Shop Local

In the wake of Starbucks' 911 call that led to a perp walk of two innocent black men, the company has taken to an apology tour, an in-person meeting between their CEO and those arrested, and shutting down for a day to conduct obligatory sensitivity training. But if you followed Chipotle's embarrassing diarrhea fiasco or Facebook's less-than-grueling two days in front of the Senate, you can certainly spot a trend: feign shock from the top down, promise future accountability, and keep an apologetically low profile during Twitter's 48 hour attention span.

Wash, rinse, repeat. 

I have to wonder when the general public's patience for the corporate excuse-mill will begin to wane. Or if, in the age of rapid-fire social media, the past's inability to instantaneously expose all ill-repute has simply been traded for our collective 21st Century ADD. 

A month later, does anyone but those afflicted remember that this even happened? No doubt The Onion is already drafting satirical replies to Starbucks' closure on the 29th #FML #ThisIsTheWorstThingThatsEverHappenedToAnyone.

Aside from recent gun reform debates that went on for an unprecedented month, I can't remember a post-smartphone boycott that lasted for more than a few days. Stocks inevitably fall for a few hours, but the cycle has been so normalized that even Facebook's value managed to surge while the Silicon Valley's prodigal son was testifying before Washington. 

Wall Street owns our outrage, even when it's directed at them. 

Shareholders know that corporate remorse is designed to benefit themselves, and it's time we begin to recon with this, and what it means as consumers and suppliers. 

Public corporations (pick one) function under business models layered far more insidiously than simple bigotry as the street knows it, and treating the symptoms that expose themselves the way they did at Starbucks is akin to bandaging a malignant tumor. The response - be it Starbucks' apology, Chipotle's investigation and blame-game, or whatever Southwest decides to do about the commercial airline industry's first death in almost a decade - is always a measured calculation backed up by data that proves it won't just repair its stock price and image, but actually advance it.

We expect this from politicians, but when perceived ideologue CEOs tout the same modus operandi, brand loyalists continually return to freely advertise their products by literally wearing and carrying their logos. 

"They've learned" and "they're actually better now" become the aftermath's rally cry from consumers who either don't want to kick the habit of their guilty pleasures or are afraid to admit they ever shopped somewhere so blind-sidedly money-minded in the first place. In the end, inevitable Starbucks apologists (among others) will sound like religious Trump-supporters excusing his extra-marital affairs. We all know better, but continue to embrace whatever is offered up so long as it supports our fractured ideals or ability to be as lazy as humanly possible. 

Any "good liberal" wants to assume Starbucks is a good company. They offer benefits to part-time employees and pay more than the minimum wage. But we ignore the fact that these decisions themselves are also the results of pre-packaged analytics that have invented an infallibly profitable model.

Remember those dastardly deeds carried out by Facebook's partner in crime, Cambridge Analytica? They don't exclusively apply to "free" ad driven companies like Facebook and Twitter. Starbucks analyzes the very same type of information. It's gathered through in-app purchases, registered gift cards, and social media, then used to determine what it needs to maintain its customers and grow.

In the realm of public corporations, we're more than customers, we're extensions of their products. Companies like Starbucks continue making money off us long after we've walked out the door.

If the Senate was really interested in (or understood how to) put the kibosh on Facebook's ill repute, one would have suggested banning targeted advertising altogether. 

Most would like to think we shop ethically by supporting companies that seem to support us back. But public companies don't have a social consciousness. Companies that offer unisex dressing rooms and wedding cards for same-sex couples don't do so at the behest of LGBT equality, only popular opinion and how it can be monetized.

Just watch as the outcry over gun reform and school shootings returns to a stable baseline and you'll see the banks and retailers who promised they'd block the purchase and sale of AR-15s back away from the subject or ignore they ever made such statements in the first place, none of which were very specific to begin with. 

The only business you can trust is the one you know. Whole Foods isn't expensive because it's healthy, it's expensive because it's fostered a clientele that assumes anything affordable is unhealthy. Does anyone really think Jeff Bezos is worth $119 billion because he wants his customers to reap the health benefits of kale?

Likewise, Starbucks has strategically weighed the pros and cons of catering to a niche, and whether their bottom line dictates change or it's more profitable to just weather the storm.

The sad truth is, this Starbucks has long been known locally as the "racist Starbucks" and that's never been formally addressed. Something about these two men didn't sit well with the manager and by extension, the clientele her company caters to. That doesn't inspire a lot of hope that anything will be remedied on May 29th but Starbucks' stock value; then it can return to the status quo. 

Like any massive company, Starbucks can always play it off by pointing out their "diverse" staff and clientele, but let's not tiptoe around the obvious: no Starbucks looks like the crowd at Dunkin' Donuts, and Starbucks doesn't want it to. 

Black, white, Indian, Asian, gay, trans, Hispanic...Starbucks customers are of a certain demographic, apparent tax-bracket, and a look that is colloquially "white." The police were called on these two men because they were black, and the thin racial veil that Starbucks (et. al.) surfs under is every bit as deplorable, if not more, than textbook black-and-white racism. 

The fact that Starbucks claims arbitrary training will somehow eradicate racial bias among its 238,000 employees isn't just disingenuous, it's offensive. If erasing 241 years of institutionalized American racism were as easy as a poorly produced corporate video and a jam session with Linda in human resources, we'd all go through it in elementary school and I wouldn't be writing this. 

To Starbucks, and any corporation that gets caught with its pants down, this isn't about social progress. It's about their bottom line. Blatantly bigoted events like this should be used to explore why businesses are obligated to welcome everyone. Instead, they're used to advertise a brand's image as inclusive and compassionate while explaining to managers how much money each specific minority spends in their stores per annum. 

Doing otherwise would negate the bottom line. They've gamed the process so well that they know exactly how to spin the worst press into free publicity. 

Starbucks has long established itself as classist, at best. They have "a look." It behooves their investors to expect this mentality of their customers, and manifests itself when franchisees call the cops on people who don't blend in. If they openly catered to the demographics of a roadside gas station, i.e. everyone, they might lose the honey pot of self-righteously woke customers who excuse their own covert racism by re-Tweeting YouTube videos of Beyonce at Coachella. 

