A preconcieved notion of reality*

Ok, to preface this I would just like to say that I’m not really interested in getting into a shit storm with anyone, and I normally don’t post things like this but since this is relevant to my life I figured I should say something. I’m from South Jersey (and love a good bread bowl at Panera. The french onion soup is just divine. Highly recommend it.)

But I’ve also gone to high school in Philadelphia (and not at a private school although I did have to pay tuition since I didn’t reside in the city) so most of my friends are from Philly. Most of my moms side of the family lives in Philly, so family gatherings were always in the city. I currently have an internship in Old City, and so I spend a lot of time there. However, I have never actually lived in Philly (I hope to change this once I graduate). This is the extent of my Philly experience.

(I can’t say that I had a real SJ experience either. I deliberately didn’t go to my neighborhood high school, even though it’s one of the best high schools in the state because it’s also got one of the highest suicide rates for high schools in the state. I avoided the suburban “communities” that formed because they were all a bit too conservative in their mentalities. But this is where I’m from and where my home is.)

Since I now go to school in Chicago, I’m often asked where I’m from, and my answer usually alternates between Philly and SJ, because neither one fully encompasses my experience. When you say New Jersey, people used to automatically think north jersey, and NYC. (A lot of sopranos references were to be had pre-jersey shore days). Now you get more Jersey Shore attitudes, although that’s still not representative of my area. SJ is way more closely aligned with Philly as it’s city hub. So I understand where that commenter was coming from. I have friends from Massachusetts and when asked where they’re from, they say Boston, even if they’re not even close to the city proper.  When talking to someone not from your area, the closest point of reference is the biggest city you identify with. And being from South Jersey, that city is Philly.

However I can’t say that I rep Philly, at all. I know Philly and I love Philly for all it’s flaws but I’ve never actually lived there. It was never a place that I was forced into, it was more something that I was drawn to. It was a place I could leave when I was done with it, which is HUGE luxury that most people born and raised in Philly don’t have. As someone from a suburb, I know that I am privileged, and that my experience is one very different from the one my friends had in high school. 

pintu:

alasablog:

marieleafbread:

pintu:

marieleafbread:

pintu:

sterbenmeinliebling:

alive-and-smiling:

random-ravings:

frannybagels:

Dear world,

Bucks County, Chester County, Montgomery County, Delaware County and South Jersey and NOT Philadelphia.

Thank You

^THAT lol

yeah but you see if i tell people i’m from bucks county or chalfont or doylestown or whatever they have no fucking idea where i’m talking about so

I say I’m from Philly because the US is such a vast country not everyone is going to have heard of my small, little suburb. It’s just easiest. So they have a general idea of where I’m from. I’m a fifteen-twenty minutes drive from the art museum yet I live in a suburb. I’m fucking from Philly. 

 let’s see..

do you and your family pay taxes to the city of philadelphia?

did you get either a) get a substandard education at a philly public school or b) circumvent the school district by going to charter or catholic schools, which have their own unique set of problems?

you know when people joke about how “ghetto” and dangerous philly is? how many of your family members can you find on the murder map that the inquirer publishes every year?

did you grow up with an inferiority complex because your neighborhood, your school, your community, your family, looks and sounds different from the ideal of the suburban “American dream” that tv, film, and literature inundate us with?

have you been taking septa— stank ass, always late, inefficient septa— your entire life? or are you one of those people who just occasionally take the subway to get to a phillies game and give everyone the evil eye the whole time?

did you grow up in a neighborhood where everyone knows each other, everyone hangs out on the steps or on the corner, everyone has each other’s back, with a strong sense of community and (at times) a strong sense of ethnic or religious identity (e.g. black communities, italian communities, asian communities, latin@ communities) only to see them washed away by gentrification? and then the suburban people moving in pat themselves on the back for making the neighbhorhood “nice”?

so yeah, you’re not fucking from Philly. say you’re from the suburbs of Philly, but if you’re not don’t try and rep it.

