Running In The Footsteps of Rocky and Al Capone, Philadelphia, April 2012

ROCKY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Philadelphia, April 2012

Saturday 28th April 2012 – We woke to the smell of frying onions this morning – always a promising start to the day! Wandering downstairs, we were presented with the usual assortment of sweetbreads but, because it’s the weekend, they put on an even bigger spread than usual! Quiche Lorraine with baked ham and ‘breakfast potato’ (fried with onions), plus a delicious fruit salad with a honey and lime sauce… slurp!

Emulating Rocky on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art,
Philadelphia, April 2012

We walked out to Market Street and braved the local bus system (which turned out to be pretty simple, cheap and effective) to get to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in the northwestern corner of the city. Were we there to admire the priceless artworks? No. We were there to emulate Philadelphia’s favourite fictional son, Rocky Balboa. Awwwwww yeeeeah! We were there to run in his footsteps – up all the stairs in one go, jump the last flight in a couple of steps, do a little U-turn, stick your arms over your head, jump about like a loon, pull up your trousers and jump about some more. Classic scene!!! We decided to film the whole debacle; there’s no point in making a total fool of yourself if there’s no evidence of it, is there? Hopefully, in the not-too-distant future, I’ll be able to post a video of our antics for you to see. We had an absolute ball running up and down the stairs, pumping our fists in the air and snapping pictures all over the place. Who would’ve thought you could have so much fun with a set of stairs? Hundreds of tourists were doing the same thing, and it was totally cheesy but it actually created a really nice atmosphere – everyone connected by this one silly little act. We also visited the Rocky statue, by the base of the stairs, and paid homage to his victorious stance. “ADRIAAAAAAAAN!” 🙂

Cell block at the Eastern State Penitentiary,
Philadelphia, April 2012

After wearing ourselves out with all the running and jumping, we walked to our next destination for the day – the Eastern State Penitentiary. Our tone was quite different at this place! Built in 1829, the jail was the world’s first true ‘penitentiary’, a place where inmates were treated in such a way as to encourage true penance for their crimes. Up to that point, prisons had been a kind of violent free-for-all where prisoners were often kept in large common rooms all together, spreading disease and causing a danger to the prison staff and the prisoners themselves. The ‘Philadelphia Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons’ (one of the founders: Ben Franklin) envisaged a new system for prisons, to be instituted largely by the Quakers: complete isolation. Each prisoner would have his or her own cell and have no contact with other prisoners or the outside world, save with their guards. A white mask was worn whenever the prisoner left their cell to avoid excess stimulation. The prisoner spent 23 hours a day inside their cell, and then had two half-hour breaks in their own little outdoor exercise space to stretch and get fresh air. Quite a different vision to today’s penal systems! As time passed, disciplinary methods changed and prisoners had to share cells; overcrowding soon became a problem.

The prison building was also quite revolutionary for its time; it was built in a wheel shape, with a central post for the guards to keep watch over everything easily, and with the ‘spokes’ being the cell blocks, the entirety of which was surrounded by high stone walls. This ‘Pennsylvania Design’ was adopted by prisons all over the world and is still in use in many places.

An evil-looking barber’s chair in an abandoned room at the Eastern State Penitentiary,
Philadelphia, April 2012

The Eastern State Penitentiary itself was completely empty by 1971; the age of the building made its upkeep difficult and its conditions unpleasant. In the 40 years since, nature has reclaimed much of it; it’s funny how quickly something can become completely dilapidated if left unmaintained and at the mercy of the elements. The paint (what’s left of it) is cracked and peeled; the mortar is crumbling off the walls, and trees have made their homes in some of the old cells, creeping through weaknesses in the brick. Abandoned buildings are always eerie, and this prison even more so. Tiny doors leading to tiny cells; echoing corridors; empty shower rooms; furniture left to rot in cells; a single barber’s chair in a run-down room; fenced-off areas that are structurally unsound; the whole place was morbidly fascinating. Such a state of decay is rarely seen in everyday life.

Admission included an audio tour, so we plugged in and were surprised to hear the voice of Steve Buscemi guiding us through the bends and turns of the prison, along with the voices of real ex-prisoners and historians. We saw the cell in Block 8 where Al Capone spent 8 months in 1929 (where he apparently lived in relative luxury, listening to his waltz records and walking on his fine rugs), and we visited Cell Block 15, also known as Death Row (although inmates were not put to death here; they were transported to another prison and taken to the electric chair). We both got creeped out in one particular cell block (Number 14? I’m not entirely sure) which had not been properly restored yet; a chicken-wire fence separated us from the main part of the corridor and I was actually quite glad of it. Something about it made the hair on the back of my neck stand on end; brrrrrrr. We went underground briefly to see the pipes and catch a glimpse of ‘the Klondike’, which was basically the solitary confinement unit, used for punishment after they stopped keeping everyone in solitary all the time. We also had a bit of fun with some of the mirrors which had been installed at the end of Cell Block 8, positioned so that even if a guard was around a corner, he could still see down the next block. The way they were arranged was quite confusing to the eye; you never knew quite which direction you were looking in! We also giggled (perhaps cruelly) at the mug shot of ‘Pep: The Cat-Murdering Dog’. Apparently, Pep was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1924 after killing the State Governor’s wife’s cat…!

