1513 Decision Street

It's friggin' cold out and there's snow on the ground. Not a lot of snow but just enough to be annoying. I need to go to the grocery store, to the gym and I really want to check out the new brunch spot around the corner - Green Eggs. I also really feel like going to see a movie.  It's already 1:30pm and doing all of them won't leave much time for anything else today. I feel pathetic agonizing over petty decisions when we haven't yet decided where Beth will be giving birth.

We went to the Birth Center in Wilmington last week and I left having come to a single conclusion.

Delaware is weird.

The Wilmington Birth Center was in some Victorian twin like you'd see in West Philly or Germantown. In fact, the neighborhood reminded me a lot of Germantown or Mt. Airy. It was half a block from a hospital with a maternity ward. Except, they only take you there in cases of emergency. If there are no major complications and the labor is just failing to progress or it's going to be a breach birth they take you to Christiana Hospital which is a good 15 minutes away.

The Wilmington Birth Center also had a much different vibe than the Bryn Mawr Birth Center. Wilmington was very hippie. The orientation there had maybe 10 couples and most of them already had kids. It seemed like most of the people at the orientation had moved there from other parts of the country. Apparently, a home-birth without an attending physician is illegal in Delaware so a lot of people at the orientation didn't really need to be sold on the idea of midwifes. They were just at the Birth Center because doing it at home in Delaware is too difficult.

When we went to Bryn Mawr there were closer to 30 couples, it seemed like everyone was around our age, this was their first child, and most people were local. A lot of people at the Bryn Mawr orientation really didn't want to deliver at a hospital but weren't entirely sold on the Birth Center and had a lot of questions about safety and that sort of thing - like a half an hour worth of Q & A.  In Wilmington I think there were 3 or 4 questions the whole night (again, probably because most of the people there had already been through it before.)  BTW - If you haven't seen Ricki Lake's documentary 'The Business of Being Born' you should definitely check it out.  

So, in case you haven't figured it out yet, Wilmington is out.  There will be a lot of appointments between now and the big day and even though Bryn Mawr is a little bit longer of a drive (50 minutes vs. 35 to Wilmington) but it's also a block from the train station. I'm sure the rush hour train ride is much quicker than a rush hour car ride.

But right now the home birth option is at the top of the list. We still need the particulars on insurance and emergency transport. We live within 2 miles of 5 hospitals with 3 trauma centers and 3 NICUs so all of those bases are covered.  It's the logistics and under what circumstances that we need to clear up.

Decisions.

Shifting Demographics

I've been waiting to post for a few reasons. Mainly because our super trashy neighbor is finally moving out. What does that have to do with high-speed rail, you ask? Well, bear with me, it's but one example of something happening every day in neighborhoods all over Philadelphia and in cities all over the country.

The house next door to us has been chopped up into something resembling a rooming house.  For the 4 years we've lived here there have been the same Vietnamese people living on the top two floors. There's a cute older couple that speak zero english on the 2nd floor.  We were doing some plumbing work in our house once and our cat, the Cheat, managed to climb into the hole in the wall and reappear in the ceiling of their kitchen 4 days later. Our neighbors were very gracious as we cut a hole in the ceiling of their closet. They then took good care of the Cheat when she finally decided to jump down. The guy on the 3rd floor is super friendly but he thinks he has a much better grasp of english than he actually does so talking to him is laborious to say the least.  What can I say? He goes to work really early in the morning (to a paper factory in Chester) comes home pretty late, and spends most of his evenings with a six-pack of Heineken and karaoke machine. The man certainly earns his beers.

The 1st floor in that house, on the other hand, has been a revolving circus show. At some point last spring this white guy moved in and tried to put up a great front about what a good guy he was and how the landlord had hired him to fix the place up.  I guess he was thinking that I hadn't been in there before. No one with any talent or skill and a grasp of the english language, who wasn't also a total fuck-up, would live in that hovel. A few days later I met his girlfriend "Dawn" and their two dogs. She seemed pleasant enough despite the vaguely stripperish name and general comportment.

A few days after that one of their dogs ran away. Dogs don't generally run away (and not come back) unless they're a) retarded or b) don't like their owners. This dog was not the former. That was the only drama there for a while. The dude was cleaning up the backyard, he strung some lights up, put some plastic furniture back there and acted like a normal neighbor.

Then the fighting started. The two of them, well, mostly her, would scream bloody murder for the better part of an hour. Then we saw her with a black eye. Then the fights got louder and more frequent. The cops were there a few times per week. Now the dude is in jail for battery and related domestic violence offenses. As soon as he went away we had 2-3 weeks of tranquility.

