Homophobia Shut Down 12th Street Gym

If I were to tell you there was a fitness center in the heart of the city that had a swimming pool, racquetball court, basketball court, sauna, sun deck, about ten thousand square feet of gym equipment, and sprawling classrooms for endless free classes, you'd think I was crazy. If I told you it cost about $29 a month, came with two free training sessions, seven individual guest passes, all without the nefarious upsell and membership cancellation practices of corporate gyms, you'd have me committed. 

But it did exist, for nearly three decades, and it finally closed its doors because New Philadelphians and Millennials have turned Philadelphia into a hot-bed of pro-corporate snobbery. 

From the outside, 12th Street Gym is unassuming. The only thing indicating it's more than a warehouse along the Gayborhood's 12th Street Strip is the stunning mural of LGBT rights activist, Gloria Casarez. Once a gay bathhouse - community code for a den of anonymous sex - the gym had a hard time shaking its former reputation. Many straight men and women no doubt avoided the notion of joining a "gay gym," while gay men scoffed at the connotation it carried, all despite its bevy of services and modest membership price. Nonetheless, it catered to over 4000 active members, many dedicated for a long time. I'd been a member myself since I moved to Philadelphia in 2004. When 12th Street Gym closed, I declined the extended membership offered for Philadelphia Sports Club, and like so many others, opted for Optimal Sports Health Club nearby at Walnut and Juniper. 

Optimal is a fine facility, casually referred to as "the other gay gym." The day after 12th Street closed, Optimal was taxed with a barrage of new members. Underestimating just how many would reject PSC's offer, Optimal quickly annexed an additional 800 square feet of space. Still, the gym is small, roughly the size of one of 12th Street's many floors. It's practical. There is no common space, no juice bar, and it's tucked down a small street. Once again, like so many LGBT venues in Philadelphia, the community has been hidden from plain site. 

What made 12th Street Gym so popular with those of us who embraced it, and the very reason we sought out Optimal in lieu of PSC, is that it was more than a fitness center, it was the Gayborhood's community center. With more and more mainstream development expanding throughout the neighborhood, with developers adopting the phrase "Midtown Village" beyond the confines of 13th and Chestnut, it's not hard to feel the pangs of gentrification. We need places like 12th Street Gym, places to gather beyond booze and hookups. I like Optimal, but it isn't one of those places. 

"Midtown Village" itself, though it started merely as a business collective along the once-beleaguered 13th Street, is a concept met with understandable reservation within the LGBT community. Real estate agents use the term to sell and rent apartments to those who might be skittish about living in a "gay ghetto." You wouldn't be hard-pressed to overhear a few sipping mimosas at Green Eggs Cafe, even cocktails at Woody's, espouse how the neighborhood is changing without a hint of dismay. 

Indeed it is changing.

Woody's, once Philadelphia's go-to gay bar, is now avoided by local LGBT individuals: it caters to bridal parties on some sort of safari. 

While this change may be good for developers, it's not for a still-marginalized community. Exposed by the apparent connotation in the word "Gayborhood," a brand only whispered by heterosexual newcomers, is a latent underlying homophobia more dangerous than arbitrary protesters at a Pride parade. Why? Well it's hard to know your enemy when they're self-professed liberals from Park Slope who don't want to admit they don't want you around their kids. 

This discrimination would be far more apparent were developers renaming the Italian Market. What would it say about race if real estate agents began referring to Chinatown as "East Market Village" because, for some reason, they had a hard time moving condos in an ethnic enclave? But that's exactly what's happening in the Gayborhood, and it's going unchecked. 

12th Street Gym had financial problems, that's very true. Several years ago, the Department of Licenses and Inspections slapped them with a fine for inadequate fire doors necessitating $500,000 in renovations. However, as I was getting my hair cut at Rossi's next to the gym shortly after it closed, I was talking about those exact problems with several former members and my barber, and it became clear that the gym easily could have crowd-funded the money needed to remain open. $500,000 is by no means a small sum, but the LGBT community is by no means loose. Thanks to dealing with a whole lot of shit, we're a tight group that comes to the aid of one another. In a few years, even a few months, we could have raised the funds. I would have gladly pitched in one of those thousands. 

The truth is, 12th Street Gym didn't fit in with what the city is becoming. The gym didn't close when it failed to meet L&I's standards, it closed when a development company from New York purchased the property. No doubt two lawsuits regarding a handsy massage therapist didn't help matters, but the second lawsuit was incredibly sketchy. In a facility as large as 12th Street Gym, and one that had been open for so long, these unfortunate cases happen. That's why gyms, therapists, and trainers pay massive insurance premiums. 

None of this would have closed 12th Street Gym a decade ago. L&I's fire safety standards haven't changed that substantially, if at all in the last ten years. But L&I and other city agencies have been working at the behest of gentrification, targeting locally owned businesses and granting passes to the corporate conglomerates that fall in line with developers' largest profits. It wouldn't be hard to imagine Midwood Corporation flipping the bill for $500,000 in renovations if they could land a corporate tenant like Planet Fitness, or something more marketable to the "Midtown Village" set. 12th Street Gym just didn't fit the mold of newcomers, and the L&I violations and lawsuits proved worthy scapegoats to shut the place down. In 2018, gay owned and operated businesses still carry a stigma amid the happy couples pushing baby carriages through "Midtown Village." And that's profoundly sad for those of us not born with the privilege of being "normal."  