Someone has their panties in a bunch. 

Have you ever dealt with a foreign person that doesn’t know where your town is but won’t stop pestering you until you tell them? 

Did your parents grow up in Philly in shitty conditions and work their asses off to get out so that you could have a better life?

Do you appreciate the good that you can find in the city? I don’t think so because you just generalized people due to their neighborhoods and ethnic backgrounds that come with those neighborhoods. 

You find fun telling people that they’re “not from Philly” when they spend large quantities of time there for personal, familial, etc. reasons. I have family in Philly that could probably talk your ass down from your special snowflake pedestal. My fiance and his family live in Philly. 

I bet you didn’t even take into consideration that people from the suburbs also pay taxes, don’t meet the image of an standard “American family” as you put it (which by the way, is ridiculous because those families exist outside of the U.S.), buses don’t always come on time everywhere (and then you have to walk to work or school when you have no other means of getting there), oh and yeh my neighborhood still knows everyone and feels a strong sense of community and ethnic backgrounds.

Don’t act like you’re all high and mighty because you may or may not have lived in Philly at one point. All of those points you made exist everywhere so get off your high horse and come up with a better argument. Until then, when someone asks where I’m from and I say my hometown only to receive a look of confusion, I’m going to keep saying “it’s about 20 minutes from Philly.”

suck my dick, forever and ever and ever (and i say that with no remorse because you told me “i had my panties in a bunch”)

i was born and raised in philly. my family came to south and west philly and while i have aunts and uncles that strayed into jersey and the suburbs, my intermediate family has never left. so fuck you, i haven’t just “lived in philly for a while”, i’ve lived exclusively in philly. i went to suburban upstate ny for a year and it was the worst year of my life. i love my city.

and yeah there’s suburbs where people have it rough, and of course we have it lucky compared to people in rural areas stricken with poverty and seclusion, and of course we all have to recognize that we’re living on land that anglo america stole from the indigenous people of the US

but i do not give a fucking shit, i have no sympathy for, and i will not bend over backwards for middle and upper class suburban people. yeah they pay taxes, to their little fucking towns and townships and counties or what the fuck ever. but they don’t get their wages eaten up by the city of Philadelphia, but then come enjoy all the subsidized tourist traps. case in point, the multimillion dollar renovation of dillworth plaza that really didn’t need to be renovated. and re: septa, did you ever realize the buses that run the smoothest are the ones that serve center city aka the tourists and the suburban weekend visitors? not the ones that working class philadelphians use to get to work, to school, to get their children every day? hmmm

and oh of course, it’s so hard to say “I live NEAR Philly” or “I live OUTSIDE OF philly” when you’re talking to someone from another country. gimme a fuckin break!!!

my point is that being FROM philly is very different from being from somewhere CLOSE to philly. philly is its own fuckin universe. we have to deal with a bunch of bullshit day in and day out but overall people love, people are proud to be from philly. so fuck off and go get a bread bowl at panera bread or whatever the fuck yous do for fun in the burbz

Yes because saying “fuck” over and over and ignoring proper grammar is going to make your point come across stronger, of course. 

And being “exclusively from Philly” doesn’t mean you’re the only person that is allowed to like Philly. My fiance lives “exclusively” in Philly, I’ve spent most of my weekends in the last four years there.

You’re also making the assumption that everyone in the suburban area upper middle class. How is that the case? I’d like to know your source for this information, I would really genuinely like to know where you found the statistic that everyone in a suburb is middle class or higher. My county has one of the highest homeless rates in Pennsylvania, yet they still live in the suburbs. This also begs the question, what makes you believe that just because you live in Philly that you’re better than someone in the suburbs? People in the suburbs pay taxes, have low paying jobs, pay taxes for public schooling, pay for educations at all levels, buy food, work long hours. People everywhere do. It’s not just a Philly thing. My cousins go to Philly’s “tourist traps” as a vacation because they cannot afford to go the shore or a distant amusement park, so think before you accuse “upper middle class” people of enjoying your tourist attractions just because they can, sometimes it’s because they can’t go anywhere else. And when did I talk about buses running smoothly? I said buses everywhere aren’t up to par. Septa serves the burbs too, my friend. 

