Philly Weekly: Tim Whitaker’s Sour Grapes
In today’s Philadelphia Weekly, Tim Whitaker’s Editor’s Note is titled “SHHH”. It should be titled “Sour Grapes.”
Whitaker takes issue with Julia Vitullo-Martin’s “A Tale of Several Cities”, published in the Wall Street Journal, which compares Philadelphia unfavorably to Boston.
Why, she wondered, was Boston so able to prosper—“people and businesses outbidding one another to get inâ€â€”while Philly “languishes, with acres of vacant and underused property announcing the lack of local demand?â€
In Center City she found the “few good buildings that are still standing†routinely visited “by street people begging at their entrances.â€
Boston was Hollywood’s idea of a “hip, fabulous place to live,†while Philadelphia seemed a “bleak postindustrial landscape….
Not only is she wrong in her observations about Philadelphia, but …
… Boston has apartheid, nightmarish traffic and John Kerry, just for starters.â€
I’ve lived in Philadelphia since 1999, just a year longer than I lived in Massachusetts, where I spent a lot of time in Boston. I feel uniquely qualified to compare the two cities, and to explain why, prices aside, Boston is indeed a more desireable place to live in than Philadelphia.
For starters, does Tim Whitaker really want to compare John Kerry unfavorably to Pennsylvania’s congressional representation? Until yesterday, our people in congress were corrupt Curt “Wacky” Weldon, Don “Philandering Strangler” Sherwood, Mike “Rubber Stamp” Fitzpatrick, and Rick “Man-on-Dog” Santorum. And we still have to deal with the likes of Arlen “Single Bullet” “Illegal NSA Wiretapping” “Fuck Habeas Corpus” Specter. Call me a moonbat liberal, but I’d rather a loudmouthed Brahmin than any of the truly odious vermin that have represented Pennsylvania and Philadelphia for so long.
Second, does Whitaker really want to compare Boston’s history of racial tension favorably to our own? Boston had riots over forced busing. We dropped a bomb on MOVE, and incinerated an entire residential city block populated by African Americans. Our black neighborhoods are some of the poorest and most dangerous in the city. And when Mayor Street made the repugnant statement that “the brothers and sisters are running the city. Oh, yes. The brothers and sisters are running this city. Running it! Don’t you let nobody fool you, we are in charge of the City of Brotherly Love. We are in charge! We are in charge”, the white reaction was just as ugly.
Moving forward, is Whitaker seriously comparing our traffic favorably with Boston’s? Sure, Boston’s had to suffer through the unforgiveable boondoggle called the Big Ceiling Collapse Dig, but has Tim driven on the dangerous, merge lane-less, accident prone Schuykill Expressway recently? Or been rear-ended at the Conshohocken Curve? Or gotten stuck on the Vine Expressway? Or tried to leave the City during Rush Hour? Driven the Blue Route? Or the legendarily deadly Roosevelt Boulevard?
Whitaker takes offense with Vitullo-Martin’s characterization that the City “languishes, with acres of vacant and underused property announcing the lack of local demand” Perhaps that’s because the Mayor’s Neighborhood Tranformation Initiative tore down old buildings in poor neighborhoods, and replaced them largely with vacant lots, which then promptly went up for sale to the highest bidder. People have been displaced, and in some cases have had to fight the city to keep their homes, while the cost of land has skyrocketed, making buying a home in these neighborhoods unaffordable for the people who live there. Considering that these neighborhoods are blighted and drug-infested, what wealthy person in their right mind is going to plunk down roots across the street from Johnny Crackhouse? And if the well-to-do actually set down roots in say Brewerytown, it is a certainty that the poor will be shoved somewhere else. And what of the middle class?
Whitaker says that Vitullo-Martin’s claim that the “few good buildings that are still standing” are haunted by “by street people begging at their entrances” is wrong. It’s Whitaker that’s wrong. There’s a reason local legend Kenn Kweder sang about the “Welcoming Committee, down by the Wawa”: this city has a horrible homelessness problem, so much so that the Mayor vowed to end homelessness in our city in 10 years, after which his divisive homelessness czar Rob Hess pulled up stakes and took a job in New York City. If anything, the problem has gotten worse, with the local newspaper reporting a 24% increase since last summer. And as for the buildings that are standing, Vitullo-Martin is correct, because in Philadelphia the Historical Commission works to demolish historic blocks and put condominiums and parking garages where they’re not wanted.
