Four days spent in Georgia's largest city have me wondering which city is more confusing: Moscow or Atlanta. Moscow was intensely difficult to find my way around in, especially at first. But at least Moscow did not show the total lack of creativity with which Atlanta invests its street names. For those of my readers who are not American, an old joke has it that in Atlanta, all directions start "First, go to Peachtree." I can now say from personal experience that this joke is firmly based in fact.
The first and most important Peachtree in Atlanta is called, simply, Peachtree Street. Strangely, since Georgia is the Peach State, the street is not named for any particular peach tree that played a role in Atlanta's history. Rather, the story goes, it was a trail named after the locally plentiful pitch tree by the Native Americans who lived in the area before white settlers arrived in the 1830s, but because the settlers didn't like the idea of a street named for such a foul-smelling tree, they changed it to Peachtree. Peachtree Street has become what Broadway is to New York or Market Street is to Philadelphia--the main spine around which the body of the city finds its structure. The street has also given its name to dozens of other thoroughfares in the city.
A block west of Peachtree is, not surprisingly, West Peachtree. Far to the north, near a wealthy district Buckhead, the original Peachtree Street becomes Peachtree Road. To the south, it becomes Peachtree Boulevard. Somewhere along the way, Peachstree Street crosses Peachtree Avenue. The map my hostel gave me also showed a Peachtree Creek, a Peachtree Battle, and a Peachtree Terrace. The Atlanta visitor's center, located close to the original Peachtree near the Underground Atlanta mall, has an intersection road sign with a good twenty Peachtrees.
I got to see a lot of the main Peachtree Street during my stay in Atlanta. My first day, I walked north along it, in 80 degree heat (maybe 25 Celsius, for my British readers), to the Margaret Mitchell House. Later in the day, I took a bus and did a lot more walking to reach The Temple. No, not the original temple in Jerusalem, built by Solomon, rebuilt by Herod, and levelled by the Romans, but Atlanta's main Reform temple, which bears that name. I was eager to go there for a Friday night service because of the Temple's role in the Civil Rights Movement. As portrayed in the film Driving Miss Daisy, the Temple was bombed in 1958 because its rabbi at the time was an active proponent of integration.
The following two days found me back on Peachtree as I searched for the Atlanta Civic Center, where I went to see an exhibit on "the African-American experience"--so called, I gathered, because its organizers wanted to emphasize not merely African-American history but the African-American contribution to America. As you might imagine, Atlanta is chock full of black history. It is also chock full of black people; at one point, a few years ago, two-thirds of Atlanta's citizens were black. This percentage has declined slightly as formerly fleeing whites have returned from the suburbs and whites from other parts of the country have come to share in the city's flourishing economy.
Nonetheless, walking through Atlanta, it is easy to forget that you live in a country where whites, not blacks, are the majority. When I visited Underground Atlanta, a downtown mall fashioned from some streets covered over by railroad viaducts and later rediscovered, I was the only non-black face in sight. Even the mall's Chinese restaurant was staffed by black people. Visiting the African-American exhibit described above, I had the same experience.
When I lived in Brooklyn, I made my home on the border between two neighborhoods, Clinton Hill and Bedford-Stuyvesant. Frequently portrayed in Spike Lee films, "Do or die" Bed-Stuy has been an important African-American community since before the Civil War, when it was one of the few areas in then-independent Brooklyn where black people could own land. Though situated between Bed-Stuy and the predominantly African-American neighborhood of Fort Greene, Clinton Hill was more racially mixed, mostly because Pratt Institute, a major school for the arts, was located there and thus brought in a more diverse community. So it is not as though I have no experience being in largely black areas.
Nonetheless, my visit to Atlanta was the first time I can recall being the only white person in large crowds of black people. Although I was, naturally, around a lot of black people when I took the busses in my neighborhood or when I went shopping in Downtown Brooklyn, I cannot recall having ever previously been in places in America where there were literally no white people present.
I guess this is a privilege white Americans have and don't usually realize: we are almost never in situations where we are the only one who looks like us. I imagine that, for non-whites, this experience must come more often and at times be much more frightening than my forays through Atlanta were for me.
23 July 2009
17 July 2009
Moving Africans (and Others) Rapidly Through Atlanta
I am staying in Atlanta's own International Hostel, having arrived yesterday evening after a day of airline travel. I had hoped to avoid the airlines on my trip across the East Coast, but to get to Atlanta I found there simply was no practical alternative. The bus from Washington would have taken somewhere in the neighborhood of sixteen hours; Amtrak's Crescent service was similar. I would have preferred to take the Crescent, but it was, believe it or not, sold out. Maybe the romance of the rails is making a comeback in America. So in the end, I hopped on a plane.
