The New Italian Market

Helen Urbinas's puff piece on Philly.com has managed to shove the proverbial stick further up the traditional Philadelphian's ass.

This benign article wasn't mean to spark debate, just fill space, but we all know that down the rabbit hole known as the internet, it takes about three posts on message boards or comments sections before the discussion turns racist.

The proposal and conversation is an irrelevant nonstarter. As far as I know, the only official designation of any neighborhood is its District or Ward.

"The Italian Market" is a website, not a legal demarcation.

People will call it what they call it. Developers attempted to rebrand the Gayborhood as Midtown Village, but people still call it the Gayborhood and will as long as Woody's continues to expand. Chinatown is full of Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, and Thai restaurants but will always be called Chinatown.  

It's real estate mumbo jumbo. Call it whatever you want: Little Mexico, Vietnamesetown, International Village, or The Italian Market. Who cares? As long as they keep selling live chicken and kangaroo meat, I'm happy it's there.

Miami Blocks

Everyone needs a Spring Break, no matter how old you are. Last week I made my way down to South Florida, seeing Fort Lauderdale Beach, Miami, and Key West. In addition to swimming in a crystal blue ocean in March, I was pleasantly surprised by the cities. I'd never been that far south. While it's true much of the region is made up of strip malls and highways, I was pleased to find a lot of history, eclectic architecture, and, particularly in Miami, a whole lot of grit.

Seybold Jewelry Building

Of course asking to see downtown Miami is a lot like asking to see downtown Los Angeles. After scratching their heads wondering where exactly "downtown" is, most locals say, "you want to see that?"

Well, yeah, I do.

Miami-Dade County Courthouse

After some great Cuban food at Latin Café, I spent the afternoon walking the city's Jewelry District. While the area is full of hidden architectural gems, these forgotten relics shadowed by the Brickell condos nearby prove just how lucky Philadelphians are to have so many vested in our historic integrity.

Burdine's Department Store Building, now Macy's

With an economy highly dependent on tourism and leisure, it's easy to forget that Miami proper is a real, working city with a diverse economy. A sprawling suburban landscape full of mansions, yachts, and beachfront condos overshadow the urban core. Unfortunately, like many southern cities, the Miami region is subdivided into smaller cities, allowing the tax revenue generated by wealthy enclaves like Miami Beach to stay in Miami Beach. While the region's population rivals Philadelphia's, the city's population is barely above 400,000 and the contrast between the suburbs and the city is evident its neglected city center.

Old US Post Office and Courthouse

What's also clear is the city's overzealous investment in the early 2000's building boom. Every conversation with a local inevitably turns to "the crash," and it's impossible not to see evidence of the fallout everywhere. The construction surge obviously Manhattanized the wealthier beach communities and suburbs, but it's also apparent that the city itself attempted to capitalize on the boom. Downtown often looks like a construction site a developer walked away from. Gravel lots and construction skeletons are everywhere.

Miami Metromover

The Italianate Old US Post Office and Courthouse sits vacant, the Art Deco Miami-Dade County Courthouse is behind a chain link fence awaiting restoration, and the city's Federal building is surrounded by concrete barriers and cracked sidewalks filled with weeds. It becomes very apparent why newer, car dependent cities like Houston and Phoenix routinely annex their suburbs to consolidate and retain tax revenue in their poorer city centers.

Freedom Tower, Miami's Cuban Immigration Monument, originally the headquarters for The Miami News



Still, with all of its neglect, downtown Miami is a bustling core. The Metromover, a small, elevated train frequently passes overhead carrying riders throughout the city's core. The larger heavy rail Metrorail commuter train shares platforms carrying people from the suburbs and airport and continues to expand due to all time high ridership, a tough feat in red states notoriously opposed to any investment in railroads.

The Bacardi Building, former headquarters of Bacardi

On my last day I decided to drive to Key West. After driving nineteen hours, what's four more?

Key West is another world and full of surprises. I expected a small, island village and resort community with a few historic Victorian and Stick Style bed and breakfasts. Surprisingly it's a real city. Hell, it even has a Home Depot and a Five Guys.

