West Philly

I've spent a  portion of the last two days in West Philly.  Yesterday Liz and I rode the #13 trolley out to 40th and Baltimore to have dinner at the Chat House.  I hadn't ridden on the trolley since I was a teenager and living in Yeadon with my parents.  The #13 trolley was our way into center city.  We hiked down the hill to catch the trolley then rode all along Chester Avenue and finally down into the tunnel at 40th Street and into center city.  In those days, the trolley wasn't air conditioned.  On hot days, all the windows were wide open so you could lean out and feel the breeze on your face and look out at the street.  The cold air was pumping in last night's trolley but it was filled with hot and sweaty passengers coming home tired and cranky from a long day at work. I remembered getting off at my stop just past Cobbs Creek and having to trudge up that long hill to my house on the corner of Church Lane and Darnell Avenue.  After dinner, Liz and I walked back to center city past beautiful old homes with big porches and flowering trees along the sides.  I didn't think these houses were the homes that most of the passengers on the #13 trolley were going back to.

This afternoon I walked out to West Philly following Walnut Street across the Schuykill to spend a couple hours at the Institute of Contemporary Art.  It was really hot crossing the bridge from center city and I felt the sweat trickle down my back.  It was a relief to step into the cool and dark of ICA.  The guard laughed and laughed when I told her I had walked all the way from center city.  "I did that when Septa was on strike," she said, "and then I had to stand all day here.  I was tired."

Upstairs was the exhibit I had come to see: Stefan Sagmeister: The Happy Show,  a mash up of videos, graphic displays of information, interactive installations by an Austrian graphic designer exploring his search for the meaning of happiness--how to define it, how to feel it, what causes it.  The gallery was nearly empty so I took my time, happy to be alone in a cool, dark space.  I laughed, I listened, I watched, I read,  I felt happy, bored, interested, even sad at one point.  It made me think which I guess was the point after all.  Then I walked back home crossing the new South Street Bridge (that's what the banners say) which I really like, with views of the river and the city on either side.