Handing your money over to Wall Street darlings shouldn't be second nature, only a necessary evil that comes with credit cards and cable. In cities like Philadelphia, especially, brand loyalty should be the realm of local chains like Saxby's and La Colombe, and even then only when owner-operated businesses aren't available.

Shop local - Green Street, Last Drop, Square One - only then can you really know why you should, or shouldn't, support a business. By the time any company has ballooned to the size of Starbucks, it's nothing but under-vetted employees operating within a vacuum of data points telling them exactly how to keep Wall Street happy. And how prejudiced they're allowed, or need, to be. Any apology, response, or sensitivity protocol is every bit as soulless as this profitability matrix because each is merely a cog in exactly that machine. 

No one needed to wait for two peaceful black men to get handcuffed in a Starbucks to find a reason to avoid a corporate chain. Our default setting should be supporting our neighbors, not Wall Street. I'm not sure when that became such an impossible idea. 

Philadelphia's Preservation Crisis

Like many publicly operated organizations, the city's preservation task force has already proven itself useless. That's a chore in itself given it isn't even a year old. From HUD to the EPA, sometimes I wonder why we invest so much in publicly operated groups. Given their political nature, they shift in purpose through administrations and are often defunct byproducts of campaign promises that never fully emerge. 

There's simply no money in altruism, and like for-profit corporations that serve only Wall Street, publicly funded advocacy only subsists as political stock. 

Simply put, the investment in public preservation advocacy would be better spent on the organizations that have no vested interest in demolition and redevelopment. The very fact that private developers, publicly traded firms, and a City Council that banks political capital from redevelopment is in any way involved with the city's Historical Commission, Licenses and Inspections office, or Design Advocacy Group is a huge conflict of interest. Preservation and its impact on our urban fabric should be left exclusively to the experts trained in historic preservation with no interest in anything else, and its autonomy should be heeded. 

In nearly all realms of public life, officials defer to privately funded experts. Allowing the Historical Commission, a tag tag gang of bureaucratic flunkies, to decide what goes, often at the behest of millionaire property developers claiming economic hardship, is no different than Betsy DeVos running slipshod through our public education system. Why are we outraged by one and not the other? Both are charged with one responsibility, enacting the opposite. 

Of course granting private groups like the Preservation Alliance absolute power over historic preservation is a tough sell. There's the knee-jerk assumption that private advocacy with too much authority can run rampant over the financial realities of any municipality. But time and again, advocates - from preservationists to gun reformists - have proven themselves nothing if not compromising. Barring the most storied of historical sites, only facades command preservation in Philadelphia (though the loss of the Boyd Theater's auditorium may, hopefully, challenge this caveat). 

The preservation crisis in Philadelphia can't be understated. Arguably as historic as Boston but considerably poorer, a recent influx of residents, mostly young or empty nested, has overtaken the priorities of our schools and our beleaguered history. In the decades since the New Deal era, Philadelphia's history survived in a preserved decay, uncataloged and untouched by the happenstance of neglect and a lack of development. Enticed by unfamiliar growth for the first time in nearly a century, City Hall and the campaigns of all those within have been fixated on the city's transformation, more often than not to the detriment of our history.

Charged with the task of organizing that history, private groups are so bogged down with the need for proposed landmarks threatened by development that only the most notable find a home on their lists. And even then, it's meaningless when the Historical Commission is so liberal with granting hardships to developers who simply don't want to salvage a portion of a facade. Meanwhile, incidental row homes built to last forever are routinely swapped out, blocks clear-cut, for new construction chock full of amenities, aimed at transplants with no concern for history, constructed to last maybe a few decades. 

When America's economy finally began to rebound from the Great Depression in the 1980s, it was through a culture of disposability. Everything from phones to cars to homes are designed to be temporary, and it's become our biggest enemy. Preservationists haven't been able to recon with the profitable nature of development itself, acting on the blind assumption that most people would like to save old buildings, and sacrifice luxury and convenience to do so. The only way they can move past this, and possibly be expected to professionally interact with and influence the very nature of our disposable culture is by granting them the autonomy and authority to do what they are academically prepared for: protecting our history in spite of developers equally vested in profitably maximizing every square inch.

City Hall can't be expected to do this, and maybe we shouldn't want it to. American culture, as much as our fickle desire for fast fashion housing, is driven by individualistic civic engagement. Maybe it's time we hand the reigns of preservation power over to those who actually care about it. 

Amazon's HQ2 Pageant

When Amazon released the "short list" for its second headquarters, I was expecting a list that was, well, short. Instead, Amazon released something that looks more like a BuzzFeed listicle of America's twenty most popular cities. And that's probably exactly what it was.

Whether Amazon knew it going into this campaign, it's clearly become a lucrative contest, one that has every major newspaper in North America singing praise of the trillion dollar beast. Of course it's not a decision to be made lightly, but considering Amazon's reputable speed of service, it's one that certainly could have been made by now, and maybe already has. Yet by drawing it out for another year, memberships will continue to surge out of cities that hope to be chosen, the press will continue to freely advertise Amazon with puff pieces careful not to damage their cities' odds, and maybe Bezos can squeeze a few more incentives out of the few cities unaware that they're already top contenders. 

Whatever is going on in downtown Seattle's hive mind, I think that Philadelphia is a top choice for Amazon's HQ2. I say that with no bias, because personally I don't want them here. Philadelphia's place in the race is evident to anyone who lives here, but not so much beyond the northeast corridor. Our public transportation is as expansive as any city between D.C., New York, and Chicago, in many cases more so. 30th Street Station's access to other cities is second only to Manhattan. Our universities are keeping more and more graduates in town, which will only grow with Amazon's career opportunities and internships. And above all, our housing stock is considerably cheap.

Sure, statisticians loves to run means and averages that show property values are on the rise, and that's great, But with Detroit out of the race, few cities of our size, if any, can offer a habitable home for $50,000 or a decent one for $150,000. Normally slums aren't an upside, and that was the fallible conclusion for much of the 20th Century. But when adventurous Gen Xers began working their way back into our cities, paving the way for Millennials to return in hoards, slums have merely become opportunity. To developers, neighborhoods like Kensington and Harrowgate are only as bad as the people who live there. To 50,000 new Amazon employees who know nothing of the city's baggage, or simply don't care, these places are real estate goldmines along the trendy Market-Frankford line. 

