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. 

Innovating a Place for Innovation

A few weeks ago I took the subway to the end of the line and decided to check out the Navy Yard. I've mentioned the district on Philly Bricks before, but aside from renderings and development news, I knew very little about it. After all, with the exception of architectural curiosity, I never had any reason to go there. My understanding led me to believe it was a quasi-urban office park, and in a way it is, but one that works better than any other. 

Unfortunately the subway ends a few, long blocks north of the formal Navy Yard gates. Because of the city's gentle slope towards the Delaware River, water tables are too high to extend the Broad Street line all the way to the Navy Yard, at least underground. But despite the boring walk past some of the largest surface parking lots I've ever seen and under the roaring interstate, passing through the gates is a journey into a very unique place.

Massive decommissioned Naval vessels loom overhead, moored to concrete docks with knotted ropes the size of a body builder's bicep. These rusted hulks aren't what you'd expect to find in our local beehive of innovation, but the location's history is exactly what sets it apart from other Millennial brainstorming hubs, and they're what make it so exciting.

Venturing further into the sprawling campuses, along the glistening headquarters donning names of soon-to-be-known pharmaceutical companies, and URBN's historic warehouses, it quickly becomes apparent that Philadelphia's Navy Yard is our own Cupertino. Big Pharma is big business, and Philadelphia owns it. The Navy Yard is taking what makes places like Cupertino work, only it's been dropped in the middle of a major city. 

While tech commuters treck to the Silicon Valley, the Dulles Corridor, or King of Prussia, or resign themselves to live where they work, the Navy Yard has taken what works in those suburban pockets of genius, condensed it, and put it in the middle of the action. 

As a fifteen veteran of the technology realm, I can tell you from experience exactly why large companies opt for sprawling campus headquarters in lieu of pompous Center City skyscrapers, and it has little to do with cash. There's a certain amount of prestige that comes with working in a place like Comcast Center or 30 Rock, but that's where it ends. To get the job done right, an agile work environment requires numerous meetings every day and that doesn't jove with elevator banks and stacked floors. Techies commute to the 'burbs because the architectural spaces that makeup Google, Facebook, and Apple foster a creative mind. 

Large footprints and grassy grounds separate employees from the distractions of the urban American city, and allow planners to strategically create the specific kind of distractions that keep those employees engaged: jogging trails, fitness equipment, outdoor conference spaces. When you leave GSK or URBN on your lunch break, you're not entering the hectic and hostile streets of Center City Philadelphia, a world that will immediately take you away from your work. Instead, you're entering a corporate wonderland designed to make your break a relaxing reprieve that doesn't take you away from your work. 

With room to grow, the Navy Yard is offering a microcosm of the environment that makes places like Cupertino work, and offering it at Philadelphia's doorstep. As word spreads and the Navy Yard continues to fill out, it would not be surprising if some of the nation's greatest innovators come home to the Workshop of the World. And why not? Will all the pluses of the Silicone Valley unfolding within the confines of one of the nation's biggest cities, what advantages to suburban campuses continue to offer?

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. 

Hyde Hotel

If you've been buried under a rock like myself, you might have missed a few things. I know I did. I thought that Dranoff's SLS Hotel proposal was dead. Apparently I'm not right, just impatient. But I'm also still skeptical. 

It's apparently happening, and its footprint is growing. Like all hotel conglomerates, SBE Entertainment Group understands you can't just cater to one demographic if you want to breed moguls. I mean what is this, the Roaring 20s? SBE wants to put another one of its' brands, the less pricy Hyde, on the same block of Broad at Pine Street.

If you don't know what is at Broad and Pine, don't worry. It's a parking garage that houses a Starbucks, and neither will be missed by this guy (go to Cafe 12, please). A preliminary rendering shows the Hyde as a handsome if dull 22 story hotel - think Boston in the '90s - with some apartments (because everyone's doing that now), and a seemingly stunted SLS International. Let's hope the latter is just a drafting glitch because that corner deserves some height. 

Dranoff, the developer behind both hotels, hopes to start construction on the Hyde in 2017, so, you know, we've got a while. Projects this large take time to get off the ground and go through dozens of redesigns in the process. We'll likely never see the SLS International we've seen in renderings, and the Hyde's introduction may be a litmus for vested parties to gauge the market. Swapping a parking garage at Broad and Pine for a new one at the should-be site of the SLS International wouldn't be unheard-of. 

