You're Ours Now

Welcome to Philly, newbie. And welcome to Primer, City Paper's guide to the city. Oh you've really stepped in it now. You see, the thing about Philadelphia is, it gets you. Whether you're here for a minute or a lifetime, you, as Glenn Frey once sang, belong to the city. The moment you wander its hectic streets, soak up its buzzing energy, endure/join its hectoring sports fans, ponder its un-pretzel-shaped pretzels, you realize it. Philadelphia's part of you.
Its gritty charm.
Its no-nonsense sensibilities.
Its boundless possibilities.
Its constant striving, struggling, building and rebuilding.

But it can be kinda subtle. Lots of people don't realize the extent to which this city has become them, and rightly that they have become Philadelphia, until they leave (or try to).

Longtime City Paper contributor David Faris grew up nearby in South Jersey and earned his Ph. D at Pennsylvania University. On the eve of taking a professorship in Chicago this summer, he penned this in a farewell ode:

Sometimes people ask me what Philly is like. It has such a bad reputation, they say. And I want to say Philly is every step into the street to see if the trolley is coming, every First Friday on every summer evening, every knee-busting move to every third-floor apartment, every 2 a.m. bike ride on every hushed avenue, every Clark Park flea market, every sweaty dance at the 700 Club, every box of Crab Fries at every Phillies game, every potluck crammed with the vegetable-studded quinoa of every drifting dreamer, every poker game laced with overeducated banter, every slurred come-on at every corner bar, every encore from the terrace at the TLA. It's every bundle of chard bought from every Amish farmer, every potpie sold at every intersection by every dressed-up ideologue, every delicacy simmered in every reduction, every roar from every bar after every touchdown.

Or artist Steve Powers, whose mural graces the cover of this magazine. Powers began his career as a Philly graffiti writer. He left Philadelphia some time ago but came back this year to tackle a mural project called "Love Letter," a series of murals that read like a series of missives from a boy to a girl but also reflect the feelings of an artist for the city that nurtured him.

I grew up at 63rd and Lancaster, and spent my childhood looking at the painted roofs, and then adding my name to the roll call of greats: Mr. Blint, Razz, Clyde, Credit, Estro, Ran and others. I moved to NYC in '94, but even after painting there and a lot of other places in the world, the roofs [here] still held a totemic power for me, and I always took people back to town to look at them. At one point in the late '90s, you could see 30 years of color, and then it was all painted brown by [the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network]. Anti maintained the chestnut brown appearance for 10 years, until I got my chance, thanks to the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage, to paint a love letter for the neighborhood and for the expression that gave me my voice all those years ago.

You can see Powers' complete mural project — more than 50 in all — by hopping on the Blue Line (the El) toward Frankford Avenue and looking out the window.

In a way, this magazine is City Paper's love letter to Philly; our guide to what we love, hate and love/hate about the city we devote most of our time writing about, thinking about, going crazy about, to every idiosynchratic neighborhood, every lush greenspace erupting from the concrete, every weird regional delicacy ...

Brian Howard
Editor in Chief, City Paper

For information on where to find Primer, e-mail primer@citypaper.net.

For information on advertising in next year's Primer, please contact Nancy Stuski at 215-735-8444 x230 or nancy.stuski@citypaper.net.