Philly 3: This Time It’s Personal
So I returned to Philadelphia for the third time from Friday July 21st to Friday July 28th.
While boarding my train in Pittsburgh, I got hustled to the right by a rather aggressive woman conductor who had that burly lesbian prison guard vibe going on and was herding everyone and making everyone wait in a single file line and yelled at some confused-looking old woman who didn’t look like she knew where to go, leaving me not sure if I was in business or coach. I’d decided to try business this time, as it was only a $20 difference, but I soon suspected I’d gotten herded into the coach car.
Lesbian Prison Guard (or as I dubbed her while messaging Mark, “Notorious L.P.G.”) came around checking tickets. I had a brief surprisingly pleasant conversation with her when she scanned my ticket and saw it was Business but quietly advised me that it was jam-packed up there and suggested I was better off where I was at, but told me to tell the dining car that I was in Business and get a free non-alcoholic beverage.
I learned that it was a long voyage from my car to the dining car and felt like I was traveling the entire length of the train, so I tried to make those trips few and far between.
The dining car was run by a gruff but amiable older man named Bob. The blue Amtrak shoulder boards gave him an almost Navy uniform appearance and he had a little smile as he went about assembling people’s orders, as if he truly enjoys his work. On my second visit Bob was bantering with some guy and his little girl who were going to Rome for her upcoming birthday. Apparently Bob speaks Italian, as he was joking that he could come along and be their interpreter. I’ve always kind of wished I spoke Italian, but alas I only understand a few small bits and pieces.
There was a cute nerdy mo with a rainbow sticker on his laptop. And a couple seats past him was a girl who had one too. Also I’m not usually attracted to black men, but on both dining car trips there was a young black man wearing a tight black shirt and tight grey sweatpants with a cute ass and speaking with a gay lisp. Also both times he was with a white boy with a less pronounced gay lisp and I get a low key couple vibe. Clearly this train is filled with homosexuals. DeSantis would turn it away at the Florida border. Also a woman with fluorescent blue hair held up the line ordering a pile of food like she was at a McDonald’s drive-thru.
We took a half hour break at Harrisburg station, which was the only one designated as a smoke break. Notorious L.P.G. warned everyone that the train will be leaving “with or without you”.
No delays this time and made good time, actually beating Mark there who was coming by regional rail. Then it was the 25 minute or so ride by regional rail back to Fox Chase Station where Mark‘s car was parked, and the drive to his house.
The first night was pretty much a quiet night in, Joey made pasta and meatballs. The next day for lunch we ran across the street to get hoagies from a deli called Amir’s, where apparently Mark is well-known to them as “the pastor’s husband”.
The first event of note on the itinerary was Jurassic Park in Concert at the Mann Center for the arts. I was envisioning some kind of drive-in theater set-up, but it was two screens on sides of the building, and the live orchestra down below performing the soundtrack. People who paid more had amphitheater-style seating, but us and seemingly hundreds of other people camped out, picnic-style, on blankets and folding chairs, in the grass spread out behind the seats. We brought three hoagies (ham, turkey, and roast beef), along with some trail mix, grapes, cheese, crackers, cookies, and a bottle of wine and plastic glasses. There was a clearly gay couple camped out next to us (not that it’s pretty much ever hard to spot gay couples in Philly). One jumped up to run to the restroom before the movie started, and the other lisped, “remember, freeze if you see a T-Rex!”. At first I thought the screens might be too small, but it didn’t end up mattering.
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, but it was a good choice for an experience, with the kind of special energy that comes only from an enthusiastic live audience. Thirty years later, you can tell how much people still love Jurassic Park. There were two couples dressed like Grant and Ellie, and two men dressed like Nedry and Dodgson, and even someone in a T-Rex costume. The audience cheered and applauded at a bunch of parts, including giving Jeff Goldblum wild applause and some whistles (apparently people like Jeff Goldblum) and unsurprisingly everyone cheering when the T-Rex rears up into sight for the first time. The funniest part was when people cheered when the T-Rex ate Gennaro (lol), and at the end a lot of people hung around through the orchestra performing the end credit music and gave them a lengthy standing ovation.
On Sunday afternoon we saw Oppenheimer in I-Max at an AMC theater. Joey is a Nolan fan and Mark generally isn’t, although ironically Mark liked Dunkirk more than I did (personally I don’t think Nolan’s last several movies have been his best, and I still think he peaked with The Dark Knight and Inception). The end verdicts were I think Joey mostly liked it. Mark complained it was 45 minutes too long. I thought it was a mix of what I called in my review “flashes of greatness” and some of Nolan’s increasing self-indulgence and excessive stylistic flourishes and excessive time-jumping getting in the way. Kind of rooting for Cillian Murphy to get an Oscar nomination though. Having a rare leading role in a big high-profile movie like this that he’s getting critically acclaimed for is his best chance.
On Monday we returned to Devil’s Alley where we’d gone my first trip to Philly in 2021, so-called because it literally used to be an alleyway converted into a restaurant, with real trees growing in the middle of it and old graffiti left up on the wall. Mark had a burger and salad and I had a chicken quesadilla and onion rings and we split a steak egg roll. Big portions, neat hipster/urban atmosphere, and a very attentive (and very gay) server. I took half my quesadilla home and had it for lunch the next day. That evening we watched Dante’s Peak, a cheesy nineties volcano movie starring Pierce Brosnan and Linda Hamilton, because it’s just fun to watch silly corny disaster movies sometimes.
