"Get Your Ugly Fat Ass Over Here"

Not exactly what you would expect to hear in a Zagat rated establishment is it? And hear it I did, directed to me personally.
But this is a great case for a quote taken out of context. On its surface, it might be assumed to be an instruction from a cop to someone who is trying to jump in front of a train, or similar circumstance, like a parental command to a lard-ass offspring.

You have to know the Zagat rated Koch's Deli, Locust near 44th in Pennland here in the Quaker City to understand that its really a heart felt invitation to try a free sample of wonderful food. Koch's, founded in 1966, is a standing room only (except for two mismatched chairs) deli wonderland remembered from my youth and virtually unchanged since then (1974, when I lived in the then shabby, now pristine, Netherlands Apartments nearby).
Nothing here for new-fangled foodies or health nuts. Their trade is in giant sandwiches which could sustain most third world hamlets for a week. "More Meat for Less Bread". They take orders over the phone but don't make them till the caller shows up because they are busy with the folks in the store. The walls are festooned with pictures, "Best of Philly" awards, autographs, fan mail and municipal proclamations of greatness. While you wait for your order they offer free pickles and samples of whatever they are working on, with very earthy invitations.

Wherever you may see Koch's listed as a "restaurant" on those stupid on line restaurant sites, know you are reading ignorance. Koch's is not a restaurant, it is a DELI.
If you are visiting Philadelphia and have the choice between the Liberty Bell and Koch's, go to Koch's, unless you are not really hungry.
They have a website and a twitter thing but nobody pays attention to any of that, its a place you have to go to and enjoy for real.

Happy Holidays!??

So here it is this year, the time after Thanksgiving, when we used to say "Merry Christmas" to just about everybody. But today we mostly don't. We offer banalities instead, most commonly, "Happy Holidays". Why is this?
To the mild of mind, saying "Merry Christmas" to anyone that does not believe in it is supposedly an insult. Since they are not of the Christian faith, they will have a crappy day on Christmas, so why rub it in?  Or logic similar, and all too widespread.
This is utter nonsense. I don't believe in the virgin birth any more than I believe that Adam and Eve chatted with a snake. Its all quite silly to me, yet I always have a delightful time at Christmas once I get over grousing about all the shitty junk we squander our money on for young people. In fact I enjoy the midnight mass at Sts Peter & Paul, its a grand god show. So why are non Christians doomed to have a lousy day on December 25th? No reason at all. Why should we not wish Moslems, Jews, Bahais, Buddhists, Confucians, Jews, and everybody else a merry day? In fact they should have an even merrier day than Christian folks, since they get a day off and don't have to waste their time racing around like rabbits buying crap young people forget in an hour or less.
So here it is, for everybody, have a damn fine MERRY CHRISTMAS! And if you are so inclined, go find a snake and ask it about them apples....

The Mighty Twenty Three

One of the oldest  (before 1877) and longest urban bus routes, for many years the longest streetcar route in the world, is SEPTA's 23 bus, here in the Quaker City. Described as "SEPTA's rolling cash register", it winds from the wealthy reaches of Chestnut Hill, through historic Germantown, through the "Badlands", downtown and ends in deep South Philadelphia. Ridership changes from white to black to Asian to white en route.

Folks still work at getting it back to be a streetcar line, especially after seeing route 23 streetcars in robust daily service in San Francisco.
Among the landmarks it passes in North Philly is Fair Hill Cemetery, resting place for early Quakers, abolitionists and female rights advocates. According to some often verbose passengers that cannot comprehend the site signage or the several murals nearby, it is a) the oldest black cemetery or b) the oldest pet cemetery in a)Philadelphia or b) the United States. This may be due to the Quaker tradition of marking graves with very modest stones.

 

 

These days SEPTA's 23 and other busses have become more and more festooned with advertising that often covers the entire bus, making it look like a Heineken bottle or a large gin & tonic. They also have ads for personal injury lawyers (who sue one another to gain ad space on our public transit) on the back.

 

The 23 also passes two wonderful places, to me heavens on earth. First is the Reading terminal Market, which lends joy to conventioneers and jury members among many others. Its inside -

 

 





 Even better, just a few stops further south, is the Italian market, a mecca to some and a great place to get some python, buffalo tongue or a pig (that's a whole pig, as in pig roast). Someday maybe Connie and I can rent a place above one of these stores...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hipper Than Thou

Here in the City of Brotherly Love, we are getting way hipper than most folks think. Not only did we have a "Texting Lane" around city hall (this was an April Fool's joke on the part of Hizzoner Mayor Nutter). Now, to outdo all others, we have UNICYCLE Lanes, or at least one of them, to wit see below-

 

 

We are getting so hip that now the old old Koch'e Deli in West Phila is Zagat rated, for crying out loud.

 

Where will it end? 

About the Best Thing I Do

It is good to ask oneself what value one's activities have from time to time.
After retiring I decided to join my Connie as a reading coach for a program called Philadelphia Reads. She works downtown and every Thursday during the school year two classes of first graders come to her building from the Isaac Sheppard School, a 114 year old elementary public school in the poorest ZIP code in the city (or perhaps the country). Each week I get to help a kid learn to read. In a lot of cases, these coaches and their teachers are the only adults in the kids lives that think learning to read is important.
I never ask about parents because usually there is only one. Vacations are another bad topic, since they mostly never have any. They come in never really clean clothes, bright and cheerful and glad to see us. Then you learn that the oven at home has too many cockroaches so no hot food or, more importantly to them, cake. One child I coached was obviously dyslexic, but despite three tries by his teacher to get his mom to see a doc, he made no reading progress for the entire year.
This year, even this early into the school year, my kid is making good progress. At first he would not let go of his teacher's hand and worried (in Spanish) about people falling out of the neighboring office towers - he had never seen things so big. Now he is braver, speaks clearly, and holy moly, he reads better every week. So there may be hope for him, no matter how hard our legislators try to destroy his life chances.

Stalwart Beauty and Let's All Help the Rabbits

Rescued from a short life as junky desk décor, our little rose has bloomed four times, and this one is from a couple of days ago. As the beautiful color of the leaves fades into crappy stuff we need to get rid of, this joyous flower is a wonder in November.

And let's all be sure to note that here in the Land of Giants, our state legislature has decreed that November is Rabbit Breeders Month. We do not need schools, health care. roads, busses, pension funds or stuff like that. However we very much need more rabbits. Who knew it was hard to breed rabbits? Ah, Pennsyltucky, home of the myopic and the brave!

Too Much Technology "Lite"

Lately I have come to feel that we are misusing the term "technology." All over the place its used to describe what really amounts to mostly useless tweaks to computers, which even though we carry them in our pockets today, are not new any more, they were invented in 1947.  Even the New York Times "technology" section mostly describes what really amount to titillating toys that enable the mild minded to pass time gazing at glowing screens or spreading useless personal information about themselves or what they ate for lunch. You can even blab at folks and watch them endure your boring yammering. Worse yet they may even be interested in your yammering since the glowing screen has removed them from the real world in which thinking is so often useful or required.
Its mostly nonsense, and it is a lousy excuse for "technology". In the early days of television folks used to hope for a vast educational asset but what we got is mostly a barren wasteland full of night soil of the mind. Similarly "edu apps" are promoted as helpful to "digital natives" (these are young kids whose lives are impoverished by early access to pads and pods and other such junk - I actually heard this bullshit on NPR today) who will in all likelihood grow up unable to boil water or rake leaves. Or care about the world they take up space in.
We were supposed to have bullet trains and personal jets and X-ray glasses. That's technology! All we got are crappy little gizmos that waste our time.