The Status Quo of Optimization

Among all the "four letter words" the internet age has wrought, none may be as underhandedly ugly as "optimization." Among the obnoxious buzzwords pouring out of cubicle pools, it's far from the newest. But it reigns over every facet of today's corporate realm, public or private, as a positive way to maximize profits, but because it's so complicatedly metric-driven it's hard to explain the damage it does to the spirit of product development and design in a sentence or two. 

When I joined the ranks of information technology nerds in the late 1990s, the internet was the Wild West. It was also merely supplemental, like a telephone or answering machine. It didn't run our lives, it simply enhanced it. The first wave, you might say, of the Technological Revolution was rooted in this simplicity. The internet just made lives a little more convenient. Optimization wasn't central to development. Graphic designers designed interfaces and product experts made decisions based on experience. Today, let's call it the second wave, or post-boom, development is driven not by experts but optimization: algorithms that determine exactly what will sell the most units, and in many cases keep you engaged with a product as long as possible. 

We binge, and profits soar. 

The good ol' days

The problem, though, with optimization is that it doesn't build optimal products, only optimal profits. When you eschew designers and experts for algorithms and metrics, you're merely seeking to reach the largest audience. And the largest audience is squarely in the middle of the Bell Curve. It's average, the status quo, not good or bad but too boring to really note. Take Netflix, for example. The online streaming service put nearly all brick-and-mortar video stores out of business. That in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, just marketplace evolution brought by invention. But over the last year, in the name of optimization, Netflix's content has gone unarguably downhill. There are diamonds in the rough like Stranger Things and Arrested Development, but rather than pay for the rights to great movies, their catalog of full of oddball foreign films, found footage b-movies, and hoards of forgettable television shows that users will binge watch because nothing else is available. It's right to point out that Amazon owns the market for online movie rentals, but it's also true that Netflix abandoned its unique model for the status quo of optimization.

So what's this got to do with architecture and urban planning? Well, architecture, like everything else, has joined the optimization movement. The most notable examples in Philadelphia would be Toll Brothers and OCF Realty, where sturdy and unique buildings are demolished for cheap construction not built to last. Rather than convert landmarks like the Society Hill Playhouse, the Royal Theater, the Boyd, Frankford Chocolate Factory, and countless 19th Century row homes for a handsome return, profits are optimized by metrics dictating low-cost construction. Our modern culture has been so groomed to not only tolerate it, but desire sameness squarely within the status quo. 

Cheapness is in vogue. 

Built to last as long as a tax abatement

This has been going on in the suburbs for decades, one might even say since the suburbs were invented with Levittowns. Today, McMansions are the status quo of desirability, symbols of wealth and status that ironically fail to stand out among the crowds of sameness. It's as if the housing market's target audience wants to display a status symbol while blending in. Keeping Up With the Jones's is an exercise in futility when you're either afraid to stand out or live within your means. Urban centers used to be a reprieve from such pointless efforts, but the trend is tiptoeing back downtown. Once home to the opulent excess of the Gilded Age and Roaring 20s, each mansion more grand and storied than the last, followed by eight decades of artistic Bohemian diversity, cities are now full of cheap construction, canned design, and flash-in-the-pan businesses that will never survive long enough to become institutions. 

You'll re-think this investment the first time you need to replace that massive roof.

Architecture, too, suffers as much as the urban planning and business concepts, and not just in the cases of press-board row homes clad in plastic and metal panels paraded as some sort of "modernism." The most lauded skyscrapers pale in comparison to the landmark limestone towers of the early 20th Century, even some mid-century Brutalist examples. For well over twenty years, glass curtains have been the optimal status quo. Some critics and architects might argue that the use of blue glass is intended to allow the building's height to blend in with the sky. But that's a cop out, and unnecessary. Why would a company spend upwards of a billion dollars to build something that fails to make a statement? You wouldn't spend $5000 on a wedding dress that looks like every other dress in the crowd. The reality is, glass is the optimal alternative to stone and brick and the employment of a curtain is an affordably chic way to cut the cost of designing anything more dynamic. 

In places like New York and other skyscraper-heavy cities, there's little incentive to truly stand out when the most basic design is financially optimal. It's also not hard to stand out when the bar has been driven so low. 

Of course all of this may be coming to a head, and a lot of that has to do with the unrealistic profits demanded by optimization, especially within publicly traded companies. It also has to do with our unsustainable disposable society. When million dollar homes built by companies like Toll Brothers begin to fall apart, the market may begin demanding quality over excess. Everything from smartphones to cars are built to be discarded and planned obsolescence can't last forever. Likewise, there will come a point where there are simply no profits left to meet quarterly goals. 

