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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
How many nights of limping round on pagan holidays
We start the 2004 Weekend Trips slideshow with an actual weekend trip. If you’re not new here, then you already know that these weekend trips slideshows are a combination of local pictures and actual overnight trips, and if you’re really not new here, then you already know that 2004 is the year that I finally transitioned from my APS SLR camera to all digital. It was a slow transition, and from 2001 to 2004, I kept a small (but heavy) digital camera in my pocket, preferring to use the APS SLR when traveling or doing something important. Which is why on this trip we’re going analog for (just about) the last time.
One other note about the APS SLR images. There are clues right in front of you that distinguish between a digital photo and a scanned APS print. First off the dimensions ate a little weird, most APS prints are 16:9 or panoramas as opposed to the (usually) 4:3 digital ones. Also I disabled the click to enlarge feature on the scanned APS prints, the resolution of the APS film isn’t great, and even a higher quality scan is noticeably blurry when enlarged. So if you are new here and continuing backwards all the way to 1997, expect to see more and more scanned APS prints as you go.
As for the picture, we’re in Philadelphia. More about that next.
I was in Philadelphia for a weekend trip. From home, I took a train into New York Penn then a shockingly cheap Amtrak train right to 30th Street. Then early Monday morning, I took a packed Acela train up to Stamford and then a Metro North train for the last leg up to South Norwalk and work. It was an easy trip and not driving to Philadelphia (or Connecticut) is always a bonus.
As to why I wanted to go to Philadelphia in the first place, it was specifically to see this building. This is the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts by Rafael Vinoly, featuring a spectacular top level winter garden room, pictured below.
I visited the Kimmel Center twice over the weekend, once under a sunny sky to enjoy the top floor winter garden and then again at night to enjoy a performance. It was the Philadelphia Symphony (I think) playing, um, something- don’t ask me what, I was there to see the theatre and experience the building, not there for the music.
I don’t normally stay overnight in Philadelphia that often (it’s not all that far away), but all that might change since I found a great hotel there. This is the Loews Philadelphia inside William Lescaze’s landmark PSFS Building, an International Style classic on Market Street,
Not only is the building fun to be in, the views out from the hotel room can be pretty spectacular too.
It’s not too hard to get to the still new Core States Center, um, I mean the recently renamed First Union Center, um, I mean the recently re-renamed Wachovia Center, so I decided to head down and see a game where the hometown Flyers played (and eventually defeated) the Boston Bruins. As you probably already know from reading these slideshows, I am a hockey fan and, more specifically, a New Jersey Devils fan, and it’s always interesting seeing other teams arenas and fan bases. Inside the Wachovia Center it felt like being inside a beehive or a Star Trek Borg Collective Cube, with Flyers fans wandering around kind of mindlessly waiting to plug in and become part of one mind, one swearing at the ref and Bruins booing mind. I felt a little out of place as possibly the only person in the crowd not wearing a Flyers jersey and also as possibly the only person there actually thinking for themselves.
