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The more things change, the more they stay the same
I don't know why I've been putting off writing all evening. I guess it's because I know once I start I'm going to write a long entry which nobody except me will read anyway. If I finish it though I can go watch movies and sew while waiting for laundry. And, I did stuff today, so I might as well get down thoughts and all. I'll even lj-cut it for all of your benefit.
For lack of any real inspiration I decided to spend the afternoon on South Street. For those who haven't been to Philly, South Street is the coolest thing about Philly, which I don't think any other cities except maybe New York have had a similar thing. It's this street, and about 6 blocks of it are filled completely with hip stores. That's the best way to describe it. Lots of used book/CD stores, lots of random shops where you can get all sorts of leather/bondage stuff, and random sorts of revealing and/or punk clothing, and there's some video game stores and a comic store and lots of little eateries and tons of things mentioned in Dead Milkmen songs like Zipperhead. (Heck, I even saw the Dead Milkmen perform on South Street once, at the TLA.)
Anyway, so I went to South Street. I was hungry and it was like 3pm but I decided my first thing to do better be get a cheesesteak, because of the lines. I went to Jim's Steaks, of course. I don't care what anyone from Philly says, Geno's and Pat's suck, and Jim's is the one true cheesesteak. Anyway. I waited in line for half an hour, but I got my pizza steak and birch beer and ate it and was very happy and proud to be a Philadelphian at that moment. While waiting in line I decided I was going to see a movie tonight, and I called Stewart, and could barely hear him, and he said he probably wouldn't feel like coming into the city. Shrug.
After Jim's I wandered around stores. I looked for neon green thread in the art store, but no such thing exists. Then I went to the book trader's a first time and only wandered the first floor, and didn't find much except a gray cat hiding behind a bunch of LPs. Then I went to Soho and bought another pair of black-and-white striped tights... hopefully this one will fit better, and even so, just in case my other pair rips, I'll have a spare. I noticed that a lot of stores on south street now have Sanrio stuff, too. After that I went into Garland of Letters, the hippie-occult store. I looked through a whole lot of random weird books and things, and I bought Carl a birthday present, but I'm not saying what it is. After that I went into Dairy Queen to get ice cream. I just sort of wanted ice cream. Yeah. Then I wandered some more.
You know, back in the summer of 1992, the first summer of freedom in my life where I didn't have to work at camp or do, well, anything, I remember wandering around downtown a lot. One of the cool things I remember doing was hanging out with a bunch of Akiba people, and one of them was David Lander. Lander's dad owned a whole lot of stuff in downtown Philly, including the property at 734 South Street. Lander's dad was also the scoutmaster for Troop 176, but that is another story. Anyway, I remember that summer, hanging out in 734 with Ben and Josh and Lander and all. Dave played guitar and I played drums and Josh sort of played bass and we "jammed" a few times. It was cool. I remember playing stuff like Paradise City, which has the easiest drum part ever written. Another cool thing was that the intersection of 8th and South had these two "phoney" phones painted onto a wall... there was one real phone and two phoneys.
Today I walked down South Street up to 8th. 734 is now a furniture store, and the corner of 8th and South got revamped so the phoneys are no longer there. It was weird to see.
You know, that summer was one of the best times of my life, even if I didn't appreciate it then. I guess I appreciate it now, since ten years later I'm sitting on another summer of no real commitments... but it's a little different now. I'm not about to spend all of my time hanging around with a bunch of other hippie geek children doing things like plastering Penn's Landing with flourescent psychadelic "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" stickers just because we can, or scaring a bunch of little kids out of a playground so we could sit under a playset bridge thingy singing "Under the Bridge" at the top of our lungs. Nor am I going to go to concerts in bad neighborhoods in Trenton and come home covered in a ton of sweat that I didn't produce with moshpit scars, or play D&D until 6am with a group of 10 people, or perform in Rocky Horror, or any of that stuff.
Or maybe I should.
...
Ugh, I need that to be a break, but it's hard to put a break into one's LJ entries. Anyway, after reminiscing around 734, I stopped in Showcase Comics, which was disappointing as it has become in recent years - I do admit that Phantom still knocks the socks off every comic/gaming store EVER. Then I went into Tower for a while and I got a CD of Really Rosie! Whee! I loved that album when I was a kid, but I don't even know what happened to my vinyl copy of it. After that I hit the book trader for a second time... and hung out on the second floor reading stuff for an hour. Picked up a bridge book that I hope I don't have (if I do I'll give it to someone I guess) and copies of the original D&D players handbook and DMG, which were fun to read through and cheap. And finally I headed home, with a lack of anything to do.
Actually, I stopped in Washington Square park for a bit on my way home. I love how Philly is laid out with all of these parks and stuff... they're small but they're all over and they are green and wonderful. I sat there and talked to squirrels. I had them literally practically sitting on my feet and then this dumb kid scared them off. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, ask me in person sometime. I really do talk to squirrels.) A woman with a beautiful golden retriever was walking her dog without a leash and the dog ran up to me. It was a really pretty dog. I was like "hello puppy!" and petted it but the owner woman got mad at me, so I stopped. Then I went home.