**
Down south, they quip that if you want to go to heaven, you have to change planes in Atlanta. The city's massive Hartsfield Airport is one of the main hubs in America's hub-and-spoke system of airline travel, and it does seem at times as though everything passes through Atlanta on the way somewhere else. The exception to this appears to be trips actually to Atlanta, for to get to the city of Margaret Mitchell and Martin Luther King, I was forced to go by way of O'Hare in Chicago.
**
I touched down in Atlanta at 7:30 last night, grabbed my bags, and headed to my hostel. Although Atlanta has a reputation as a driving city, I was easily able to reach my hostel on MARTA, Atlanta's subway and bus system. Since the 1970s, Atlanta has been what in America is known as a majority-minority city--meaning that a majority of its residents are now people of color. MARTA is underfunded, some suspect because its users are overwhelmingly African-African. A local joke has it that MARTA, which actually stands for Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, stands for Moving Africans Rapidly Through Atlanta.
**
Oddly, then, on my trip in, I noticed that the other passengers were a diverse racial mix. I sat next to a couple of men from India, and there were several white passengers in my car. I guess I'll have to take more trips on MARTA to see if the joke really reflects reality.
**
I don't know how much use I'll make of MARTA, though, since my hostel is conveniently located within an easy walk of most of the major attractions in Atlanta. So far, I am more pleased with this hostel than the others I've had the pleasure of staying at, for the simple reason that my room is on the first floor and I was not forced to drag my gargantuan suitcase up three flights of stairs to my room.
**
Today, I am off to the Varsity, to the sacred site where Margaret Mitchell's mind first conceived Scarlett O'Hara, and eventually the Temple, the synagogue bombed in 1958 due to is involvement in the Civil Rights Movement.
**
More on Atlanta later.
12 July 2009
Good Evening, Baltimore
I can't recall just why, when I cogitated plans for this trip, I felt compelled to come to Baltimore. I suppose because Boston and Baltimore were the two cities in the Bos-Wash (Boston to Washington) corridor I had never visited, and because I had illusions that Baltimore's harbor would prove quaint and charming, as people always imagine harbors will. Nonetheless, the city has turned out to be remarkably dull.
Baltimore's famed inner harbor is pleasant enough, but what's around it is, essentially, another d****d mall, meant to serve businessmen attending the local convention center. I had a chance to wander through Federal Hill, a neighborhood I was told was filled with charming, 18th-century row houses. Charming enough it is, though not really worth a long visit. Mostly, it reminded me of Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill in Brooklyn--a gentrifying (perhaps gentrified) neighborhood trying too hard to imagine that it's something more interesting than what it is. On the other hand, I did manage to find a used bookstore where I was able to trade my book about the Evelyn Nesbit tragedy for a cheap copy of Anne Tyler's Accidental Tourist. Having seen the movie version of it on iTunes, I had wanted for some time to read the actual novel, and as it's set mainly in Baltimore, I figured this was as appropriate a time--and place--to begin.
For lunch my first day here, I managed to make it up to Baltimore's Lexington Market. I had expected to find something similar in conception to Quincy Market in Boston or Reading Terminal in Philadelphia--a well-executed food court made out of a historic-looking venue. What I found instead was very downmarket. At Reading Terminal, virtually all of the stalls were selling meals and food. At Lexington Market, I would guess that at least half the vendors were offering uncooked meat and other staples. Seating was inadequate. I eventually managed to buy a meatball sub and an iced tea, but was not, sadly, able to find any local specialties. Baltimore is famous for its seafood, and online guides had told me I had to experience a coddie (a kind of cod-and-potato cake) and something called pit beef while I was here. Neither was I able to find at Lexington Market.
Yesterday, I went to the local library to make my onward travel plans. My plan had been to take Amtrak down to Savannah, but I found out quickly that the hostel I had intended to stay in down there was closed for repairs, and today I finally made other travel plans. I will instead be going to Washington for three days--but not tomorrow, as I had hoped, but on Tuesday--there being no hostel vacancies in Washington for Monday night. So I will have another full day in Baltimore, with nothing in particular to fill it.
Don't get me wrong. Baltimore is pleasant enough, and I could imagine living and working here if the opportunity arose; it's just very light on real attractions. Nonetheless, I look forward to Tuesday, when I can finally say, "Good Evening, Baltimore."
