User:InMooseWeTrust/Places in Philadelphia

Neighborhoods

Philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods. This may account for the racial violence that is exhibited from time to time.

Center City

Center City is home to many thriving shops.

If you want a smaller version of one of New York's many shopping districts then look no further! Clothing store after clothing store, you'll never have a problem finding clothes! This section of the city was once very rundown, however real estate is now booming and everyone wants condos! You know Liberty Tower, those two huge blue buildings synonymous with Philadelphia's skyline? They are built on the remains of a porn theatre. Liberty Tower is great for anyone who wants to buy clothes, or eat in a food court. Center City is now stigmatized as being a "rich neighborhood" because it's been cleaned up a lot since the 1980s and everyone wants REAL ESTATE!

The Rittenhouse Square area, for example, is extremely expensive. Fifteen years ago, Rittenhouse Square was a place you'd go if you had a fetish for being beaten up and mugged, or if you made a living panhandling while pretending to be disabled. Now, you go to Rittenhouse Square if you want to eat in an overpriced outdoor restaurant and sneer at people walking on your sidewalk. Damn pedestrians. The area is also popular for weird 20 year olds who stand around trying to get people to vote or join their commune. They'll ask your age and when you say that you aren't 18 they'll call bullshit and ask for the year you were born. Unless you're a math whiz, or actually are under 18, you won't be able to answer immediately because you'll be trying to calculate a year which works. When traveling around Center City it is best to have a year already planned in the back of your head.

Rittenhouse Square also attracts bicycle messengers, much like a bright outdoor light attracts moths. The messengers congregate in large groups, then do nothing. Scientists are still studying this as yet unexplained phenomenon.

Center City is a great place to visit if you like rich snobs, clothing stores, and large buildings. (NB - If you plan to stay longer than 20 minutes be sure sure to carry excessive amounts of cash with you because you will invariably be taxed or fined for something)

Comcast Center

Yeah, it's tall. Yeah, it's reflective. Get at me, nigga. Let's see your city top this. Back to business.

South Philadelphia

One of South Philadelphia's famous Italian eateries.

Have you ever watched The Sopranos and thought to yourself, "Wow it would be so awesome to be in the Mafia!" Well then head down to South Philly. Every single Italian stereotype is pulled from there, or Brooklyn, the Bronx, or North Jersey. Now you can be around authentic REAL Italians with tough accents! Imagine that! Yous all could be actin tuff in da neighborhood wit da fam'ly! Get some pizza and cheesesteaks to top it off! Get some "wooder" to wash it down! Your suburban WASP friends will never believe you. Home to a massive open-air market where you can buy, among other things, live goats. Topics not suggested for discussion:

• Italian ethnic slurs
• (Your Favorite Team) is better than the Eagles. In fact, never say this anywhere.
• Unions aren't all that great.

Have you ever watched any movies or music videos about gangstas and thought to yourself, "Wow it would be so awesome to be in a gang surrounded by daily violence!" Well then head down to South Philly west of Broad Street. You'll find too much of it. Point Breeze makes North Philly look like a nice suburban neighborhood in comparison.

Art Museum Area

This area includes the Art Museum. Look around for a bit, it looks a lot like a certain French city. The Parkway which leads all the way up to the Art Museum, is shamelessly ripped off of Paris' Champs-Élysées. Around the area are many other museums as well. Why is the area famous? For starters, Rocky immortalized it by running up the steps of the Art Museum, but nobody ever actually goes inside. Seriously, it's going to go bankrupt. Also Live 8 was held there. Behind the Art Museum is the Schuylkill River (pronounced "sku-cul", though nobody knows how or why), where people row and ride their bikes. Of course riding your bikes on the bike path next to the river is only recommended if you enjoy other cyclists who don't understand the concept of "family bike path" and how it differs from a "race." Also you may need to have a high tolerance for people who simply don't understand that the term "bike path" actually implies bikes are permitted to be ridden. If you plan to drive to Plymouth Meeting along the Schuylkill River highway, make sure it's not at quitting time on a Friday. Especially if your dad is driving you to a date that was just moved to the Plymouth Meeting Mall at the last second, but that was full so they moved it to the "great" northeast.

North Philadelphia

What's there to say about North Philadelphia? It successfully became synonymous with black people and it's now the area you don't want to park your car in or drive through at night all. Since Philadelphia police laugh hysterically when people get mugged, Temple University must maintain its own air force and army just to protect its students from the hostile gang members. Temple University has the single largest standing army in the continent of North America. That's the city of Brotherly Love for you.

The typical North Philadelphia house has distinctive wooden boards over the windows, holes in the roof to let in the breeze in place of air conditioning (and guess what? There's no carbon footprint!), and has not been inhabited since the time when Sylvester Stalone was actually considered cool. And that's just North Philadelphia west of Broad St. You should see the scary neighborhood east of Broad St.

