Millions of visitors will pass through the city this summer. Most will make a pilgrimage to the same sights. They'll pose beside The Bell, tour The Hall, eat cheesesteaks, and succumb to the obnoxious pleasure of the wacky quack. But they will all come away with different perceptions.
Janae Lawson, for instance, and four friends from Raleigh-Durham went back home, grateful to still be alive.
Outside the Hard Rock Cafe on Market Street, a deliveryman pushing a hand truck charged up the sidewalk. When they didn't scatter like ninepins, he barked, "You're going to get run over!"
In North Carolina, Lawson explained, "We're much more courteous." The pace of life back home, she said, makes Philadelphia seem maniacal.
"If I lived here," said Lawson's colleague Lola Decacus, "I'd have to be on something." Realizing how that sounded, she clarified. "High blood pressure medicine."
In contrast, Meg Kroll from Fort Lauderdale found Philadelphia positively mellow.
"Everybody's angry in Florida. It's a more aggressive environment. Many people in South Florida have forgotten the basic ability to be courteous."
She and her entourage were passing a parking garage when a car tried to exit. "We were blocking the sidewalk. He waved to us and apologized."
"In Florida, we would have been run over," said Kroll's friend, Mary Ellen Macuski.
After a trip to Philadelphia, the impressions visitors take away seem to depend mostly on what they brought with them.
Cut to Independence Hall where Krishna and R.S. Rao, a couple from Hyderabad, India, waited along with the Watson family from Springfield, Va., in the (endless/orderly) line for their 11:45 a.m. tour.
Krishna's silk sari rustled in the (weary/refreshing) breeze as she walked serenely to a bench and sat down to rest. Holly Watson chased after her cranky 21-month-old son, Eric, who was pushing his stroller into the crowd.
The night before, the Watsons had planned to stay at the Hampton Inn on (gritty/hip) Race Street, said Greg, a captain in the U.S. Air Force.
"We have stayed in Hampton Inns from one side of this country to the other," he said. On Race Street, however, "We didn't have a very warm and fuzzy feeling."
The family saw homeless people digging through trash. "That's something you obviously find in cities, but not something we're used to." So they drove to Valley Forge and found a hotel.
"It can be very upsetting," says Meryl Levitz, president of the Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp. "When you're on vacation, you're not geared to thinking about the realities of the world."
Levitz receives a lot of complaints from people like the Watsons. And that's worrisome.
The city's roughly three million summer visitors generate one-third of the annual $10 billion in tourism, Levitz says. Most tend to be first-time visitors. "They have a checklist," she says. And they are on a mission to do everything on that list.
Hanging with the homeless isn't on it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
MOST POPULAR PHILLY.COM PHOTOS
Philly.com news blogs
Philly.com Promotions
