English, and New Amsterdam became New York. Under the Duke of York (brother of English King Charles II), the English's claims extended down through New Jersey; at the same time, Lord Baltimore's Maryland claims for the English extended up to the west shores of the Delaware. York and Baltimore disputed the land (including Hoornkill) until they united under the crown when England declared war on the Netherlands in 1672. Under the English, Hoornkill was anglicized to the charming Whorekill.

In the following ten years, Whorekill suffered another takeover by the Dutch and yet another by the English. (Mind you, the Swedes had also set up shop in a few locations upriver in the preceding decades with the blessing of the Dutch.) In these handovers, the citizens of the town were each time forced to swear allegiance to the respective Dutch and English crowns, and after the last one, Maryland's governor (Baltimore's son Calvert) decided to 'teach them a lesson' and burned their village while they watched. And of those who decided to relocate 60 miles upriver to New Castle, some were murdered along the way by hostile Indians.

After stabilizing as a port under English rule, Whorekill petitioned for and won a name change from the governor of the Middle Colonies (which was basically the British's rule over the former New Netherland) -- "New Deal". The new name came with a new courthouse in 1682 -- around the time a whole new way was coming.

A Quaker called William Penn came with a deed from York's brother the king for what would become Pennsylvania and Delaware. In his short tenure in the colonies, he changed the name of "New Deal alias Whorekills" to Lewestown, which was eventually shortened to Lewes. Penn also set aside land on Cape Henlopen "for the usage of the citizens of Lewes and Sussex County," effectively creating an early beachfront park.

In its 327 short years since then, little Lewes at the mouth of the Delaware River and Bay has been the home of skilled sailors for hire (before a channel was dredged, beginning with steam power in 1829) and relatedly the site of pirate raids (including a legend of Captain Kidd's burial of a chest of gold on Cape Henlopen), the site of a grassroots American standoff against a British Navy bombardment in the War of 1812, the Lewes and Rehoboth Canal (whose drawbridge you pass over on Rehoboth Avenue) one hundred years later, World War II's Fort Miles, and beginning in 1964, the Cape May-Lewes Ferry.

For a town of 3,000 resting in the shadow of the better known Cape May and Rehoboth Beach, Lewes packs a historic punch, largely of Dutch flavor but embellished by three centuries of English and American rule with a sprinkle of Swedish. Funny, then, that in my visit over the weekend, the two ships of interest at Lewes' port were replicas of vessels that never saw the Delaware sailed by a man who never knew America: Christopher Columbus' Niña and Pinta.



Lewes, Delaware is an easy two hour drive away, and is a must-stop for anyone interested in the history or geography of the Delaware River. And hey, it's right on the way to Rehoboth and its sun, sand and sexy queens.

NOTES & SOURCES:
The New Netherland Project, Virtual Tour.
Zwaanendael Museum, State of Delaware.
Lewes Facts, beach-net.com, beach travel guide to the Delmarva Peninsula.
The District: A History of the Philadelphia District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 1866-1971 (PDF), "Early Dredging," 1974.
Delaware, A Guide to the First State, compiled and written by the federal writers project of the Works Progress Administration for the State of Delaware, Viking Press, 1938.
Delaware Diary, Episodes in the Life of a River, Frank Dale, Rutgers Press, 1996.
Opportunity Valley, Edwin York, Xlibris, 2007.

–B Love


2 June 09: Calendar Companion: Comcast Center



Who knew? When our Comcast Center construction section took off with the unusual groundbreaking ceremony on the then-new version of this web site in March 2005, it was nothing new -- the University of Maryland had been hosting its own Comcast Center construction section since July 2000.

In 2001-02, as Juan Dixon was leading the Terps to their only NCAA men's basketball championship, the university was wrapping up construction on the new arena that would open for that team six months after they hoisted the trophy, replacing Cole Field House, which they'd used since 1955. Maryland's 18,000 seat Comcast Center was designed by Ellerbe Beckett, who also designed our Wachovia Center.

Meanwhile, around the time that Camden's E Centre became the Tweeter Center, so too did New England's Great Woods amphitheater become the Tweeter Center. (Corporate sponsorship always makes for fun tours -- "hey mannn, we're playing the Tweeter in Boston tonight . . . and the Tweeter in Philly tomorrow!") With Tweeter's financial instability, they last year opted out of the naming rights in Camden and it became the Susquehanna Bank Center. At Great Woods, the naming was picked up . . . by Comcast!

