Philadelphia – The City of Love

“Oh so you’re one of the hoards?” she asks. I met her on the bus leaving Philadelphia. She just happened to be English so we naturally started talking and I told her yes, I was one of ‘those’ people who had been working at a summer camp.

“Well, how did you find Philadelphia?”
“It was interesting,” I replied

Those of you who looked at the title and expect me to divulge in these few words how I caroused her will be disappointed. Philadelphia is interesting, but not because of a chance encounter on a bus (she did turn out to be my best friend’s third cousin though!).
Some of you may know that in Philadelphia there is a piece of sculpture entitled ‘LOVE’. It is simply what it says; four letters organised in a square under which couples have their photos taken in a myriad of charming manners and it is this sculpture I happened upon the night I arrived in Philadelphia.

To find ‘LOVE’ in Philadelphia, though, was not so easy. Turned out my hostel was not exactly on the beaten track, and when I enquired as to the best way to walk into Philadelphia, after offering me a deal that involved wearing a skin-tight money costume (strange, I know) the guy at the check-in desk finally got round to the business of showing me a map, methodically informing me not to go “there, ‘there’ and there” because they were the ‘bad’ areas. According to this chap, it was somehow better I jump down an embankment and cross a highway than go through ‘there’.

Well, despite the map and jumping down the embankment onto the busy highway, I still managed to get a wee bit lost in West Philadelphia (withholding the Fresh Prince opportunities here). Not that this intimidated me, I was firmly of the opinion that
‘I’ve been on a night out in Newcastle, what more could West Philly throw at me?’
But somehow it disarmed me in other ways. Turns out what the guy meant by ‘bad’ area was that it was a ‘black’ area. The sun was setting as I roamed these streets and all around me families were out and about, guys returning home from work, people hanging about the streets in just the way that made me think that perhaps this area was a home; not so bad after all.
This didn’t last for long though. I finally made it out of that barbarity to the high streets, downtown, where all the shiny lights were and made my way down a causeway of international flags towards the heart of Philadelphia (look up the Guatemalan flag by the way, pretty darn exotic). On the way I passed a few parks until I was pretty close to City Hall Station. One last park was the JFK Plaza, with a large fountain, its water drenched in green light and behind this fountain was that LOVE sculpture, one I recognised in an instance from my stamp collecting days.

But as I took hold of my phone to take the necessary photos, not only did it hit me that here I was, the other side of the world from the people I love, alone in Philadelphia, but surrounding this iconic sculpture of LOVE were dozens of homeless people and prostitutes.

It hit me hard.

Imagine being that person who has lost friends, family, home and hope and you wake up in the morning on a hard bench in JFK Plaza to couples tip-toeing over you towards LOVE. These were the people who couldn’t even aspire to the ‘bad’ areas of Philadelphia. As all of this was taking effect, a guy came over and asked for some change. He picked up on my accent and we started talking. He even introduced me to his girlfriend, who didn’t look so convinced. In that park I think, by chance, I found true love in Philadelphia. Later, after I had been around City Hall Station and was waiting for the bus, the guy’s ‘girlfriend’ sat down in the shelter. After shyly acknowledging me, a car pulled up at the lights, the window rolled down and the guy at the wheel nodded once. She looked at me apologetically and got into the stranger’s car.