Then a whole new level of trash started hanging out there and the fighting continued but this time it was dudes fighting with each other and then with her . . .  and her screaming for people to "get the eff out of my house." But then after all the drama she would have the same dudes back there a few days later.  Last weekend we had the cops over there 3 times in one night.

I'd had enough. Finally,  I got in touch with her landlord, told him the deal and he gave her a week to vacate. He knew that her boyfriend had gone to jail but had no idea that she was still living there rent free.

Apparently she grew a pair and, feeling a certain sense of entitlement,  comes over,  knocks on my door and says, "Can I talk to you?"
 I said, "about what?"
 "David told me what you said. I just want to talk to you for a minute."
"OK. How 'bout you come back when I'm not eating?" *slams door*

First, while she's standing there I'm looking at her and am mesmerized at how absolutely filthy her glasses are. Then I notice the meth sores on her face. Then I'm back to her glasses and the fact that they're broken. No, not like she accidentally sat on them and taped the frame together, the actual lens had a crack all the way across. WTF? Eyeglasses aren't even made of glass anymore! That chick is a hot friggin' mess and I feel sorry for her new neighbors.

Don't care where you go sweetie - but you can't stay here.

What's happening in Newbold is indicative of national trends. Not the crazy-bitch-next-door trend but the not-putting-up-with-her-shit-anymore trend.  Actually, a lot of the trashier elements in the neighborhood are relatively recent arrivals. The neighborhoods just to the east of here kicked most of them out in the last 3-4 years and more than a few have landed here. So now we have to kick them out and watch what they do in the neighborhoods just west of here. Point is, the neighborhood is refining to the old-time old folks, immigrants and the young,  college educated set (american and foreign born).  

Cities are resurgent anyway but high-speed rail is a shot in the arm.  National demographic trends favor cities but even on the local level the changes are dramatic.  Some people think it's a conspiracy. Some call it the Caucasian Invasion. At the 1996 annual Conference of White People it was decided that we would all move downtown. The reality is simple economics and people wanting to be close where they work and where they hang out. So the census data will start to trickle in at the end of this year and we'll see Philly trend younger and more affluent -  as with most big cities.

The country as a whole is trending older and more "metro".  Put another way, as a percentage of the population, there are fewer young people but more of them are living in cities. To people who follow this sort of stuff it's not really news that  the automakers are on the ropes. You have an increasing number of old people who can't or don't want to drive. You have an increasing number of young people who can't afford to drive or who live in big cities and don't need to drive.

So it's all the more prescient that the White House announced today the recipients of the much awaited high-speed rail grants. If you live in a city that's getting new service it's going to make a big difference.  Somewhere along the lines of your city's airport getting a new, full-service airline.  Except, you don't have drive 30 minutes to the airport then stand around for another 90 minutes waiting to get on your plane.  I mean, people in the backwater of Merced, CA are all abuzz over what new high speed rail service will mean for their city . . . once they're within an hour commute of San Francisco.  It's going to have profound impacts on the residential real estate markets in those smaller (read:cheaper) cities and it will completely reshape office markets in bigger and smaller cities alike.

What will high speed rail will mean for you? Initially, I think you'll see increased competition from airlines trying to stay on top of the short-hop markets. You know them, the $39 r/t tickets to Pittsburgh or Providence that are always on offer at Southwest. Eventually, high speed rail will replace those short-haul flights under 500 miles.  Ed Rendell seems to agree that it's a "lofty" goal.

I guess if you already live in NYC or Philly or DC it's hard to imagine this as a game changer. It's how we live anyway. But we're in the midst of a big, paradigm shift. 1945 - 1995 was the suburban half-century. The pendulum is now swinging the other way. It's just a simple matter of energy prices, an aging population, shrinking household sizes, a rejection of the suburbs, and a desire to reduce ones carbon footprint.

that run down feeling

It's kinda morbid but I came across this google map today - Camden County Pedestrian Fatalities
When you look at the other counties it's a clear pattern that most people getting run down and succumbing to their injuries are being hit along major highways (at high speeds).

I'd be interested to see where all of the car/ped accidents are happening - not just those where people are dying as a result. I'm just curious to know if the presence of more pedestrians in certain areas makes things safer for people walking around those areas or if it's simply the highway speeds that are killing people.

Why is it so hard to get good data on this stuff? This country averages about 17,000 murders per year and about 43,000 traffic deaths. I can find all kinds of stats on murder victims, their attackers, their relationship, etc. and only limited national stats on people who die on the road.

The Public Works: Places: Design Observer

There's been a lot drama lately about the bank bailouts. Obama "bailed out Wall St." blah, blah, blah. It's just kinda funny because it wasn't a choice. Had the banks failed, and they would've fallen like dominoes, we'd all be standing in line, pieces of plastic in hand, staring at empty ATMs. Standing in front of shuttered shops. Marching up and down Broad St., banging on pots and pans like this was Buenos Aires circa 2001. The only difference between 1929 and 2009 was the TARP program. I'm not defending Wall St.  Just defending dinner on the table. And not on a table in a soup kitchen. You put out the fire then you worry about catching the arsonist.