Many have speculated that the D.C. suburbs, namely Northern Virginia, will likely emerge as the ultimate winner of Miss Amazon's crown. The Dulles Corridor has been tech heavy since the early days of AOL and MCI, and Metro's new Silver Line connects it to downtown D.C. through the semi-urban enclaves of Arlington and Tysons Corner's growing skyline. While that might sell a location to a tech company like Oracle, Amazon isn't one of many. When AOL moved into an old Boeing office at the end of the Dulles toll road, it was surrounded by farmland. At the time, it ruled the tech sector like Google and Amazon do today, and it defined the region the way Microsoft defined Redmond, WA.

Amazon undoubtedly wants a location with talent, but short of technology vacuums like West Virginia or Northern Alaska, today's tech talent isn't hard to find. What Northern Virginia provides are established applicants with lengthy resumes, and if I know one thing as a fifteen year veteran of the industry, it's that tech companies are willing to pay threefold for inexperienced college graduates that can be groomed into a company's unique corporate culture. 

Considering we're talking about an industry that boomed a short twenty years ago, what's an established technology region even mean to a company like Amazon anyway? They could plop HQ2 down in the worst part of Camden, NJ or the middle of the Ozarks, and they're going to define that place exactly how they want.

In that regard, Philadelphia has what all cities have...plus easy access to an ocean that's warm enough to swim in. Compared to other areas on the list - costly Northern Virginia, New York, and Boston, isolated southern cities, and Denver's redundancy - Philadelphia has more pros than cons. Our only real cons are our unions and historic reputation for fucking things up. If Amazon is willing to weather our notoriously frustrating unions throughout construction, the only thing it has to look past is what few ever do: recognizing that "Philadelphia isn't as bad as Philadelphians say it is." Considering Amazon decided to set up shop in an iffy part of downtown Seattle instead of taking the traditional route out to Redmond, I think they're savvy, and unique, enough to see Philadelphia for what it actually has to offer.

All that said, I'd rather Amazon go anywhere but Philadelphia. Sure, it would be exciting to see what they build and how the city evolves. But the incentives Amazon receives will set a precedent for kickbacks that is already painfully apparent to corporations dancing around Philadelphia. I wonder how many developers have shelved plans for Philadelphia, waiting to see how Amazon's decision plays out, waiting to see how many more handouts they'll be able to demand in its wake. 

This city has been a whore in Colonial drag for the last forty years, and by handing out a few million here and there to developers who do nothing but demolish landmarks under the pretense that they might someday build something better than a parking lot, the pimps in City Hall aren't even trying to be discreet. What's the next developer or corporation going to want knowing Amazon got, say, $1B or more? 50,000 new jobs sounds great, and maybe the investment seems sound, but not if we're paying for those jobs and one company's tax breaks for the next ten or twenty years. Hell, by the time the first ordinary Philadelphian reaps the benefits of Amazon's theoretical HQ2, the Technological Revolution may have collapsed and it could be 1929 all over again.

But that's where things get really icky, not just in Philadelphia, but in all cities competing for a prize that could be as laboriously fruitless as winning the Olympics. Philadelphia hasn't even disclosed its offer to Amazon, and though it will likely come out at some point, it's being kept under wraps for one or two reasons: It's unrealistically expensive, and in the likely event that we aren't chosen, residents will begin questioning why even a fraction of such a bloated amount can't be put towards our existing infrastructure. How greedy we are to expect our elected officials take care of their own citizens' needs with found money apparently available to a trillion dollar conglomerate three thousand miles away? Speaking even more broadly, Amazon's corporate pageant has driven a rift in a once united country, pitting American cities against one another as if we are embroiled in an economic war. 

Historically, we're bribing a 19th Century robber baron to build a train station or a port, something that will never be appreciated by the masses until it's an architectural relic seventy years later, and a civics lesson in economic ethics. But that's exactly what this contest signals, and why it should be more disconcerting than it is. Whether Amazon winds up here or Northern Virginia, history is repeating itself. And between Amazon, Google, Tesla, Comcast, etc., etc., etc., we are all doomed to repeat it. But we're so caught up in the pageantry of it all, we can't see what awaits us.

Graffiti Pier Can't Last, and That's Exactly Why We Love It

Allie Volpe at Curbed wrote a wonderful piece about Graffiti Pier and the allure that may soon escape us. Of course, the fact that Graffiti Pier is being written about in the mainstream media is perhaps proof that its allure will not endure. The fate of the space, properly named Pier 18, has been mentioned in more than passing by the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation. It's included in the master plan for the riverfront and the Director of Communications, Emma Fried-Cassorla, has mentioned that the DRWC plans to incorporate the pier's popular namesake into that plan, in some way.

Creating a legal space for ongoing graffiti wouldn't be unheard of. The Writerz Blok in San Diego was the first park of its kind and there are other similar spaces throughout the country. Considering Philadelphia's proliferation of street art, it makes sense. In North Philadelphia, at 5th and Cecil B. Moore stands an ever changing wall of some of the city's most astounding graffiti. Passing by one afternoon to shoot photos, I ran into the wall's owner who was lamenting over the "shit job" an artist had done overnight. In the background, in broad daylight, a man kneeled down surrounded by paint cans, toiling away on something fresh. "I hope it's better than this shit," the owner said, pointing to a hackneyed series of silver smiley faces on a shiny, solid black background.

He was busy so he didn't linger long. His attitude towards the graffiti seemed more resignation than pride. If artists are going to continue to tag his wall day after day, it might as well look cool. After all, it's just a concrete wall. The owner is clearly more interested in the its physical purpose than what it looks like.