This happened in some small part during the last Recession and on an unprecedented scale in the Great Depression. If history repeats itself, and given the election of a neo-Herbert Hoover, it is, the Technological Revolution will end very much like its Industrial counterpart in 1929. That's not bad, though. Like the late stages of the Industrial Revolution, optimization has come to replace innovation. We're not inventing anything but perpetual and exponential profits. 

Our society has become more financially polarized than any era since the Roaring 20s. The waste of our excess is unchecked. When the market inevitably collapses it may hit harder than it did in the 1930s, but we'll be forced to recon with our disposable society, economic polarization, and the fast-fashion way we attack architecture and corporate design in general. Quality and optimization can't go hand in hand, but quality can be forced by financial hardship where longevity becomes necessity. We might build smaller and live more simply, but we'll re-learn an appreciation for history and building things to last. We'll also be forced to reject optimization's cheap and boring status quo. The next Depression will be rough, but it will bring welcomed change. 

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. 

Odd Bedfellows: Frankford Chocolate Factory

Inga Saffron's articles at the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News are some of the region's most "don't miss" reading. And like some of the best binge-worthy television shows, most are great, but occasionally there's that one that truly stands out as astounding. If the architectural critiques found within Philly.com were Season 3 of Twin Peaks, today's column is easily Part 8, right down to its inexplicable and stunning nuclear detonation. 

Hard hitting and investigative journalism is hard to find in the age of the internet. In the column titled, "What's the connection between a Philly blogger and the demolition of the Washington Ave. chocolate factory?," Saffron expands well beyond the confines of architectural design reviews and local development news to explain exactly why the "fuddy-duddy legacy media" still matters. Held (mostly, we hope) to journalistic ethics standards, the legacy media, especially print (and its online counterpart), enforces conflict of interest guidelines, clearly notes sponsored content, and resists click-bait and high-revenue-generating infotainment. In a frenzied 24-hour news cycle competing for advertisers, it's easy to overlook when some of the largest media outlets (looking at you CNN and FoxNews) treat fact checking like old hat.

But they're also competing with the internet's vacuum of anonymity: blogs, message boards, YouTube videos, even user generated content in the comments sections. That the legacy media of print journalism and the nightly network news have managed to survive, barely, amid an echo chamber of subjectivity doing little more than preaching to its own choir is utterly amazing. That Saffron managed to use its platform to turn on that very blogosphere in an objective and insightful way is unprecedented, and it's why she has a Pulitzer Prize. 

Like Starr Herr-Cardillo's column for Hidden City, Saffron points out the shady connection between Point Breeze developer Ori Feibush's demolition of the Frankford Chocolate Factory and Dennis Carlisle, a.k.a., GroJLart, blogger, contributor to Hidden City. and long-time favorite foul-mouth of architecture nerds throughout the tri-state area and beyond. In short (you should really read both columns for yourself), Carlisle had nominated the Frankford Chocolate Factory to be placed on the Historic Register in December. In January he was hired by Ori Feibush's firm, OCF Reality. In March, still writing for Hidden City, an outlet championing above all historic preservation, he appeared before the Historical Commission to retract its nomination, a retraction that was denied. To ultimately bring the factory down, Feibush hired his own engineers to deem the building unsafe, and demolition was finally granted by the Historical Commission and L&I. 

By then, Carlisle's identity as GroJLart had been exposed, at least to the small, but vocal community of preservationists familiar with his work. 

Herr-Cardillo's column delved into the nitty-gritty of the unusual process that led to the factory's demolition, but it was uncharacteristically passionate for the outlet. With GroJLart's columns aside, Hidden City can be described as dry. Those who love architecture and local history routinely pour through its virtual pages, but the articles might be too lengthy and bespoke for some's taste. After speaking with Herr-Cardillo briefly on Instagram, she used the word "hopeless," a sentiment all of us vested in the city's built history can surely sympathize with right now. Those at Hidden City undoubtedly felt duped by Dennis Carlisle. 

The fact that no laws were clearly broken in order to raze a building on the National Register, that Feibush could refuse an independent engineering assessment in lieu of engineers he himself hired to deem the property unsafe, categorically puts every historic building in Philadelphia in jeopardy. We've seen this all play out before in one way or another, the most insidious tactic being the economic hardship exemption that allows developers to demolish often historic structures when they can prove renovation or reuse unprofitable, as if millionaire developers deserve the same exception that the variance was designed for. "Hopeless" is really the only way to describe how preservationists, and people who simply love what Philadelphia is, feel right now.  

Saffron took a somewhat different route in her column, calling out the odd marriage of a demolition-happy developer and a journalist focused on historic properties, and particularly the fact that the OCF Realty employee who retracted the factory's historic nomination was anonymously moonlighting as a preservation-minded writer. In general, she pointed out how this is another example of the dangers of anonymity in journalism, comparing Carlisle to none other than FoxNews muckraker, Sean Hannity. 

