I highly encourage you to read the opening page in this months Philadelphia Magazine. It is written by D. Herbert Lipson, whose family has published Philly Mag since 1946. It’s called “Off the Cuff”, and here are a few choice excerpts:
Philadelphians are ugly…what the world sees is the layer of crud over everything, including us. We’re not clean …or safe…I’ve been railing for a long time about how shabby we are, how Philadelphians present themselves poorly.
It gets better.
Not so long ago, a national high end retailer wanted to put a store on Walnut Street. A couple of executives drove down from New York one day, parked their limo on Walnut, and gazed out through tinted windows…at the slovenly crowd passing by. Then they drove back to New York, after coming to an easy decision: Philadelphia is not the place for high end retail.
Oh, no! We lost a chance to encourage a couple of blue blood aristocrats from New York to put a chain store on Walnut Street because we weren’t all dressed like we care what blue blood aristocrats from New York think of us? What is wrong with us? Why can’t we start living our lives to impress the obscenely wealthy?
We sometimes invite staffers down from Boston magazine…an they’re startled by what they see…we prance around in public like we’re walking the dog in our backyard.
We don’t just disgust New Yorkers, we also disgust those vanguards of taste and class, the Bostonians? How embarrassing! This isn’t the first time Lipson has blasted Philly while praising Boston. In an article written about him for his alma mater, we get this little gem: Boston magazine, he says, is classier than Philadelphia both in appearance and writing. That reflects Lipson’s opinions of the two cities.
There’s plenty more jewels in the write up: how disgusting Rittenhouse Park is, how he recently had lunch at the Palm, and how our lack of fashion is going to be difficult for the new Mayor to deal with. Now all of this would be pretty funny if Bobby Badtimes wrote it, but I don’t think D. Herbert is kidding. I think he really finds Philly to be a cesspool, and an embarrassment when compared to the crown jewel of haut couture, Boston. So shape up, Philadelphians! If you want your mag to get the classy treatment like Boston, you need to start wearing expensive suits and eating at the Palm and rooting for the Patriots.
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