LOVE and other Philadelphia Icons

Sylvester Stallone with Larry Strange
photo by Joe del Tufo

Another perk of living Arden is its accessibility to Philadelphia. Mark works in the Philadelphia Main Line, so it is precisely this proximity that brought us to Arden. It sometimes feels like Arden is a suburb of Philly instead of Wilmington. It's probable that we've been to Philly more often than downtown Wilmington since we moved here. That is part of the problem of Wilmington; It suffers from little sister syndrome. Why settle for the art and dining options in Wilmington when, for an extra ten minutes of travel, you can be in Center City Philadelphia with all its magic?

Our Sunday morning hiking group avails itself of Philly at least once a month. We can get there in thirty minutes on a Sunday morning. We call these our urban hikes. Larry Strange, our unofficial leader, is a Philly boy. He loves to show us around, and we are willing disciples. In fact, the hike that launched our Sunday morning group was a nine-mile trek on a beautiful September day which wound us through Fairmount Park and ended at Federal Donuts on Sansom Street for a chicken/donut lunch. Most of our Philly hikes involve food. Even our daughter, Maren, will rise early to accompany us when we go to Philly. Is it any wonder that our hiking group became a habit? 

We call our group Strange Adventures after Larry. I have loads of stories of our outings--and they truly are adventures--which I will tease out over the course of this blog. This group and its adherents have been at the heart of our assimilation into the Ardens. You will want to hear some of these stories. I experienced them, and I am still shaking my head in disbelief.

This Sunday, we went to Philly as we did last year, not to witness the St. Patrick's Day parade, but to be part of the energy surrounding the event. People are crazy, costumed, and more than a little bit inebriated at ten in the morning. What can be more fun that watching the spectacle unfold? We speculate, of course, as to what is under all those kilts. Larry is Irish, and I think he needs to look into getting his own kilt for next year.  This has all the markings of becoming a tradition--as is Larry's tradition of getting home later than the rest of the group. He hangs with other native Philly boys in pubs after we go home, and finds his way back to Arden by combination of rail and Uber--another indication of just how accessible Philadelphia is to us.

This is my second experience of St. Patrick's Day in Philly. Last year, our hiking group somehow got caught up in the middle of a Chinese parade happening at the same time. That was a head-scratcher. This year, our plan called for hiking in a different part of the city. We started at WXPN, a good place to park on Sundays, circled around University City, and then it become hazy for me. We usually walk up to the art museum by way of the path along the Schuylkill River path, but Larry must have found some sort of portal to get us there faster--either that or I was lost in conversation, as I am apt to be. The brain trust on these hikes is though the roof. Each person is treasure trove of knowledge and ideas, and it doesn't matter who I am lined up with when we are walking; the conversation is always stimulating. I  gain at least 10 IQ points from these hikes. (Temporary IQ points. I lose them again when we hit the pubs.) 

photo at Philadelphia Art Museum by Joe del Tufo

Joe took plenty of pictures along the way. He documents the hikes though photos that I later archive and make into photo albums for the group. We posed with different sculptures around town. Joe got a great shot of us women on a statute by the Philadelphia Art Museum. We bypassed all the people taking photos with the Rocky statue. There was a line. And we laughed at the fitness trainer who planted himself at the bottom of the Art Museum steps where he shouted at two women to encourage the epic stair climb. No stairs for us this time; we were moving onward to get to the newly opened City Tap Room, former home of The Public House, where we had brunch reservations. On St. Patrick's Day weekend, it is good to have such forethought. Two of our  twelve-person hiking crew bailed on brunch; they had a family engagement. But Larry was meeting friends, so that brought the number in our party to about sixteen. We waited for them to set the long table for all of us.

 Look to the man at head of table. Directly above him.
Guy in beanie is Stallone.

What to say? The brunch was superb. Mark's chicken and waffles were insanely good with a red pepper jam and thyme butter. And the beer list, the reason we were here, was top notch. By getting there early, we had just beat the rush. I took a photo of our group at the table. This is something I never do because Joe is the photographer, but he was mid-table, and I was at the end, so I took the shot. A couple of minutes later a flurry broke out at the opposite end of the table from me. Stallone was in the house. He had been sitting at the next table over the whole time. We had walked right by him to be seated. In our defense, he was wearing a knit beanie and dark glasses. Joe hopped up with his camera and asked him to pose for a photo. Sly obliged. Pfft. Those people waiting in line at the Rocky Statue. We had the real thing. I then checked my group photo, and sure enough, I spotted Stallone's beanie hovering above our group.  This hike is going down in history. Perhaps Stallone will even get the coveted cover spot in the yearly photo album. These are the kind of funny moments of serendipity that seem to happen to us on our hikes. Or maybe we are just more aware on Sunday mornings, having taken a respite from our ordinary lives. Open to nature. Open to culture. Open to little winks from the Universe. Yo, Philadelphia. City of Brotherly Love. How we love you.