Mirrors pointing at all sorts of wierd angles lead to directional confusion! The Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, April 2012

There were a lot of other things there that we could have seen before leaving, but hunger called. We had already been at the Penitentiary for a couple of hours and it was freezing inside (I dread to think what it must have been like for the inmates during the harsh winters), so we knew it was time to go. As we left, we spared a thought for the older gentleman we had met on Thursday who had been here as an inmate years ago. By our calculations, he was probably in his 20s (or possibly his 30s, if he was among the last prisoners to live there) when doing his time, and conditions must have been awful. Sure, you do the crime, you do the time, but wow. What a dreadful place.

We gratefully walked out into the sunshine and walked down Fairmont onto Pennsylvania Avenue to get the bus back into the city centre, where we made a beeline for the famous Reading Terminal Market. Talk about a foodie haven! If we hadn’t been gorging ourselves everywhere else in town, we might have tried to make it there earlier! The whole joint was a-jumping with people out for a food fix, and boy was there a lot to choose from. Everything from Indian to ice cream to Greek to Chinese to fresh fruit, fresh meats, wicked cheeses, confectionery… we did the logical thing and did a round of all the aisles first, to see what we’d most like to try, but by the time we go to the other end we’d forgotten the multitude of things we wanted to try and had to go back again! We were tempted to join the gargantuan queue at DiNic’s to see what all the fuss was about (I think they were just selling sandwiches), but in the end, we settled on Cajun food. Charlie had a muffaletta sandwich (which the server carelessly shouted out to the kitchen staff as “One quarter muff to go!” …Sheesh!), which was basically meats, cheeses and pickles in a whopping stack, and I tried a bit of prawn and crab pasta salad with corn bread and mac & cheese balls. Oh my. I didn’t even get halfway through it but it was gooood. We sat at a nearby table and enjoyed the piano skills of a young man who had set up a keyboard in the area; his rendition of Love Rollercoaster, done with a jazzy beat, was particularly awesome!

I resisted the urge to buy an anatomically-correct chocolate heart (ventricles and aorta!) but could NOT resist ‘The Famous Fourth Street Cookie Company’. We were about to order a chocolate-chip cookie to share when we discovered that they were selling the same cookies, dipped in chocolate. SOLD! We were so thrilled but knew the danger of eating cookies like that (once you start, you can’t stop!)… the man checked that we were over 21 (so we could cope with the pressure!) and said that he wasn’t allowed to sell them within 500 metres of a school…! We sat at a table outside and before we knew it, the cookie had magically disappeared. It was amazing, but gone all too soon.

We walked from there, through Chinatown, to the National Constitution Centre, but I am ashamed to say that by the time we got there we weren’t all that keen, and the $15 entry charge sealed the deal. We turned right around. Maybe I’ll regret that later, but right now I feel fine about it. Instead, we walked past the building that holds the Liberty Bell and marvelled at the length of the queue outside. Not wishing to waste two hours of our afternoon in a queue, we kept walking and then spotted the bell itself through a side window! Job done – we saw the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. We then tried to get in to Independence Hall, only to find that all the tickets were sold for the day, but we were able to get through the security check and hang out in the courtyard behind it for a little bit. I had a little bit of regret over that, but there wasn’t much we could do if all the tickets were gone! Feeling a bit lazy, we then wandered home and spent a nice couple of hours just relaxing and hanging out in our room – probably something that was a bit overdue. One has to remind oneself to take a breather when travelling, sometimes. It’s all well and good to run around like a headless chicken and see everything you think you should see, but sometimes you need to find a bit of peace, too.

For the first time, we made it to the 5:30 wine and cheese that our hotel organises for the guests; we found that we were definitely a different ‘demographic’ to all the other guests present, by at least 30 years. “One of these things is not like the other!” Still, we had a nice chat and enjoyed the cheese (we were Philistines and ignored the wine) before going back to the room to back up photos before heading out for dinner.

We decided just to explore our immediate neighbourhood in search of food. A lot of the places nearby seem to be bars that also serve food, but we didn’t really feel like being in a bar and it’s Saturday night, so we felt a bit too scruffy to hang out with the Beautiful (and in some cases, not-so-beautiful!) People. In the end, we opted for Rocchino’s, a swanky pizza joint, where Charlie had a Florentine pizza (spinach, peppers and olives), and I had the Rustica: rosemary oil with chopped pancetta, potato, parmesan and mozzarella. Nom nom nom nom nom!

Our walk home took less than two minutes, and when we came through the front door we found our nightly fresh cookies waiting for us. I’m going to miss those, that’s for sure! We made ourselves a hot chocolate and sat down in the sitting room for a little bit of peace, only to be swarmed by about 6 other guests about 2 minutes later – bad timing. Next thing I knew, we were embroiled in the fringes of a heavily political conversation, and one of the guys had the balls to make an incendiary comment along the lines of “The Muslims are taking over America”. I realised soon afterwards that in this group of people, that was not considered an incendiary comment, and I was appalled. I found myself telling them how much (and why) I disagreed with that rubbish and to their credit they listened politely, but honestly I don’t think there’s much you can do to change people like that; all you can do is hope that they forget to vote! Sigh.

Anyway, Charlie and I escaped upstairs as soon as was humanly possible (the pitfalls of being in a shared guesthouse!) and now it’s bed for time again.

Thanks for stopping by,

Tara.

Tags: food, philadelphia, travel