Here are some other observations.
Boston Harbor is clean enough to swim in. Compare that to the chemical spill we call the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, or the toxic spew that fills our creeks.
Let’s talk about culture for a moment. In Boston, the TD Banknorth Garden and Fenway Park are right smackdab in the city, where visitors can patronize the surrounding businesses, like rstaurants, stores, and clubs. In Philadelphia, thanks to Vince Fumo and others, efforts to situate the Phillies’ stadium at 15th and Spring Garden were quashed, as was a similar plan to build Liberty Yards at the site of the old Schmidt’s Brewery where, surprise, they have instead built an incredibly expensive condominum complex that ordinary Fishtowners and Kensos could never afford to live in in a million years. Again, what about the middle class?).
Today, the stadiums the taxpayers funded are where they’ve been since the early 1970s: at the very bottom of South Philly, far from any local businesses (compare to the original Connie Mack Stadium, originally located at Somerset and Lehigh). Tell me how this helps establish Philadelphia as a destination: from my perspective, the quick-and-easy access to the highway and the bridges to New Jersey encourage an almost colonial relationship between the stadium and fans, and the city. They come to our outskirts to watch the game, spend their money on concessions owned by corporations, and then go home without dropping a dime at a locally-owned, small business or eating at one of our fantastic restaurants.
Boston has a thriving, indeed legendary, music scene, supported by the fans, the bands, and the radio. Philadelphia? Not so much. Sure, we have some good clubs and some great bands, but long-time musicians like Kenn Kweder, Andrew Chalfen, and Leo Eisenstein remind me that South Street was once lined with live music venues. That’s not true anymore. And without the strong support of radio, our scene adds up to significantly less than Boston. It has always amazed me that a city as far north as Boston has so much bluegrass music on the radio: Philadelphia is a few scant miles from the Mason Dixon line and there is literally nothing. Where Boston has WGBH, WMBR, WBUR, WERS, WFNX, and a host of other college, public, and corporate radio stations supporting the live scene, we have…? Well, WXPN on a good day: they’re UPenn’s pre-programmed, left-of-the-dial-adult-contemporary station. We have WKDU, which has only short-term student DJs that play hardcore/metal, electronic, and reggae/hip-hop. We have WRTI, jazz and classical. Our corporate stations have little to no investment at all in the local scene. My former band mate Paul Edelman may have been wrong about everything else, but he was spot-on when he pointed out that he couldn’t get airplay anywhere in this city. Contrast to our tour stop in Boston, where we were invited to play live on WMBR, when we had never played the city before.
One area in which Boston and Philadelphia are comparable is in their obsolete and poorly run transit systems. Boston’s MBTA is more wide-ranging than Philadelphia’s, but shuts down completely, buses included, at 12:30, while Philadelphia has a few lines that run 24 hours. However, Philadelphia’s system is more expensive than Boston. Buses and subways cost $2.00 here, and all transfers are 60 cents. Currently, Boston buses and subways cost $1.25, transfer is free from subway-to-subway and bus-to-bus, and where a transfer fee is incurred, the cost is 35 cents. However, in both cities, service is spotty at best.
For violent crime, Philadelphia is the number one city of its size, according to the FBI. Boston’s crime rate seems to have dropped. Perhaps that’s why it’s considered a “hip, fabulous place to liveâ€.
Speaking of living, it is also true that Boston has a far broader array of territory that is welcoming to tourists, visitors, and of course residents. Philadelphia is much more block-by-block. Philadelphia’s safe and inviting areas include Center City, Old City, Art Museum, Chestnut Hill, parts of Mt. Airy, Northern Liberties, parts of Fishtown, parts of Powelton Village, University City, West Philly as far as 50th Street, Fairmount Park, the Italian Market, the Stadiums, and some parts of South Philly. Northeast Philly is made up of ticky-tacky houses and shopping centers: outside of Pennypack Park, there’s not much going up there. These enclaves are scattered among wide swaths of blight, grinding poverty, and the crime that goes with those conditions. Most of the Delaware River waterfront is occupied by the remnants of industry, and is being bought up by slots parlors and a condominiums. Philadelphia is better compared to New Haven, where I also used to live, than it is to Boston.