Without a massive overhaul of multiple layers within the city government - L&I, the Historical Commission, the Register - it's clear this is just getting started, especially with a growing population and an inexplicable demand for more new construction in a city with an abundance of handsome and affordable old homes. In a New Philadelphia that would consider everything I've personally lived in a "shell" just because it's cheaper to tear down than add central air, nearly every house in the city is threatened by developers. Like Pearl Properties' demolition of the Boyd Theatre's auditorium, Southern Land Company's razing of nearby Sansom Street, and Toll Brothers at Jewelers Row and the Society Hill Playhouse, Ori Feibush is another in a line of developers providing more blueprints for how to abuse the intended purpose of our city agencies. 

Of course Feibush might be the lowest common denominator, evident in his shoddy construction and poorly chosen architectural merit. Unlike the others mentioned, Feibush is a slumlord for the upper-middle class and behaves every bit as erratic. Private developers are capitalists who begrudgingly work within (or around) city ordinances to turn a handsome profit. It speaks to arrogance, and perhaps even more conflict of interest, that a private developer would run for office as Feibush did in 2015, a trait he shares with President Donald Trump. 

Like Trump, Feibush hasn't kept professionally silent when challenged. Instead of deferring to lawyers and spokespeople, Feibush has taken to Facebook to defend the demolition of the Frankford Chocolate Factory. Using a handful of dimly lit videos of damp rooms within the factory, he seemingly "proved" that it was in imminent danger of collapse. Never mind the fact that it looked like any warehouse that had sat empty for a decade about to be rehabbed, apparent to any developer or architect who has converted a factory in Brewerytown, Callowhill, Fishtown, or Kensington; attempting to justify his actions on Facebook was an unnecessary means to keep himself in the spotlight inviting more critics to rake him over the coals. 

As the bottom rung of online media, social media is a juvenile platform to speak to those who've already made up their minds. Friends of his will vocally agree, pointing to the videos of an abandoned warehouse to say "good riddance." Opponents might view them with frustration, ignore them, or call out images so blatantly designed to look bad before Facebook's firing squad. None of this matters because, on social media especially, opinions can't be swayed. 

Professional demolition men, nefarious as the likes of Toll Brothers can be, know how to keep quiet until the dust settles. Dennis Carlisle knew to go dark on social media the second he was outed as GroJLart. Maybe Feibish should have spent some time reading Carlisle's columns and heeded what he once had to say about historic preservation and architecture instead of just hiring him for his pending historic nomination. Or maybe, like our President, Feibush will continue to buy his way throughout the poorest parts of the city, remaking them in his cheap and tacky image, fired up by columnists who might as well be resurrecting Graydon Carter's riotous Spy magazine until he's got enough personal social media stock to run for Mayor and really fuck things up. 

That f-bomb's for you, GroJLart. We all need jobs, and I know how easy it is to sell out. 

The Frankford Chocolate Factory

May is Preservation Month. How are you celebrating? Well to kick it off, developer and failed City Council candidate Ori Feibush began demolition on one of the last remaining Civil War era factories in Philadelphia, the Frankford Chocolate Factory, not six months after it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. A little over a year ago he demolished the Royal Theater, one of the oldest black theaters in the nation, also on the Register. The latter was allowed by a technical loophole in the Register that often only requires salvaging a facade. The former, pure greed and spite.

When Feibush ran for City Council back in 2015 he ran on a platform of unapologetic gentrification. He lost because the only yuppies who would have voted for him in his Point Breeze district are transplants out-priced from somewhere else, still registered to vote in already pillaged neighborhoods like Brooklyn's Park Slope. Cozying up to six decade City Council veteran and resident crone Anna Verna probably didn't help his bid. As a developer who is pro-construction to a fault, it's odd that he aligned himself with the woman proudly responsible for the Stadium District's longtime lack of anything but stadiums and parking lots. 

Of course this isn't completely Feibush's fault. Developers are cold and calculated, money is money, business is business. They're why we have organizations like the National Register, the Historical Commission, and City Hall's recently established done-nothing Preservation Task Force. But where developers fail to recognize the long-term value of history, bureaucratic government agencies are staffed by flunkies waiting in line for a pension job at the DMV. They push paper around for months while developers open up historic properties to nature's elements and let them rot just in time for some sycophant from L&I to slap a red and white "condemned" sticker on the door.

Last year Mayor Kenney, who himself ran on a promise to end historic demolition, created the Preservation Task Force which immediately presided over some of the city's biggest losses. He solicited advise from the National Register which has grown so frustrated with the city's unwillingness to heed anything they have to offer that they don't bother returning our phone calls. He declared a "Preservation Crisis," seemingly for the sake of declaring something.

All of this right after UNESCO named Philadelphia North America's first World Heritage City.

Every public organization charged with protecting the city's portfolio of historic properties has turned into demolition's loudest advocate, and the private ones are stuck with a backlog of unprotected buildings while they try to save the protected ones crumbing under the city-enabled wrecking ball. That is when they're not being sued by developers, stuck in court, defending the right to do their jobs. 