Baltimore's famed inner harbor is pleasant enough, but what's around it is, essentially, another d****d mall, meant to serve businessmen attending the local convention center. I had a chance to wander through Federal Hill, a neighborhood I was told was filled with charming, 18th-century row houses. Charming enough it is, though not really worth a long visit. Mostly, it reminded me of Carroll Gardens and Cobble Hill in Brooklyn--a gentrifying (perhaps gentrified) neighborhood trying too hard to imagine that it's something more interesting than what it is. On the other hand, I did manage to find a used bookstore where I was able to trade my book about the Evelyn Nesbit tragedy for a cheap copy of Anne Tyler's Accidental Tourist. Having seen the movie version of it on iTunes, I had wanted for some time to read the actual novel, and as it's set mainly in Baltimore, I figured this was as appropriate a time--and place--to begin.
For lunch my first day here, I managed to make it up to Baltimore's Lexington Market. I had expected to find something similar in conception to Quincy Market in Boston or Reading Terminal in Philadelphia--a well-executed food court made out of a historic-looking venue. What I found instead was very downmarket. At Reading Terminal, virtually all of the stalls were selling meals and food. At Lexington Market, I would guess that at least half the vendors were offering uncooked meat and other staples. Seating was inadequate. I eventually managed to buy a meatball sub and an iced tea, but was not, sadly, able to find any local specialties. Baltimore is famous for its seafood, and online guides had told me I had to experience a coddie (a kind of cod-and-potato cake) and something called pit beef while I was here. Neither was I able to find at Lexington Market.
Yesterday, I went to the local library to make my onward travel plans. My plan had been to take Amtrak down to Savannah, but I found out quickly that the hostel I had intended to stay in down there was closed for repairs, and today I finally made other travel plans. I will instead be going to Washington for three days--but not tomorrow, as I had hoped, but on Tuesday--there being no hostel vacancies in Washington for Monday night. So I will have another full day in Baltimore, with nothing in particular to fill it.
Don't get me wrong. Baltimore is pleasant enough, and I could imagine living and working here if the opportunity arose; it's just very light on real attractions. Nonetheless, I look forward to Tuesday, when I can finally say, "Good Evening, Baltimore."
The Harvard Hoar House
My apologies for not blogging sooner, but I've rarely had access to a computer since my return to the States. I shall devote this post to Boston. The next will be devoted to Baltimore and to the change in travel plans I have been forced to take.
My stay in Boston was not everything I had hoped it would be. I arrived in Boston on a Sunday night, after 7 hours on Greyhound, and got a cab to my hostel. This hostel proved to be only a stone's throw from Commonwealth Avenue and Newbury Street, the main streets of Boston's fabled Back Bay. Planned as Boston's Champs Elysee, Commonwealth Avenue is indeed quite pretty, though not so grand as I imagine the Champs Elysee to be. Newbury Street had quite a nice selection of restaurants, and I eventually settled down for an Indian meal of chicken tikka masala, nan, and iced tea, before heading back to the hostel for a good night's sleep.
The first day I went on Boston's famous Freedom Trail. Briefly, the Freedom Trail is a network of 14 famous sites involved mostly in the Revolutionary War (though a couple are linked more to the abolitionist movement and the Civil War). To take the trail, you start out in Boston's famous Boston Common and follow a red brick line that eventually takes you through the winding and narrow streets of Boston's downtown all the way to the Bunker Hill Monument across the harbor in Charlestown.
I spent almost a full day on the trail, stopping off at Quincy Market for lunch and at the Paul Revere house for a tour. Quincy Market is a prime example of a 30-odd-year trend in America of taking unused historic or "historic" sites in central business districts and turning them into--you guessed it--upscale shopping venues. The market at Quincy Market, located just behind Boston's famous Fanueil Hall, has functioned as a market in one way or another for over 150 years. In its current incarnation, it houses a food court and is surrounded by such stores as Ann Taylor and Sunglass Hut.
Paul Revere's house was interesting less for the site itself than for what I was able to learn about his life. The man had no fewer than sixteen children, by two different wives. Even by the standards of the 18th century, this was quite a prodigious amount of offspring. I was also surprised to learn that, in addition to his work as a silversmith, Paul River was known for his printing and engraving.
My second day in Boston, I decided to venture up to Harvard. The weather was a tourist's worst nightmare--pounding rain. Wandering into Harvard Yard from the Cambridge T stop, I managed to hook onto the tail end of a campus tour. I got to see the famous statue of John Harvard--who, it turns out, did not actually found the university but merely bequeathed it a shipload of money early in its history. I was surprised to learn that the statue is not a genuine likeness of John Harvard, all images of the man having been destroyed in a 1730s fire. No one knows exactly who served as the model for this statue, but rumor has it that the statue is a likeness of a Harvard president by the name of Hoar. At the time Hoar served as Harvard's president, the campus was expanding, and a tradition had developed of naming new undergraduate houses after retiring presidents. For understandable reasons, the story goes, Harvard was none too keen about having a Hoar House (whorehouse...get it...get it) on its campus, and so they agreed to honor President Hoard by making this statue in a likeness either of him or of his nephew, depending on which version of the story you believe.