But Philadelphia's so hot right now (say that in Mugatu's voice) we could see both sooner than we expect. Philadelphia's recent success is locally unprecedented, at least in any of our lifetimes. Just look at what's happening on Market East and the Schuylkill River. SLS and Hyde aren't household names to most Americans, not like Marriott and Hilton. But their interest in Philadelphia says a lot what's happening in Center City. 

2016 Mummers Day Parade

I tended to my Philadelphian obligation and went to yesterday's Mummers Parade, for about ten minutes. To be honest, that's a new personal record. I get it. It's a fun and uniquely local tradition, and if I was accustomed to binge drinking at 10am, I'd probably do a little more than show up for one picture. 

Besides, I'm there for the costumes, and they're easy to see on social media, so that's where I went next. And believe me, social media's reaction to this year's festivities was certainly present, and vocal.

One of the unfortunate traditions that seems to plague the Mummers Parade every year is an amateur knack for insulting various cultures and races, most notably through blackface. This year's targets by two of the bands were Mexicans and Caitlyn Jenner. What's truly unfortunate is how the actions of a few boobs can ruin a good time for everyone.

If you were to read Facebook or Twitter today, you'd think that the Mummers Parade was solely dedicated to mocking minorities and Caitlyn Jenner. It even made it to PerezHilton, where the celebrity blogger repeatedly confused the actions of one band with the entire parade, stating "this year the parade poked fun at Caitlyn Jenner." To anyone outside the Philadelphia region, you'd think that this were a parade put on by professionals, that the city was promoting bigotry, and that the entire parade was a hateful tribute to Caitlyn Jenner. 

This makes us all look bad. 

Let's get one thing out of the way, Caitlyn Jenner is a superficial fame-whore. She's primed for parody. But resorting to tasteless jokes and witless memes doesn't make you clever, it just proves you're as shallow and vapid as she is. Further proving that Finnegan's performance was not simply a tasteless joke, one member decided to shout "Fuck the gays!" at a camera. 

It shouldn't be too hard to figure out who this idiot is.

While Finnegan's Captain repeatedly apologized for the words of one member, pressured apologies have become routine on social media. It's difficult to determine what apologies are sincere, and that sincerity is certainly suspect in Finnegan's case following its choreographed routine that mocked the transition process of a member of the LGBT community. Was it really the words of one man, or just one man's words caught on tape? What kind of environment does Finnegan's social club foster, and where the motives behind their performance cluelessly ignorant or deliberately hurtful.

Finnegan's wasn't the only offensive culprit this year, either. The Sammar Strutters went with a Mexican theme, which in itself might not have have been so offensive...if one didn't dress up like a taco.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Social justice is swift and often unfair. It only take a few hours for Social Justice Warriors to tap into a cause, vicariate the city involved, and move on. In one day, social media has unraveled all the progress we've made rebranding our city's image. We're no longer the hip new "it" city, we're now a city of bigots, all thanks for a very small group of ignorant morons. 

Keep in mind, there are 10,000 performers in the Mummers Parade, and 99.9% of those Mummers put on a wild and wonderful show, including the Miss Fancy Brigade of drag queens. 

I'm not going to apologize for the hateful actions of a few idiots anymore than the drunken slobs pissing in the street all day, because they are not my Philadelphia. My Philadelphia is the city that recently received a perfect score from the Human Rights Campaign's Municipal Equality Index. My city is the one that embraced same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court of the Unites States did. My city is the one that effectively ended veteran homelessness last year. And my Philadelphians are the roughly 1.5M residents who cooly embrace diversity with a, "Yeah, so what? Let's go grab a Lager." 

My Mummers are those who spend months crafting meticulously colorful costumes and live to play a role in the nation's oldest surviving folk festival. 

This is what it's all about.

Residents who confuse insults with comedy are bigots, and when a Social Justice Warrior's cause ends with one broad stroke of reactionary hate, they are an equal offender. Philadelphia is an amazing city and the Mummers Parade is one of many reasons why. 

Mark Foster Gage

There's a new kid in town and he's got some choice words for those currently creating the world's tallest and most revered skyscrapers. While Mark Foster Gage's firm isn't entirely new to the scene - and having taught at Yale for over a decade, Gage isn't a novice when it comes to design theory - his visions are wildly refreshing, and his overwhelmingly positive press should have institutional architects shaking in their Eames Lounges. 

In fact, his study for Helsinki's Guggenheim prompted Arata Isozaki to call him "WEIRD," a truth Gage accepted with pride. 