Feibush attributed the abandoned Frankford Chocolate Factory to all of the ills in Point Breeze and Graduate Hospital over the last two decades. As if one block sealed so tight it's never been tagged by graffiti artists was solely responsible, or had anything to do with, the neighborhood's blighted past. Washington Avenue is industrial, so industrial the factory he's demolishing hasn't even yet been rezoned for his proposed project. Big rigs roar past spewing diesel fumes, it's lined with gravel warehouses, suburban-style shops, parking lots, and truncated by a crumbling concrete viaduct. Certainly these contribute to the neighborhood's lack of residential appeal, not to mention neo-Jim Crow-ism that manages to keep the area as poor and poorly educated as possible. 

Apparently he thinks one block of "luxury" apartments and townhomes will remedy fifty years of housing inequality, but what he builds and his firm OCF Realty manages, is the flip-side of urban blight, or just a more insidious kind. Low quality, cheaply constructed McTownhomes crammed with superfluous amenities like granite and stainless steel at $700K a pop, each outfitted with ample parking so residents never have to mingle with neighbors who've lived there longer than Feibush's personal prejudices can stand. 

Let's not pretend race isn't a factor. Developers like Feibush are just too two dimensionally minded to see where race and class intersect. He's systematically removing everyone who can't afford one of his properties, and in Point Breeze those people are black. The Frankford Chocolate Factory could have been converted into art studios or, dare I say, affordable housing. Feibush could have gotten a handsome kick back from the state for either, not to mention points for a future run for office. But he knows as well as his yuppie posse that people who need a garage for their weekly excursions to Target, Target, Target, or Whole Foods dread living near anything subsidized, even if the tenants are war veterans or retirees. Ironic considering how many of them have "Namaste" slapped to the bumper of their SUVs.

No architects have stepped to the plate with a rendering for what's to replace the Frankford Chocolate Factory, but be sure to expect more of the same. Post-post-"modern" townhomes with concrete causeways and garages where yards would logically be, an apartment building reminiscent of the new beast at Broad and Washington, all clad in randomly colored plastic panels that mask exactly how uninspired the buildings actually are.

They'll be pitched as "luxury," demand a price that makes rational people scratch their heads and wonder why anyone wouldn't rather spend less money on house in Society Hill, and constructed to last exactly ten years. The purchase prices will be justified with ten year tax abatements ensuring residents will contribute absolute zero to the community before their mashed potato board palaces need to be demolished and replaced. Funny how these human kale chips hate subsidized housing, except when it comes with a private swimming pool and in-house Starbucks, and is only available to those making well over six figures. 

What truly sucks is that in fifty years - if our country hasn't suffocated under the waste of our excess - is that cities will be riddled with the pockmarks of demolished 21st Century construction. It's bad enough we don't keep our bloated cars and gigantic flat screen televisions for more than a few years. Who knew money grubbing development firms like Toll Brothers, and those Feibush so wishes he could play golf with, would find a way to make cheap construction the vogue? A lifetime's single biggest investment is now every bit as disposable as an iPhone. Thank HGTV and Bravo's Million Dollar Listing (remember when Bravo showed operas?) for convincing latte sucking Netflix zombies that a house is nothing more than a short-term sensory deprivation chamber designed to be flipped the second the mortgage goes through. Anyone else miss when houses were homes and lived in long enough to watch your kids grow up with marks on the door frame? 

The Frankford Chocolate Factory could have been this, and even more. Over a century ago when it was constructed, buildings were built under the assumption that they would never be demolished. Feibush could have profited off its conversion into lofts and shops, even lined its north face with modern townhomes. Eric Blumenfeld did it with the Divine Lorraine and he's doing it with the Metropolitan Opera House, to meticulous detail. Feibush is just a small-fry, a Donald Trump wannabe, a mini-mogul with an ego big enough to run for City Council, and too deluded to realize he lost because long-time Point Breeze residents are wise enough to spot a villain. 

Unfortunately for those of us who get Philadelphia, history, and cities in general, City Hall has rolled out the red carpet for urban newbies and late-generation Millennials who see it as nothing but a bedroom community and "cheap" real estate, the "Sixth Borough," a suburb that might as well be Newark, NJ. Feibush is no doubt an unequivocal dirt bag, but he's doing his job within the confines of the law and marketplace. Those who refuse to recognize that dense neighborhoods require individual scarifies for the collective betterment of the city, they're the ones who bring down buildings like the Frankford Chocolate Factory. They'd rather have the cold isolation of large townhomes and Soviet style apartment blocks than anything integrated into the unfamiliar and unexpected world outside their sterile cubicles. 

We like to think future generations will look back and marvel at all of the technological advances we've made, but they'll probably just wonder how people so wealthy and privileged managed to built and live in such soul-sucking shit-cans. Or maybe developers will find a way to make construction even cheaper and more profitable, and the future will look at the soggy remains of Feibush's garbage-architecture the way we revere the lost works of Frank Furness and Willis G. Hale. Maybe, but I would like to think the well of American standards has a bottom, and I hope with whatever replaces the Frankford Chocolate Factory we've finally scraped it. 

Whatever Happened to the Coffee Shop?

Somewhere between a ubiquitous diner and the proliferation of Starbucks stood a brief period where the independent coffee shop reigned supreme, and the chains on the rise were more than just app-driven money mills. Believe it or not, two decades ago, gastropubs and beer gardens weren't the way flannel-clad Gen Xers spent their evenings. There were bars, to be sure, mostly stuffed with stuffy parents sipping Manhattans and complaining about taxes, or sad dives not yet appreciated with a hip sense of irony. 