Sadly, I was unable to get the full tour of Harvard. The tour guide was kind enough to tell me where to go to get the start of the tour, but as I was walking there, the rain, which had temporarily abated, started to come down so fast and furious that I was forced to seek refuge in the Harvard Co-op, the main bookstore for Harvard. Started as an independent store, the Co-op now so thoroughly resembles a Barnes & Noble that it even serves Tazo Chai tea lattes. By the time I ventured out again into the rain and over to where the tour began, the last one of the day had already ended.
The third day, the weather improved enough that I decided to venture out to Salem and see what I could of sites relating to the famous witch trials. I shouldn't have bothered. Salem is a classic tourist trap. Were it not for the history of the 1690s witch hysteria, Salem would be a perfectly ordinary bedroom community for Boston. I saw three witch-realted museums. The first turned out to be almost entirely child-oriented, with a light-and-tableaux show giving the general history of the witch trials. The second, in the basement of a store on Salem's pedestrian mall (what is with America's fascination with pedestrian malls?), took me down into a basement to see more lights and tableaux.
The third museum, the famous Witch House, belonged to one of the judges in the witch trials. While it was pleasant enough to see a restored 17th-century home, I didn't really feel I knew any more about the witch hysteria after touring it than I had before.
There is quite a lot more to see in Boston, and I hope to go back and see it at some point during my time at Penn, but I felt oddly compelled to move on to Baltimore after three days. As my next post will reveal, I needn't have.
My stay in Boston was not everything I had hoped it would be. I arrived in Boston on a Sunday night, after 7 hours on Greyhound, and got a cab to my hostel. This hostel proved to be only a stone's throw from Commonwealth Avenue and Newbury Street, the main streets of Boston's fabled Back Bay. Planned as Boston's Champs Elysee, Commonwealth Avenue is indeed quite pretty, though not so grand as I imagine the Champs Elysee to be. Newbury Street had quite a nice selection of restaurants, and I eventually settled down for an Indian meal of chicken tikka masala, nan, and iced tea, before heading back to the hostel for a good night's sleep.
The first day I went on Boston's famous Freedom Trail. Briefly, the Freedom Trail is a network of 14 famous sites involved mostly in the Revolutionary War (though a couple are linked more to the abolitionist movement and the Civil War). To take the trail, you start out in Boston's famous Boston Common and follow a red brick line that eventually takes you through the winding and narrow streets of Boston's downtown all the way to the Bunker Hill Monument across the harbor in Charlestown.
I spent almost a full day on the trail, stopping off at Quincy Market for lunch and at the Paul Revere house for a tour. Quincy Market is a prime example of a 30-odd-year trend in America of taking unused historic or "historic" sites in central business districts and turning them into--you guessed it--upscale shopping venues. The market at Quincy Market, located just behind Boston's famous Fanueil Hall, has functioned as a market in one way or another for over 150 years. In its current incarnation, it houses a food court and is surrounded by such stores as Ann Taylor and Sunglass Hut.
Paul Revere's house was interesting less for the site itself than for what I was able to learn about his life. The man had no fewer than sixteen children, by two different wives. Even by the standards of the 18th century, this was quite a prodigious amount of offspring. I was also surprised to learn that, in addition to his work as a silversmith, Paul River was known for his printing and engraving.
My second day in Boston, I decided to venture up to Harvard. The weather was a tourist's worst nightmare--pounding rain. Wandering into Harvard Yard from the Cambridge T stop, I managed to hook onto the tail end of a campus tour. I got to see the famous statue of John Harvard--who, it turns out, did not actually found the university but merely bequeathed it a shipload of money early in its history. I was surprised to learn that the statue is not a genuine likeness of John Harvard, all images of the man having been destroyed in a 1730s fire. No one knows exactly who served as the model for this statue, but rumor has it that the statue is a likeness of a Harvard president by the name of Hoar. At the time Hoar served as Harvard's president, the campus was expanding, and a tradition had developed of naming new undergraduate houses after retiring presidents. For understandable reasons, the story goes, Harvard was none too keen about having a Hoar House (whorehouse...get it...get it) on its campus, and so they agreed to honor President Hoard by making this statue in a likeness either of him or of his nephew, depending on which version of the story you believe.
