Being (T)here: First Impressions

We've been here a week.  So what do we know about Philadelphia?  Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.

First things first: we are so close to everything that we walk everywhere.  This has required us to regain our "city legs."  Been a sore week...

But everything here is so green that the oxygen content of the air must be above 25%!
I feel smarter already!

We'll do a photo tour of the inside of our apartment in the next blog, but here is some info:  built about 1928.

Solid building--no noise comes through the walls.  It has three stories with 13 apartments, including a dungeon.   There is a string of five just like it in a row.

Location: technically in University City, almost West Philly.  There is a strong Islamic influence in the area, with an Islamic school across the street and a mosque up the road a block.  Also, Manakeesh, a Lebanese bakery is next door and Saad's Halal Restaurant is across the street.  Islam is family-oriented and pretty conservative; and we love middle eastern and African food choices all around us.

Our street, Walnut, is a main artery, which means lots of traffic around the clock.  Yes it can be noisy when we are sitting on the veranda, but we don't hear it at all in the bedroom in back.  There are some streets that get sketchy at night, but we have families strolling, single women jogging and lots of indications that it is safe enough.  The crime map shows our little intersection to be safer than any in a four-block radius, including the genteel neighborhoods a block away.   We attribute that to the traffic.  Plus, we don't take our safety for granted.

On neighboring streets there are rowhouses, two or three stories high, about the same vintage as our ours, some better cared for, some worse.  

A lot of hole-in-the-wall businesses: laundry, specialty stores, eating establishments.  Leafy streets to the south.  We have the best trees on our street in front of us.  Since we are at tree level, it is nice.

Everything is close.  We've been here a week and have only moved the car once. We had to go find a Target to buy saucepans.  I can walk in my jammies around the corner for a newspaper, next door for baked goods, grocery a block away, three doors down to buy a replacement lockwasher for the one that went down the drain.

We are less than three blocks from an elevated train, three buses (one of which drops us off not 50 feet from our door) and a couple of trolleys.  Terisa walks 1.2 miles to work.  I walk two blocks to a subway station which whisks me off to the train station, which connects me to a regional train, which drops me by a DC Metro stop, which takes me to the front door of my office in Arlington, VA, several times a month.

Parking: It is all street parking, first-come-first-served-unless-someone-else-dug-out-the-spot-from-the-snow-in-which-case-if-they-put-out-chairs-they-have-claimed-the-spot-and-you-could-really-get-a-lot-of-bad-words-shouted-at-you-if-you-try.  Will probably be maddening on a busy night.

And of course there is a new cast of characters in the city, not the usual suspects.

In our building we have neighbors from all seven known continents, one missing continent, and at least three different star systems.

People who would have been considered sketchy in our Utah neighborhood are solid citizens here. 

Haven't met too many homeless people. Yet.  And only a few panhandlers.  But there are a lot of people who talk to themselves.  Or they could have handsfree telephone devices, you can't always tell.

There are a lot of students in University City, imagine that!  But it means an active, youngish flavor to the neighborhood. We feel like we are slightly less clueless than the newest Penn and Drexel students, but maybe we are just slightly more naive.  

I got cussed at by a passing motorist for just being me, I think.  The last bus driver had a honking obsession.  Sitting at the back of the bus I couldn't hear the horn, but I could see the reactions. Whew!

Our neighbor of the year is Abd Gazzawi, who runs the Lebanese bakery next door.  He let us use his wireless signal for four days while Verizon fiddled around with our wiring. He has gone camping with his family this week and closed the cafe.  But if you come visit us, we will be taking you to his place for some tasty food.

The hot summer city produces a variety of smells.  On the street we get exciting surprises from the steam that comes up from the grates.  In the hallway we get Indian and Chinese food smells. And  garbage day is quite the visual and olfactory display at curbside.

Navigation in the nation's 5th largest city is an adjustment.  What did people do before GPS?  Talk about your dark ages...

Summary:  This is so different from Riverton that it is a grand adventure.  Who'd have thunk that two hicks from the sticks would love city life like we do?  But we do so far.

And wait until you hear about church!