2002-02-23 - 11:47 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Science Fiction Double Feature", RHPS soundtrack

Well, it's been almost a week and I'm still completely obsessed with the whole Philadelphia thing. I spend every spare moment on realtor.com and researching neighborhoods. Unfortunately, I'm not finding any really good neighborhood information. Statistics don't mean much. We need to go and LOOK, and talk to people who live in those neighborhoods.

On Monday when we got home, I was actually a little stunned. I was heartened by our explorations in Upper Darby, but I was depressed about what we'd seen in our little jaunt through Philadelphia.

Maybe I shouldn't be. I'm also struggling with some of what may be prejudices. I'm not sure. Or maybe I'm just spoiled.

See, the District of Columbia is a really nice city. Just about anywhere you go in the entire Northwest quadrant is nice. Capitol Hill is nice. I've driven through and skated through areas in the other three quadrants (except Anacostia) and although it's a bit run-down and there are some through streets that are rather dirty, I haven't really seen anything that compares to the poverty and neglect in what appears to be a large portion of Philadelphia.

I dunno, we were driving around blind, using only a map, so maybe we really did see only the worst spots. But I wonder. The Art Museum area is generally considered a very nice one, and it is, but just to the east it's awful. Run-down, abandoned houses and lots of trash. Even neighborhoods that are supposedly up-and-coming, like Queen Village, were nowhere near as pretty as borderline areas in DC. Well, maybe we missed seeing the restored areas.

Poindexter says that Philadelphia is primarily a blue-collar city, and many of the houses were built fifty years ago for people of moderate income, so you're not going to see the ornate row houses that I love so much in the District. That explains some of the neighborhoods, I guess, but then there's places like Germantown.

Germantown, I fell completely in love with in a painful sort of way. It's incredible. Cobblestone streets. It's got these GIGANTIC old stone mansions in Victorian and Queen Anne styles that look like this. They're in lots with huge, beautiful old trees, one after the other. Gorgeous, gorgeous homes.

And they look like shit. It's so depressing. They're falling apart. Part of me loves the ghostly look, and part of me is depressed that they're decaying. Most of them have been broken into apartments. On one hand, I'm happy that it's possible for people besides Bill Gates to live in such beautiful buildings. On the other, I hate that they're being so horribly neglected.

Sigh. There are a lot of other streets that we meandered along that had some really interesting abandoned/run-down houses too. Maybe places like that have the potential to be restored someday. I sure hope so. Poindexter thinks the city needs to draw more of a white-collar base with money and hoity-toity tastes before we're going to see any kind of real renaissance in Philadelphia.

Then you get into the issue of, well, if white-collar folks come in and take over everything, where will the lower-income people go? Sigh.

One other major disappointment for me was the discovery that Philadelphia is highly segregated.

I'm not used to this. Our street in San Jose was ethnically and economically diverse, my current neighborhood is ethnically diverse, and in the DC area in general, everybody comes from somewhere else. I see women in burqas on the streets and in the grocery store! I like being reminded that not everybody in the world is just like me.

But in Philadelphia, on the other hand, it seems that a neighborhood is either WHITE or BLACK. And if it's white, it's IRISH or ITALIAN. It's all boxed off. I thought I must just be crazy, but while looking for neighborhood information I happened across 1990 Census figures that back it up. Maybe it's changed since then; ten years is a long time. But I'm beginning to wonder if it's actually possible there to live in a neighborhood like the one I have now, where I've got neighbors who came here from all over the world and all over this country.

So, these are my first impressions, anyway. If anyone from Philadelphia is reading this, and wants to prove me wrong, PLEASE DO. I do SO want to be wrong, or looking in the wrong places.

But you know what I just realized? I think I'm going to love it anyway.

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