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I know the consensus is that NYC is dirty, but people don't magnify it like they do when referencing Philadelphia, its sort of looked over because its NYC. Same with homeless.
IDK, a big complaint I got from many people about NYC is that it's dirty, garbage everywhere, homeless people, etc. In fact, more people complain about NYC this way than Philly. Philly gets more complaints about it being rundown and it feeling unsafe.
I actually like Philly a lot more than NYC for lifestyle. You can get a nice brownstone/row house there for under a million close to center city. In NYC, the same thing would cost you at least 5 million dollars. Unless you're a multi-millionaire, life in Philly is simply a lot better than in NYC.
True. I’ve noted older, native Philadelphians are surprised to learn we moved to the city with great enthusiasm 7+ years back. Because they have lived here all their lives, birthright Philadelphians don’t see all the city has to offer. It’s analogous to a fish being unaware of the water it swims in. Further adding to the picture is the fact that only other city many life long Philadelphians know is the behemoth 90 minutes up the road. Well, guess what: No American city can compare with Manahattan’s heft and sophistication.
In the meantime, more and more people like us are picking up stakes and moving here. It’s no longer the insular city it has been. In the meantime, more of those who study in the area are remaining here after graduation bringing a fresh energy to the city. I’ve noticed it in the 7 short years we’ve lived here. And now we’re seeing political change with the election of a progressive DA last fall and the defeat of many of the machine politicians in last week’s election.
Philadelphia’s reputation is in good hands with the rising generation.
Honestly the degree of generalizing about native Philadelphians makes me angry. You do not know all of us. You're superior tone! Please. Who do you think made and supported and started the tremendously important cultural institutions in the city that you know about either through experiencing them or some other way today, for instance? Mostly native Philadelphians that's who.
I'm a native as you know. I'm live in the Philadelphia because I want to. I'm proud of it in ways you can't measure. People who stayed here through the bad times, who actually started the renaissance, deserve some recognition that you fail to give us.
Its interesting to me that people complain about Philadelphia being dirty (which it is), yet I find NYC to be so much dirtier, yet it is never really mentioned, or magnified like it is in Philadelphia.
New York gets a "pass" about its dirt because its NYC. LA gets a "pass" about its absolutely horrendous homeless problem which seems unsolveable right now because it's LA. But Philadelphia is still known as Killadelphia or Philth-adelphia. It's like few recognize that a lot has been done about homocides, though admittedly not enough, or the Center City District and University City District have done nothing, apparently, to keep both clean.
Honestly the degree of generalizing about native Philadelphians makes me angry. You do not know all of us. You're superior tone! Please. Who do you think made and supported and started the tremendously important cultural institutions in the city that you know about either through experiencing them or some other way today, for instance? Mostly native Philadelphians that's who.
I'm a native as you know. I'm live in the Philadelphia because I want to. I'm proud of it in ways you can't measure. People who stayed here through the bad times, who actually started the renaissance, deserve some recognition that you fail to give us.
With all due respect, you do march to the beat of your own drummer.
I lived with a native for 28 years. He met me in Boston, fell in love with me, and considered moving there but decided to bring me down here instead because I didn't show enough interest in his career move.
The place grew on me quickly, but I also quickly learned that he didn't think his hometown all that hot - it was too provincial and insular.
Now, the plural of anecdote is not data, but I also still remember something that former Penn graduate student Marc Stein, who is now on the faculty at San Francisco State University, wrote in the preface to his history of pre-Stonewall LGBT Philadelphia, "City of Sisterly and Brotherly Loves" (Chicago, 2000).
In the preface, Stein writes that he had difficulty beginning his book at the outset for a number of reasons, one of them being that he didn't much like this city. Then, he wrote, he read an article that referred to a survey that stated that 60 percent of Philadelphians surveyed said they would rather live somewhere else. With that, he decided he had absorbed the local attitude towards the place, and eventually, he came to like it.
By contrast, I think if someone were to survey Kansas Citians around that same time (mid-1990s), they wouldn't have expressed that sentiment in such large numbers.
Honestly the degree of generalizing about native Philadelphians makes me angry. You do not know all of us. You're superior tone! Please. Who do you think made and supported and started the tremendously important cultural institutions in the city that you know about either through experiencing them or some other way today, for instance? Mostly native Philadelphians that's who.
I'm a native as you know. I'm live in the Philadelphia because I want to. I'm proud of it in ways you can't measure. People who stayed here through the bad times, who actually started the renaissance, deserve some recognition that you fail to give us.
Many of the natives don't do themselves any favors in regards to their often very vocalized disdain for the city. You guys are your own worst enemy, and in my opinion as a transplant, quite deserving of the Negadelphian label. Obviously there are exceptions, like yourself, but overall it's a very true generalization.
Many of the natives don't do themselves any favors in regards to their often very vocalized disdain for the city. You guys are your own worst enemy, and in my opinion as a transplant, quite deserving of the Negadelphian label. Obviously there are exceptions, like yourself, but overall it's a very true generalization.
"Exceptions" don't get acknowledged as much as we should. It's frustrating.
"Exceptions" don't get acknowledged as much as we should. It's frustrating.
I wonder about that too.
Ed Bacon landed on the cover of Time for his work on Society Hill, the only city planner ever to do so.
Steve Poses and the motley crews that opened the Knave of Hearts, the Astral Plane and Friday Saturday Sunday seem to me to be widely acknowledged as the architects of the first Restaurant Renaissance.
"One percent for art" originated here and is widely known within the planning profession.
The problem is, the Negadelphians have historically been quite vociferous in their disdain while the believers have been more modest in their evangelism. Must be that Quaker modesty at work.
(And in that Baltzell book I still recommend new arrivals here read, he holds up the American Friends Service Committee, formed by descendants of the more outwardly oriented Hicksites after that split within the Religious Society of Friends, as an example of what could have been. Of course, they're rooted here too - but as Baltzell notes, they were the exception to the rule again.)
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