Southernmost House in the Continental US, now the Southernmost Inn Key West

The city's wild nightlife along the island's Duvall Street strip feels a lot like a holiday on South Street, with the Fat Tuesday Spring Break crowd on the street's north end and it's Gayborhood to the south. The island is no stranger to great shopping and even better seafood.

The friend who booked the hotel room declined to mention that we'd be staying at an all male clothing optional hotel across the street from a drag club. Putting my Pennsylvanian modesty aside, I decided, "when in the Keys," and embraced by hippy upbringing...with my clothes on.

The New Orleans House, Key West's all male clothing optional hotel

The drag show at 801 Bourbon Bar across the street was like nothing I'd ever seen at Bob and Barbara's. With all due respect to the Gurls of Philadelphia, lip syncing to a Whitney Houston ballad in a cocktail dress from Contempo Casuals is not drag. These queens were funny, campy, and raunchy, and encompassed everything a drag show should be.

Twenty four hours in Key West is hardly reality. But even back on the mainland, with its abandoned construction sites, strip malls, and grit, one thing I took away was just how happy everyone was to live there. People are polite, even at gas stations, drivers let you merge when you signal, and no one assumes the worst. It is the opposite of the northeast.

No road trip to Florida is complete without a stop at South of the Border.

As much as I love my city, my biggest grief with the Jerseyvania Triangle is our pissed off pessimism. We seek things to complain about, and when we can't find something, we form neighborhood organizations to help.

Between the winters that don't end and our toxic summers, few of us take the time to enjoy ourselves. I've often said that you have to be a bit of a masochist to live in the Northeast, and it's true. It's no stretch to say that 365 days of summer can make one a very, very happy person.

Celebrating Thirty Years of Hype

Let's cut through the bull shit. With the amount of money Philadelphia has spent throwing design contests and hiring firms like Hargreaves Associates to paint us the same pretty renderings Temple architecture students have been churning out for the past three decades, we could not only afford to cap I-95, we could throw the biggest party the world has ever seen at a top notch waterfront concert hall...with enough left over to buy every Philadelphian a used Jetta.

There are no excuses left for this sorry ass piece of prime property or those slum lording over it since the 70s with costly, empty promises.

To every ass hole at the DRWC pocketing the city funds and grant dollars you funnel into these annual empty promises: nut up and build something already or shut the fuck up about it and sell it to someone who will.

Cities smaller and poorer than Philadelphia are doing amazing things on the oil soaked shores of their swamps. Everyone who thinks it should take 30 years to build a fucking park is the reason it takes 30 fucking years to build a park in Philadelphia.

The Cheesecake Factory

While Philly Foodies bottleneck the blogosphere criticizing one of the nation's most successful upmarket chain restaurants, the Cheesecake Factory is cooking up their 15^th and Walnut location unimpeded.
 

Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, the architects behind Apple's minimalistic glass cubes, has been hired to develop the site for several tenants. It's unlikely anyone will miss the three buildings being razed for this project, particularly since the former Fleet Bank and Eckerd Drug Store have been vacant.

Local critics have already started raving about BCJ's preliminary renderings of the site as well as the firm's trademarked Apple contract. But like other starchitects, BCJ is selling a brand the way athletes and pop stars sell body wash and perfume.
 

BCJ offers a few I-beams to break the Apple mold, but their signature style is evident in this 15^th and Walnut façade.
 

Why do we continue to applaud architects for an absence of style?
 

Bohlin Cyninski Jackson's rendering of Cheesecake Factory's 15th and Walnut location

 

BCJ's new building won't offend anyone. How could it? In every way, this building is perfect for the Cheesecake Factory. It's deliberately intended to appeal to the broadest audience possible.
 

Architects, particularly national and global firms, are quickly intellectualizing the art out of their craft. Glass curtains, corporate branded design, and canned blueprints are boxes for engineering and market research. A glass cube might be more pleasant to look at than a suburban Hampton Inn, but what makes it more interesting? And more importantly, what makes it cause for praise?
 

Why do we criticize mass appeal at the dinner table, but laud it on the street? Local architecture firms like Erdy-McHenry take risks at smaller venues and experiment with our visual palette only to be criticized as kitsch.