Sadly, I was unable to get the full tour of Harvard. The tour guide was kind enough to tell me where to go to get the start of the tour, but as I was walking there, the rain, which had temporarily abated, started to come down so fast and furious that I was forced to seek refuge in the Harvard Co-op, the main bookstore for Harvard. Started as an independent store, the Co-op now so thoroughly resembles a Barnes & Noble that it even serves Tazo Chai tea lattes. By the time I ventured out again into the rain and over to where the tour began, the last one of the day had already ended.
The third day, the weather improved enough that I decided to venture out to Salem and see what I could of sites relating to the famous witch trials. I shouldn't have bothered. Salem is a classic tourist trap. Were it not for the history of the 1690s witch hysteria, Salem would be a perfectly ordinary bedroom community for Boston. I saw three witch-realted museums. The first turned out to be almost entirely child-oriented, with a light-and-tableaux show giving the general history of the witch trials. The second, in the basement of a store on Salem's pedestrian mall (what is with America's fascination with pedestrian malls?), took me down into a basement to see more lights and tableaux.
The third museum, the famous Witch House, belonged to one of the judges in the witch trials. While it was pleasant enough to see a restored 17th-century home, I didn't really feel I knew any more about the witch hysteria after touring it than I had before.
There is quite a lot more to see in Boston, and I hope to go back and see it at some point during my time at Penn, but I felt oddly compelled to move on to Baltimore after three days. As my next post will reveal, I needn't have.
06 July 2009
Boston or Bus
Despite all of the hoopla Philadelphia attempts to generate surrounding its Independence Day celebrations--the official website of which is called "America's Birthday"--I ended up having a rather lackluster Fourth. As the day was Shabbat, I went to synagogue in the morning and was pleased to be able to find a Conservative/Reconstructionist shul in Society Hill I had remembered visiting a few years back when I had a job interview in Philly. The job didn't pan out, but I had liked the congregation and wanted to make sure to come back there if I was ever in town.
Following synagogue, I came back to my hostel, to find that my alarm clock, which I had not used since leaving Russia, was broken in such a way that the battery kept coming out. As I needed to go up to Boston the following day, I was forced to go out in search of a new battery (the old one having apparently rolled into some crevice in the floor my oh-so-nimble hands couldn't find) and some masking tape, to keep the new battery in.
The actual evening of the Fourth, I walked down (up? west?) to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway with some other hostel guests to see the concert and fireworks. I wanted to go the concert because Sheryl Crow was the advertised headliner. It took more than an hour for them to bring her on; by the time her face flashed across the jumbotrons on the Parkway, it was past ten. Knowing that I had to get up and travel in the morning--my bus was to leave at 11:00 AM, but I wanted to get there early as I knew crowds were likely on a holiday weekend--I decided to walk back to the hostel before the fireworks began. I did manage to see a couple of fireworks flashes as I passed City Hall, roughly the center of Center City.
When I booked my bus ticket on Thursday night, I had carefully weighed all the options for coming up by train and bus. By train, of course, there was really only one option: Amtrak. The only remotely affordable trains between Philadelphia and Boston left at ridiculous hours of the morning, so I chose to abandon my plans of taking the train up and instead resorted to the bus. Through a site called busjunction.com, it is now possible to compare the various choices for bus travel in what has become a highly competitive market on the East Coast.
For those of my readers who do not have the good fortune of living on the East Coast of the United States, the bus situation at present is this: about 10 years ago, your choices in bus service were limited to Greyhound and various regional operators that had ties to Greyhound. Then, suddenly, a lot of busses running between Chinatowns of various East Coast cities started to appear. These "Chinatown buses" are able to undercut Greyhound's prices because they do not use central bus stations (except in Boston, where they are now forced to by a law heavily lobbied for by--you guessed it--Greyhound). Even more recently, Greyhound and some of the established bus services have started fighting fire with fire, offering streetside pickups and drop-offs on newly branded buses called Bolt and MegaBus. These new services are currently runnings deals for as little as one dollar--yes, you read that right, one dollar--between New York and Philadelphia (though to get the dollar fare you have to book pretty far in advance).
Busjunction.com and some other websites now allow East Coast bus passengers to compare available bus options and find the best fare and time of day for their travels. My search for a ticket to Boston yielded an interesting result. I ended up paying $14.00 for a Philadelphia-New York trip and $20.00 for New York to Boston--so a total of $34.00--to ride on Greyhound and Peter Pan (a smaller, regional bus company affiliated with and partly owned by Greyhound). This compared to $66.00 to book a full through-ticket from Philly to Boston, even though a through-ticket would likewise have involved a transfer at the Port Authority in Manhattan. Go figure.
On reaching the Greyhound counter in Philadelphia, I was issued a ticket for Philadelphia to New York but not a ticket from New York to Boston. I was told I had selected an e-ticket from New York and would have to print the ticket at a Kinko's when I got there. Ah, the wonders of Greyhound customer service.