5th and Cecil B. Moore falls somewhere between what Graffiti Pier is and what it could become: a safe, publicly maintained, organized art space. But the graffiti at Pier 18 is only part of its allure, and what attracts photographers, explorers, and outsider tourism is what attracts graffiti artists. It is a brutal, crumbling hulk of an industrial past few can even remember. We're drawn to Graffiti Pier for the same reason we're attracted to the Reading Viaduct, the CSS tracks under Pennsylvania Avenue, and traipse through the woods to find the charred remains of The Cliffs Mansion in Fairmount Park.

Sure, there's something exciting about exploring what's off limits, telling weary friends and Instagram followers we climbed something we shouldn't. But there's more than that. Like wilderness voyagers who find solace in the forest, urban explorers find something the same in nature's reclamation of our greatest feats of engineering.

After Eastern State Penitentiary closed, numerous ideas were floated for its redevelopment, from parking to total restoration. What preservationists settled on was something unique, to preserve much of it in its decayed state and safely allow tourists to explore on their own. But Eastern State Penitentiary is as much a product of its era of preservation as it is its storied history. When it opened its doors to hard hatted visitors in the 1990s, urban decay was as much a part of the urban experience as taxes and traffic. Places like the Reading Viaduct and Eastern State weren't white elephants to be endured, they were simply expected. 

It's from this era where much of our fascination stems. From the New Deal to the Oil Crisis, American cities are a mystery to anyone under 40. You can scour the internet and find countless photographs of Philadelphia in its heyday of the Industrial Revolution, but you'll find few of interest between the late '40s and early '80s. Philadelphia was filthy, blighted, and covered with the dust of constant construction and demolition. Places like Graffiti Pier are more than evolving art galleries, they're places where we can experience an era that many didn't bother to photograph.

Sanitizing all of that has been happening since the 1980s, but those more interested in the allure of our forgotten past flock to these places because they allow us to imagine a built environment few ever documented. Change is inevitable, and preservation of that ideal impossible. Several piers have been transformed into parks, the Reading Viaduct is undergoing the same fate, and if the economy continues to bring more residents to the city, Graffiti Pier will lose its allure, either as a museum to graffiti or in total demolition. You can't fight it anymore than you can bring back the past. Even in the midcentury, these spaces were fleeting, constantly under the threat of demolition and transformation. 

I wish Philadelphia still looked like it did when I moved here in 2004, that the Reading Viaduct still ran trains through Callowhill as it did in the 1970s, and that Graffiti Pier would never change. But what makes these places so alluring, more than anything, is their complete lack of permanence. The only way to make time stand still is to take plenty of pictures. I wish I'd taken more photos in the 1980s and '90s, even when I finally moved to Philadelphia. They'll be another Graffiti Pier, and the beasts we build today will someday crumble and crack, attracting another generation to the history we're creating right now. Nothing lasts forever, and that's exactly what makes Graffiti Pier, and cities, so special.

Elon Musk vs SEPTA

From the highways to the stars, Elon Musk has become a titan in the transportation industry. However, his interaction with SEPTA consultant Jarrett Walker two weeks ago paints a different picture, one of a dismissively arrogant elitist who can't be bothered to craft an informed response to expected accusations. 

"You're an idiot" is the way a tween shuts down a conversation on Tumblr. Deleting the comment is what that tween does after graduating to Twitter. Loose tweets sink fleets, and in 2017, two words and a conjunction can do a lot of damage. The juvenile retort was picked up by Inga Saffron at Philly.com, but not before it went global on Slate, The Guardian, and Fortune.

A week later, he clarified his Tweet: "Idiots can be very dangerous when they seem smart, but aren't (having 'PhD' in their bio is a dead giveaway), as some policy makers may get fooled." By doubling down on his statement, Musk solidified his attack on Walker, called all PhD holders potential idiots, and insinuated that city agencies can't understand why they value consultants and employees with advanced degrees. Musk's education isn't shy on impressive bachelor's degrees, but the fact that he dropped out of a PhD program at Stanford after only two days might explain his bias, and dare I say insecurity, around those more educated. 

While Elon Musk's ventures range from boring tunnels beneath the earth to hovering miles above it, his bread and butter is the Tesla. But Tesla's Model 3, designed to make his pricy electric platform affordable to a larger audience, has been plagued with problems, from poor quality resulting in large gaps between body panels to delayed delivery. As customers wait for Teslas that may or may not be worth what they'll pay for them, Musk is prepping to put a cherry red roadster into orbit around Mars. 

Elon Musk is beginning to sound like a dreamer who fell ass backwards into enough money to bankroll a product General Motors shelved twenty years ago, and borrow enough money against that to inflate his ever growing ego. He's the Liz Carmichael of the digital age, only instead of getting an immobile car featured on The Price is Right's Showcase Showdown, he's launching one into space. Instead of defiantly fighting an automotive industry bent on destroying any innovation not owned by the Big Three, he's working within a market that's largely given up. 

He's second wave technology, the tail end of the 21st Century's Industrial Revolution, a market not funded by great products and satisfied consumers, but by venture capitalists and promises of an exponentially altered future that may or may not come. Accusing a SEPTA consultant of fooling policy makers simply because Walker has a PhD is absurd, and infuriatingly hypocritical. The Boring Company, Musk's corporate arm aimed at building a pneumatic tube ferrying passengers between Washington, D.C. and New York City, has been granted conditional approval to dig beneath the Baltimore-Washington Parkway based on nothing more than Musk's own provenance. 

Jarrett Walker may be bogged down with the harsh realities of existing transportation systems, but his reputation precedes him. He understands cities, subways, and public transportation that can't simply be scrapped to start over. Musk's aim is two dimensional. He's playing SimCity while holding down on the fast forward button, and his impatience fails to recognize that cities continually need to function as they evolve. 

Walker's original tweet holds very real merit. Musk's dream of a megalopolis wherein pods deliver us directly from points A to B is only sustainable for the extremely wealthy. To entirely neglect or ignore public transportation in lieu of a Hyperloop and autonomous vehicles forgets about all the service employees who will never be able to, nor should want to, pay for his innovations, and it clogs our streets with more cars.

Those who embrace electric vehicles, car sharing apps, and automotive autonomy are decidedly progressive, and that doesn't jive too well with Musk's personal disdain for subways and buses. When we call for more bike lanes, that isn't meant to include more auto sharing and electric cars. We want the streets safe and clear of unnecessary traffic, something that can't happen without commuters vastly more willing to share trains and abandoning their unease over mass transportation. 