If we went out to drink, we went out: dance clubs, concert venues, warehouses that were loud, hot, and sweaty. Booze was incidental. Getting together "for a drink" was for old people and alcoholics. When the Slacker Generation gathered to watch the world pass us by, we met up at the coffee shop. 

On the heels of International Coffee Day (do we really need another "Day?"), it's clear that caffeine's addictive personality is sunny as ever. There are six Dunkin Donuts, four Starbucks, two Saxbys, and a La Colombe within two blocks of City Hall, and each does a brisk business. But each operates on a fast food franchise model, not under the cozy notion of a traditional cafe. Even Starbucks, arguably the end result of a fifty year American trend, pales in comparison to its past. Comfy chairs have been swapped out for metal stools which, like those at McDonald's or Burger King, are designed specifically to keep customers from lingering. 

It's unfortunate that an industry built on bringing people together in a warm and inviting atmosphere, welcoming them to lounge for hours, now so blatantly wants to get you and your money in and out as fast as possible. This says nothing of the hours, either. If you want to get out of the house after 7pm, you're options are severely limited. In fact, unless you want a cocktail or beer, there is almost nothing to do after dark.

What happened? Money is certainly a culprit, as is a spendthrift 21st Century culture of consumerism. As with everything, I'm sure technology can be to blame somehow. And of course, generational rifts drive new fads. Millennials will someday lament the loss of micro-brews the way our parents and grandparents may wonder whatever happened to the Supper Club. 

But this isn't exclusively a case of rosy memories and the frustrations of change. The loss of the independent coffee shop is one in a myriad of examples where another layer of our culture is stripped away on behalf of homogenization and the most profitable status quo. It's a bit odd that cafes have gone the way of music shops and bookstores despite offering one of the few products you can't buy on Amazon. Perhaps it was discarded by fickle Millennials, the coveted goldmine of marketing, because of its mere 90s-ness. 

Like all business trends in the 21st Century, metrics drive decisions. For all progressives like to tout a European ideal, they sure have a penchant for corporate creature comforts like Target and Chipotle. We should be embracing the notion that exponential profits and "going public" aren't the end-all goal in life, even business. Start patronizing employees who simply love their jobs. Why aren't we more reluctant to hand our hard earned cash over to corporate entities that view us as nothing more than aggregated data and a transaction?

Of course these are all subjects better fleshed out over a cup of coffee and a cigarette, were there such a place. Maybe we should turn down our nostalgia filters and start looking at Generation X for the insight we once offered, and not just an interim exercise in uselessness. We loved life as we watched it pass us by, and we refused to succumb to "The Man." I'm not sure when that turned into a bad thing, but probably somewhere around the first time a Millennial suggested how much better the world will be once the Civil Rights trail-blazing Baby Boomers start dying. 

They're cold. 

Generational debates are a minefield of conjecture, but there is something valid to be said of a demographic raised amid the isolated anonymity of the internet, and their resignation to corporate greed. Their relationships with the largest companies in the world - Apple, Facebook, Google - are every bit as intimate as, if not more so than, those of family and friends. To Millennials, Starbucks is a Mom and Pop and Amazon is Main Street U.S.A.

Wall Street won, and no one should think that's good. 

Some corporate ills are impossible to avoid - banks, credit cards, utilities, even careers - but we should all be less willing to sell out to those who only feign an interest in their customers' well being when it can be aggregated for a quarterly prospectus. Be less willing to be a number wherever possible, even if it means using cash in lieu of an app. Such tactics are paraded as streamlined simplicity but really just a nefarious way to continue making money off you long after you've left the store. 

We should all want an independent coffee shop at the corner of our block, not just for the coffee, but for everything it represents. 

Under Wonderland

Nothing anchors a neighborhood of a certain type like a new Whole Foods. Just ask the town behind SoDoSoPa. Directly across the street from the Dalian that hosts the upscale grocer, Tom Bock received approval to build a sleek mid-rise of 33 condos behind the Rodin Museum. The site has long been a literal hole in the ground, a gaping maw that exposes parking accessed from, well...I honestly have no idea how those cars get down there.

It's led at least one person to call this corner Hole Foods. 

The premier Parkway-adjacent address at 21st and Hamilton, and the already-excavated land, offer something the Dalian doesn't have: underground parking. A former project abandoned after the Great Recession had already begun construction, so aside from some concrete and rebar, the site is prepped. The Dalian greets Hamilton Street with a glassy facade, but hovers over 21st and buildings along Spring Garden with a hulking and uninviting parking garage. Tom Bock's condominium tower, designed by Cecil Baker & Partners, stands to be far more dynamic with the kind of sunken and unseen parking that should be the rule for all urban developments. 

Although Curbed and The Inquirer both mentioned the Rail Park's master plan, which runs through the defunct railroad tunnel that would become this project's parking garage, Friends of the Rail Park have yet to comment. 