The ride up to New York from Philly was short (less than two hours) and pleasant. I was pleased to be riding in one of Greyhound's newer buses, which the company advertises as having more leg room. On reaching New York, I ended up having to scramble to get to a Burger King (yes, a Burger King) where I could print my ticket to Boston. But I somehow managed to find said Burger King, print the ticket, return to the Port Authority, grab a sandwich, and find out which gate my Boston bus was leaving from, all in under an hour. I had scheduled a two-hour layover just in case there were problems on the road up from Philly. Not knowing what to do with my second hour, I went to where my bus was eventually to leave and fortuitously found out that, as there were open seats on the Boston bus just then leaving, I could travel an hour sooner. And so I did.
Though long (over hour hours), the trip to Boston was also quite pleasant. The day was sunny, and I was able to pass the ride reading a book about the Harry Thaw-Stanford White murder at the turn of the century (more on this later). The ride was "direct", meaning there were to be no stops. So at one point I got the thrill of trying to go to the bathroom as the bus rounded a curve at 65 miles an hour.
Finally arriving at Boston's South Station a little after 6:30, I got a taxi to my hostel, deposited my bags, and went for a walk in the immediate neighborhood, an upscale area known as the Back Bay. I eventually went as far as the southern edge of Boston's Public Garden before heading back to the hostel.
Tomorrow, I'm returning to the Public Garden to ride the famous swan boats before heading off on the Freedom Trail. But first, off to bed.
Following synagogue, I came back to my hostel, to find that my alarm clock, which I had not used since leaving Russia, was broken in such a way that the battery kept coming out. As I needed to go up to Boston the following day, I was forced to go out in search of a new battery (the old one having apparently rolled into some crevice in the floor my oh-so-nimble hands couldn't find) and some masking tape, to keep the new battery in.
The actual evening of the Fourth, I walked down (up? west?) to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway with some other hostel guests to see the concert and fireworks. I wanted to go the concert because Sheryl Crow was the advertised headliner. It took more than an hour for them to bring her on; by the time her face flashed across the jumbotrons on the Parkway, it was past ten. Knowing that I had to get up and travel in the morning--my bus was to leave at 11:00 AM, but I wanted to get there early as I knew crowds were likely on a holiday weekend--I decided to walk back to the hostel before the fireworks began. I did manage to see a couple of fireworks flashes as I passed City Hall, roughly the center of Center City.
When I booked my bus ticket on Thursday night, I had carefully weighed all the options for coming up by train and bus. By train, of course, there was really only one option: Amtrak. The only remotely affordable trains between Philadelphia and Boston left at ridiculous hours of the morning, so I chose to abandon my plans of taking the train up and instead resorted to the bus. Through a site called busjunction.com, it is now possible to compare the various choices for bus travel in what has become a highly competitive market on the East Coast.
For those of my readers who do not have the good fortune of living on the East Coast of the United States, the bus situation at present is this: about 10 years ago, your choices in bus service were limited to Greyhound and various regional operators that had ties to Greyhound. Then, suddenly, a lot of busses running between Chinatowns of various East Coast cities started to appear. These "Chinatown buses" are able to undercut Greyhound's prices because they do not use central bus stations (except in Boston, where they are now forced to by a law heavily lobbied for by--you guessed it--Greyhound). Even more recently, Greyhound and some of the established bus services have started fighting fire with fire, offering streetside pickups and drop-offs on newly branded buses called Bolt and MegaBus. These new services are currently runnings deals for as little as one dollar--yes, you read that right, one dollar--between New York and Philadelphia (though to get the dollar fare you have to book pretty far in advance).
Busjunction.com and some other websites now allow East Coast bus passengers to compare available bus options and find the best fare and time of day for their travels. My search for a ticket to Boston yielded an interesting result. I ended up paying $14.00 for a Philadelphia-New York trip and $20.00 for New York to Boston--so a total of $34.00--to ride on Greyhound and Peter Pan (a smaller, regional bus company affiliated with and partly owned by Greyhound). This compared to $66.00 to book a full through-ticket from Philly to Boston, even though a through-ticket would likewise have involved a transfer at the Port Authority in Manhattan. Go figure.
On reaching the Greyhound counter in Philadelphia, I was issued a ticket for Philadelphia to New York but not a ticket from New York to Boston. I was told I had selected an e-ticket from New York and would have to print the ticket at a Kinko's when I got there. Ah, the wonders of Greyhound customer service.