The dictionary defines "idiot" as "a stupid person." Jarrett Walker is a public transportation expert exercising that expertise to make cities work better, dynamically. Whether or not Musk is incapable of understanding that - what will make cities work - I can't say. But maligning a stranger for a degree he doesn't have, for criticizing someone's job done and done well, all while premier products sit on the assembly line as customers wait, that doesn't sound like a particularly smart person. While Jarrett Walker is vested in his job, in SEPTA, and the people of Philadelphia, Elon Musk is trolling Twitter like a teenager with way, way, way too much money for his own good.

Jeweler's Row: What's Next?

Despite the best hopes of preservationists, we all knew this was going to happen. Toll Brothers received a permit to build a 24 story apartment building on historic Jeweler's Row. Under the permit, six properties will be combined, five of which will be demolished. 

While Jeweler's Row is largely synonymous with the 700 block of Sansom Street, it is essentially a district of its own, albeit a small one. Many jewelry shops line 8th Street and a few spill over to Sansom's 800 block. 

The demolition is an architectural loss, and the proposed building's height and vaguely modern design are a jarring juxtaposition to the eclectic row we know now. But Toll Brothers is a publicly traded company, and a successful one at that. It doesn't build what the market doesn't demand, especially after the Housing Crash of 2007. Toll Brothers isn't the problem, it's a symptom of a changing mentality in city residents towards our history and heritage, change that the historic community hasn't figured out how to deal with.

Although Toll Brothers' high-rise will stand out, its impact on the district will be more cultural than architectural. 85 units will be available in the tower and it will find tenants willing to pay top dollar. Those are at least 85 Center City residents who don't quite look at Philadelphia the way many of us do, especially those of us who look at places like Jeweler's Row as points of nostalgia and adored relics of another era. To Toll Brothers' clients, Jeweler's Row is outdated. They want the address and the cache of living in the historic diamond district, but they only want the name, a name that will undoubtedly be appropriated by Toll Brothers and affixed to a building that has nothing to do the row's history.

If you stroll the blocks of Jeweler's Row, you'll notice something curious. Most of the jewelers host signs in favor of Toll Brothers and its construction. Property owners know the reality of high end apartments on their block. Real estate values and rents will go up, something property owners want on a street that is still relatively cheap for Center City. It's a harsh truism in a city on the rise, and one preservationists haven't yet grappled. Not everyone looks at Jeweler's Row and appreciates the time machine, and these are the people driving the city's transformation. These are the people who'd rather see the 700 block of Sansom house a Chipotle, Starbucks, and a few gastropubs instead of the independent jewelry shops they'll never enter. These are the people who have sanitized Northern Liberties and Kensington and tried renaming the Gayborhood and Callowhill purely out of spite for the past.

In some ways, Toll Brothers presence on Jeweler's Row is a poetically perfect metaphor for what's taking place throughout Philadelphia, and what's already happened in Washington, DC and New York City. The construction company's banal architecture and squarely status quo approach to development is exactly where new urbanites find comfort, those who'd rather drive to Whole Foods than set foot in Reading Terminal Market, those who laud Target's blitz on Center City never knowing how many corner stores have shuttered in the process. 

To borrow a youthful parlance: they're basic. We've listened to seasoned New Yorkers bemoan the onslaught of corporate development for the last two decades, and yet our City Hall continues to grant any new developer carte blanche. 

The ordeal on Jeweler's Row has been ongoing for a year now, and while t-shirts and Facebook pages and Instagram accounts do wonders for visibility, their chances of staving off Toll Brothers was nil. Property owners don't care for historic designations that dictate how they develop and sell their properties, which is why it's important for the historic community to get in front of redevelopment long before it's proposed. 

In the last year, though, what have preservationists done to curb the next loss? What about our equally unique Fabric Row? Surely there are crops of urban pioneers who view a district so dated with the same disregard they have for Jeweler's Row. We'll likely lose Robinson's Department Store's midcentury facade as the Fashion District begins to chip away at what's left of Market East. The Art Deco interior of the 9th Street Post Office remains unprotected. The Church of the Assumption continues to deteriorate in wait for a developer with a profitable plan, and it seems not a week goes by that another church isn't lost to shoddy new construction throughout South Philadelphia, Northern Liberties, and Kensington.

Ride the El towards Allegheny and you'll see parking lots along Front Street and Kensington Avenue that have metastasized overnight.  

In a city known for an architectural legacy, one miraculously in tact, the only buildings we're good at truly saving are warehouses too expensive to demolish that just so happen to make great, expensive lofts. What else the Historical Commission and the Preservation Alliance do manage to save is by pure happenstance, simply for the fact that no developer has come to the site with a wad of cash and a wrecking ball.  

We lost the fight at Jeweler's Row, but we're going to lose the war if those charged with protecting our historic heritage don't begin to understand why it's under attack. We need to do more than catalog threatened properties and assume that all Philadelphians regard landmarks with the same esteem we do, because they don't. We need to begin convincing new Philadelphians that we're more than a city to be remade in their own image, but one with worthy institutions and districts already in place. 

Be Proud, Philadelphia

Be proud and stand tall. The stars of last week's Democratic National Convention may have been Hillary Clinton, Barack and Michelle Obama, and those who echoed the humility and enlightenment of Freedom loving Americans in both their passion for our Democratic nominee or their right to dissent. 

In stark contrast to the Republican National Convention's hate fueled and reactionary rhetoric, party disillusionment, and fear laden anxiety over potential violence in Cleveland, Philadelphia's DNC was one fueled solely by passion from all points of view, and left the stage at the Wells Fargo Center, Center City, and Broad Street littered with optimism and insight. 

The Democrats did good. But Philadelphia did even better. As politicians returned to Washington, our elected nominees went on to campaign in Harrisburg and Ohio, and the national media returned to their own cities, the unsung heroes of the DNC are undoubtedly Philadelphia's Men and Women in Blue.

