Play in the City 2013

There’s nothing quite like meandering through a city. Not knowing where you’re going to go next, or what you’re going to see. As one of my friends had said only the day before, “It’s all an adventure in guesswork.” And it is. My group wandered around, doing some shopping here, checking out the used bookstore there. Every time I turned my head I saw something different, something exciting: A dog walker, a street blocked off by police cars, an old building next to a shiny new one. A group of forty rollerbladers racing through the streets, the leader yelling “RIGHT TURN RIGHT TURN” and as one the group makes the turn, some slowing down, some going backwards, but all of them making it. Except for one, the man with his head down, the man going to fast to notice anything around him. As he skated ahead, he was being left behind.

I noticed a lot of adults walking the same way the rollerblader skated. I noticed it because I often do the same thing: head down, shoulders slightly hunched, quick steps. It means business, it means stress, it means you have a place to be and you’re going to get there on time and that means no looking around, no small smiles to passerby, no muttered hellos, no noticing anything. No time for anyone.

Jessica Bernal

ESEM- Play in The City

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Trains were a figment of my imagination. They would only get as real as Thomas and Friends, The Polar Express and only as exciting as the Zorro movies with Antonio Banderas. And now I find myself walking back slowly step by step startled by the roaring sounds of what they call a train.

As much as I try to tell myself that the trains are real and that no, I’m not on the set for the next Back to The Future movie, my feet can’t seem to believe it. I get a little push from everyone around me making his or her way onto the monstrous silver caterpillar. The chilly wind brushes off the nerves away and I embark onto discover what Philadelphia holds.

I take each step as if I were walking in the dark yet my eyes are wide open looking at everyone and everything on the train. The young couple too busy with each other’s faces to notice we’re all staring, the woman reading her book with no attention to her surroundings, and half of the train busy on their phones texting away as if their thumbs were on a marathon. I’m trying to look for a seat but I find myself more interested in the people on the train than the actual empty seat right in front of me. I feel like a kid in the candy store for the first time and I haven’t even arrived to the city yet!

Philadelphia is quite literally larger than life.  All around us on the parkway there were huge, imposing buildings.  They were imposing, intimidating, incriminating halls not because of their size but their age.  Their echoing chambers filled with the history of centuries, telling the stories of the great heroes long past, all bear down on me.  It’s a beautiful and epic place, but the walls themselves seem to demand silence and awe, as if you could somehow destroy the integrity of the place by being anything less than amazed.  The eyes of carvings and statues follow us around the rooms and along the sidewalks.  Their exaggerated size and features look down upon us as if we must feel privileged to walk down the same paths that others once did.  And I do feel awed; I do feel a bit amazed that after all of these years I can be in the same place people once worked and lived hundreds of years ago.  But this is what I mean by larger than life.  Those giant statues?  We can never fill those shoes.

Philadelphia is a very authentic city, from what I’ve seen of it so far. It has the “soul” keeping it alive that Zukin speaks of. When I’m there, I can feel how many people have been there and have loved it. It gives me hope that one day, I’ll be one of them, living in the city and loving it along with all the ghosts of its past. Zukin says that it is these, the ghosts, that make a city a true city. If that is in fact the case, Philadelphia is one of the truest cities I’ve ever run across.

We explored what felt like every inch of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, and even a bit beyond. For the amount we saw, we came out at the end of the day feeling like we had spent the whole weekend in the city. My favorite site (or sight?) was the Reading Terminal Market. It was full of people, talking loudly to each other, clearly enjoying themselves as they did their shopping in this bustling indoor market. It was almost overwhelming because of how many people were in there, and how full it was. But when I took a minute to breathe (while moving, I didn’t want to stop in the middle of the traffic!) and look around, I got my bearings. And I loved it.

    When I was rambling around in Philadelphia, the city was distant to me. I was just a tourist coming to visit, taking pictures and looking at everything through my fresh new eyes. Our role changes every time we visit a new city. In my hometown, I'm the host welcoming the guests. But here, I'm just a visitor waiting for the city to welcome us.

 We walked slowly towards the Art Museum, trying to catch on with the surroundings. In the opposite, the city residents walked in a much quicker pace. We saw a lot of runners and bikers exercising on the street all day, ranging from students to the old. People took their dogs out for a walk. The owner of a food cart stretched out his head and said hello to us, hoping that we would buy his food.

 We finally reached the museum, with the grand staircases in the front. As we were climbing up the stairs, I heard women shouting and cheering. Soon, a group of young men started racing on the stairs. One of them even took off his shoes and ran in bare feet. I guessed he was the winner at last. They seemed to have a lot of fun in their playing. It was already 11:40 when we reached the top of the stairs. Looking back, the landscape of Philly was right there, as high as I am. I really wanted to go inside the museum or walk around to take a look at the sculptures. But since it's a long way from the library, we had to head back to the Free Library to catch the Quiet Volume Show.

When momma and I stayed in Philly for Admitted Student Day in April, we were taken aback at how the banking district lived side-by-side with streets that almost looked like a ghetto. I told her I was feeling exceedingly pale and female. However by the end of our trip, we concluded that Philly is what it is and we appreciated it. This opinion has not changed. Whilst playing in it with Ellen and Samantha, I found myself looking for run-down establishments and homeless people near the Rodin Museum, as if the scene is incomplete without them. When we were messing around on the giant monopoly pieces near the municipal building, Sam commented on how the city hall does not fit in with the rest of Philly. I agree with her; its majestic white marble put the surrounding skyscrapers to shame. 

And yet, these observations support the thesis in my previous paper. Philly is a concentration of American culture. This means that the facets of Philly are not supposed to necessarily compliment each other, but only to coexist silently. For example, I told Ellen that I felt like we were in Paris whilst strolling down the parkway. As soon as we stepped off it onto the Free Library Green, we were back in ‘Murica. Not just anywhere in ‘Murica, but in Washington DC. Washington DC likes to use lots of pillars like the ones at the Free Library; methinks it makes the elites feel more powerful. 

During the second day of class, the word I chose to describe Mumford’s piece “What is a City?” was “improbable.” Although I liked the concept of a “civic nuclei” (96), in which “social disharmony and conflict [could create] drama” (94), I did not think that such a place could exist. I was aware that many cities have the diversity that allows for “social disharmony.” Yet, I considered it unlikely that people of different ethnicities encounter each other often enough to create it. Instead, I believed that most cities are split into various cultural and/or ethnic neighborhoods, that people are mainly drawn to places that they can personally identify with, and, in consequence, that a whole city could be diverse, but it was not necessarily a melting pot. 

However, all of these beliefs were altered during my first trip to Philadelphia. Now, I do not doubt the actuality of “civic-nuclei.” Instead, I believe that they can exist and, when they do, they are integral parts of a city. 

I thought Philadelphia was a modern city with hundreds of high-rise buildings, busy men silently walking in the streets and thick dark clouds. My thoughts are broken when I go up from the Septa station and the first sunlight shines on my hair. Blue sky and clouds are like the Easter egg and its soft white decorative patterns, enwrapping the old but fashionable city.

    I first visited Philadelphia a few weeks ago with a friend for a quick day in the city with light shopping and Shake Shack.  My first impression was that Philadelphia was simply like a smaller, less crowded, and slightly cleaner New York.  I quickly felt at home there thanks to the familiarity from the similar architecture, known stores, common and slightly disgusting smells, and recognizable street layout.  Visiting for a second time yesterday I noticed much of the same things I had previously; engine oil near parked cars, a subway system nearly identical to that of New York, sidewalks covered in gum, many museums and galleries, and small parks and gardens.