Kensington

Okay, I've lied. North Philadelphia is not only synonymous with black people. It is also synonymous with Irish people. Kensington Avenue (especially where it meets Alleghany Avenue) is a great place to pick up hookers, or heroin. Or get shot. Watch out for the angry drunk Irishmen and Puerto Ricans there. Aren't we a great city? Stereotypes, sex and violence. In defense of North Philadelphia, those Center City minivan moms can get pretty violent as well. Along with those Mercedes driving rich guys who nearly hit me that one time because they don't understand the concept of a traffic light.

Fishtown

Originally named for the distinct rotten fish smell that permeates the area, Fishtown is now the "Up and Coming" neighborhood of Philadelphia. It's called that because when you get there, you're "coming up" on Kensington, and it's about time to turn around before you get shot. Fishtown strives to be Northern Liberties, a bustling neighborhood full of artists, bars, and empty blocks. In that respect, it's doing pretty well, except it doesn't have any artists. Until then, Fishtownies can continue to tell everyone how much it's "up and coming", because nobody will know they're lying, since nobody has any good reason to go to Fishtown anyway. Except if you're looking to score some heroin, assuming you couldn't find any in Kensington, which is not likely.

Port Richmond

The Little Poland of Philly. You can get some Polish kielbasa and perogies, just avoid Polack jokes...or some crazy huge Polish dude named Czeslaw and his local pub buddies will pummel you.

City Hall and the Gallery

City Hall and the surrounding areas are a commonplace for everyone. Subways, people, everyone bustling around, it's one of those places where a lot of people end up. A lot of stores are around along with some hotels. The stores are generally Dunkin Donuts, department stores, jewelry stores, or stores which sell brands of clothing such as Rocawear and Sean Jean. Stolen or fake jewelry is abundant on the street, along with real jewelry in the stores.

This area is also home to The Gallery, a big urban mall where it's common to hang out. Only instead of it being a hangout for suburban private school students, it's where public school students from all over come to gather. The homeless near the Gallery are unusually aggressive, even for Philadelphia. The Gallery, like most malls, drains you of your serotonin level when entered, but it is quickly regained when you realize you won't be around a bunch of annoying white, gothic, suburban, teenage mallrats. It also helps that there's a GameStop. This is also where Love Park is, you know the place where people skateboard. Or used to. The sport was killed by the government and the year 2000.

Many decry the fact that it was the MOVE cult headquarters that was bombed from the air and not the Gallery. Current proposals to seal the Gallery an hour after school lets out and flood the entire building with nerve gas are being considered, but the city has already blown its budget for mass murder of its own citizens, so it's a distant shot.

Chinatown

The place where millions of Asians don't get the fuck out of your way.

Right nearby the Gallery and its surroundings is Chinatown. What makes Chinatown so good? Two words: Wing Wang's Peking Duck House (9th and Winter, right near the Vine St Expressway). Well that's five words but most people only refer to it as Sang Kee so you can keep your comments to yourself. Also it's just a cool place to get imported Asian things, Like syphilis. Or opium. Yay opium! Now with a booth in the Reading Terminal Market.

Chinatown is an excellent place to poison yourself because you're drunk, incapable of making informed decisions regarding what you're eating and Chinatown has the only places open.

University City

Contrary to popular belief and empirical fact, University City does not actually exist (except on maps, street signs, city government records, and the records of the University City District). The area known as University City successfully seceded from West Philadelphia to establish their own edutopia, led by the University of Pennsylvania and its comic but borderline retarded sidekick, Drexel University. There are a bunch of things you might expect to find at a college campus such as food courts, tennis courts, bookstores, and movie theatres. There is also a place where you can buy cereal, only cereal (this is actually true). Now that's clever and alternative enough to attract preppy college kids - oh and lets not forget the stoners who have the munchies and thick wallets!

West Philadelphia

Unique for having been firebombed from a police helicopter by the city government in 1985 (this is actually true, killing 11 people and devastating a historic working class city block), West Philadelphia is famous for being the home of the University of Pennsylvania and the birthplace of Will Smith and Wilt Chamberlain. The local diet consists of halal, cheesesteaks, and babies. Visiting is not recommended due to a very high probability of getting shot, raped and murdered.

Recently the area has been infested by a variety of Crust Punks and other lower primates. While friendly, these creatures sadly lack the ability to communicate vocally. Instead, use a stick. Also, hold your nose, as the stench that emanates from these beings is generally unbearable and has been rumored to cause respiratory infections.

   also home to the great Mountain TheHoleInTheA**, which is realy a volcano.

The Great Northeast

Basically, the only sane part of the city left.