Police Commissioner Richard Ross said it best, "If you go in like you are preparing for a fight, that's what you'll get." A simple message that would be best heeded throughout the rest of the country. We didn't see walls of Men in Black, assault rifles, military vehicles, and intimidation. We saw our servants doing what they were trained to do: assisting, protecting, all with a smile that said "Welcome to Philadelphia." 

It's hard to say if the same would be the case had the RNC been held here. The Republican campaign is far more contentious, and insane. But that doesn't matter. Last week's convention was the complete opposite of 2000's riotous one, and all that matters is we pulled it off and looked good doing it.

Of course last week wouldn't be over without a critique of it all, and plenty of media outlets - both local and national - have both praised us and called out our faults. 

From the start, social media erupted with the expected knee-jerk Philly-hate. We're used to that. In a way, the national press's love-hate relationship with Philadelphia is a compliment to our city. Unlike more depressed cities, Cleveland is a good example, Philadelphia is large enough and powerful enough to be used as a punching bag. Kicking Detroit makes a reporter look like a bully. Kicking Philadelphia just makes them feel better about their problems back home. We can take it, and they know that. 

The criticisms were largely, if not exclusively, irrational. There were long lines of traffic getting in and out of the Wells Fargo Center. SEPTA's token fare system was dubbed "quaint." There weren't enough Ubers. And it was hot.

I shouldn't have to delve into the hypocritical irony of Left leaning delegates driving and seeking out cabs a block from a subway stop while snubbing one of the most expansive rail systems in the country. But I'll touch on it:

"CARBON FOOTPRINT!" "GLOBAL WARMING!" "Oh, hey, did you call an Uber?"

SEPTA was faced with the ultimate Catch 22. Show off a subway system a lot of Americans don't know exists while worrying how many riders will call out the odoriferous Broad Street Line. As if New York's trains smell like potpourri or the Washington Metro's cold Brutalism looks like something this side of a Pyongyang wet dream. SEPTA was prepared despite losing its fleet of Silverliner V trains, but probably relieved that the system wasn't overwhelmed. 

And the weather. It was hot. It stormed. And people shook their fists at the skyline, smartphone in hand, and Tweeted their ire at our city. If I could control the weather I would have, but only if social media hadn't been such a dick about it. Karma unleashed one last thunderstorm on Thursday night to wash away the hostility, offering an unseasonably autumnal Friday morning peaceful and quiet.

If last week taught me anything, it was that my two and a half years inside the Beltway were two and a half too many.

I may not be one of Philadelphia's native sons, but I'm local. Even with fifteen years under my belt and roots across the city and the region, I know don't need to be here that long to get it. We're urban, but not conventionally urban.

We're not in a hurry. We don't like being told what to do. And I know it doesn't always show, but we really don't like other people messing with our stuff. But despite our gruff stereotype, we're also extremely likable when you're not looking for the traditionally harried pace of an American metropolis. We smile at strangers. We hold doors. And we love it when visitors appreciate our hidden treasures. 

After the pains of the DNC's arrival began to settle, these gestures are what America began to appreciate about Philadelphia. We welcomed visitors to the city, not just in hotels and on tour busses, but on the streets. For some reason a city notorious for expecting the worst was brimming with quizzical excitement over the arrival of the DNC. Perhaps some of our anxieties have been quelled after last year's uneventful Papal Visit. Perhaps Philadelphia's voice is being passed on to a more optimistic generation. Or perhaps we are finally beginning to acknowledge our self-worth as an influential American city.

I prefer to indulge in the latter. We are still Philadelphia. Whether we're today's 1.5 million, 1950's 2 million, or 3 million in fifty years, we never have and never will function as a big city. We are a city taken care of by and for itself, and our leaders are accessible and as chatty on the street as a neighbor. 

When visitors arrive expecting the same red carpet they find elsewhere, this throws them for a loop. We want visitors, but we accommodate our own first. This doesn't just set us apart from tourism driven comparisons like New York or Washington, it also sets us apart from cities like the RNC's host, Cleveland. 

If delegates, the media, and visitors had any problems with Philadelphia's ability to host the DNC, it was with the fact that we are a working city with a working core, and both are growing. Center City and South Philadelphia can't be entirely upended to accommodate every creature comfort of our visitors. When any one of the media dipshits said Cleveland was a better host, what they meant was that Cleveland's downtown is dead, and a convention can be given carte blanche. 

That's certainly not to say we're incapable or failed, but that some visitors failed to recognize the everyday functional prowess of Philadelphia. Instead of expecting to be faced with the same headaches they'd find in New York or Chicago, they expected a city that could serve as a blank slate for every vice they needed. They were simply lazy and uninformed. Philadelphia is a big deal, and some had no idea. 

Still, despite some derogatory comments from the media and visitors, we succeeded. The true failures in past events have been put to rest. History won't remember the Tweets, but a DNC and a Philadelphia full of peaceful protests, brilliant speeches, and a police force that worked with the convention and all attendees, not against them.

In the end, history will remember two things: key speakers and the city's skyline. Visitors, lobbyists, pundits, and Beltway Lobotomites will all be quickly forgotten, buried beneath the heap of the internet and tomorrow's next story.

To us, some visitors may have been the world's worst houseguests. They showed up three days early, unannounced. They spent a week bitching about the house we just renovated. And I think one wiped his ass on our fine linens before clogging up the toilet, only to leave brandishing a middle finger. 

To those select few, I offer our collective "Fuck You." 

But they were a very select few. In the end, praise far outweighed the criticism, something Philadelphia is just getting used to. Al Roker tried scrapple. Mo Rocca ate a cheesesteak. And Ed Rendell attributed words to Philadelphia that could only describe America's Shangri-La. 

We did it. Be proud. Now go back to doing what makes Philadelphia the best city in the world: work hard, be real, and don't a shit what anyone else says about you.

Is Philadelphia Better Than It Was?

Whenever one of my fellow Philly-philes posts an article on Facebook about a new building, business, or emerging neighborhood, I get a little giddy - and indulge in a bit of pride - that my adoptive city is finally getting the recognition it deserves. 

