The Manrilla Blog | Life. Art. Religion. Culture.

I’m hanging out right now in South Philly, at the Philadelphia Java Company (Google Map). It’s a nice little cafe that has mostly locals. It’s about a half block off of South Street so you don’t have the crazy throngs of young kids and bruthas tryin’ to sell you incense and oils. Just went and looked at a loft space around the corner from here (9th and Spruce). The money’s very reasonable - now all I can do is wait for the land lord to contact me back.

Besides that, I’m still settling into my routine at work. I actually got to get hands-on today with some of the software we use. My job is to break it and put it back together again, so to speak. Testing. Man, one thing I have to do different is eat different while I’m at work. I had a burrito from Qdoba (I think - well, some place like that) up on 40th and Spruce. It was a big, honkin’ burrito with black beans, rice and chicken with tons of extra-hot hot sauce. By the time I had made it back to the office, I was ready to slip into a coma. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t concentrate. My eyes kept watering and my vision was blurry. Two cups of coffee was all that kept me clinging to the rope of life, so to speak. I gotta watch the carbs, I guess. Not that I care about the weight. I’ve continued to loose 7 to 8 pounds every two to three weeks from exercise. My pants are already fallin’ off my arse. But I think it’s the carbs that make me wanna fall out and take a siesta. So no more burritos for lunch. Hmm…, I wonder how many carbs there are in a cheese steak?

Well, my time in South Philly has come to a close. I’ve packed up and moved to the Fairmount neighborhood. So I’ll continue my city ramblings from this new spot. The South Philly Blog is officially retired. Although, like Rocky, you know how many comebacks it could make.

Update: The South Philly Blog’s not stopped but rather has been incorporated into the blog as a whole. To see posts that deal with South Philly, you can visit this portion of the blog. Thanks.

Went out for a walk tonight. I’ve been doing that a lot lately. You know, for a city I’ve been coming to (and now live in) for almost 20 years I don’t know Philadelphia that well. I took a long walk yesterday, around 3 hours or so, from South Philly down to South Street. From there I headed to Penn’s Landing, over to Northern Liberties, up to Center City and back down Broad Street to South Philly. It was a heck of a walk. I gotta break out the camera on one of these trips.

So today I took another walk down to South Street. It was drizzling and thought that I’d be okay but by the time I made it to 7th and Washington I was severely soaked. Grabbed a gyro at the Souvlaki place on South Street.

When you’re passing through 7th and Morris, say, the neighborhoods get weird down in that part of town. It’s like Little Saigon in between Oregon and Washington Ave around 7th Street. Lots of shops owned and patronized by Vietnamese and other “boat people”. I don’t know about that word. Well, what ever. White folks haven’t moved into these parts yet, gentrifying the whole place. But I imagine it’s just a matter of time. It’s going on in other parts of South Philly (and other major cities across the States as a whole). If you go down to 15th, 16th and 17th Streets between Washington and Lombard, those were ghetto just a few years back but now there’s scaffolding outside almost every house down there. Being renovated and resold, but not to the black families that live there. Urban renewal. The latest trend. More on my travels through and around South Philly to come.

It is said that we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about the bottom of the ocean. The same might be said for South Philadelphia. It’s such a weird, eclectic mezcla (mix) of cultures - sites, smells and sounds, that I felt it deserved its own corner of the Web. So I’m happy to announce The South Philly Blog - “What it’s like to live, eat and breathe in South Philadelphia. The manifesto of an artist living in one of Philadelphia most diverse and dynamic neighborhoods.” Here’s the address: manrilla.net/southphilly/ - check it out. And chime in if you’ve got any tasty bits of info on life in South Philly.

I saw the funniest thing the other day. I saw an older guy, say mid 50’s, in a yellow jump suit with lots of gold chains, smoking a cig and his shirt said, “Italian Stallion”. That’s South Philly if I ever saw it. It was a magical moment. And like many magical moments I was ill prepared without camera to document the occurance. My only hope is that the Stallion will be back again some day.

Welcome to yet another Blog by Yours Truly. I had an idea: I live in South Philly. It’s a funny and interesting place. Why not write about it and share it with the rest of the world? Well, ‘wrote a song ’bout it - here it go! Where’s a good place to grab a hoagie? Where to shop? The best Vietnamese food? I hope to answer all those questions and more. Stay tuned and enjoy!