PHILLY IS GOING CRAZY

Maybe it really was the Curse of Billy Penn. The city's founder was apparently not happy about losing his statue's "tallest thing in town" status to some skyscrapers in the late 80s, and cursed Philadelphia to never win a championship in any major sport, despite our perennially great teams. (Last year, a miniature statuette of Penn was added to the latest and highest scraper as a CYA). But maybe it really required me not being here to see any games this summer. (I'm not being ego-centric, ALL phans here blame themselves for the teams' record). Either way, I can't tell you what a pleasure it's been to come home and watch the Phils make their way through the playoffs and win the World Series here at home. For a city that lives and dies via its sports, the mood here has been ecstatic this past week and the town is red with old and new baseball fans. I'm very lucky to have left the trail for a place like Philadelphia, and I'm constantly reminded why I love living here. It really is a rare place - a big city with all the entertainment and activity that entails - but also one with individual neighborhoods like Fishtown, where if I don't ever leave its boundaries (or leave the house in 3 weeks) I can pretend I live in a small town of 25,000. I feel for the folks who left the trail and went to live with parents or are stuck in cars in the suburban traffic lifestyle - believe it or not, that would be a harder transition than coming back to this metropolis was. To be sure, there's been a lot of change over the six months in town and some of it is disconcerting, like the best wig shop on Chestnut becoming another upscale coffee house. But the essential Philly-ness remains: less than 2 hours after winning Game 5, a guy came down my street pushing a shopping cart full of "official" World Championship merchandise for sale. So with civic pride, I'm heading downtown after this post to check out the big parade for the team, which will easily be the biggest gathering of people I've seen since walking through the July 4th festival when I stopped home this summer. At that point, I was halfway through the Trail and was wonderfully surprised by a cop who gave me an extra hoagie he had. (See above photo). Hopefully I can score a trail-magic pretzel today, but I fear I don't look so desparate without the beard. Why did I cut it off so soon?!

PS, finally got a look at my photos. I took a lot. And by "a lot" I mean an insane amount. More to come.