Some Philly observations

Yesterday, I visited the City of Brotherly Love for the first time in about four or five years. I’ve always loved Philly; I think it’s a beautiful little town with plenty of interesting architectural treasures and even spots of natural beauty. So not having been there in some time, I wanted to catch a baseball game at the (relatively) new Citizens Bank Park, about which I’d heard good things, and generally mill about.

And to be sure, once seated inside the stadium, one is struck by the saneness of the layout—there’s probably not a bad seat in the house. While not particularly unique, I found the park pleasant. And then the game started, and my opinion of the place began to plummet. The atmosphere—it’s hard to describe—is a kind of, well, sterile. I realize part of that can be chalked up to a Sunday afternoon ‘family’ crowd and that most MLB games have inexplicably become versions of Romper Room, but the experience was much less than I would have imagined. Where were the notoriously hard-to-please Philly fans screaming vile obscenities at opposing (and their own!) ballplayers? Oh sure, there were a few scattered boos when one hometown relief pitcher entered the game and promptly gave up a home-run ball, but the crowd was so well behaved! That was not the Philly I know and love.

But seriously, I did find the place a bit vanilla. And I mean that in more ways than one. As my friends and I casually surveyed the crowd, I eventually announced, ‘you know, I think I’ve seen a total of 10 black people in the entire stadium…and they work for the ball club.’ Is Philadelphia not roughly half black? Where are the black baseball fans? I don’t know, maybe it was White Suburban Family Day at the ballpark.

The experience made me appreciate Met games at Shea Stadium a little more, for although Shea is a dreadfully boring ballpark, the crowd itself is most certainly a reflection of Queens, with blacks, whites, Hispanics, and Asians thronged together, cheering on their home team. And there seems to genuinely be some attempt at outreach from the Met organization itself to embrace the sundry neighborhoods in the area, such as the corny but nonetheless charming International Week, during which a national culture is celebrated each night (Irish Night, Dominican night, &tc.). Philadelphia, by contrast, seemed creepy and polarized.

One might find such a perception bogus given that I spent a total of 10 hours in town, but I cannot deny that I did feel a strangely palpable tension in town between blacks and whites. I don’t know…maybe it was a figment of my imagination.

Last month, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, Jonathan Adler posted a link to a humorous series of mock ads lauding Philadelphia over New York as being a more livable city. From what I sensed yesterday—not to mention that I was asked for money on the street more times in 10 hours than I have been all year in New York—I think New York needn’t trouble itself over Philly.