Feature Article

Philadelphia, Meet Your Future

By Dan P. Lee

Page 3 of 10



WE'RE WAITING FOR THE movie/show to start.

Inside a theater at the International House near Penn's campus, Joey and Ruth and I are standing by the entrance. This is an event Philebrity.com has written an advance about, and Joey and Ruth also happen to be friends with the harpist who will soon take the stage, along with members of other various Philly instrumental groups who have written a 73-minute score for the 1970 Czechoslovakian surrealist film Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, which will play without sound. It will make watching The Wizard of Oz to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon seem like child's play.

Joey asks Ruth and me if we'd like a beer, and as he's leaving the auditorium to fetch them, I can't help but think that he hardly seems the image of the scenester power broker he's become. Soft-spoken and utterly ­innocuous-looking, he blends easily into the background, another dark-haired young hipster in an auditorium full of them. Rarely if at all does he betray the confident condescension that is a hallmark of his website; only at the computer in the hermetically sealed confines of his home office does he apparently feel comfortable letting the gloves come off. He returns with three warm beers in plastic cups, which we press together with a "Cheers."

It seems Joey and Ruth know the majority of the people coming in and out of the theater, a mix of gelled and shaggy hair, Urban Outfitters and consignment threads. Onstage at the moment is a young woman with long hair parted in the middle, wearing a black gauzy dress. In a voice reminiscent of comedienne Rita Rudner's, she tells the audience: "This next song is a Pablo Neruda poem put to music. So it's not in English. But you can get the jive."

Joey bemoans the fact that Philly is again making national headlines for something that "makes us look stupid" — that Rocky statue. "I think it's a huge embarrassment," Joey says to Ruth and another couple — an attractive, pigtailed girl dressed in thrift-shop chic, the guy with long sideburns, a black film festival t-shirt, several silver rings on his fingers. All nod in agreement. The pigtailed girl is carrying a large leather bag, which contains a fully stocked bar — a "Port-A-Bar," she informs us. She's carrying a small pocketknife as well, which she's using to cut limes.


 

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User comments

Sweeney and the Rocky Statue
Posted by Jim | Jul. 25, 2009 at 4:29 AM
COMMENT:
I think the article is spot on. There has been a big change and shift in the newspapers all forms of media. The Rocky Statue, the bus from 12 monkeys, the bench at Peirce for Sixth Sense, one could go on and on. The point is the ever shifting and deversaty of this Metro Area, and those that help shape the art and culture that are woven into the fabric of what is Philly in all of its evolving era's. We have a unique situation here in Philly. We have the history of the fore fathers of liberty, we have the current residents themselves with their own art culture politics, or lack of it. Yet there is a need to make a statement by the residents that use the sidewalks and the rowhouses, the business of business, we have here a connection to one another unique to our culture, our present time and it is fantastic to get out and experience it on all its multi layered venue's.To live here, now, is exciting and nail biting at the same time to say the least, but look about, we are not about boring

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