Our Neighborhood
Beetle-bags. Yow know what I'm talking about; those squirming, plastic sacs that hung over the street's greenest lawns in the summer time. My family never had one and thank goodness for that. My mom passed her elevated (and often ridiculous) empathy on to me, and the thought of that crowded bag being the final resting place for hundreds of hard-shelled pests is/was enough to make me cry.
Regardless, I have long reminisced of those beetle-bags as an image that sums up my understanding of "neighborhood".
Growing up in a very standard, suburban neighborhood, the term conjured a sweet nostalgia. Dozens of kids jumping on a single trampoline, trick-or-treating in packs of 20, every kid on the block playing kick-the-can, riding bikes through the woods, hearing your name called from a block away because the streetlights came on and you did not come home. Its all pretty standard. I certainly grew up in a "neighborhood".
The narrow concept of such a place has since changed. Nathan and I now know and love a very different kind of "neighborhood" - several blocks of city living, where life seems to squirm and overflow, like beetles in a bag.
Old City, Philadelphia is arguably the oldest residential community in the country. It is also home to the nation's oldest continuously occupied residential street. Neighbors built their structures on "Elfreths Alley" alongside each other just yards from the Delaware river 74 years before our Nation's Independence was declared three blocks south. Today that street is lined with 32 adorable, period-appropriate homes (and a near-constant flow of tourists).
Within steps from our apartment, we can dine on roof tops, courtyards, front yards, alleyways, where we can consume, American, Italian, Indian, Asian, Parisian, ect. fare. We trip over old cobblestones, walk in plumes of cigar shop smoke, meander through musty antique stores next to mustier bookshops.
City living is sensory overload, and we seek that sensation nearly every day. We head to the the theater, the bar, the salon, the river, and the park but mostly we just walk. Most often my pinkie is linked in his. We do adore our neighborhood and adore what it began as, fell victim to and then rose from.
Once a desolate near-wasteland of abandoned factories and slaughter houses, Old City Philadelphia was a destination for people looking for work or perhaps for some seedy liquid relief following a day's labor. Its color was that of muted charcoal.
Suburbanites would not touch it, or a bulk of the city for that matter during its most recent low-point, spanning from about the 1970's to the early 1990s. It was at that point that something changed. What it was I am not exactly sure, but one rumor I heard is that former Mayor Ed Rendell liked the idea of outdoor seating, and the city soon allowed restaurants to serve food to curb-side tables. The way it was told to me is that when people began driving by and seeing others enjoying a good meal on a nice night, more outsiders began to flock to the city, bringing back some culture and some color with them.
Currently, young families in the United States are leaving behind the idea of a 1/2 acre plot of land, settling down instead within previously uninhabitable city spaces. We are among those record numbers. Besides, a recent report stated that, on average, property taxes for those living in cities is now less than that of those living in the suburbs.
But with rent prices is mind, that is clearly not why we call this section of the city our home. Old City is something to savor, and judging by the 30 loops we are forced to make on Saturday's to find street parking, more and more visitors are eager to savor it too.