On major reason Boston is in better shape than Philadelphia is that, as the capitol of Massachusetts, it makes sure it funds itself adequately so the city can serve its residents. On a related note, Albany has no doubt that without the economic might of New York City, the entire Empire State would go belly-up. Here in Pennsylvania, Harrisburg has treated us like a red-headed step-child, consistently giving us the short end of the stick. This does not work in our favor.
Finally, one major difference between Philadelphia and Boston is that Boston is clean. They pick up after themselves. The city recycles far more extensively than Philadelphia: pickup is weekly, and they take glass, plastic, corrugated cardboard, and paper. For that matter, you can turn in cans and bottle for a nickel a pop. To call Philadelphia’s recycling system retarded is an insult to retarded people. And everywhere you go in this city, from the rich folks on Chestnut Hill to the poorest of the poor in Feltonville, our city is awash in trash. It is like living in a landfill here. And don’t just take my word for it. When we went to Boston last year with the Jangling Sparrows our drummer,a lifelong Philly resident, was enchanted with Boston. “I love it here,” he said. “It’s just like Philly, except its… clean! It’s as if the people here take pride in their city!” And this is where Vitullo-Martin is wrong. Philadelphia’s Quaker background has nothing to do with the pigslop we’ve made of our city. Quaker tenets includ community, service to others, and self-reliance. For longer than Tim Whitaker and I have been around, Philadelphia has been run by notoriously self-interested people, patronage politicians, and a pay-to-play ethos that goes far beyond that which goes on in places like Chicago and Boston. Is it any wonder the city languishes?
Look, I love this city. I’ve lived here for almost 8 years now, bought my house here, and intend to stay here for a long time. When I had the opportunity to move north to the bucolic splendor of Vermont, I turned it down. Philly remains one of the cheapest places to rent or own on the East Coast, if not in the entire country. We have the infrastructure in place to do so much better. I WANT a high-quality transit system. I WANT a cleaner city, both physically and politically. I love our architecture, our rivers, our beautiful, if littery, Park System. Our history is second to none: we are every bit as important as Boston in the establishment of these United States. They have Paul Revere and the North Church, but we have Ben Franklin, the Declaration of Independence, the Continental Congress, Independence Hall, and Thomas Fucking Paine. But this is all in the past.
Whitaker believes, “Philadelphia is noisy and combative by nature. We scrap and fight all day. It wakes us up, keeps us alive. Our bellicosity is a point of pride. It’s our handle. For better, and for worse, it’s what makes us an original. E-A-G-L-E-S. We should direct our belligerence at more deserving targets” and points the finger at Vitullo-Martin. He is 100% wrong.
Philadelphia’s problem isn’t Wall Street Journal writers who accurately describe our city to the chagrin of local editors.
The problem is Philadelphia itself and Philadelphians. Bad publicity is not the disease: it is the symptom. Instead of telling others to stop pointing out our weaknesses, we need to clean up our OWN act and show that we can be a world class city. Until people like well-meaning Tim Whitaker start pointing that finger in the proper direction, that ain’t gonna happen.
13 Responses to “Philly Weekly: Tim Whitaker’s Sour Grapes”
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November 10th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
Wow, Brendan. You tore him to pieces.
November 10th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
I’m not done, I have to update.
I lost the post three times, and forgot a paragraph…
November 10th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
It would be nice if these sorts of comparisons were done between cities that had something in common. Let’s see, if we take a mid sized city which, for the last century, has had a primarily service economy and compare it to a large industrial city that spend the last half century losing it entire economy, which one will come out looking more like a Lands End advertisement? What a fucking surprise. What next? The beaches are nicer in Hawaii? Also, how the hell did I miss the day that all of the buildings in Center City collapsed?
November 10th, 2006 at 7:24 pm
And sorry to be so negative, but Vitullo-Martin piece really pisses me off. As you point out there’s plenty to be critical of, but she’s just pulling it out of her ass. She’s just doing a gut feeling thing and isn’t even dealing with a real place. A few buildings left standing? The homeless bit is another stupid thing, as Boston’s rate of homelessness per 100,000 is signifigantly higher than Philadelphia’s. Whatever.