For dinner I decided to try the random sushi place around the corner from me, Aso Sushi. I got food take-out. I walked by Iron Chef Morimoto's restaurant, which is a block away from me, on the way home. It is big and bright and full of expensively-dressed people. The sushi I got was pretty decent. They were liberal with the wasabi, but I've gotten a good tolerance up for wasabi, so it was ok. I don't know if I'd definitely recommend going to this place as their prices seem a little high, and next time I'm in town I should try another place to compare, but it wasn't bad, and now I have their take-out menu, at least. And you can't beat the fact that it's like 2 blocks from here.
So I wanted to go to a movie. I looked at the listings, which I'd perused earlier in the day as well, and decided that the most interesting-looking thing playing anywhere near me was The Cat's Meow, playing at the Ritz theatre under the Bourse, which is like 5 blocks from here. It was a nice movie, and it had a great feel for the period, but I don't know if I liked the feeling I had coming out of it... mostly because I mean, I know the story isn't necessarily true, and it had a very downer sort of ending. It's basically the story of this trip on William Randolph Hearst's yacht in November 1924, where Thomas Ince was killed, or so people think... nobody really knows what was going on, but this movie goes on the mainly believed theory, that Charlie Chaplin had been hitting on Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies, and that Hearst shot Ince by accident, thinking he was Chaplin. Cary Elwes was Ince and he was really good, and Kirsten Dunst was Davies and she was really good (but a little bit TOO YOUNG... I mean... Hearst was 61 at the time and Davies was 28, half his age, but in the movie she looked like she was young enough to be his granddaughter or something). But, the really shining actress in this to me at least was Jennifer Tilly, playing the gossippy newswriter Lolly Parsons. She had that role DOWN, and was probably the most entertaining person on the screen. The way they played out what happened after the accidental shooting was really interesting but also sort of painful to watch. I guess this is what I get for watching another movie about people on a boat in the early part of the 20th century.
Now I am home doing laundry and wishing I hadn't forgotten that the CMU Andrew system is down for the evening. Doh!
For lack of any real inspiration I decided to spend the afternoon on South Street. For those who haven't been to Philly, South Street is the coolest thing about Philly, which I don't think any other cities except maybe New York have had a similar thing. It's this street, and about 6 blocks of it are filled completely with hip stores. That's the best way to describe it. Lots of used book/CD stores, lots of random shops where you can get all sorts of leather/bondage stuff, and random sorts of revealing and/or punk clothing, and there's some video game stores and a comic store and lots of little eateries and tons of things mentioned in Dead Milkmen songs like Zipperhead. (Heck, I even saw the Dead Milkmen perform on South Street once, at the TLA.)
Anyway, so I went to South Street. I was hungry and it was like 3pm but I decided my first thing to do better be get a cheesesteak, because of the lines. I went to Jim's Steaks, of course. I don't care what anyone from Philly says, Geno's and Pat's suck, and Jim's is the one true cheesesteak. Anyway. I waited in line for half an hour, but I got my pizza steak and birch beer and ate it and was very happy and proud to be a Philadelphian at that moment. While waiting in line I decided I was going to see a movie tonight, and I called Stewart, and could barely hear him, and he said he probably wouldn't feel like coming into the city. Shrug.
After Jim's I wandered around stores. I looked for neon green thread in the art store, but no such thing exists. Then I went to the book trader's a first time and only wandered the first floor, and didn't find much except a gray cat hiding behind a bunch of LPs. Then I went to Soho and bought another pair of black-and-white striped tights... hopefully this one will fit better, and even so, just in case my other pair rips, I'll have a spare. I noticed that a lot of stores on south street now have Sanrio stuff, too. After that I went into Garland of Letters, the hippie-occult store. I looked through a whole lot of random weird books and things, and I bought Carl a birthday present, but I'm not saying what it is. After that I went into Dairy Queen to get ice cream. I just sort of wanted ice cream. Yeah. Then I wandered some more.
You know, back in the summer of 1992, the first summer of freedom in my life where I didn't have to work at camp or do, well, anything, I remember wandering around downtown a lot. One of the cool things I remember doing was hanging out with a bunch of Akiba people, and one of them was David Lander. Lander's dad owned a whole lot of stuff in downtown Philly, including the property at 734 South Street. Lander's dad was also the scoutmaster for Troop 176, but that is another story. Anyway, I remember that summer, hanging out in 734 with Ben and Josh and Lander and all. Dave played guitar and I played drums and Josh sort of played bass and we "jammed" a few times. It was cool. I remember playing stuff like Paradise City, which has the easiest drum part ever written. Another cool thing was that the intersection of 8th and South had these two "phoney" phones painted onto a wall... there was one real phone and two phoneys.
