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					Also this issue: Big Trouble from Little Thailand -Howard Altman Real Barbecue -Bruce Schimmel Letters to the Editor

June 27-July 3, 2002

slant

Back on the Streets Again

by David Warner

If you’re a regular reader of City Paper, you’ve probably been dimly aware that the top of the masthead has undergone a few changes in the last several months.

Last August, thanks to a mid-career fellowship from the National Arts Journalism Program, I left the editorship of the paper to study for an academic year at Columbia University in N.Y.C. In my absence, Howard Altman and Frank Lewis did such a good job of running things that we have permanently altered their roles: Howard, as executive editor, will oversee the paper on a day-to-day basis, while Frank, as managing/online editor, will make sure the newsroom operates efficiently. As editor in chief I'll be free to focus on one goal: that of making a great paper even better.

I've been back now for about a week, and I'm finding myself puzzled by an all-too-frequent question: Wasn't it hard to leave New York? Or, put more bluntly: How could you bear to come back to Philadelphia?

The answer: I missed this place. Italics mine, because I get the feeling from some people that the sentiment is difficult to believe.

Don't get me wrong. I do love, hey I even heart New York. And this year, of course, New York needed all the love it could get. The feelings of fear and loss experienced throughout the country were amplified for anyone living in the city (I still blanch whenever I see a jet flying overhead). But the attacks also strengthened New Yorkers' determination to cherish their town, and it was impossible, even as a temporary resident, not to share in that feeling of solidarity.

As a first-time New Yorker (I'm from New England originally), I was certainly ready to dive in. A huge part of my education this year was learning New York itself -- scoping out the neighborhoods, going to theaters and museums and restaurants I'd heard about but had never seen, meeting people who make the city's newspapers and magazines and arts institutions work. The endless appeal of New York, I think, is the fact that it's endless, so big and so mutable that you can never really feel you know it.

But size isn't everything. An ironic fact of life in New York is that, with all those options out there, many residents never leave their neighborhoods; the very idea of taking a train all the way from, say, the West Village to Morningside Heights is anathema. Traversing the island by train, bus or even by cab can take a Very Long Time, so it can be a major chore to sample the culture beyond your front door. And there's a special kind of N.Y. neurosis that's linked to the fact that you can't see everything, that you're always missing something, and since you're not going to see it before anyone else, it's already too late.

In New York, I often found myself thinking that Philadelphia has what New York has, only less of it: We have dignified brownstones like Brooklyn Heights, leafy streets like the Village, a gallery district like Soho. All right, we have nothing quite like the alternative art scene/ethnic stew of the East Village and Lower East Side, but we are developing a critical mass of artists with a similarly adventurous "downtown" sensibility. And if they're not concentrated in one neighborhood, they're still beginning to constitute a recognizable Philly dance/theater scene -- a scene that's getting noticed in, yes, New York.

In fact, Philly was big news in New York all year, particularly in the visual arts. The Barnett Newman and American Sublime shows at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, respectively, reaped huge coverage in The New York Times. (The Eakins show, just arriving at the Met after its successful debut here, is drawing the same level of attention.) Praise wasn't confined to the blockbusters; The Institute of Contemporary Art's current Charles LeDray show, for instance, was enthusiastically praised. Philly dance and theater were well-received, too: Philadanco and Headlong, Pig Iron and New Paradise all played New York gigs.

But Philadelphians don't have to go to New York to see them. And in our still eminently walkable downtown, we can take in a show without having to make a travel plan. Though New York is famously a walker's city, nothing there could match the pleasures of my walk to work in Philly -- a stroll that can, depending on my mood, take me down South Street or Society Hill's garden paths.

And there's so much still to discover here. On Saturday, I found this great, unpretentious new French place -- paper tablecloths, great food, reasonable prices -- called Tartine at Fourth and Bainbridge. A few nights before that, I paid my first visit to Hard Liquor Theater, a rowdy, Big Mess-y mix of vaudeville and queer culture at Tritone, presided over by Psydde Delicious and Needles Jones, a hilarious cross between Joan Rivers and Ernest Borgnine. I want to catch the final weekend of InterAct's National Showcase of New Plays. I'm hearing good things about the upcoming Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. I'm looking forward to the Fringe (and am performing in it again).

And I can walk to it all.

David Warner is the editor in chief of City Paper. If you would like to respond to this Slant or have one of your own (850 words), contact Howard Altman, City Paper executive editor, 123 Chestnut St., third floor, Phila., PA 19106 or e-mail altman@citypaper.net.