All part of a cynicism that's become disturbingly common in Philadelphia Magazine, it's certainly worth noting that none of these three writers are native to the Philadelphia area. It's not as though journalists aren't welcome to cover subjects they aren't intimately familiar with, but hit-jobs are usually reserved for those rooted in the subject matter. Otherwise they can sound ignorant at best or prejudiced at worst. For example, Owens has spent a number of his stories criticizing events and venues he boycotts.
Ironically, shortly after lauding South Street's uncharacteristically posh new venues and making some comment about lattes, Primis gushes about her first experiences on South Street, claiming - accurately - that one "couldn't build something like South Street today." She then begrudgingly likens to strip to an aging rocker, specifically Keith Richards, who might be the human embodiment of the street, now or thirty years ago.
The article is weird. Primis waxes and wanes between an appreciation for the street's past and vitriol, even copping to her own unfamiliarity with a street she's lived on for ten years. Perplexing, she lands on saving the street's inherent grit by essentially turning it into a kid-friendly shopping mall with a grocery store. Fun.
While it's true South Street has seen better days, it's also seen worse. Like many neighborhoods once emblematic of Philadelphia's Bohemian mid-century past, it's facing the growing pains of a city on the rise. But the knee jerk reaction to treat it as the status quo and propose stuffing it with upscale boutiques selling $900 jackets only provides residents and tourists with more of the same. South Street could use an injection of new businesses, but treating it with the same canned response employed everywhere from Kensington to Passyunk Square, or suggesting some sort of cohesive makeover, strips away an eclectic appeal formed through decades of urban evolution.
It's also shortsighted because, as opposed to the aforementioned neighborhoods, South Street isn't necessarily outdated, just not Philadelphia Magazine's apparent cup of tea. But that is the exact problem with the magazine's flawed take on Philadelphia, and gentrification in general. South Street thrives in the summertime and sees no shortage of business during the winter months. It's a destination attraction drawing people from all over the world, and they seem to like it. It's the sole locale for Baby Boomers, the bane of gentrifiers and the ilk writing for Philadelphia Magazine, to find a concert from their youth without hoofing it out to York County.
What's troubling about Philadelphia Magazine's sort of commentary is that, in a city of a million and a half residents, and a massive geographical footprint for the mid-Atlantic, there's seemingly no room to leave something that hasn't failed well enough alone.
South Street will hardly be the first casualty of this urban dementia. Nearby, the Gayborhood might appear to be thriving with its abundance of bars and restaurants, but the LGBT community itself has been scattered throughout the region by sky rocketing rents and corporate chains. Recently, 12th Street Gym, a vast and wildly popular business that was as much an LGBT community center as a fitness center, was forced to close after being purchased by a New York-based developer and targeted by the Department of Licenses and Inspections. When the luxury apartment building Commonwealth 1201 opened, the Mazonni Center left the Gayborhood for Bainbridge Street. The Italian Market too may soon see its own luxury apartment development at the corner of 9th and Washington, inevitably altering a unique streetscape that still retains the provincial aesthetic from some of the nation's earliest immigrants, catering alongside some of our most recent.
Most unnerving in Primis's assessment is her awe inspired witness to the reclamation of, among other areas, the Gayborhood's re-branded "Midtown Village." Coupled with her former jab at the Gayborhood, I can't help but read the thinly veiled homophobia shared by so many neo-liberals who desperately want to appear progressive while harboring resentment for anything that doesn't cater exclusively to their brand. "Midtown Village" reclaimed the LGBT community's safe space for a bunch of homophobic frat boys and real estate agents who know their clients are too covertly bigoted to buy condos in a neighborhood with the word "gay" in its name.
With so many costly and already-posh neighborhoods straddling the river, where does this gut instinct to terraform every last square foot of real estate in the name of sameness come from? With an almost hostile disdain for anything not clad in glass, plastic, and steel; sanitized to suburban perfection, one has to wonder why those moving to Philadelphia in droves ever bothered to move somewhere so oddball in the first place if not to simply bully a bunch of weirdos into submission like they did in the high school cafeteria where they once reigned supreme.
South Street is an institution. It's empty storefronts could be filled with something far more dynamic than more restaurants. Our foodie scene once rivaled some of the world's best, but an influx of high-end poverty appropriation - fancy tacos and french fries - has turned a scene once brimming with quality and panache into one that's exhaustively cliche. Instead, the evolution that South Street demands is one reflective of its past: art stores, tattoo parlors, shops packed with oddities, and lots and lots of color. What's wrong with head shops and districts that cater to those not shoving $2000 baby carriages through our narrow sidewalks? Primis points out the diversity of the South Street strip - diversity that can be hard to find commingling in Philadelphia - but her pitch to turn it into a destination for the spendthrift threatens to make it about as "white" as Starbucks on a Monday.
This is the Philadelphia Philadelphia Magazine wants, despite hiring Chicago muckraker Ernest Owens to challenge its straight, white image of yoga and beer gardens.
Misunderstanding this, not to mention taking aim at nearly everything that defines Philadelphia as something apart from a New York borough, has made Philadelphia Magazine the least Philadelphian local outlet, and continues to prove that it's incapable of shedding its notoriously banal past. Not only do the magazine's contributors not get Philadelphia, they simply don't want to. Unfortunately they speak for a voluminous influx of new residents who never liked Philadelphia much to begin with, and came to remake it in their own boring image. Sameness is the enemy of diversity and what once made cities great. Why is Philadelphia, and its namesake magazine, defiantly embracing the most basic elements that ruined New York, San Francisco, and Seattle?