They might not. The first phase of the Rail Park is scheduled to open this spring and the second phase hasn't been fleshed out. As mapped on the Friends' site, "The Cut" is the mostly-open rail canyon that ends near 22nd and Hamilton. "The Tunnel," easily the most ambitious piece of the park, runs under Pennsylvania Avenue before traveling parallel to the freight tracks that separate the Poplar neighborhood from Lemon Hill. The latter is a favorite of urban explorers and photographers attracted to its vaulted roof and unusual lighting, and easy access to something off-limits. That's also why it's on the Rail Park's site map. 

It is a stunning sight to behold, especially in its current state. But the Rail Park itself is a gamble, and how Phase 1 pans out will dictate how it moves forward. Often compared to Manhattan's High Line Park, the Reading Viaduct runs through a more rough-and-tumble part of town. Although Callowhill and Spring Garden are gentrifying rapidly (the Callowhill ZIP code is the forth fastest gentrifying in the country), it will be a long time before the Rail Park offers views of much more than parking lots. It's appeal, like its subterranean western extension, has always been in nature's reclamation and the excitement of trespassing. Sanitized as it will become as a park, it may simply become a place for neighborhood residents to walk their dogs once the novelty wears off. 

Even Manhattan's High Line, though lauded and popular, is new. Elevated parks aren't traditional and require structural maintenance, not just seasonal gardening. Time will tell if they're sustainable or if, even in Manhattan, they become the target of inevitable budget cuts down the road. The Rail Park's underground component is a greater gamble in that it's largely untested. While it's fascinating in its current state, it's a one- or two-time destination. As a recreational trail it's just long, dark, and monotonous. Once you leave "The Cut" you're essentially walking into an abandoned subway tunnel, and the westernmost end past the vaulted ceiling is not particularly interesting. In fact, it's western entrance is a bit frightening, coupled by the fact that you'll be walking through the massive, concrete catacomb alongside an active freight line. No amount of lighting will make anyone want to push a stroller through it for a mid-morning walk. 

Short of a mandatory Civic Design Review, Tom Back has what he needs to move forward with or without consensus from the Friends of the Rail Park. Given the infancy of the park, it would be hard for Friends to argue such a premier address remain a hole in the ground on the off-chance that they may someday find the means and need to open the tunnel to recreation. It may be for the best, too. Closing the hole will allow those vested in the Rail Park to focus all their efforts on the assets above the ground. Perhaps someday, "The Cut" will connect Callowhill to the heart of the Parkway District. In the meantime, the subterranean tunnel beneath Pennsylvania Avenue will remain the realm of the adventurous looking for more mystique than a park, deep beneath the confines of SoDoSoPa.

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.

Priced out of the Gayborhood

With residential high-rises encroaching from each direction, Center City's hottest neighborhood is inarguably the Gayborhood right now, and it's been no stranger to the causalities of development and rising rent. Just last Sunday, the neighborhood's oldest gay bar, Venture Inn, arguably the nation's oldest, served its last stiff cocktail. 

With the exception of Venture, much of the change has been welcome, to varying degrees. Long vacant storefronts have begun to fill out and 13th Street's strip of hoagie shops were replaced with some of the best restaurants in the region. But the gentrification tipping point in this southeast corner of Center City is coming sooner than later, and it's being pushed by the promise of large chains like Target and a mammoth entertainment and residential complex at 12th and Market. 

Both may mean little to the quaint streets of the Gayborhood, at least to the brick-and-mortar, but they are rapidly eroding the cultural balance between the area's newcomers and those who haven't left. What it does mean is rising property value, which may encourage some business owners to cash out and pressure others to relocate. 

The latest hit came to I. Goldberg Army & Navy, which has stood at 13th and Chestnut for almost a century. With PMC Property Group asking for $600,000 a year for the three story retail space, I. Goldberg will be packing up and looking for a nearby location. 

However, of all the changes unfolding from the "Midtown Village" assault on the Gayborhood, I. Goldberg may be unfortunate, but not exactly surprising. My father, who used to take the West Chester train downtown in the 1950s to sift through the militariana in I. Goldberg's basement, recently payed the store a visit only to say "it hasn't changed a bit." 


What's unfortunate is that I. Goldberg, which is a very unique store for Center City, has been regarded by many New Philadelphians and Millennials as just another Shirt Corner, a ruff-n-ready nonsense store that inexplicably survived fifteen years into the 21st Century. And while the comparison is far from true, part of the assumption is I. Goldberg's fault. 

Nostalgia can't sustain itself on the fact that it exists, and with Philadelphia evolving, I. Goldberg needs to do the same. The store's most unique gadgets - the kinds of things you'd expect to find in a surplus shop - are buried in the basement. It's most marketable products - jackets, coats, boots, and outdoor gear - are upstairs. Meanwhile, the main floor is a crowded mess of oversized flannel shirts and Dad Jeans shoveled behind a security guard. Its first impression doesn't exactly sing the same tune as those renting $1500 a month apartments upstairs. 