Gage's designs are as otherworldly as anything you can expect to see in The Force Awakens, perhaps even beyond the visuals of Hollywood's greatest science fiction. While the most ambitious of his firm's designs are relegated to paper and 3D printed models, he's offering the world a vision into a future that design lovers have been craving ever since Frank Gehry balled up a piece of tinfoil and called it a museum.

His latest work, codenamed "The Khaleesi," which should be apparent to any Game of Thrones fan, challenges Manhattan's rapidly growing skyline, growth which painfully caters to the status quo. 

More than any other city in the Western World, the wealth of New York's new millennium has rendered its once eclectic cityscape of masonry and steel unrecognizable to its 20th Century past. In the face of rapid change and short attention spans, this global center is breeding skyscrapers - very tall skyscrapers - like overwatered kudzu. 

There's no question that Manhattan's sprawling skyline of blue glass, geometric silver shapes, and sheer height is impressive. But once the novelty of its renaissance has worn off, once you step back and objectively look at what New York City is visually becoming, its to-be skyline looks less like a diversified hub of capitalism and more like a mammoth university of the future. 

Its glass curtains are less about current architectural trends and more about the economics of architecture, a point Gage drives home in a recent interview. From New York's Bank of America Tower to the World Trade Center, Manhattan's architects have been playing fast and loose with shapes but ignoring texture, materials, and craft. 

That's where Mark Foster Gage comes in, and where the legitimacy of even the best Starchitects around the globe comes into question. Treating architecture as art first, art with purpose, Gage sets out to create the very best works, at least as he sees it, while ignoring economic (un)realities.

And why shouldn't he? In Manhattan of all places, why do architects cut corners when their audience is the 1%? Without delving into the political nightmare surrounding our country's polarized economy, we're reaching a threshold of decadence, one on par if not surpassing that of the Industrial Revolution, even the Roaring 20s. If these sky scraping towers are finding billionaire tenants, why are architects sparing any expense?

From mansions on the Main Line to Central Park's sky scraping condos, it's easy to wonder if anything built during our 21st Century's Gilded Age will ever make it into the architectural history books that isn't a lesson in boring design.

Mark Foster Gage's "The Khaleesi"

Call Gage Steampunk Gothic, Bladerunneresque, or the Grace Jones of the built environment, as an academic of architecture he is ironically unfettered with any academic analysis of his own work. And that's exactly what sets him apart from the heard, and exactly why we'll be hearing more from him. 

In his interview with The Creators Project, Gage refers to his "High Resolution Architecture" in a manner that deliberately dodges meaning in lieu of his audience's "right to develop their own narratives."

To the artistically academic, that might sound like a copout, like an excuse to throw a bunch of rambling elements together for visual porn. If Gage's work were simply for the sake of raw stimulation, that argument would have merit. But his work - random as it may be - is a cohesive and direct reaction to a plugged-in world's desperate need and latent want for textual stimulation.  

As Gage puts it, "in the world of the Tweet, people are forgetting how much richer things can be - that you can't put into 140 characters."

Using the materials and technology available to the new millennium, Gage attacks today's architecture the way pioneers like I.M. Pei used reinforced concrete to reinvent the embodiment of bureaucracy through Brutalism. Like the Neo-Deco post offices and train stations of the 1950s, our cityscapes have plateaued on a dull sense of familiarity, even when well designed, built, and outfitted. 

Architecture holds a unique place in the Art World, namely in that it's so utterly expensive to build a building, especially a big one. While painters, sculptors, and musicians need to constantly evolve to maintain their relevance, architects only need to design one great building, then wash, rinse, and repeat.

As groundbreaking as Frank Gehry, Robert Venturi, and the late Michael Graves initially were, they abandoned their art and corporatized. Even Norman + Foster's Comcast Innovation & Technology Center, being hailed by critics as Philadelphia's first "World Class" skyscraper, is uncomfortably similar to Foster's twenty year old Commerzbank in Frankfurt.

Incredibly critical of Manhattan's recent building craze, Gage's criticism doesn't come from a place of arrogance, even when he calls the Freedom Tower "easy." It comes from a place of frustration, a place from which all lovers of architecture - art - can sympathize. 

Gage's Khaleesi may look like a chaotic mess of industrial, patriotic, and even garish elements, but didn't America say the same of Willis G. Hale and William H. Decker in the 19th Century? Didn't Philadelphia decry its own City Hall upon its completion for those very same reasons? 