November 10th, 2006 at 9:41 pm
The “buildings left standing” line is pretty lame, and I will admit I don’t know what she’s referring to. But I also disagree with your statement that Boston “has had a primarily service economy” for most of the 20th century.
The last 15-20 years? Indubitably. But for the previous 80-85? I’d like to see evidence of that.
Same with your statement about the homeless problem in Boston. I’d like to see some data.
My point stands: the problems with philadelphia aren’t caused by a snarky, and misinformed, article in the WSJ. They’re caused by Philadelphia itself, and Whitaker doesn’t address any of that. He just says the writer is wrong without explaining why.
Philadelphia is a corrupt shithole, and it’s the way the city does its business, as well as the residents who tolerate it, that have made it this way.
Thank god for people like Vern Anastasio, Anne Dicker, Albert Yee, Philly for Change and neighborhood networks, who agitate for reform, run campaigns, and try to change our city from the ground up.
November 10th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
Homeless rates per 100,000
Philadelphia 32.26
San Francisco 36.89
Seattle 40.27
New York 40.62
Boston 46.69
Washington 56.89
November 10th, 2006 at 10:31 pm
I’m not disagreeing with the root of the problems having nothing to do with the crap written on the pages of the Wall Street Journal. What I’m saying is that comparing Philadelphia to Boston is silly and I really hate seeing. A much more useful comparison would be to other rust belt cities that had to deal with similar economic collapse in the second half of the 20th century. Better yet, compare it to the Philadelphia that existed when I was a kid. Talk about a shithole. Somehow, even before it had Albert Yee, it managed to improve itself to a place where people who are priced out of other metro areas are willing to come and live and call a shithole. I think at least a few of the longtime residents had something to do with that.
November 10th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
I’ve lived in Boston for 4 years, and the Boston suburbs for another 2, and Philly off and on for six.
While I like both cities, Boston reminds me of a French city, where the slums have been moved to the suburbs. Boston ’solved’ the problem of low income housing by making it too expensive to live there unless you had public housing or made 50k/year.
That’s why Boston is hip- it’s filled with the well to do and well-educated. Everyone else has been priced out of town.
And while Philly has inefficient public service, so does Boston. Starting a business there is as difficult as it is here. It’s just that for certain businesses, it’s the only place to start, since your employees were already there.
Philly can’t follow Boston’s lead, unless we cloned both Penn and Temple a few times.
November 12th, 2006 at 3:40 am
I’ve lived in Boston since 1992 (with the exception of a regrettable two-year return to Newport RI from ‘95 to ‘97) and since I’ve never been to Philly I can’t compare the two. I guess it’s all relative. There is much I love about Boston, but the gentrification, skyrocketing cost of living/plummeting of good jobs, and eradication of all the places and things that made the city a cultural (and subcultural) mecca in Boston proper has rendered the city all but useless. All places change and evolve, and let’s admit it, clubs like the Rathskeller were dead for years before they officially were forced to close in 1998 (not unlike CBGB’s slow demise into a pathetic shadow of its former self), but there is NOTHING in Kenmore Square (save for Nuggets Records, which somehow manages to stay afloat) that you can’t find in any other city now (The Gap, Pizzeria Uno, an overpriced hotel, etc.). This, of course, is the result of thuggish development by the Boston University machine, which drove dozens of honest, family-run small businesses like Kenmore Liquors and Bertha Cool (a used clothing store) into the ground. Nearby Landsdowne Street is a joke; the “rock” clubs there like Avalon and Axis cater largely to rich students. On the occasions where a good, legendary rock band plays at one of these venues, a strict curfue kicks in so the rock crowd has to make way for the Eurotrash dance crowd. Legends like X and the Bad Brains have had to do sets so painfully short that John Doe once apologized to the audience because they didn’t have time to talk to the crowd between tunes.
Most of the true Boston rock tends to happen in Cambridge clubs and other venues on the outskirts now (Allston, Quincy, Davis Square in Somerville, Inman Square on the Camb/Sville border, etc.).