Today I walked down South Street up to 8th. 734 is now a furniture store, and the corner of 8th and South got revamped so the phoneys are no longer there. It was weird to see.
You know, that summer was one of the best times of my life, even if I didn't appreciate it then. I guess I appreciate it now, since ten years later I'm sitting on another summer of no real commitments... but it's a little different now. I'm not about to spend all of my time hanging around with a bunch of other hippie geek children doing things like plastering Penn's Landing with flourescent psychadelic "Andre the Giant Has a Posse" stickers just because we can, or scaring a bunch of little kids out of a playground so we could sit under a playset bridge thingy singing "Under the Bridge" at the top of our lungs. Nor am I going to go to concerts in bad neighborhoods in Trenton and come home covered in a ton of sweat that I didn't produce with moshpit scars, or play D&D until 6am with a group of 10 people, or perform in Rocky Horror, or any of that stuff.
Or maybe I should.
...
Ugh, I need that to be a break, but it's hard to put a break into one's LJ entries. Anyway, after reminiscing around 734, I stopped in Showcase Comics, which was disappointing as it has become in recent years - I do admit that Phantom still knocks the socks off every comic/gaming store EVER. Then I went into Tower for a while and I got a CD of Really Rosie! Whee! I loved that album when I was a kid, but I don't even know what happened to my vinyl copy of it. After that I hit the book trader for a second time... and hung out on the second floor reading stuff for an hour. Picked up a bridge book that I hope I don't have (if I do I'll give it to someone I guess) and copies of the original D&D players handbook and DMG, which were fun to read through and cheap. And finally I headed home, with a lack of anything to do.
Actually, I stopped in Washington Square park for a bit on my way home. I love how Philly is laid out with all of these parks and stuff... they're small but they're all over and they are green and wonderful. I sat there and talked to squirrels. I had them literally practically sitting on my feet and then this dumb kid scared them off. (If you don't know what I'm talking about, ask me in person sometime. I really do talk to squirrels.) A woman with a beautiful golden retriever was walking her dog without a leash and the dog ran up to me. It was a really pretty dog. I was like "hello puppy!" and petted it but the owner woman got mad at me, so I stopped. Then I went home.
For dinner I decided to try the random sushi place around the corner from me, Aso Sushi. I got food take-out. I walked by Iron Chef Morimoto's restaurant, which is a block away from me, on the way home. It is big and bright and full of expensively-dressed people. The sushi I got was pretty decent. They were liberal with the wasabi, but I've gotten a good tolerance up for wasabi, so it was ok. I don't know if I'd definitely recommend going to this place as their prices seem a little high, and next time I'm in town I should try another place to compare, but it wasn't bad, and now I have their take-out menu, at least. And you can't beat the fact that it's like 2 blocks from here.
So I wanted to go to a movie. I looked at the listings, which I'd perused earlier in the day as well, and decided that the most interesting-looking thing playing anywhere near me was The Cat's Meow, playing at the Ritz theatre under the Bourse, which is like 5 blocks from here. It was a nice movie, and it had a great feel for the period, but I don't know if I liked the feeling I had coming out of it... mostly because I mean, I know the story isn't necessarily true, and it had a very downer sort of ending. It's basically the story of this trip on William Randolph Hearst's yacht in November 1924, where Thomas Ince was killed, or so people think... nobody really knows what was going on, but this movie goes on the mainly believed theory, that Charlie Chaplin had been hitting on Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies, and that Hearst shot Ince by accident, thinking he was Chaplin. Cary Elwes was Ince and he was really good, and Kirsten Dunst was Davies and she was really good (but a little bit TOO YOUNG... I mean... Hearst was 61 at the time and Davies was 28, half his age, but in the movie she looked like she was young enough to be his granddaughter or something). But, the really shining actress in this to me at least was Jennifer Tilly, playing the gossippy newswriter Lolly Parsons. She had that role DOWN, and was probably the most entertaining person on the screen. The way they played out what happened after the accidental shooting was really interesting but also sort of painful to watch. I guess this is what I get for watching another movie about people on a boat in the early part of the 20th century.
Now I am home doing laundry and wishing I hadn't forgotten that the CMU Andrew system is down for the evening. Doh!
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You were probably trying Pearl on South St... If you're looking for thread, you need to go to "Fabric Row". It's Fourth St. between South and Catherine. See:
http://www.fabricrow.com/
It's basically the "strip district" for fabric in Philly. You will be able to find anything you need there.
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hmm, i won't have time to go back to south street on this visit, but maybe i'll remember that next time.
i forget, are you also from Philly? the other night when i was trying to remember which of my CMU friends went to Central I was coming up with a huge blank...
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Aso seems to be a proper name. How odd.
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Sadly enough, I've been to Jim's twice in the past 4 months (despite neither of the trips actually involving anything else from Philly). The onions (provolone "with" is my usual order, I've never understood the Cheese Wiz thing) just melt in your mouth. Luckily, both times, the wait was under 10 minutes.