Those in my former city to the south are eating crow as they claim to forget the snide comments they made when I relocated here in 2003. But the thing is, I didn't move to Philadelphia thirteen years ago for an investment, at least not in the financial sense. I moved to Philadelphia because it's the city I truly love, and have loved since I first saw it in 1982. And as anyone who saw Philadelphia under Rizzo, Green, or Goode can attest, to love Philadelphia in its darkest days is to love it like family, to love it at its worst.

Today that pride is waning. Sure, I'm proud of our humbling skyline, top-notch restaurants, and award-winning architecture. I'm proud of Mayors Nutter and Kenney who have and continue to set the nation's bar for LGBT equality. And I'm proud that this once forgotten city tucked between the country's political and financial capitals has finally found a place amongst the world's greatest travel destinations.

But in today's urban renaissance, it seems impossible to balance what made our cities great with what's making them appear greater. The rally cry of amateur real estate moguls, "this city's about to pop," sums up the callous notion that cities aren't homes, but investments. 

Ten years ago, MySpace posts would rave about Philadelphia's unexpectedly amazing restaurants. Friends from New York or D.C. would nod, but pay little attention. Philadelphia was still Philadelphia, and at the time, the country's best kept urban secret.

Now that we've "popped," the posts and raves read like those of any other city: food trucks, bikes lanes, beer gardens, beer gardens, and more beer gardens. These are tokens of a great city, but they are tokens nonetheless. They aren't defining anything uniquely Philadelphian like the restaurant scene Steven Starr fostered more than a decade ago, but they're defining a city just like any other. 

That homogeneity is unfortunate for a city as diverse as our's, but it also explains the nation's interest in the city. Like conventioneers looking for Applebee's or Fuddruckers, those new to Philadelphia are seeking familiarity, and they're finally finding it - or creating it - in gourmet french fry joints and free yoga.

Does any of that make us better than we were? I can get a beer on every corner, but I can't find a local coffee shop open after 9PM anymore. We're not necessarily becoming a better city, we're becoming a boutique city, the very idea that transformed every gritty American city into a bubble for wealthy consultants. Once upon a time new residents moved to cities to become part of an existing, Seinfeldian experience. But now every inch of a city has to be terraformed right down to our alleys and viaducts at the behest of one very specific kind of person. The investor. 

Rather than engaging in the character that's left, they are blind to what is right with a place, or was right with a place, and fixate on perceived problems that need to be solved. Instead of becoming part of the city, they regard longtime neighbors as townies, mingle solely amongst themselves, and wait for the day when their neighborhoods are flooded with the suburban trappings they begrudgingly think they need.

Moving to a city no longer comes with the caveat that you'll buy tools at 10th Street Hardware and forage Reading Terminal Market for produce, not when we're about to get blitzed with three Targets. The unique venues, diversity, and locally owned businesses that allowed Philadelphia to survive the bleak days of suburban flight are being transformed into tourist attractions, tokens in their own right instead of the assets that they are.

Old habits die hard, and those who flocked to the suburbs in the mid-20th Century are returning en masse, and they're bringing their ilk with them. Many want the idea of a city, one they can watch like a Netflixed rerun of Friends from their table at Green Eggs Cafe, without engaging in the diversity that gave the sitcom its robust setting. 

I'd be the first to tell you that cities are constantly evolving, and if you expect one to stand still, you're not going to enjoy it. All cities are constant construction zones - literally and figuratively. Despite the best efforts of Brooklyn refugees, Millennials, and retirees driving change towards a perceived completion date, the project will never be done. 

The Great American City hasn't seen this kind of resurgence since the Industrial Revolution and the Roaring Twenties, eras fraught with similar divisiveness that's been lost to glossy photographs of Gilded Age mansions. But the transformation is divisive. Real estate developers like to claim that business isn't personal, because it isn't personal to them. But it is personal to everyone else.

Today's Philadelphia is just another crescent in the ever rolling coaster of its prowess. As cities like San Francisco and New York are - or should be - starting to learn, the peaks are unsustainable. Bike lanes will fade, beer gardens will close, and cities will return to their most pragmatic purposes.

Philadelphia survived the grimmest hours of American history, so I'm optimistic our identity can survive brunch. So are we better today than we were ten or twenty years ago? Is Philadelphia better than it was when I first saw it in 1982? My answer, is "No." But only because those of us who truly love Philadelphia know we didn't need to be. We love it like that crazy cousin you laugh at, complain about, and whose life we're obligated to be a part of because down deep we know she has a heart that pumps our own blood, and because - despite all her flaws - she's the most interesting person we know. 

We were always better than so many other cities for more reasons than not. And if we deserve recognition for anything, it's our perseverance, our inherent uniqueness, and not the complements that make us "as good as" any other city. That's my Philadelphia, and I'll still be here when the roller coaster starts to fall. That's the most exciting part.

AIDS and the Living Narrative of Philadelphia

While working on some #tbt ideas (because I'm so hip and current), I was browsing Netflix looking for some older films set in and around Philadelphia. Then I though, "huh, what about Philadelphia?" It was filmed exclusively in the city, plus both the title and Bruce Springsteen's Oscar winning theme share the city's namesake. 

Less than five minutes into the movie, I found what I was looking for. Scenes from a past somewhere between what we know now and the history books. But just as quickly, I found a reason to revisit this movie for more than its background. 

It's a perfect movie.

I last saw Philadelphia 21 years ago. As a closeted teenager, I remember anxiously sitting on the couch next to my parents, trying to fight back my tears as my mom, even my dad, shed theirs'. I heard them whisper my cousin's name, "Sammy..." 

He had died just two months earlier.

Watching it again as an adult, it didn't remind me of the closet. Instead, it brought back the emotional roller coaster I would experience during the height of the epidemic. More than 140,000 Americans would reportedly be lost to AIDS when I was in college. With those deaths came fear, sorrow, but also supportive camaraderie with many wonderful strangers. 

I learned a lot very quickly.

At face value, Philadelphia is a sad movie. But beneath the surface it's something else. To those dealing with AIDS in 1993, Philadelphia wasn't a movie with a sad ending, it was their unfortunate story with a bittersweet purpose.

For the first time in the disease's 11 year history, statistics were finally being given a face. Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, and a host of other Hollywood celebrities showed America a real disease afflicting real people. 

