Diary Entries on Will Brady's website

trip ta philly ~ part 3-A: Sunday's surprise expedition | The surprise trip came after, by chance, I called up Philly's Northern Liberties artist and community activist Mitch Deighan [look for his mention in the article] who showed up on my mom's door steps early Sunday afternoon and took me off for a tour of the area he knows and loves so well | We drove down re-discovered cobblestone streets, past the stables that serve the carriage rides from Independence Hall tourists | Saw the site of the old 2nd Street Market, made note of several locally renowned neighborhood activists, got a glimpse of the Liberty Lands public community gardens and we looked at the now vast vacant lot that once had been the Schmidt's Brewery | We passed many chi-chi pubs, nighclubs and eatries | I wanted to see where they'd filmed 12 Monkeys segments, but we never got to that | Some of the streets we traversed were too small for the pick-up truck and we had to get out and walk |
Mitch regaled me with stories about neighbors battling with drug dealers and city hall alike (but for different reasons), talked about the efforts of cleaning up EPA Superfund sites, of the still present plight of residents without housing, and of fantastic scavanger hunts for architectural elements in long abandoned buildings |
Map of Northern Liberties

But by far the most exciting part of the tour, was the visit to a hidden urban forest on a street I won't name here | Already the residents are fighting against Kudzu but there are trees saved from some landscape renovations made near I M Pei's Society Hill Towers as well as a quirky sculpture garden at one end of the hidden urban forest |
Gotta admit, the site visit was altogether too brief | It was a productive chance to see how "open space" gets saved in urban settings, and a glampse of thedynamics of community renewal while remaining sensitive to history | I'll look forward to coming back for a more detailed tour in the future |

OTHER SITES DEVOTED TO NORTHERN LIBERTIES

Project for Public Spaces recognizes Liberty Lands
an historical perspective and how long ago the area had its name |
a WHYY-FM story on Northern Liberties |
Census statistics from 1990 on who lives in the area [drop a note to upenn to ask they update this page]
northernliberties.org
Philadex's Fishtown
The Daily News discovers the Liberties

And for what it's worth, the Center City Development Corporation is hosting one of its Architecture Walk Tours this coming Sunday, 15 September, in Northern Liberties
Northern Liberties: A Neigborhood Reborn | 11:00 am | MEET: In front of Northern Liberties Restaurant, 705 North 2nd St. |
For more information and to inquire about tours requiring preregistration, call 215-848-9141 or e-mail at WalkPhiladelphia@juno.com. To receive a complete Walk Philadelphia tour brochure for 2002 contact Rachael Alessandro at 215.440.5500 or at ralessandro@centercityphila.org.
Tour fee of $10/person ($8/person for students, including college students with valid ID - children age 10 and under: FREE and must be accompanied by an adult) for all tours except where indicated differently.

Philly trip part 3-B: the long ride home | The ride was long, but this'll be short | Seems that I've been driving with a slowly dying battery, which decided to crap out right in front of the centermost tollbooth lane on the Pennsy turnpike in Bristol PA | I waited about an hour for the tow guys to arrive [fron Bob's in Bristol] and have to deal with a no-zone attendant who first wants me to push a truck full of table saws, big band records and other heavy stuff across about 10 lanes of traffic so he can continue collecting fares | 'No way' said I | His tollgate cohorts were making rude circling gestures around their ears, indicating I should stay right there so I ate the first of the hoagies I'd bought for the trip |
Once the garage guys got there, the three of us did push to truck off to the side, as dozens of cars and passengers waited for us to get this done | It mush have taken another half an hour before these two guys anaged to get my failing battery bypassed and the S-10s engine revved up again, and I was off | But almost as soon as I got onto the Jersey t-pike I was greeted with night-time bumper to bumper parking lot and a sign greeting me that said "Next exit 8 miles" | And I crawled to that and drove off, not knowing what road to take except north |
I eventually got home at 2 a.m. |

The big "C" | My friend Bill P was recently diagnosed with cancer. He has a tumor in his mouth | Years of cigarette smoking, given up just under a year ago, finally took its toll | He's distraught about it | Had biopsy and surgery only this week | Me, I try to learn more about it so I can better understand how to be supportive | There is some unintended humor out of all this | I went to stay over his apartment the night after surgery and had difficultly falling asleep | 'Like being next to a frelling¹ highway off ramp' I mused while finally drifting off, only to realize that was exactly where I was |
Bill is recovering slowly, only soft foods | His short temper, however, clearly indicates that he's back to himself quite quickly | I wish him well |

¹ FarScape swear word

FarScape | Yeah, I'm a FarScape fan | Shouldda known, and not just beacuse Crichton is so easy on the eyes | But on the trip down to Philly, concerned as I was to catch the last episode of the season, I implored Peggy to let me watch it and talked her out of watching Friday's taped soaps | While it was an entertaining episode for me [Crichton getting sucked up in a wormhole, reliving parts of his last few years adventures in a cut and paste fashion] It was difficult to explain to Peg just who was who and what and where all this was occurring | definitely not a show for the neophyte viewer |
For those of you who don't know the series, FarScape is produced by Jim Henson productions, is now it it's 4th (maybe 5th) "season", and provides some of the more creative sci-fi adventure writing in ages (if you'll pardon the play on words) | Incidentally, the Henson folks have an entirely different website for this production: Henson's FarScape site if yer interested | |

gettin' rain now, but still could use more

other stuff || internet access tools || ECONOMIC TREASON: Do travesties like ENRON make your blood boil? There's a new discussion group on the Yahoo Groups website. It's still new, so the discussion has just begun. Participants are welcome. Stop by, sign up, and add your POV.