We rave about the latest BYO and rant about its corporate competition, but when the Cheesecake Factory of architecture firms drops another deuce on our city's most premier avenue, the voice of Philadelphia's architecture is starstruck.

It's as hard to criticize this building as it is to praise it. It's not ugly like the new Hilton Home2 Suites at 12^th and Arch, but at both sites the skill is in the unseen engineering required to keep any building from falling over.
 

Hilton Home2 chose to put its engineering inside an abysmal concrete facade. BCJ puts it in a glass cube, like a Swatch watch.
 

It's unfortunate because buildings are relatively permanent. We threw away our translucent telephones when we realized how stupid they were, but architecture can't afford to be a fad.

As important as a critique of any building is how we react to it. Like a fine meal at a local restaurant, good architecture often offends as many as it inspires.
 

Modern architecture at any point will inevitably face a point at which it needs to await renewed appreciation as history. Victorian architecture was reviled for years and we are just now revisiting Brutalism.
 

How will history view our most contemporary modern architecture? Will our successors admire the craftsmanship? Its lack of presence? Will society have entirely schooled the design out of design and face a cityscape of prefabricated shipping containers?

 

Or will the future recognize the gimmickry in modern art, expect more from those we hire to sculpt our cities, and put BCJ's glass cubes up on eBay next to our Swatch watches and translucent telephones?

America's Most Miserable Cities

Like TLC and The History Channel, Forbes has completely given up. In what's fast becoming the Reality TV of financial publishing, they realized they can make a lot more money producing crap than actually talking about, you know, money.

Anyway, Forbes recently published a(nother) list pitting cities against cities, ranking America's Most Miserable Cities. But check this out, Philadelphia isn't on it!

Seriously, while even our home grown publications like Philadelphia Magazine and the Inquirer slum it in self loathing, Forbes doesn't think we're that miserable.

In all fairness, Forbes altered the more credible "Misery Index" from the 1960s to include subjective statistics like quality-of-life annoyances and weather.

Detroit and other Rust Belt ghost towns made the top 3, but surprisingly Chicago made #4 and New York City made #10.

If a statue this bad ass can't save Detroit, nothing can.

 

 

Raising the Titanic

Australian mining billionaire Clive Palmer has plans to rebuild the ill fated Titanic in an effort that "is not about money." The near-replica will be built by China's CSC Jinling Shipyard for an undisclosed sum.

While CSC Jinling has no experience building passenger ships, they are interested in expanding into the luxury market. Additionally, as legendary as the ship has become, realistically, rebuilding the ship isn't the undertaking many may think. In fact, the only thing unprecedented in Palmer's plan is building an ocean liner so small.

Let's start off by defining the difference between ocean liners and cruise ships. The Titanic, and most passenger ships built before 1960 were ocean liners, which means they were built to carry passengers across the Atlantic and then some. Basically, the hulls are sturdier and the life boats are higher (of which they're now required to carry enough). Cruise ships on the other hand drift leisurely around destinations that tourists usually drive or fly to.

Unfortunately for ship-o-philes and people like me who hate to fly, when Pan Am started carrying passengers across the Atlantic in a matter of hours, the market for ocean liners dried up over night.

Palmer's plan for his Titanic II is to recreate the experience as closely as possible. Not only will 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Class accommodations be limited to their quarters, travelers will be dressed in period garb.

It sounds fun, right?

For a night.

Titanic II's maiden voyage will carry its 1500 passengers from the United Kingdom to New York, completing the original's journey. With 3rd Class passengers locked below and everyone stuffed into early 20th Century corsets, it sounds like one of those murder mystery parties...one that just won't end.

You might be able to find a thousand rich eccentrics willing to shell out who-knows-what for its maiden voyage, but what about after that?

There's a reason the Titanic has never been rebuilt, and it goes beyond the bad mojo that comes with naming any ship "Titanic."

The truth is, while the Titanic was the biggest ship the world had ever seen - in 1912 - it's pretty small. If it sailed into New York Harbor like it did in the inadvertent comedy, Raise the Titanic, it would be dwarfed by today's cruise ships and ocean liners. Hell, if Titanic II ever finds its way to Dubai, it might even get scoffed at by a few sailing private yachts, especially when the Renaissance Faire - er, Victorian Faire - disembarks clad in pantaloons and lacey sunbrellas.