Now, one can only assume that this "neighborhood" was named out of sarcasm. If you go out far enough, this looks like some run down blue collar suburb. But it isn't a blue collar suburb, it's the Northeast. It's a fun place to drive to if you feel like a nice one hour drive to somewhere not even outside of your own city. Otherwise known as the "N'East" by residents or ex-residents. The neighborhood is also known as "N'Easty", a word denoting a propensity for comfort with strip malls, bleak futures, row-homes, and winding, unnavigable roads.

Northeast Philadelphia frequently discusses breaking away from Philadelphia proper, making it the Quebec of Southeastern Pennsylvania.

The Northeast's primary product is boredom and a crippling inferiority complex regarding its relation to the rest of the city, i.e. the parts someone gives a shit about.

The Northeast is also home to many, many upstanding policemen who were chosen to be among Philly's finest for their aptitude at being white guys from the Northeast.

The Northeast excels in arson, a method by which stores, restaurants and other establishments that are no longer profitable transition to their next phase. As an example, Ham the Man grocery, Bauer's bakery, Pennypack Flowers, etc.

Mt. Airy

Mount Airy is famous for being the third most Jewish place on Earth, and created quite a stir a few years back when it actually seceded from the union to join Israel. Famous for having fairly large, nice houses with two kitchen sinks, one for meat, one for dairy products. Home to a few nomadic tribes of black people. Also home to a trolley car diner, which is quite nice if you happen to be a connoisseur of deep-fried rat.

Mount Airy also contains an unusually large number of hippies. They refuse to recognize that any other part of the city exists, and never leave the neighborhood unless their lives depend on it.

Germantown

Psssst--There are no Germans here! This neighborhood is one of the nicer residential options as it has a nice big park where people still occasionally come across skeletons and unexploded ordinance left over from the American Revolution. It is also home to those Jews who for whatever reason do not live in neighboring Mount Airy. (Really!). Home to more Nation of Islam Mosques than Las Vegas is home to Casinos.

Chestnut Hill

The WASP capital this side of Nantucket. Chestnut Hill is home to several crazy old street people, many more wealthy alcoholics, gourmet dog food stores, bead shops, used record places, tiny family-owned grocery stores, coffee shops, and 97 places to cash a check. The rowhouses are all several centuries old, and the other houses are all the size of a small village.

Old City

Also spelled Olde City by pretentious misspellers, this is the area of Philadelphia where everything historical seems to have occurred. Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell are located here. There are plenty of small shops, museums and historical sites to visit and a fun day can be had by all, old and young, in this area, provided you don't mind waiting in more lines than Disneyland due to new-found security measures in place. Now it's just boring.

There are horses though, with carriages. This is amazingly awesome the first time you see it. Then it's just another site, with the added bonus that it produces feces capable of being stepped in. It it also recommended that you wear boots in Old City during daytime hours, lest your shoes and socks be drenched by an unanticipated flood of horse urine. The most famous resident is the legendary guy-who-dresses-up-as-Benjamin Franklin.

At night this mediocre tourist trap for families is transformed into a mediocre nightlife trap for girls from New Jersey with bad hair. Do not approach them. They all have herpes. Every single one.

Society Hill

This is a fairly upper middle class neighborhood near Old City and The Gallery area. Its unnatural darkness at night, illuminated only by yellow street lamps is enough to give someone the creeps and haunt their dreams. Brick is the building material and mugging weapon of choice in this area. At the southern end of this district they have erected a gate ostensibly to keep out the residents of the rest of the city. The Inscription above the gate reads "Here thar be yuppies" in olde yuppish (latin).

South Street

What can be said about South Street? It's a place you can walk around and buy stuff. This is one of the only places in the city where you run a pretty low risk of getting shot and bumrushed, since the city's abundant deranged violent crackheads are scared off by local Starbucks, yoga shops, rastas, and all that other sissy stuff. Besides, the emo alternative goths or whatever the fuck are real wusses, despite their "badass" tattoos and collars and the rest of Hot Topic products. This relative safety ("relative" is as good as it gets anywhere in Philly) has resulted in making the place one of the city's most popular tourist destinations. Now your choices on items include tattoos, CDs, sex toys, wiccan paraphernilia, skateboards, alternative clothing, and yogic knick-knacks. At night you can get drunk at the bars, and meet beautiful women. It's Philadelphia's mainstream fauxhemian area. There is also frequent flashers, mooners, and sunners. South Street also has the city's highest concentration of cops, since here they are almost safe from being shot at, slept on, bitten and/or begged for change.

In 2004, South Street was designated as Philadelphia's official wilding district.

2nd Street

Also known as Two Street. If you call it 2nd street, you're a terrorist. Quite popular with out-of-towners for its convenient existence as I-95.