One day, when you’re in Philadelphia, you should try to seek out the opinion of this city from one of its visitors. Try to find a visitor from the United States, and preferably a major city. I must caution you now that it will be difficult; it is not a city for those whose travel preferences do not overlap at all with European and Asian tourists or suburban children on a chaperoned field trip.
The New Yorkers, who may come in for a weekend to visit friends, will invariably display a sort of callous amusement toward the city; they tend to view the city the way an effortlessly successful Alpha Male may view his bumbling, ne’er-do-well best friend. Philadelphia does not even seem to register for the residents of Boston and D.C.—maybe because it is further away, but possibly because one moves to cities like Boston and D.C. in order to avoid the type of misadventures which are abundant in a city like Philly. I’ve found that Chicagoans tend to be the most critical of Philly; they are personally offended by its very nature, and unlike the New Yorkers, find no such humor in its less attractive traits. Philly confirms every fear that Midwesterners have of the East Coast—that people are rude, the streets are dirty, that it’s rife with crime—but with none of the glamour and gloss which New York, Boston, and D.C. generously dole out.
On the flip side, Baltimore and New Orleans folk tend to be more forgiving, even appreciative, of Philadelphia and its many flaws. Probably because living in these cities makes one understand the experience of searching for the good in a place which has already been so abused, so mishandled, and so maligned by so many. I think that when you live in a place like this city, you learn not to give up. Once, I almost gave up on Philadelphia. There was a time, maybe in my second or third year of living here, where my previously intermittent homesickness for Chicago would not seem to disappear. I ran away back home for two weeks in the summer of 2007; I was escaping my life in Philadelphia, and the fear that I had made a horrible mistake after all, and that maybe it did not hold anything for me in the end. I feared that my choice to move there had not been a step forward at all, and that it had merely been a diversion.
And so I spent a magical two weeks in Chicago. It was clear-skied and every day the sun shone diamond-bright on gleaming, clean streets; twilight fell in gauzy swathes of pearlescent blue. I recall hurtling down Lake Shore Drive in the rain, the glittering lights of the city refracted a thousand times in the beads of water racing across the taxi’s windshield. And I remember being sprawled out on the lawn of my parents’ suburban home, glistening blades of grass above me and a big, blue-white sky above me, a sky unfettered by that singular urban haze of humidity and smog which seemed emanate from every surface back in Philadelphia. Clouds drifted across the sky, innocent and untroubled as sheep grazing in a field. I did not want to go back to Philadelphia.
We’ve heard this story before. A man, dogged with guilt at the fading novelty of his marriage, encounters an old flame looking as beautiful as she did the last time he saw her. The man begins to have doubts. He begins to entertain thoughts of leaving his wife for this girl; the girl offers a fantasy which his wife, by dint of being his life partner, could never provide. Perhaps running away with this girl would also kill that fantasy, but this is a truth which never occurs to our protagonist. Herein lies the difference between infatuation and love: with the former, you want to be a part of someone else’s world, and with the latter, you want to bring your world to them. Infatuation means turning away from yourself and denying that which makes you, you.
And because we know this story well, then we know how it ends. Ultimately the man realizes that he’s been projecting an ideal this whole time. He finds that he misses the familiarity of his marriage. He recognizes that, in matrimony, you make a commitment which maturity bids you to honor. He learns all over again how to love his wife.
This is what happened with me and Philadelphia. Philadelphia teaches you patience. Other cities hide their urban blight with clever politics and sly marketing. This is not the case in Philly, where it is difficult to make it through the day without rubbing shoulders with someone much less fortunate. It’s true that the city does not offer you much if you are looking for easy fun and obvious beauty. But I love how inaccessible it is to outsiders in that respect; even now, after five years of living here, I still discover small treasures around the city. Maybe it’s a neighborhood watering hole which I’d never seen reason to set foot inside before. Maybe it’s a charming storefront sign, left untouched from decades before on a now-shuttered, more modern establishment.
I will leave you with this: when Philadelphia finally opens itself to you, it is—and I can’t think of a more fitting word—a rewarding experience. You have to give it that second chance. You have to learn to love it. Just ask the people who stayed here.