“we have to deal with a bunch of bullshit day in and day out”—-wait so does that mean that my mom isn’t sitting at home right now in constant pain because of a series of surgeries she had to have on her spine and shoulders? I’m sorry I didn’t realize that not living exclusively in Philly meant that people in other towns don’t struggle. My bad. 

Just because you say all of this isn’t going to stop people from saying they’re from Philly when they live 20 minutes away, just as people from the outer edge of North Carolina swear they’re from OBX. Living close to Philly, spending a good portion of your life in Philly, and being familiar with the people and the areas of Philly should garner the right to say you’re at least from the area.

Apparently the mystical cit of Philadelphia is a secret club that no one can ever understand except for a select few such as our friend Pintu here. 

It also seems that to be from anywhere but Philadelphia means that you’re a stuck-up asshat who’s pastime involves schlepping around the city and tormenting the people that live there with your ever-so-blatant asshattery. How dare we even mention the name “Philadelphia” let alone cast our eyes upon it. UNWORTHY!

I’m sorry that, from what you’ve said, Philadelphia apparently sucks a huge cock despite your pride and love for it. I didn’t know one could love something and proceed to rip it a new asshole at the same time.

I’m also sorry that there is a possibility that some of my ancestor’s plundered, murdered and stole from the Native Americans in times past. Apparently that has something to do with the argument over the description of one’s hometown. 

Also, pro-tip: Philadelphia is in fact included in these “fucking towns and townships and counties or what the fuck ever.” It’s literally a county itself, and has not only townships but, wait for it, BOROUGHS ALSO! So, I’m sorry to say, it seems that you do technically pay taxes to your “fucking towns and townships and counties or what the fuck ever too,” not just the whimsical city of Philadelphia.

On that note, let’s do an overview on your relationship with the city of Philadelphia. It seems to me that, though you love said city and those within it, you hate a lot about it, going on to write 2 paragraphs about the shitbag quality of SEPTA and how taxes and the wages of workers gets squandered by the authorities of Philadelphia. Which prompts me to have this thought. Being that you are in fact of age to enroll into college one could assume that you are at or above the age of 18. This is to say that you have the power to vote.

If you hate everything that is being done to Philadelphia, vote for change, that’s your constitutional right.  And don’t try to counter with “but everyone that’s running sucks” because, surprise, that’s just how it is. You can please some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all of the time. 

Also: if you don’t know much about politics or what is being done, don’t talk about it man. It’s like trying to explain the structure, creation and implications of carbon nanotubes after watching a Magic School Bus episode.

Hi, I’m Bryanne, and I’m from Bucks County (which is very much not Philly, don’t fret) and currently reside in the middle class. Despite the fact that I grew up in a one-floor flat complete with leaky ceilings, mold, bugs and the occasional rodent, I still resided within the suburbs of New Jersey so that makes me eligible for an asswhoopin’ and a Panera bread bowl. Nevermind that people in the suburbs have to work hard to make a living and a future too, fuck that shit. BREAD BOWLS UP IN THIS BITCH!

It seems to me that you should major in English and proceed to squat in Central Park. 

Now it’s your turn to rip me a new asshole. I expect nothing less than the usage of “fuckin” and “gentrification” at least 50 times along with a fair amount of ridicule. 

madcuzbad. 

“Apparently the mystical cit of Philadelphia is a secret club that no one can ever understand except for a select few such as our friend Pintu here.” now you’re getting it! you don’t know what it’s like to be from philly unless you grew up in philly. congrats, you got it!

unfortunately i’m not going to respond with lots of “fucks” and “gentrifications” because i’m too busy laughing at your suggestion that i should major in english and the suggestion that voting changes everything! have a nice weekend, i wanna hear about your breadbowl too!