What's ironic is just how easily they could. They have some great products. But if I was heading back from a few mimosas at Green Eggs on a cold January day and looking for a NorthFace jacket, I'd have no idea that I. Goldberg sold them, unless I stared at chaotic window display for about fifteen minutes. And even then, I'd probably assume they were second-hand. Plus they close at 5:45PM and don't open on Sundays. 

If they scaled back their inventory, right-sized their space, and merchandized their supply properly, they could easily compete with Center City sporting goods stores, and even still manage to offer a few of the unique products that the hipsters covet, like Soviet era military watches. 

Gentrification may be quickly terraforming the Gayborhood, but this loss is on us. 

Last Call: Venture Inn

With Venture Inn closing next weekend, I can't point out the exact reason I'm so torn up. Perhaps that's because there are so many things about its closure that break my subtly jaded, yet big gay heart. 

It's not like I "came out" at Venture Inn, or in Philadelphia for that matter. It's never been a must-see social spot for visitors. It's not a house pumping danceteria like Woody's or a musclebound hookup joint like U-Bar. It's not even "Gay Cheers" like the quietly shuttered Westbury. 

What it was, and is for the next nine nights, is the Gayborhood's cozy neighborhood bar, one that happens to put on the best drag show in Philadelphia (sorry, Bob and Barbara's).

It's also a microcosm of a Philadelphia - and a Gayborhood - that is slowly fading amid cultural shifts, an influx of new residents, and massive development. Change is inevitable and it's necessary for a city's evolution. Places that don't change or fall in line with the trends of the time are often casualties of progress. 

For the past forty years, Venture Inn has been "the other gay bar," and for the past forty years Philadelphia has remained relatively frozen in time. Until recently, that worked in Venture Inn's favor. Philadelphia's gay bars were windowless fortresses, many tucked down tiny streets like Camac. If you wanted to go to a gay bar ten years ago, you couldn't help but feel a little seedy. But when real estate brainiacs decided to callously rename the Gayborhood, "Midtown Village" in some attempt to quell the nonexistent homophobia of buyers they thought wouldn't be too keen on raising their kids in a gay ghetto, the game changed. 

It started when an admittedly crappy stretch of 13th Street was packed with some of the best restaurants in the tristate area. Then came Green Eggs where chicks in Jackie O glasses could nurse their hangovers in bottomless pitchers of heartburn. And finally, Nest, because you're never too young to start CrossFit, even if you're two. 

Today, those new to Philadelphia have no idea just how gay the Gayborhood used to be, even when its most lavender venues didn't even have windows. 

Business-savvy gay bars took advantage of their revived (albeit homogenized) neighborhood and the public's curious interest the LGBT community and reinvented themselves. Woody's renovated. Uncles and 12th Air changed their names to U-Bar and iCandy. All of them traded their soulless speakeasy walls for windows. With Philadelphia rebranded as the 21st Century "it" town, our gay bars followed suit. Most of them.

Venture Inn has redecorated over the years, but it's always ended there. Today, to New Philadelphians and their concept of cool, Venture is a venue that clings to a time newbies are desperate to amputate.

Part of Venture's reluctance to rebrand itself might simply be because it worked. On any given night it's packed. It's not just a gay bar, it's the Gayborhood's industry bar. When the restaurants close, waiters and even a few notable chefs sidle up to Venture's bar for a stiff cocktail and some attitude. Despite those who refuse to venture in (ha, get it?), it's hard to imagine why Venture Inn needs to close. It might not cater to those constantly seeking out the next hot fad, but it has a niche. 

It's a second home to Gen Xers and Babyboomers who never really needed a reinvented watering hole, and Millennials who tire of the vapid dominance of today's fickly disaffected iPhone holders. In that regard, Venture Inn is the perfect dive bar, and not in the pejorative sense. The jukebox is loaded with a mix of Motown, disco, grunge, and '80s era electronica, and after a few drinks, it's hard to remember if it's 2016, 1970, or a future that never happened. Instead of inundating its customers with the inexplicable insurrection of 21st Century pompousness, it's exactly what the crowd makes of it. 

For me, Venture Inn holds a special place, mainly made from memories. In a changing city, I suppose that's all we have, and all we should try to make of innumerable, upcoming iterations. But I'm not someone who likes change or takes it well. Perhaps that's because I didn't grow up in a city, but rather a place where time stood and still stands still. When I make friends, go on a date, or find a place like Venture Inn I want it to last forever. It's naive, I know, but it's a habit that's hard to kick.

To many, Venture Inn's closure is just a sign of the times or worse, irrelevant. But to me, it's a passing. The loss of a place where I met some of the most amazing people in Philadelphia - hell, the world - and looking around, it's not a place that's going to be replaced. Quickly approaching forty, like Venture Inn, I've come to the realization that my Philadelphia, my Gayborhood, and my neighborhood bars are products of another era, relegated to the annals of history and time. 

I wouldn't be who I am without Venture Inn. Whether that's good or bad is debatable, but it's where I am and I'm happy. My life may not be complete, but it's content, and part of that is thanks to performers like Sandy Beach, bartenders like Henry, and the crowds of proud misfits at Venture Inn.