And when you meet a musician whose work you respect and they turn out to be a really decent human being, well…it reminds me to make an effort to be less of a dick.
Reblogging as a reminder that that thing I tell myself, when I see a really amazing image of the built or natural environment, that goes something like if only I were living/traveling in Japan/Oregon/Egypt/Maine/Bolivia/New Mexico, then I could be capturing images like this, is a total fucking fallacy.
Anyone who lives in this city long enough develops their own dream SEPTA expansion plans; this is the first I’ve seen that manages to ignore the city of Philadelphia itself (with the exception of that BSL spur through the Great Northeast, which still keeps it in white suburbanites-only territory.)
Here’s a tip to potential mass transit planners: there are four quadrants of urban Philadelphia which are currently unserved by rail. A better subway system would have a far greater impact on the region than more rail lines through the burbs.
Before there was Youtube and the accent meme, there was, I guess, punk rock.
In this music video from 1988, the Dead Milk Men, a Philadelphia area punk band, give a rather hyper-Philadelphian performance. For the most part, Philadelphians aren’t that aware of what marks their dialect as distinct from other regions, nor are most non-Philadelphias aware that there is a unique Philadelphia dialect…
/ow/ fronting
/ow/ fronting is, perhaps, the most salient dialect feature on display in this song. It’s certainly not unique to Philadelphia. In fact, it’s what qualifies Philadelphia as the Northern-most Southern city. While Philadelphia has many other Northern features, like a very raised /ɔ/, stereotyped in coffee talk, we depart from the rest of the North by fronting /ow/, and Joe Genaro does this to an extreme degree in this song. Right off the bat at 0:28, he says
And she almost knocked me dead.
Then he immediately follows this up with
I tapped her on the shoulder And said do you have a beau? She looked at me and smiled and said she did not know
In fact, all of his /ow/s in this song are incredibly fronted, except for the two tokens in rollin and stolen which, of course, are effected by the following /l/.
The article’s pretty interesting, but Old City has always been super trashy. It’s always been full of drunk people wanting to hook up. Right? Why else would Ben Franklin lived there?
You know, like a lot of people in politics, I get hit on by women all the time. There are political groupies just like there are sports groupies. I got hit on when I was 260 [lbs] every bit as much as when I’m 200.
— Ed Rendell. I’m going to have to start saying things like this. “Like a lot of F-list bloggers, I get hit on by women all the time.” Also, I still kinda refuse to believe he’s down to 200, unless he has absolutely no muscle on his body (also possible). (via willdo)
Eric Fischer has created beautiful visualizations for dozens of cities, comparing where locals (in blue) and tourists (in red) take photographs. This is the one for Philadelphia.
This is really neat. Even as a local, though, I take a photo of the Liberty Bell just about every time I walk by. I have no idea why.
Tourists walk up and down the Parkway; locals hang out in West Philly and on the transit lines.