Without even making an iceberg joke, replicating the Titanic experience is masochistic by today's standards. Modern day passenger ships offer nightclubs, water parks, gyms, rock climbing walls, and zip lines. Even oil tankers occasionally have a pool or two.

The Titanic had a piano and a couple medicine balls.

Taking the kitsch factor to even weirder levels, the ship's 3rd Class passengers, you know the one's who won't be allowed upstairs for five days, well their entertainment will include Jameson soaked Irish jiggery.

Okay, that's kind of fun...until you consider how many 3rd Class passengers were just hunkering down to get to the States. If the Irish dance scene from James Cameron's Titanic actually happened, most 3rd Class passengers were barricaded in their windowless rooms because there wasn't a lot of space to party down there.

Let's face it, rebuilding the Titanic is like watching The Neverending Story at 30: Better left a memory.

You know where the Titanic's scale would really impress? Docked in New York Harbor as a hotel. But wait, there's already a ship sitting around with nothing to do, one that broke more records and had a lot more panache. And it's sitting down in South Philly just waiting for an eccentric billionaire to give her a second life.

Toll Brothers and Irresponsible Urban Design

In a recent Philadelphia Real Estate blog, Toll Brothers has come to their own defense. Toll Brothers, long loathed by Philadelphia urbanites for its isolated, suburban designs, is no stranger to criticism. In fact, architecturally, they are frequently excused from any discussion because their designs simply aren't worthy of critique. In other words, they're projects aren't good enough to be deemed "bad architecture."

That said, Toll Brothers is a wildly successful development firm, and more importantly, local. According to Toll Brothers Vice President, Brian Emmons, that success is bent on appeasing shareholders and neighborhood organizations through safe design. Private developers can take risks with lots of their own cash, whereas Toll Brothers needs to guarantee a prompt return on their investments. But a prompt return for investors isn't a long term investment in the city.

Proposed Toll Brothers project at the former New Market complex in Society Hill

Toll Brothers claims that market research indicates luxury consumers like parking, and even a detachment from retail and business. That's a tough assertion to swallow when the bulk of Toll Brothers' market live in the McMansions the firm helped invent. The claim also becomes a bit of a self fulfilling prophesy when you deliver your market exactly what they think they want. That's the kind of conservative approach that turned The Learning Channel into a nonstop Honey Boo Boo marathon.

People won't want more if architects - artists in their own right - don't deliver them something new. That is until you've completely dumbed down the supply so much consumers become absolutely sick of it. Like reality television.

While Toll Brothers' urban market might echo the suburban market's desire for parking and isolation, and delivering that might provide a profitable return, giving the New Money exactly what they want won't change the fact that they'll tire of the urban ills they're trying to avoid behind a gate or garage.

Anyone seeking isolation in neighborhoods as densely populated as Society Hill and Graduate Hospital, as desirable as the proximity to theaters and restaurants may be, will and have been exhausted by the poor schools, crime, and taxes that tenured residents integrated into the fabric of the city are willing to trade for the urban experience.

A city is more than a portfolio of independent properties, it's a complicated algorithm of its parts. Emmons has cited private developers struggling to attract retail and tenants at the Murano and Piazza, but both examples are responsible cogs in a broader collective effort to terraform emerging neighborhoods. They weren't designed to provide an exponential return on the investment, but to provide a lasting infrastructure.

Toll Brothers might not employ artists when it comes to design, but they're masters at business. I have to respect them for that, but it's an art more responsibly reserved for the suburbs. The Murano and Piazza may be struggling to attract tenants, but that isn't unheard of, especially in neighborhoods like Market East and Northern Liberties.

A decade from now the Murano and Piazza will have established their purpose, while Toll Brothers' projects will, at best, be dull infill. Worse, these pockets of suburban isolation could outlive their usefulness when their market realizes they didn't want to live in the city after all, leaving them to be discarded like a disposable suburban stripmall.