Monday evening we went on a long trek walking all around Center City and through the Gayborhood. Coming from small-town Trumper country Ohio, it never fails to be a slightly jarring contrast to see rainbow flags hanging from store windows, sections of the street chalked in rainbow colors, and even some street signs in rainbow colors. My trips to Philadelphia are the only times I wear my Pride shirts in public. I took some more pictures of City Hall and the Freemason temple, and a huge mural on the side of a building and the giant neon guitar slowly rotating above Hard Rock Cafe.
Oh, and I had my first subway rat sighting (from a distance). So I guess you could say I passed a city rite of passage.
Tuesday evening we got slightly tipsy and watched Twister and then Volcano and made fun of what cheesy nineties disaster movies they are. I had rum and gin with some Coke mixed in, but no matter how much I tried to water it down, I couldn’t stomach the alcohol taste and ended up saying to Mark, “you know how I know I’m getting old? I just don’t think I enjoy drinking anymore. Or maybe I’m just not drinking the right things.” (more on that later)
Wednesday we got back on a regional train to go out for dinner. On our itinerary was either Mushulu, an old sailboat converted into a floating restaurant, or Tavern-On-Comac. Well, we ended up venturing back into the Gayborhood to Tavern-on-Comac, which is a little underground restaurant almost like a cavern with dim lighting with a piano bar upstairs right above it, filled with older gay men and a raucous group of drunk straight women (because flocks of drunk straight women love descending on gay bars, maybe because they know most of the men there aren’t going to be sexually harassing them; Joey dryly refers to them as “invaders”). Anyway a friend of Mark’s, a quite heavyset bearded very gay man (Nathan?) was playing the piano and singing various showtunes (he hit, among other things, West Side Story, Rent, and Hairspray) until 9 when he turned it over to someone else. A couple of drunk women got up to sing with him a couple times. The first one couldn’t sing her way out of a paper bag, but the second one had a good voice, almost like an opera singer (for all I know, maybe she is?).
Speaking of maybe just not finding the right drinks to enjoy, Mark experimented by getting me a Cosmo with a lime and I ended up sucking the whole thing down, maybe a little too fast. I was sipping slowly until Mark turns and says “once you’re finished with that, we should head out”. Well apparently there was a slight miscommunication, because we still had plenty of time to catch our train back, but I took it to mean I should hurry up and chugged the rest of my Cosmo in two gulps basically. Cue Mark turning and looking back aback and “Jesus Christ, Jesse!”. For a while I felt a bit like a sailor walking on a tilting ship deck, with vision a little blurry.
Each time I return to Philly, I feel like I‘m understanding the way stuff works more. I’m now to the point where I understand how to buy my ticket for the regional rail at the subway kiosks, and how to swipe it without having to watch Mark do it first. Also, even a little tipsy, Mark was apparently surprised I walked pretty confidently in front of him all the way from Tavern back to the subway station and seemed to know where I was going, so I felt pretty proud of myself. When Joey dropped me off back at 30th Station to await my train back to Pittsburgh, I didn’t feel worried or confused about knowing where to go after doing it all before.
Every time I visit, I have the growing instinctive suspicion that I could live here. It’s full of historical sights, attractions, and events, a lot of it is spread-out widely so it doesn’t really “feel” like a big city except for when you’re smack in Center City (it takes about half an hour from Mark and Joey’s house to really get “into” the city), and after a couple previous visits I don‘t feel intimidated or confused by any of it. I find the atmosphere invigorating, even if some of it is grungy and sketchy. I feel more energetic and mentally stimulated. There’s the stereotype of “city people” being hard-nosed and unfriendly, and that’s probably true to an extent, but frankly, for better or worse, I’m not very warm or friendly with strangers either, so it doesn’t bother me in other people. I’m perfectly happy with people keeping their eyes straight ahead and minding their own business, and me doing the same. Of course, money as always is the great barrier, unless I want to live in one of the grungy ghetto areas which obviously is not an option. The only other intimidating thing is the traffic and all the lanes, which seems like it would be confusing and a little nerve-wracking, although it has a highly-rated public transit system.
My last evening on Thursday, Mark and Joey had two friends over, a husband and wife couple named Mike and Cheryl to play first Cards Against Humanity and later Telestrations, which is basically like Telephone except with illustrations. She showed up wearing a Pride shirt and he frankly seemed a little gay, so I wasn’t 100% sure if they were a couple or just friends until eventually he handed her a card and she said “thank you, husband”.
Alas, my week was finally over, and I had to pack all my stuff back up, with some reluctance, and prepare to return.
While awaiting my train at 30th Station, an old man sat down unnecessarily close to me and crowded into my personal space. Also a girl sat down across from me who looked like Millie Bobby Brown if Hollywood cast her as a “nerd” and slapped some frumpy clothes and big glasses on her.
I got in the forming line as soon as my train popped up on the board at Gate 7, and got onto the train pretty fast, finding a window seat at the back of the Business car. Seating-wise, I don’t really see what the difference is, although I realized I now had the advantage of the dining car being right behind me and the restroom and trash receptacle also being right behind me instead of at the front of the car like they’d been before. As soon as we got going a little bit I jumped up and got a very good Chicken Caesar Salad.
The black man who took the disabled seat across from me because it was the only open one left at the time had to give it up and move at Harrisburg because an old couple with handicapped stickers got onboard, so now instead of someone who was quietly minding his own business on his laptop with headphones on, I have an old man flat-out staring at me like he wants to strike up some train ride chit-chat, so I’m avoiding looking at him, though I can feel him staring in my peripheral vision. See? I’m not the “everyone knows everyome”/“howdy neighbor!” small town stereotype. Frankly, I’d rather people be cold and distant, because I am too. I accept this about myself, so I don’t hold it against other people.