It’s funny. While I was in high school, I was never really one for school pride. I guess I could say the same thing about college, as well.

Although there are some people who fully embrace the spirit of being in school and try to personify school pride by donning gear and getting involved in school rivalries, there are some who go through the motions simply by going through the motions. I guess I would say that, in high school, I was part of the latter category. continue reading »

Whenever I talk to anybody who is, at best, slightly familiar with the area, or Philadelphia in general, there are two specific places I like to reference to give them an understanding of where I grew up.

And, without a doubt, people usually are familiar with both and tend to have a story – sometimes negative – about at least one of them. continue reading »

This was a conversation I had with a friend when I first got to college in New Jersey six years ago:

Me: “Oh, I grew up in a row home in Philadelphia.”
Friend: “A row home? Is that like an apartment or a condo or something?”
Me: “No, you know, a row home. Where all of the houses on the street are connected. Sometimes a house will share a walkway or a driveway with another house.”
Friend: (blank stare) “You mean a townhouse?”
Me: “I don’t know what that is.” continue reading »

I always forget about it every year – forget about it, of course, until I receive a call from my mom around noon or pull up to the street on which I grew up only to be met by road partitions and a cruel reminder that I have to drive a few blocks to find a place to park.
Both of those things happened this past weekend when I drove down to Northeast Philly for the weekend on Saturday and realized that the annual block party for the section of my childhood street was in progress. continue reading »

I think a lot about how drastic the difference seems to be between people from the Northeast and those from New Jersey in how they identify themselves.

Obviously, a lot of this has to do with the sheer difference in size between Philadelphia and most towns in New Jersey. People from the Northeast often distinguish themselves based on neighborhoods (or parishes, especially those who live in areas that are prominently Catholic; however, that is another column for another time), a point that can easily be proven by looking at the sidebar of this website. continue reading »

Introducing our new column — and new columnist: Missing the Northeast by Steve Wilson. Steve is a former Far Northeast resident who recently moved to New Jersey for work. And he realized something. The Northeast is awesome. Every month, Steve will write about one of the many things about our great region he misses since moving. And they’re often the things we take for granted.

When you grow up in the Northeast, learning to drive on the Boulevard is a rite of passage. I remember being 17, feeling like a king – after having a nervous breakdown over the possibility of being in the wrong lane – when I could cross over the Boulevard simply to get to my best friend’s house, instead of having my parents drive me.

The Boulevard is one of those things that, if you are completely unfamiliar with it, can seem daunting, sometimes even more than traditional highway driving. However, once you drive it a few times, whether to travel deeper south into the city or north to get to the Turnpike, it starts to feel almost second nature.

All in all, though, it probably doesn’t seem like something anybody would miss, let alone a topic worthy of a full column of type. However, I have to say that I miss Roosevelt Boulevard. continue reading »