I knew when I returned from Mexico to my hometown of Philadelphia in late January, 2021, to get my COVID vaccines, that I would have to face sooner or later how my neighborhood in the city center looked now vs. how it was when I left it 18 months ago, before the at-first-peaceful response last May to the killing of George Floyd tragically devolved into looting and burning, and before the pandemic-induced collapse of the retail corridor, and yesterday was that day.
I had not been able to walk outside for three days due to a prolonged snowstorm with accompanying high winds, and I felt I just had to get out. So I bundled up for a one-hour walk as if for an extended Arctic exploration, and except for the fact that I felt I could have used another pair of socks inside my ankle boots, I was warm in spite of the 35 mph winds on the north/south streets, which I avoided. Unfortunately, my glasses fogged up almost immediately and stayed that way because of the combination of my mask and my hood trapping my exhalations.
The first alarming thing I encountered as I walked under towering skyscrapers were large A-frame signs—two or three per block, strategically placed mid-sidewalk so as not to be missed--that read, “Caution - Falling Ice and Snow.” Great! In what way were we to change our behavior in order to avoid this catastrophe? I did notice that some people moved to walk in the bike lanes, but that seemed to carry yet another danger, although bicycles were few and far between. Since I had heard chunks of ice falling from my own apartment building over the last two days, and none today, I figured all that were going to fall had already fallen and I kept on walking.
Most of the sidewalk areas had been shoveled except for those in front of the stores that were now closed, and there were far more of them than I ever dreamed I would encounter. Also, when the streets were plowed, the piles were dumped at the corners, making crossing a real challenge, made worse when cars pulled up into the crosswalks.
First I walked over to and then down Chestnut and up Walnut, from Broad St. as far as the prestigious Rittenhouse Square at 20th, to arrive to where center-city’s former premiere shopping district was concentrated, and observed that about every fourth store was closed, including, surprisingly, many that had been the previous homes of huge, nationwide chains. Some of the stores were still boarded up the way I’m sure they were secured immediately after the destruction that sprang from the ill-fated demonstrations, although now covered with graffiti. Others had professionally-placed boards disguised by attractive paintings that were repeated up and down the blocks to give a sort of continuity and to hide the glare of so many shuttered high-quality stores on the best shopping street of center-city.
And then there were several of the--in-my-eyes--pathetic-looking, incongruous efforts of restaurants on this freezing day in February to offer outside dining as a last-ditch effort not to go under, set up in a variety of small structures in the parking lane of Walnut St. I thought that one must be truly desperate to eat in a restaurant rather than prepare something at home to dine in one of those open-air places, even with the highly-visible presence of large heaters.
Almost everyone on the streets was masked, even the legion of the homeless, some of whom just seemed to be milling around and others who were begging. I was shaken to the core and very, very sad. As I rode back up to my apartment on the service elevator in order to avoid staff members and other tenants as I was still in quarantine, I reminded myself that the day was cold and grey, that on a lovely May morning without dirty piles of snow and people wrapped to their eyeballs in their efforts to stay warm and avoid the killer virus, that it might not have hit me quite so hard, but I doubt it. My city, probably most cities throughout the world, have a long way to go to return to the way they were, and I cannot imagine that that will happen any time soon.
The walk may have invigorated my body, but it put a heavy burden on my soul.