This article has more to do with our infrastructure than with banks per se The Public Works: Places: Design Observer but it all sort of comes back to how we spend our money and how we as a people have come to relate to government and to the public realm in general. The writer takes specific aim at privatization of public assets. Most governments have long since sold off the enterprises that were profitable - power generation, telephone networks, etc. - and have turned to doling out contracts for services that aren't profitable. So, for instance, instead of paying taxes to run the local library you are paying taxes so a private company can run your library, or your train or your park. The idea of extracting profit from something that isn't profitable has always intrigued me. Not because I don't understand where the profit is coming from (my pocket) but because they get away with it.

Speaking of profit-making . . . the Mrs. and I have been running the birth circuit. Last week we talked with a home birth midwife and then went to the Birth Center in Bryn Mawr. The Birth Center was crazy in that professional hippie kind of way. I don't mean full-time hippies. I mean hippies who found something they like to do and are really professional about it. So this week we went to visit the OB who is part of Penn Health. They were all really nice. I'm not knocking the people - just the process. We weren't there but 5 minutes and they have Beth filling out marketing crap for infant formula. Similac, the product on offer, is a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical company Abbot. Beth politely said, "oh, no thanks" but then the nurse insisted, "you never know." Like we couldn't find formula at the grocery store if we needed it. It was just a weird experience all around. Maybe it's my own hippie upbringing but when every piece of stationery has a drug ad on it I get a little creeped out. The environment was also a lot like being in an emergency room but in slow motion. Like it's a 9 month emergency. Like they see the car crash coming so they're getting all of your paper work in order and paging the anesthesiologist. That reminds me of a great book, 'The Long Emergency' by James Howard Kunstler.

Wow, that was circular.

One more stop before decision time. Today the niño (or niña) is the size of a kidney bean. We gotta get this all figured out because before we know it, it's gonna be the size of a lemon. Seriously. One of the baby books I've been reading compares the fetus to various nuts, legumes and pieces of fruit all the way up to week 20. We're going to check out the birth center in Wilmington next week for a few reasons, one of which is that, while it's further distance-wise it takes less time to get there than Bryn Mawr. If it's as cool as Bryn Mawr then that might be where we end up.

Park Once

hugeasscity

Not many people I know get very excited about this kind of shit. But I certainly do. First, huge-ass-city is an awesome name for a blog. Second, this concept is great. For those of you not willing to click and read for yourself here's the summary; It's a proposal in Portland to build a giant parking garage on the edge of downtown. The idea being that they'll need to consolidate a lot of parking in one location as they start to build condos, apartments and stores where smaller, scattered parking lots and garages now stand. Eventually,  in an effort to make the downtown more bicycle and pedestrian friendly, they'll start closing streets to traffic one-by-one. I've seen it in a few places before. New Brunswick, NJ is the first place I had seen the "park once" concept. You can drive right up to the outskirts of New Brunswick, park your car, and take a shuttle bus into town. You know, instead of driving around, looking for parking, then going back to your car to take it with you to your next destination a few blocks away. Believe it or not, a lot of downtown traffic in most cities is just people circling the block looking for parking. Oxford, England is another example. Oxford being more relevant here because most of the streets in the town are now closed to car traffic. Buses and deliveries are all that get through.  Hmmm . . . yeah . . . I have a picture of that somewhere . . . ohh, there it is

old movies.

My grandparents generation intrigues me. They were all big city folk so, in a lot of ways, their life wasn't much different than mine.  All of the modern conveniences that I consider essential were already around. They had telephones, washing machines, air conditioning, subways, trolleys, trans-continental airlines and you could still get from Philly to NYC on the train in 80 minutes. At the same time, it's crazy to think that, outside of big cities a lot of people didn't have electricity or running water, horses were still a common form of transportation and most roads were not paved.

Now everyone has a cell phone, air conditioning, running water and paved streets. My grandparents even email me their birthday wishes.

Over the last few years I've come to appreciate the big band music and movies of their jeunesse. It's a small window into their world and, wanting to see more, I've been stocking up on the classics.  I just watched '12 Angry Men'.  It never fails to amaze me how little politics have changed in 50 years (and how far the acting profession has fallen.)  The movie is about a jury in a murder case. The defendant is some nameless italian kid from the 'hood. The jury goes to deliberate and takes an 11-1 vote. They deliberate for a few more hours and over the course of the movie the vote swings the other way. Change the ethnicity of the kid, shuffle some accents and wardrobes and it could be any courthouse, USA ca. 2010.


