I can't speak for DC, but this stuff doesn't happen nearly as frequently in NYC. It's a city of nearly 9 million people, so obviously things are going to happen on occasion, but it isn't a daily or even monthly occurrence.

I never felt unsafe riding the subway in the 2+ decades I lived in NYC. And I rode it through the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens regularly at all hours of the day and night. Sure there were times when my radar went up a bit, but that was infrequently. I do feel unsafe here though, and won't take the subway after rush hour in the evening. I worry about my wife taking it alone in the middle of the day, which I never did in NYC.

As the saying goes: The first step to solving a problem is recognizing that there is one. Obviously Philly has problems that need to be addressed. Shrugging our collective shoulders and saying "mehp, it happens other places too" just diminishes the severity of the problems that Philly faces.

Fun. So basically they'll point their fingers at each other and nothing meaningful will get done.

That intersection, and a few blocks East, is a real s**t show. It really doesn't need to be though. Does anyone know if that is Johnson's jurisdiction or Squilla's? The district maps are a bit unclear.

You would think that an organization as large as CBS would have someone on staff that speaks Thai and could help the blond lady be confident in pronouncing Chutatip 'Nok' Suntaranon. That being said, I didn't know about Kalaya before now and I've been jonesing for some good Thai food since I left Queens. Might need to make a trip up to Fishtown this weekend.

Check out West of Broad up to around 16th between Tasker and Mifflin. Price drop quite a bit once you cross broad but it's still super close to East Passyunk.

I'm sure it exists. I've just never seen something like it at an urban university. I was just in Cambridge for some professional activities at Harvard and MIT. Both seemed to be locked up pretty tight and I needed to register as a guest at both about a week in advance. Both sent me a pass for my phone so I could swipe into the buildings that I needed to be in. I wasn't looking for a food court though.

My god, I seriously don't need this diversion right now but from the few posts that I read that sub is bonkers in the best possible way! To be clear, though, I was being serious in my comment above. Debord's ideas are prescient, as are Umberto Eco's in his essay "The New Middle Ages."

Thanks for the clarification. Just out of curiosity, do you know what the rational is to allow this food court to be open to the general public?

Check out "The Society of the Spectacle" by Guy Debord and it will all start to make sense. Leave it to an essay written by a Frenchmen in 1967 to explain contemporary American life.

I have taught at several universities in NYC and only one, Columbia, allowed access to the general public, and only in certain buildings. All of the rest require you to swipe in if you are a student, faculty, or staff, or you need to register with security if you have another reason to be there. The exceptions are public events such as lectures, concerts, art openings, etc. but even then you generally need to tell a security guard why you are there. It seems like Temple needs to implement similar policies.

Morgan Hall also contains student housing. When you take that into account, there is absolutely no reason why it should be open to the public, food court or not.

Yeah, I'm pretty diligent about tying to scrub my personal info from the web as much as I can. Those sites you mention really don't have much on me. I did review all of my sales documents thoroughly, and had the lawyer that oversaw the sale of my apartment in NYC go over them as well (NY is a lawyer state, which I think is good), and there wasn't any clause that stated that my information would be given out left and right. It just seems odd to me that I would go from having 3-5 calls a year in NY to 3-5 calls a day in PA.

Just curious, how are they not the same? I know that the MTA police have basically the same authority as the NYPD.

Having SEPTA police in the stations and walking through the train cars would really solve a lot of the problems that happen in the subway. If there isn't the personnel to place officers in both, just having a pair on the train would cut down on a lot of silliness. I can't understand why that's such an impossibility given that the system isn't that big.

Oh trust me, I'm well aware of the effect that COVID had on the performing arts. Fortunately, I make most of my living teaching, but my wife lost all of her work for nearly a year and a half with the exception of a few online performances.

When I mention a creative community, I'm talking less about things happening and more about making things happen. Getting together with other people in the arts, coming up with ideas, and figuring out how to make it happen, no matter how crazy. Or just having a community to bounce ideas around or talk about things. A sort of informal creative think tank that happens naturally, and sometimes randomly. I haven't been able to find such a thing in Philly.

