Rittenhouse Square Surprises

I spend a lot of time in Rittenhouse Square, and I'm constantly amazed at the strange things that pop up there. It's unlike any other urban space I've ever been to; the closest approximation I've seen is DC's Dupont Circle. In both places there are musicians, chess players, break dancers, and sunbathers. But Morris dancers? Mummers? Star Wars characters?

The Star Wars characters showed up months ago, part of some sort of promotion for the Franklin Institute's exhibition on the movies. I was rather surprised to come across Darth Vader on my way to pick up lunch.

This photo from the group's website shows a wedding party in the same spot I saw them perform. They apparently don't wear their fish masks for these events, but they do in the parade.

A few weeks ago, the mummers appeared. Mummers are a Philadelphia institution, parading through the city on New Year's Day since 1901. Apparently they also perform the rest of the year at special events. The costumes are elaborate--the group of mummers I saw leading a wedding party into Rittenhouse Square were dressed as fish, with flounces of scales in bright colors covering them from head to toe. They appear to have been the string band (which is Mummer terminology for brass band) Aqua. Aqua started in 1920 and has never missed a year in the parade.

I'd heard of mummers before, but the Morris dancers I saw this weekend were new to me. This folk dance actually started in England soon after mumming (which really just means performing in disguise) in the 15th century. The dancers combine rhythmic stepping with wielding sticks that they cross like swords or tap on the ground to the tune of music. The outfits look more like what I'd imagine Austrian or Swiss folk dancers might wear. Several local groups gathered at Rittenhouse Square to perform for the afternoon to start off their summer tours and a ring of onlookers gathered. Here's a video of what the dancing looks like.

As the weather finally gets warmer, I'm looking forward to seeing who else shows up in the square this summer!

Heading to Headhouse Square

The Library of Congress's undated file photo of the Headhouse

I had read a blog post about how great the Headhouse Square farmer's market was and I decided to check it out today. I had walked through the square for the first time earlier this week on my way to dinner at one of the country's top vegan restaurants, Horizons (which I really enjoyed--I need to figure out how to make pan-seared tofu!). After having brunch on South Street today, I walked all the way down to Society Hall to the market. Once I got to around 7th, it felt like walking through a beach town--a visual overload of signs, lots of cheap clothing shops, and a variety of delicious junk food options.

Then, suddenly, South Street opens up at 2nd st into Headhouse Square. Located a block from the Delaware River, the market there opened in 1745 to supplement the existing market on Market Street. "Headhouse" refers to the firehouse structure at one end of the market which was built in 1804. In the late eighteenth century, supposedly Dolley Madison and Martha Washington shopped here.

The market finally reopened there last summer, and it's one of the best I've seen--and I've checked out my fair share of markets. There's still cobblestone on the street and it does feel a bit like going back in time. Let's hope there was fudge as good as what I bought yesterday when the founding mothers went shopping there!

(Cleverly) Collapsing Categories

When I told a friend that I was writing a paper on WASP culture, she told me I had to check out the website "Stuff White People Like." I wasn't sure what to expect when I went to the site; how on earth do you lump an entire race together and discover common interests? Well, it turns out that by "white," the site really means middle to upper class, liberal whites. Since I fall into that category, maybe that's why I find it so funny. Number 81 on the list, Graduate School, really hit home:

Being in graduate school satisfies many white requirements for happiness. They can believe they are helping the world, complain that the government/university doesn’t support them enough, claim they are poor, feel as though are getting smarter, act superior to other people, enjoy perpetual three day weekends, and sleep in every day of the week!

Presumably the "hardworking white Americans" that Hillary Clinton recently said were supporting her wouldn't see themselves on this site. Funny as the site is, I think it reflects a tendency in America to talk about class by talking about race. The Newshour had a great discussion about the media's treatment of race during the presidential campaign; the commentators all agreed that the media was vastly oversimplifying some complicated categories.

We hear a lot more about the black/white divide in this election than old/young, urban/rural, or even class divides. And when we talk about people in the lower income brackets, they are the "working class," a term which connotes whites. But Stuff White People Like tries to understand how its audience views this class in the post Knowing what's best for poor people:

Deep down, white people believe if given money and education that all poor people would be EXACTLY like them. In fact, the only reason that poor people make the choices they do is because they have not been given the means to make the right choices and care about the right things.

Is this attitude that much better than a Republican girl's comment on this post that "we don’t want to give away our hard-earned money and/or inherited money to the unemployed population who are too lazy to work or too stupid to quit having kids they can’t afford"? There's obviously a class divide here on both sides of the aisle, and I hope we don't have to wait for a Rev. Wright to start discussing it.

Philly Transit in a Perfect World

When I first moved to Philly, I wrote a post complaining of the ridiculously bad public transit here. Ever since, I've been thinking about places I wish had their own subway stops. Seeing this map of the possible future of the DC metro spurred me to create my own map of my dream subway system for Center City (click on the link to the larger map so you can click on each line and read the blurbs).




View Larger Map

This is obviously quite unscientific--I have no idea where the real demand is. I am certain, however, that it's not on either of the existing lines. The buses have to pick up the slack and, based on how crowded they are at off hours, I don't even want to know how bad they are at rush hour. Since the lines already meet at Broad and Market, I figured it would make sense for the other lines to interest there to make transfers easier.

This dream map also would make it a lot easier for tourists to get around by connecting the Independence Mall area to the art museum. And it might seem silly to have a line so close to the Market st. line, but Walnut is really where things are happening in both West Philly and Center City. An express bus, at the very least, would be a huge help.

A few other highlights: that tourist-friendly red line would go to the Italian Market and end up at the big box stores, including the Super Fresh and Target. Frankly, I think getting a DC metro stop in Georgetown, pipe dream as that has always been, is a whole lot more likely than any of these changes happening in Philly.