The 2014 Mummers Parade
I don’t speak about this enough. Partly because Philadelphia has the same kind of numbskull political leaders that have killed Detroit and are now poised to kill New York City. (The mayor is named Nutter and he is.) Also partly because so much of the anti-Philly propaganda that shapes national attitudes comes from the sports press, which has identified the City of Brotherly Love as one of the easy targets for constant, repetitive, sneering insults. A joke everyone who knows anything is supposed to share without a second thought. A lot like the way they’ve treated Tebow. I haven’t addressed this for a while because I didn’t want to jinx the inspiring season the city is having under a new Eagles coach; it’s like everyone is breathing again after a long bilious spell. If we lose now, it’s still been a glorious Renaissance season.
Why it’s time. There’s good and bad in Philadelphia, and as in so many other instances, much of what is deemed bad is good and vice versa.
Case in point, Eagles fans. Drudge has an item today about the disturbing fact that three out of the four NFL playoff games this weekend are not sold out. Only late and almost by inference is it revealed that Philly IS sold out. Diminished by an earlier statement that Green Bay has the best fans in the NFL. No they don’t.
The sports press is headquartered in New York City, a white collar town that is obsessed with the glitterati soap opera of New York athletes, hideously focused on the diva tantrums of the Jets, Giants, and Yankees. Philly is a blue collar town. Every time the Eagles are on national telecasts, Bob Costas or some other smug MSM elitist rehearses the old old story, always inaccurately, of Eagles fans throwing snowballs at Santa Claus. Never mind that Santa was a skinny amateur, drunk, careening down the sidelines. That didn’t stop Costas from showing the headline of the newspaper page from what — 30, 40 years ago? — during the prime time season ender in Dallas this year. Eagles fans suck, ha ha ha. Boo birds. Louts. A disgrace to the NFL and sports generally.
Meanwhile, reports of Mets fans throwing batteries at opposing outfielders, shootings and stabbings and fatal beatings of fans wearing opposition gear in San Francisco and other cities don’t show up on the radar of the sports press. No, the bad fans we can all scorn are in Philadelphia.
It’s part of the great new divide between the patricians — The Wall Street/government/media elite — and the plebeians who exist only to be mocked for their parochial passions. Philadelphia’s great bad luck is its geographic proximity to New York and its checkered history of providing fits to New York sports teams, including not one but two “Miracles of the Meadowlands” and a couple of late season takedowns of the Mets by the Phillies. How dare we?
The boroughs of New York City are competing political states, almost constantly at bureaucratic war with one another. In contrast, the neighborhoods of Philadelphia are miraculously still intact. The city has a little regarded Big Five basketball tournament that keeps the rivalries in the family, including teams from the Main Line, Center City, and even the Ben Franklin taproot Penn. Philadelphians still know how to live with one another.
Ironically (or not), Philadelphia remains in many ways more vital and fun than sophisticated New York. More innocent, hopeful, and passionate in some ways too.
Snobs look down on the incredibly persistent tradition of the Mummers Parade, for example. Bunch of drunks stumbling down Broad street on New Years Day. Lower middle class nuts with feathers and banjos. But the Mummers Parade puts New York’s Macy’s Day Parade to shame. Not balloons and corporate juicing but committed clubs of wage earners who work all year for one day to shine. Street theater versus grandiose Disney promotions. Mummers Day is what Mardi Gras could be but isn’t, a celebration of life and spirit. Not a staggering debauch but a fine old party with decent rules and traditions.
Macy’s now owns what was once the greatest department store anywhere ever, Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia. Even Macy’s falls back on the Wanamaker name at Christmastime, because so many grew up with the memory of scenes like this.
Wanamaker Christmas
Hollywood reveres New York and San Francisco by constantly destroying their great suspension bridges. The Ben Franklin bridge is equally lovely, between them in age, and not yet savaged by space aliens, because space aliens ignore the inferiors of their targeted human inferiors. Got it?
Come on, aliens!
So the Ben Franklin still stands, along with his university, a mere outline of his house, and a glimpse of the city he lived in, which would be hard to find in all the iron and concrete of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.
Elfreth’s Alley. Stone’s throw from the Delaware River. Intact and lived in.
I’m tempted to mention the glory of Longwood Gardens, a few miles from Philly, but I won’t.
Anyone can visit. Everyone does. Even the meatheads in Eagles jerseys.
Speaking of meatheads, the real ones live and work in City Hall, which is still more beautiful than they are ugly and corrupt.
Oh, right. The smart ones make fun of William Penn’s profile because the plan was never to get a level view of the sculpture. As always, the founders’ bad.
What Philadelphians at ground level see.
You should behold it in person.
You’re thinking I’ve stressed culture and architecture over fun? Think again. Philadelphians are equally amused by that one awkward angle of William Penn now that they’ve seen it. And unlike certain other cities we could name, their passionate devotion to the Eagles is leavened by a ribald sense of humor. Somebody, anybody, show me another U.S. city that has responded to a prolonged drought of Super Bowls the way Philly has with its annual Wing Bowl (pics not safe for work).
If you can’t celebrate triumph, celebrate life, food, and boobs.
A lesson a lot of the so-called smart ones would be well advised to learn.
Another reason Philadelphians are the best fans of all. They lose, forgive, recover, and fight again. If they boo, they also cheer their hearts out. It’s called being alive.
Contemptible, nasty, worthless little backwater full of scummy Eagles fans. As of yesterday, 2014.
