I like good infrastructure, of which my new home on the Jersey Shore has very little.
Exurban growth makes me feel like life doesn't have any edges, but not in a crunchy, awe-inspiring way like Glacier National Park or fields of sunflowers along Route 2 in North Dakota. I like daily life to feel contained and manageably sized, like I can walk around the corner in any direction and hit:
- 1 coffee shop, preferably one cramped with pitted wood tables, rickety chairs with fake wrought-iron backs, and an exposed brick wall. A smudgy black markerboard would do best for the menu, especially if there are artistic dry-erase representations of dessert present.
- 5 places to eat, ranging from the quick-and-dirty local bagel shop to the über-swanky, "rose-petals-on-the-table" black-tie affair, complete with $65 prix fixe menu. Preferably 5 different ethnicities, although 5 Indian buffets for less than $7 a pop would be nice too.
- 1 place to make copies
- 3 banks
- 1 place to buy band-aids, gum, cat litter, and shampoo
- 2 news agents
- 1 full-service, traditional grocer
- 2 hair salons - the kind where the stylists are all between the ages of 20 and 38 and don't look like they were up chain-smoking at a bus stop all night long
- a disgustingly lavish array of public transportation options
- 1 dry cleaner and laundry
- 3 different ethnic supermarkets. Any combination will do: Indian, Polish, Chinese; Korean, Lebanese, Caribbean; African, Mexican, Greek. The kind where those $8 "specialty items" collecting dust at A&P will now cost 79 cents. The kind where, if you don't speak the language, you can't totally tell if you're buying a bottle of morello cherry syrup or duck blood.
I had the good fortune this weekend to accompany
some friends to the Camden County Library System, where they were giving a program on How to Make Your Own Comic Book for teens. After a stop-off at the Walt Whitman House in Camden proper (in front of which two shady looking characters were exchanging money for, let's assume, something other than an autographed copy of
Leaves of Grass), we headed into Philadelphia for eating purposes.
Never been to Philly before. (I should add that the act of saying "Philly" makes me vaguely uncomfortable - I would never, after all, bestow a cutesy nickname like "Clevey-Poo" upon my dear, dirty, dying hometown. Maybe, on reconsideration, the creation of an endearing nickname is step one toward recovery.) The frill-free
Lakeside Chinese Deli, with its squiddy assortment of dim sum and heaping plates of brightly colored exotic vegetables, was City Good (as opposed to Urban Sprawl Good - only those who have lived in both environments will truly understand what that means). Even the glossy, particle-board lazy susan in the center of the table (Grammy's house circa 1979) was just what the doctor ordered for someone who'd been away from Life With Edges too long.
The other thing that particularly impressed me about our nation's first capital was how many people were out and about in Center City. Granted, it was a nice night. Granted, it was a Saturday night. But the combination of nice + Saturday in downtown Cleveland still wouldn't generate a fraction of the vitality that was positively dripping from Philly's steel-and-concrete pores.
The night was rounded out by scouring both the nearby Chinese grocery (one of many, actually) for treats I used to enjoy at my Taiwanese friend's house as a child (i.e., sweet bean paste and little dried fishies with the heads still on) and the
Sanrio store, where everything is scientifically engineered to give you crazed maternal happy feelings.
Then on Sunday I went to Trenton.
Maybe I'll tell you about that another time.