For all intents and purposes, Comcast Center is to Boston as The Susq is to Philadelphia, only Comcast Center is a lot longer than a five minute ferry ride away. The Nine Inch Nails and Beyoncé and Coldplay and Phish sized shows make their New England stop a good 35 miles south of downtown Boston at this 20,000 seat venue that opened in 1986. Such acclaimed bands as the Gin Blossoms and Nickelback have filmed videos here, and Korn released a dvd of a whole show filmed here. (It hurt to write that sentence.) Local heros Aerosmith will be playing their 23rd show at Comcast Center in two weeks, coheadlining with fellow Bostonians the Dropkick Murphys.

So then, the Comcast Center we know so well is the third of its kind. How do you like that.

I don't suppose there's a whole lot left to write about Comcast Center here on Philly Skyline. With its grand opening a year ago this Saturday, the Comcast Center chapter of this site concluded. Its real life's beginning was its online documentation's end. But for the integrity of the companion piece to the June subject of Philly Skyline, The Calendar: 2009, a quick recap won't hurt nobody none.

  • NAME: Comcast Center
  • DEVELOPER: Liberty Property Trust
  • ARCHITECT: Robert A.M. Stern
  • ENGINEER: Thornton Tomasetti
  • LANDSCAPE: Olin Partnership
  • LEED CERTIFICATION: Gold
  • URINALS: Waterless, with pipes installed "just in case"
  • ADDRESS: 1701 JFK Blvd
  • FLOOR COUNT: 58*
  • HEIGHT: 975' / 297.18m

    * There has been debate whether Comcast Center is 57 stories or 58, as has been regularly reported. While all of the building's official literature states 57 floors, 58 is accurate, insofar as there are 58 floor plates (including the subterranean Marketplace at Comcast Center).

    Philadelphia's new tallest building was also the tallest building to be completed in the United States in 2008, the same year the Phillies broke the Curse of William Penn, perhaps absolved by that most famous of Quakers when Comcast placed a miniature version of the statue atop City Hall on top of their new headquarters.

    The 80' HDTV dubbed The Comcast Experience . . . the soaring winter garden with Jonathan Borofsky's cartoonish sculptures Humanity in Motion . . . the recycled-water fountain chutes by Wet Design . . . Table 31 and the Plaza Café by Georges Perrier and Chris Scarduzio . . . the LED accent lighting by Winona Design . . . the building's place on the skyline (and place on Philly Beer Week's Septa pass, ha ha) . . .

    It's Comcast Center. The tallest building in Pennsylvania, the tallest building between New York and Chicago, the tallest green building in the country. Readers of this site are long familiar with it. And owners of this site's calendar will be sick of it by the end of this month, when hey, one Brian Roberts turns 50. Aww. Happy birthday, insanely rich and popular cable man.

    Suzanne Stephens wrote a nice feature on Comcast Center in a recent edition of Architectural Record, accompanied by a great photo by Peter Aaron that appears to have been taken at The St James, HERE. (Thanks for the heads up, Anthony!) More info than is probably necessary about Comcast Center is on Philly Skyline right HERE. And a nice 1200 x 800 Philly Skyline Comcast Skyline for yr desktop pleasure is HERE:



    –B Love





  • 1 June 09: On Lower Slower Delaware



    WEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL . . .

    There's a little town where they're down with the brown
    And even if you're gay you can shake it all day

    in REHOBOTH.

    There's a race up in Dover and the party's never over
    With the Pennsylvania people who've all left behind the steeple

    in REHOBOTH.

    The cops don't need bribes to pass along good vibes
    So wash down that rockfish with an ice cold Dogfish

    in REHOBOTH.

    They're white and they're black and they're tan and they're yellow
    And every last one is Delaware Mellow . . .

    In REHOBOTH, baby.

    I think you know what I'm talkin' bout. Purple drinks with purple peeps at the Purple Parrot, gettin' blotto in the Grotto, mmhmmm. And there ain't no beach tags on the LSD, no sirree. It's all good, baby bubba . . .

    in REHOBOTH.



    –B Love


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