Change is controversial, and those who challenge our perceptions are the men and women who create new worlds. Gage's Khaleesi may never happen, and even if it does, it may simply stand as a testament to a future we never saw. But even on paper, The Khaleesi serves as stark opposition to towering infill and asks us to demand more from those who build our cities, even if it isn't safe. 

Gage is young. He's versed in technology and attuned to the wants of several generations with very little representation in the industry. Regardless of his own youth, those generations - the Xs, Ys, and Millennials - deserve a voice in the field, and Gage's exaggerated imagery is what we've been waiting to emerge from the silent fog of repetitive, uninspired design. 

We tire of musicians and celebrity chefs who refuse to evolve and innovate, but we give art's most ever-present artists a pass on mediocrity even though we have to look at their buildings every day. Gage is the Lady Gaga of architecture: frightening, bold, obnoxious. He manages to be rhetorically pedantic and stunningly visionary at the same time. In those regards he is the voice of an architectural generation, a revolution for those BuzzFeeding, Tweeting, and Instagramming their sharp snap for irony and whimsy. 

Those who are too bored to look up, or too afraid to appear impressed, to shock them may be the ultimate, architectural feat. And if Manhattan doesn't want Gage, he's welcome in Philadelphia, a city still enthralled by our own, great Frank Furness, our Camille Paglia who told us to "Look Up." We get you. And we're not afraid to look up. 

Something to be Thankful For

"Letting the S.S. United States go to the breakers would be like letting the Statue of Liberty be melted down and turned into pennies. Unthinkable."

Those are the words of an anonymous supporter who recently donated a quarter million dollars towards the conservation efforts behind the S.S. United States, docked in South Philadelphia for almost two decades. Currently out of commission and stripped of its midcentury fineries, the historic ocean liner still holds the record as the fastest passenger ship ever built.

As one of the last true ocean liners, passenger ships designed to traverse the choppy seas of intercontinental travel, the S.S. United States ceased operation in 1969 when air travel and leisurely cruise ships replaced the need speedy transatlantic crossings. 

At the time, the S.S. United States was unprecedented both in its speed and its panache. Inspired by the great ocean liners of the Gilded Age combined with the modern technology of its time, you might call the S.S. United States the world's last Titanic. Only her legacy didn't enter the history books with a bang, but with a slow decline into irrelevance.

For decades she idled in Norfolk and Philadelphia as her fittings, furnishings, and mechanics were stripped for restaurants and museums. 

Her arrival in Philadelphia gave way to urban legends and even inspired an episode of Cold Case. For years, she was simply referred to as "the big ship by IKEA," as the furniture store even installed a massive picture window in its cafe from which to view the massive, rusting hulk. 

The campaign that finally recognized this diamond in the rough began in 2009. As Philadelphia enjoyed a rebirth of its own in the early 21st Century, residents began taking another look at our deteriorating assets, and the S.S. United States happened to be one of our most visible. 

H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest has been the liner's most vocal advocate, originally pledging a $300,000 grant towards the S.S. United States Conservancy in 2009. The efforts of the Conservancy helped keep the ship stay afloat for a few years, but the hefty docking price of $60,000 a month always whispered quietly into the ears of even the most hopeful.

Proposals ranged from a casino or hotel here in Philadelphia, to attractions in New York or Miami. Quizzically, nothing seemed to stick. Given that Long Beach can support the Queen Mary, it's mind boggling that Manhattan wouldn't be jumping at such an opportunity for its densely packed ports. 

A year ago, her fate seemed sealed: she would be sold for scrap. The Conservancy had seemingly explored every possible opportunity, even the notion of filling her with computer servers as a means to simply make rent. That's when they went viral with a plea to save the ship, and that's when magic happened. By October of 2015, the Conservancy had raised $100,000. By this month, that number jumped to $600,000. 

While room remains for pessimism, the outpouring of international support is new, and hopeful. The $600,000 will help keep her afloat in Philadelphia or relocated to a port with more potential within the next year. It would be wonderful if a fitting place could be found for the S.S. United State in Philadelphia, but losing the ship to another city isn't Philadelphia's loss. The S.S. United States is America's ocean liner, the World's last Titanic, and a symbol of International innovation and grit. When you think of the S.S. United States as a symbol of our past, it's easy to understand support spanning the globe. She's the World's treasure. 

Whether she sits in South Philadelphia as eye candy for Instagrammers, serves as a museum to nautical knowhow in Norfolk, or as a lavish hotel in New York or Miami, one thing is certain, one thing the outpouring of international support proves: The S.S. United States deserves to stay afloat.