The ride up to New York from Philly was short (less than two hours) and pleasant. I was pleased to be riding in one of Greyhound's newer buses, which the company advertises as having more leg room. On reaching New York, I ended up having to scramble to get to a Burger King (yes, a Burger King) where I could print my ticket to Boston. But I somehow managed to find said Burger King, print the ticket, return to the Port Authority, grab a sandwich, and find out which gate my Boston bus was leaving from, all in under an hour. I had scheduled a two-hour layover just in case there were problems on the road up from Philly. Not knowing what to do with my second hour, I went to where my bus was eventually to leave and fortuitously found out that, as there were open seats on the Boston bus just then leaving, I could travel an hour sooner. And so I did.
Though long (over hour hours), the trip to Boston was also quite pleasant. The day was sunny, and I was able to pass the ride reading a book about the Harry Thaw-Stanford White murder at the turn of the century (more on this later). The ride was "direct", meaning there were to be no stops. So at one point I got the thrill of trying to go to the bathroom as the bus rounded a curve at 65 miles an hour.
Finally arriving at Boston's South Station a little after 6:30, I got a taxi to my hostel, deposited my bags, and went for a walk in the immediate neighborhood, an upscale area known as the Back Bay. I eventually went as far as the southern edge of Boston's Public Garden before heading back to the hostel.
Tomorrow, I'm returning to the Public Garden to ride the famous swan boats before heading off on the Freedom Trail. But first, off to bed.
03 July 2009
Gone in a Phlash
Having secured an apartment very near the Penn campus yesterday--the ideal little studio I mentioned in my last post--I spent a little time today exploring Philadelphia further. I started out the day by walking to Reading Terminal Market, a giant food court inside the old Philadelphia terminus of the Reading Railroad (yes, the one of Monopoly fame). Reading Terminal Market really is something to see. Food of every nationality and description is on offer, in addition to such sundries as Amish crafts and cookbooks (yes, there's a whole stall devoted to nothing but cookbooks). After wandering up and down the aisle, I decided to have a turkey dinner at a place that sold nothing but gobblers. Having missed Thanksgiving two years running, I can say the tender turkey on sale there all but brought tears to my eyes.
Once I had sated myself on turkey, I set off along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. A giant city beautification project of the 1920s and 1930s, Benjamin Franklin Parkway aspires to be Philadelphia's Champs Elysees. It goes in a diagonal from near City Hall to the Philadelphia Zoo. Festooned along either side of it, I discovered, are flags of many nations. The flags fly either from flagpoles or from strings suspended over the roadway, but are in either case marked out so that viewers know which country's flag they are looking at. I was delighted to spot the flags of both Russia and Ukraine along the Parkway.
One site reachable from the Parkway is the central branch of the Free Public Library in Philadelphia. The building easily rivals the central branch of the New York Public Library in beauty and grandiosity--though it has no lions out front to guard the books. I went in just long enough to use the Internet and book onward bus and hostel reservations for my trip to Boston on Sunday. But I got to go up the library's giant main staircase on the way to the computers, which was quite a treat.
During the warmer months, Philadelphia runs a system of tourist buses called Phlash Buses. These only go up and down Market Street--one of the main axes of the city, the other being Broad Street--and the Parkway. After leaving the library, I took a Phlash bus to one of its ends--a riverside walk called Penn's Landing--and back up to the Philadelphia Art Museum and the Fairmount Waterworks. Built in the early 19th century to supply the water needs of the growing city, the Waterworks are a neoclassical masterpiece and, during their years of operation, were a major tourist destination in the city. Though closed for their original purpose for a full century, the Waterworks now house a museum devoted to how water and sewage system in general, and Philadelphia's in particular, work. I could tell the museum was geared mainly to schoolchildren, but it was nevertheless interesting to walk around in it and see some of the 19th-century gearing on display.
You might say today has gone in a Phlash. I can't wait to see how tomorrow goes.
Once I had sated myself on turkey, I set off along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. A giant city beautification project of the 1920s and 1930s, Benjamin Franklin Parkway aspires to be Philadelphia's Champs Elysees. It goes in a diagonal from near City Hall to the Philadelphia Zoo. Festooned along either side of it, I discovered, are flags of many nations. The flags fly either from flagpoles or from strings suspended over the roadway, but are in either case marked out so that viewers know which country's flag they are looking at. I was delighted to spot the flags of both Russia and Ukraine along the Parkway.
One site reachable from the Parkway is the central branch of the Free Public Library in Philadelphia. The building easily rivals the central branch of the New York Public Library in beauty and grandiosity--though it has no lions out front to guard the books. I went in just long enough to use the Internet and book onward bus and hostel reservations for my trip to Boston on Sunday. But I got to go up the library's giant main staircase on the way to the computers, which was quite a treat.