I was also a fan of 'On the Waterfront'. Another movie about integrity.  Marlon Brando is the anti-hero that can break the mob's grip on the longshoreman's union. But will he stand up? It's depressing in the same way that '12 Angry Men' is . . . that industries come and go and the faces of the corrupt change but people still struggle unnecessarily and for the same reasons they did when our grandparents were our age.

Next up are the musicals. I had always wondered why Hollywood dropped the song and dance. Apparently, the rise of television and what audiences were coming to expect had a lot to do with it.  It's just crazy, though, that 60 years later my grandparents still know most of those songs.

Adventures in Switzerland

I'm not sure how I feel about Betty yet. The cookbook has a lot of cool recipes full of butter, cheese and a lot of other ridiculously fattening ingredients. So it's certainly exciting and everything I've cooked so far has at least smelled delicious.

The book itself is kind of a pain in the ass. It seems as though it was translated perhaps from French to German and then into English. Not that the steps matter here. The end result is that the instructions can be incredibly difficult to make sense of. That and all of the measurements are metric . . . ahh, the metric system.

Metric measurements may make a ton of sense (oh no i didn't) in the fields of science, industry and commerce but I feel like, in the kitchen at least, our english system is far superior (if you're not a scientist.) It's just intuitive and comfortable. It uses regular household items and asks you to divide by two. Even the Swiss have to revert to folk terms like "teaspoon" and "tablespoon."  What the hell does 40 ml look like? How does that relate to my day to day? It's just sterile and scientific. It make's cooking feel like a chemistry experiment.

I'm exaggerating the problem a bit. My measuring cups all have the metric equivalents stamped on them as does my food scale. The only real problem is in the possible differences between an american tablespoon/teaspoon and the spoons that Betti Bossi is using. But she'd be happy to sell me a set of her spoons if I need them.

Now that I've explained all of my excuses for failing miserably at these recipes here's how they went down:

1. Baked Cheese Puffs

These are your basic dinner rolls - like a Swiss biscuit - except with 3/4 pound of cheese folded in and a little cayenne and nutmeg. I used a little too much cayenne. The recipe called for two pinches. I think my pinches were just a little too big. I also made the mistake of just dumping the eggs into the mix rather than beating them in slowly. It took me forever to get the dough to thicken up. They cooked OK, a little dense maybe, but they were a pain to handle when trying to get them onto the cookie sheet. Oh, and the recipe also called for Jura cheese. I used an aged gruyere which worked just as well.

2. Fish Soup

For a landlocked country there are a lot of fish recipes in this book. I never cared much for fish but I thought I'd give it a go with a few modifications. The soup was butter, leeks, onions, garlic, tomatoes, carrots, celery, white wine, water, parsley, lemon juice, a bay leaf and salt & pepper. You cook the fish in all of that for a few minutes then you pour off the liquid, bring it to a boil, then add more butter, flour and what the book calls "double cream".  In Britain that's a cream that's 48% fat so I've just been using heavy whipping cream instead.

For the 'fish' I went up to Huong Vuong at 11th & Washington (you may know it as the 'Vietnamese supermarket'). They have a freezer aisle and one of the doors there's a random label that says "health foods".  You'll find lots of frozen oddities in there. For this occasion I grabbed the 'veggie fish ham'. It's this slab of tuna shaped seitan wrapped in nori.

This went off problem free - except to say that it's incredibly thick and rich and I could barely finish one serving. It was great, I just pushed the leftovers on my brothers.

OK, there are more recipes to come but for now, the sun is shining and the thermometer says 51. That doesn't happen very often in January so I'm going to get my ass outside and enjoy it.

Welcome

So - I finally decided to take the blogging plunge. The impetus had been slow and building but I had always found excuses for putting it off. Then came two Christmas gifts that gave me the inspiration I needed. 

The first gift was a Swiss cookbook from Beth's "cousins" in Basel.  And by "cousins" I mean they are her grandmother's 2nd cousins, twice removed. Or something like that. 

The second gift was finding out that I'm going to be a dad. It's still weird to say. It's not at all what I was expecting for Christmas but it's awesome. Beth broke the news by buying a copy of "The Expectant Father" and wrapping it up with my other gifts. The whole thing is exhilarating and terrifying all at the same time. Well, I'm excited. Beth is excited too but mostly just tired and nauseous. So yeah, there will be a lot more about all of that later. 

Hopefully, if I can keep up with this while keeping you interested, I'll manage to share with you some info that you might find helpful at some point. Expect to hear about: my adventures in the kitchen, news and observations around town, imminent parenthood and a little bit about the world at large. 

Thanks for reading!