Philadelphia wasn't just a movie, it was a true story that played out on our city's stage. Over the last two decades a rumor has periodically surfaced regarding the production of the film, claiming that within two years of its release, more than 40 cast members had died from AIDS. It's not a legend, and today the number is likely 53. 

ActionAIDS of Philadelphia was sourced by director Jonathan Demme to cast 53 extras for the film. 

In 1995, Clifford Rothman wrote an homage to the 53 HIV-positive extras in the film and the 43 who had already passed. Similar in spirit, the Philadelphia Inquirer printed its own moving article prior to the movie's release. 

The national dialogue was evolving and the mainstream media was showing the general public a side of AIDS they didn't know, one of unbearable suffering and grieving families. 

Therese Frare's photograph of David Kirby's deathbed in 1990 is historically referred to as the "picture that changed the face of AIDS." Published in both Life magazine and by Benetton, the heartbreaking picture of Kirby with his weeping father elicited outrage, but for the first time, it also found empathy from many who had no personal understanding of the disease. 

AIDS had been humanized. 
 

The "picture that changed the face of AIDS." David Kirby with his father, mother, and sister, by Therese Frare.

Salt-n-Pepa's 1991 single, Let's Talk About Sex, came with an alternate version titled Let's Talk About AIDS. The music video's message isn't subtle, and it worked. 

People talked. 

By 1996, the AIDS Quilt made its last annual appearance on the National Mall until it would return once more in 2012. 

These articles, photographs, memorials, and songs offered the public a firsthand look at an epidemic - a public plagued with misconceptions about a community hiding in the gritty corners of our cities. It seemed - finally - that the public was ready to accept that AIDS was real.

Philadelphia is part of the broad story that AIDS continues to tell. At the time of its release, ActionAIDS serviced 500 HIV-positive men and women. Today it services about 5000, a testament to early detection, better meds, and compassion. But it also proves that the epidemic won't be over until the last cocktail is prescribed.

39 million people have died from AIDS since the epidemic began. But with the recognition of the disease's humanity comes the understanding that AIDS also afflicts the uninfected. There is no way to calculate the untold number of friends and family who've buried their loved ones. 

Until recently, there was little hope that a cure would be found. Treatments are improving, and advocacy is getting it to those in need. HIV-positive men and women are living full, normal lives. But the cost isn't limited to money. These drugs come with side effects. 

However, in the last few years, research in gene therapy has shifted interest back towards curing the disease. Now, more than three decades later, there seems to be more promise than ever that AIDS will be gone within most of our lifetimes. With strides coming from our own Temple University and Penn Medicine, perhaps Philadelphia's living story will return for its final chapter. 

It isn't over, and you can help:

ActionAIDS
AIDS Walk
MANNA
Mazzoni Center
Philly AIDS Thrift

Through My Rosy Glasses

Forbes released yet another list and, not surprising, subjectivity landed Philadelphia pretty deep at #15. You know when Philadelphia finds itself behind Phoenix, something's off. 

Still, even if it's just morbid curiosity, these lists are fun to sift through. More often than not they foster a contrarian rant proclaiming why your city deserved a better position. So here's my rant.

This time Forbes ranked the twenty U.S. metropolitan areas with the most new construction. Right off the bat, the article delves into the oil industry's impact on Texas. That's valid. But the survey based is rank order on a city's percentage of spending compared to previous years. That is riddled with confounding variables. Namely, increased spending doesn't equal more development. Cities with a high cost of living have to spend more money on construction. Cities with powerful unions spend exponentially more on development than more development friendly cities. And, in the case of Philadelphia, relaxed union rules have made development potentially more affordable. 

But, as so many of these ridiculous lists do, this survey seems to be more about image than quantifiable substance. So naturally, Philadelphia didn't do so well.

That might not be a bad thing.

We don't need Forbes to tell us we rock.

Do other cities have a better image? Yes. Thanks to Matt Damon and Ben Affleck setting every one of their ******* movies in Boston, our chief historical rival has a better national image than a city with three times the population and much better architecture. Yes, I'm being entirely opinionated about that because I can.

San Francisco, which surprisingly landed just ahead of Philadelphia, definitely earned its image. It's a beautiful city that managed to attract some of the most wildly innovative business markets. But it also has a notoriously narcissistic reputation few cities can rival. San Francisco is great because the Chronicle says so.

It's unfortunate, but San Francisco suffers from a similar reputable woe as Philadelphia. Their smug idealism is our throwing snowballs at Santa: a stereotype that exists in a fairy tale based on a select few, but far from wholly true. 

But that's what all major cities deal with and why these lists are complete and utter bull****. Unless you're talking about Farmville, VA, you can't even try to pigeon hole any city as successful, fit, sick, or young. There are simply too many people. 

However there are some things that empirically set Philadelphia apart from our more "successful" counterparts, if Forbes is to be believed. Our undoing is our saving grace. You have to ignore what you think of a city, what's being built, and how affluent its residents are. You have to solely think of a city's potential. And that's one area in which Philadelphia not only thrives, it's an area we are seriously tapping into.

High priced cities like San Francisco have nowhere to grow but vertically. Cities like D.C. have nowhere to grow but out. The populations of Forbes' "better" cities are growing, and in turn, so is the cost of living.

But Philadelphia is an anomaly. As opposed to cities like Detroit or St. Louis, we have a relatively stable business market. But we also share a built environment the size of Baltimore waiting to be redeveloped. We have land, abandoned apartment buildings, and shelled row house waiting to be revitalized and redeveloped for at least another fifty years. That will help us attract refugees out priced from New York, D.C., and other pricy cities as new development improves our image, both of which can attract new business. 

When you consider that, a city's image isn't relevant to anyone who's looking at a city's potential. In fact, a "good" image like San Francisco or New York might even signal that a city's being maxed out. When the nearest affordable apartment is in Queens, that's a very long train ride to ponder the better quality of life you could have in Philadelphia. There will come a time when retail employees, waiters, and artists can no longer afford cities known for shopping, restaurants, and art. Then what? When that day comes, Philadelphia is already the next best thing. It might even be the better thing.