During the warmer months, Philadelphia runs a system of tourist buses called Phlash Buses. These only go up and down Market Street--one of the main axes of the city, the other being Broad Street--and the Parkway. After leaving the library, I took a Phlash bus to one of its ends--a riverside walk called Penn's Landing--and back up to the Philadelphia Art Museum and the Fairmount Waterworks. Built in the early 19th century to supply the water needs of the growing city, the Waterworks are a neoclassical masterpiece and, during their years of operation, were a major tourist destination in the city. Though closed for their original purpose for a full century, the Waterworks now house a museum devoted to how water and sewage system in general, and Philadelphia's in particular, work. I could tell the museum was geared mainly to schoolchildren, but it was nevertheless interesting to walk around in it and see some of the 19th-century gearing on display.
You might say today has gone in a Phlash. I can't wait to see how tomorrow goes.
01 July 2009
The Philadelphia Story
It's been a while since I've posted, so for those of my regular readers who don't know, I am back safe and sound, in the United States.
I arrived in America a week ago after a relatively uneventful flight home. Before I left, I had expected some hassles leaving the country, since I had lost my declaration form over the course of my stay, but oddly I was quickly waved through by the Russian bureaucrat at customs. On my flight, I had the good fortune to sit next to a man from Kiev who claimed he had never flown before. I quickly offered him my window seat so that he could see the ground below.
On reaching Washington, I had to go through American customs, which proved simple enough. In line, I overheard a flight attendant trying to ask one of my fellow passengers whether she had any liquids or other materials that might keep her from entering the country. The flight attendant had the mistaken impression this woman spoke Spanish. I chimed in in my halting Russian and managed to explain to this woman what she could and could not bring into the United States.
After five days in New York getting reaquainted with, well, old acquaintances (and several very good friends), I came down to Philadelphia on Sunday. I will admit I've had little chance to scope out the city, having spent the bulk of my time near Penn looking at apartments and reading in the Penn bookstore (man, how I missed Barnes & Noble when I was in Russia). But here is what I can report about Philadelphia so far:
I arrived in America a week ago after a relatively uneventful flight home. Before I left, I had expected some hassles leaving the country, since I had lost my declaration form over the course of my stay, but oddly I was quickly waved through by the Russian bureaucrat at customs. On my flight, I had the good fortune to sit next to a man from Kiev who claimed he had never flown before. I quickly offered him my window seat so that he could see the ground below.
On reaching Washington, I had to go through American customs, which proved simple enough. In line, I overheard a flight attendant trying to ask one of my fellow passengers whether she had any liquids or other materials that might keep her from entering the country. The flight attendant had the mistaken impression this woman spoke Spanish. I chimed in in my halting Russian and managed to explain to this woman what she could and could not bring into the United States.
After five days in New York getting reaquainted with, well, old acquaintances (and several very good friends), I came down to Philadelphia on Sunday. I will admit I've had little chance to scope out the city, having spent the bulk of my time near Penn looking at apartments and reading in the Penn bookstore (man, how I missed Barnes & Noble when I was in Russia). But here is what I can report about Philadelphia so far:
1) The housing market is much saner than in New York, by orders of magnitude. By this I mean not only that housing is more abundant and cheaper, but that the process of obtaining it is infinitely saner. I have not spoken to a single broker but have been dealing directly with landlords who have apartments in and around Penn. I may have found the perfect one today, not enormous but barely a stone's throw from campus, from a cinema, and from a grocery store. But all of the small studios I've sen have been lovely and infinitely liveable. What's more, all of the landlords I've spoken to are only too happy to rent to a future Penn student and seem uninterested in my income statement, by credit score, or in having me sign over my firstborn child.
2) Transportation is also pretty good. The subway system is not nearly as extensive as in New York or Moscow, consisting of only two lines, plus a "subway-surface" line that is a vestige of Philadelphia's formerly extensive streetcar network, but it's nonetheless quick and reliable. I've found a bus that takes me directly into the Penn area from the hostel where I'm currently staying. The bus is reasonably quick and not terribly crowded. I have yet to encounter anything that resembles a major traffic jam.
3) People seem much more chill here than in New York. A case in point: tonight, as I was getting on a bus, I realized I didn't have any singles to pay for my ride (the bus costs $2.00). I asked if anyone had change for a ten. The driver suggested I go into a nearby restaurant and get change there. I figured that by the time I did this, he would have driven off. But no. He actually kept the bus waiting for me. And no one on the bus complained about it.
4) Philadelphia is also a reasonable "walking city". I haven't been to the Liberty Bell or any of the major tourist destinations yet, as this is not the main purpose of my trip, and as I've seen them on previous visits. But they're all an easy walking distance from my hostel.
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