No, Philly certainly isn't NYC lite, and nor should it be. It always cracks me up when people compare Fishtown to Williamsburg or Bushwick. Philly does have its own thing going on, though, and has a lot of potential to be a real creative center on the East Coast. At 50, I'm too old for clubs, but what I would like to see is a more robust art/experimental music scene that isn't dependent on bringing people in from NYC, which is what seems to happen. I mean, I like seeing my friends do stuff here but I already see most of them when I'm in NYC for work 2-3 times a week.

I'm not sure why you're getting downvoted for this. It's good advice, and my wife and I did exactly what you suggested over the course of a year, and we're happy that we did. Of course, we're no longer young, but it's still a huge shift to move to a smaller environment, especially if you are in the arts like we are, not to mention that we both spent the bulk of our adult lives in NYC. That being said, while there are a lot of things that I miss about NYC, I've found a lot of very pleasant surprises living in Philly, not the least of which is the fact that there is sandwich genius on almost every corner.

One thing to know is that Philly isn't as densely populated, and basic amenities within walking distance can be few and far between in certain areas, which is one of the reasons why we settled where we did. You aren't going to have a bodega, wine store, pizza place, and grocery store all right around the corner, and on the same block, like you do in NYC. There's nothing comparable to Steinway Street, for example. We actually spent a year checking out different neighborhoods and either staying with friends or renting Air B&Bs until we zeroed in on where we are, just to find out if a neighborhood would meet our needs. In the end, I'm happy we took the time to do that.

Where will you be coming from? I only ask because I've been here for a year and have yet to identify any real creative community (I'm an experimental composer/sound artist, but I've also engaged with the other arts in a variety of ways). I'm not saying it doesn't exist, just that I haven't found it. As a result, most of my work is still happening in NYC, which I would like to not be the case. That being said, I've been happy in my little corner of South Philly in the Newbold/East Passyunk area, which I think has some potential to develop into what you (and I) might be looking for.

Like everything else, there is some give and take. My wife and I settled in Newbold/East Point Breeze (the name of the neighborhood seems to be a contentious issue) after living in Queens (Woodside) for 15 years. One advantage that this area has is that all of our daily needs are within easy walking distance, and it has good access to transit. We're just West of Broad, so it's basically like living in East Passyunk.

Depending on where you lived in Queens, it will probably be similar in terms of safety.

I'll preface this by acknowledging that I've only lived here for a short time. That being said, I haven't been impressed at all with the local government of Philadelphia from the city council up to the mayor. To me, Rhynhart is a good strong push in the right direction. She seems to be the most holistic of the possible candidates. She has not only identified the problems facing the City, admittedly not a difficult task, but seems to have put some thought into what can, and should, be done about them. Rhynhart strikes me as a thoughtful technician who has strong ideas about how to best use the limited resources of the City, something I can't say about the others. Most can't seem to put together a basic websites that clearly articulates their policies, let alone provide details on how these policies might be implemented.

Meister's is the only place that I've been to that is somewhat reasonable and does a decent job. You need to get the right person, and catch them in the right mood. Jaime and Adrian have been the best for me, although they are both somewhat inconsistent. I've added haircuts to my list of things that are oddly, and inexplicably, more expensive in Philly than in NYC.

While that may be true, I have jumped the turnstile several times because the damn card reader wasn't working, or my card randomly deactivated, which has happened four times (!) since I've lived here (just over a year). I am decidedly not a hooligan, nor have I ever been, but if I need to be someplace and SEPTA's stuff isn't working properly, I will jump the turnstile. I generally try to ask the sometimes nice person in the booth to let me in before I do that, though.

What WOULD help dramatically and be a long term solution, but seems politically and economically impossible at the moment, is a greater police presence throughout the system augmented by homeless outreach personnel. This sort of thing has made a huge difference in NYC after the pandemic, and periodically before.

I'm not all that handy, even though I sometimes like to think that I am (best to acknowledge my limitations with something like this). If it was just the gate to my patio I'd just rig something up, but this is the gate from the street that we're looking to replace. Although, I do have a couple of neighbors on the other side of the street that might be willing to help.