Public transportation here sucks. There is no 24-hour service. While Brendan contends that our public transportation covers greater ground than Philly’s does, the T is outmoded and run by a corrupt, cash-flush quasi-public institution that year after year declines in service quality while continuing to hike fares. Few of the bus and train lines run on schedule or with any frequency, except in areas (BU, BC, Harvard) where there are people with money. I’m sorry, but it shouldn’t take you two hours to get from Brighton Center to Central Square in Cambridge (which, geographically, is about a 10 minute car ride or a 15-20 minute bike ride). It’s no wonder why the parking situation gets more and more competitive by the year. It makes more sense to drive yourself into debt (assuming you can afford it) as a car owner than to deal with the nightmare of public transportation.
Economy-wise, Boston took a major hit in the early 2000s, because its strongest industries had been technology and finance — Boston was actually considered at one point to be the Silicone Valley of the East Coast. Good jobs remain hard to come by, in spite of all the talk of economic growth. By being stubborn and sticking it out, it has gotten harder and harder for me to make ends meet in this city, and I don’t even have a family to worry about keeping fed and clothed. I have no idea how working families even survive in Boston (oh yeah, they share cramped apartments with other families in crime-and-violence-plagued areas like Dorchester, Mattapan aka “Murderpan”, Roxbury, and Chelsea).
I just hope the climate will change with the political shift. Our long-absentee governor, Republican presidential aspirant Mitt “The Stormin’ Mormon” Romney, will be giving his seat up to Deval Patrick, a smart, rich, socially-conscious Democrat and former Clinton colleague.
November 12th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
despite all you say, brendan, i still LOVE PHILLY and have always hated boston.
November 13th, 2006 at 3:02 am
My last post was definitely to offer some of the negatives on living in Boston, but I can’t argue with your comments about the ongoing strength of the (greater) Boston music scene and wealth of free-form, non-commercial, college-based radio here. When I transferred to Northeastern University in 1992 from URI, it had as much, if not more, to do with the music scene than any of my other reasons for moving. It’s not a perfect, integrated scene and it’s not without its share of problems (cliqueyness, scenesters, sleazebags, and so forth), but still, the longer I stay, the harder it becomes for me to imagine living anywhere else.
November 13th, 2006 at 3:27 pm
i also think brendan is a bit harsh on philly.
from my experience boston is VERY expensive, shuts down at 1am or so, and, perhaps most glaring, is extremely segregated. I mean like south african apartheid segregated.
also, I do not know how to quantify this, but how does one discuss the problem of the white-irish boston masshole type?
you know, the guys that show up at shows all fucked up drunk and deliberately bump into people in line just to start trouble?
the ones that see a black person walking down the street and call them “nigger” to their face?
philly, to me, seems like “the last city in america”
unvarnished, un-re-habbed, still edgy, still dangerous, still independent.
still 19th century in so many ways.
There has been no “disneyfication” of philly, and in fact, our “disney” spot is still a large hole in the ground–or it was last I checked.
philly is still DIY in many areas, and in philly you can still buy a house for less than 100k…
Sure, people are pigs here, and they litter and will tell you to fuck off if you call them on it, but at the same time you can still walk down the street and drink a beer here–or smoke a blunt–and no one is going to hassle you.
‘
there are things I hope will change here, but I hope they never change so much that philly becomes boston or nyc.
I might say that I am sick of people dissing philly, but on the other hand, maybe I should ignore it since complaints about the city may keep people from nyc and boston from moving here and fucking it all up.
this is the best place i have ever lived, and I don’t plan on ever leaving.
November 13th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
i’m with steveeboy who outlines most of the reasons i love philly but was too lazy to write.
also love that it seems to be filled with people who, like me, would be pleased if they never had to get dressed up again, so you can be as big of a slob as you want pretty much anywhere. potheads abound. middle aged people hang out in bars - i never saw that before, outside of the old man blarney stone drinkers. there’s loads of good cheap ethnic food. and yard’s philly pale ale!!!
and as someone who lived 15 years in nyc, yes, i do miss the fast and easy mass transit. but if you do have a car, this city is way easier to get in and out of, or around, than either boston or nyc. there’s no comparison. and the tickets are cheap. and philly isn’t dirtier than nyc either.
and i know you have big problems with the music scene, but i can go out dancing in clubs with my middle aged women friends and not feel like an old freak.