Until he starts talking about the Mummers, I think journalist Steve Lopez is right on. (Introduced by the quintessential Philly cool cat, the Geator.)
liz | 1:41 PM | Uncategorized
Liz Spikol was born in Philadelphia sometime in the 20th century. She started writing about her experience as a person with mental illness in 1999, while employed at Philadelphia Weekly as the paper’s managing editor. Aside from serving as that paper’s web editor, music editor, staff writer, senior editor, executive editor and a host of other random roles that she couldn’t make up her mind about, she has also worked as a Spanish teacher, as a Certified Peer Specialist during Philly’s system-wide transformation and as a communications specialist for a prison reform organization. Currently, she works at the Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania and writes book reviews for PW. This blog — named one of the Top 10 Bipolar Blogs of 2007 and 2008 by PsychCentral — is about medications, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, OCD, PTSD, SAD (and many other acronyms), mad pride, Big Pharma, celebrities, hospitals, stigma and the recovery movement. And other stuff.
i don’t get philadelphia. never have. it’s definitely a backwater, i agree with that. i just don’t get the perverse charm. i think it’s just perverse. and the “defensive pride” lopez talks about, is to me just a massive inferiority complex. and that’s because philadelphia actually is inferior to new york, washington, boston, etc. it’s inferior to every big city in the US except for maybe detroit and any city in ohio.
and the mummers are one, untrained and untalented oafs pretending to be musicians. two, gay men afraid to come out of the closet because they live in backwards, bigoted neighborhoods and are probably mostly homophobic themselves. three, very similar to skits put on by not-so-bright, drunken frat boys and sorority girls.
often, the mummers are all three.
to me, philadelphia’s a dump. and not in a charming way. just a dump.
^ Wow, whoever wrote that is an idiot. Have fun in your strip mall sushi house sc.
But anyway, I really wanted to say that this is just as good a description of Philly;
http://www.dovate.com/blog/?p=376
Hmmm. The Mummers were a phenomenon I deliberately did not pay attention to when I lived in Philadelphia (or the range of Channel 6, which broadcast the parade, I think). I wasn’t able to articulate my reasons at the time the way the previous poster did, but that’s how I feel now. A Mardi Gras without charm, and prone to rain or snow.
Perhaps that’s part of its charm – the fact that it can lose its place in the city’s imagination if it rains or snows heavily on New Year’s Day. One day is so important in the lives of so many boorish men and their pleasure is dependent on the whims of weather.
Steve Lopez, on the other hand, is a journalistic genius. Of late, his column makes the front page of the preview edition of the Sunday Los Angeles Times. It is scathing and asks bitter and biting and insightful questions of the rich and bureaucratic and powerful. He’s not above casting aspersions on David Geffen, the media impresario/gazillionaire who wants to own the paper, either. I say, go Steve! If we could clone him and send him to the Inquirer, the paper would be in better shape.
LA steals a lot of talent from Philadelphia. It’s less vicious than New York and the climate is certainly better. And you don’t have to feel guilty about having your house cleaned or lawn mowed.
Of course, these are all reasons for a person to want to return to Philadelphia – depressed housing prices, good transit system if you live near a rail station, and easy to get anywhere from the airport – or to the airport. None of those are true in Los Angeles.
One more thing about Philadelphia: you have a single really good public radio station (WHYY) and several great ones (WXPN, WRTI, etc.). Los Angeles’s radio scene is divided in two, or maybe three, with no one station covering the entire region. Lucky you and sad for us.
Our split is between the snotty Westside and the more diverse Eastside. The Westside is represented by KCRW, the station which breeds Hollywood industry musicistas. KPCC is the Eastside station which is controlled by Minnesota Public Radio, which also runs USC’s (classical) and Cal State Long Beach’s (jazz) stations. They’re both good, but suspiciously inaudible “for engineering reasons” in random areas throughout the 10 million-plus county.
Oh, and there’s a vague, floating Pacifica station covering everybody and heard by almost nobody.
Enjoy your media independence, Philadelphia.
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