half a cat

So — today is going to be a recollection of things I miss about living in Philadelphia.

• Food. There are a few decent restaurants here in Billings, but to get good quality food you have to pay for it, sometimes dearly. What I miss about Philadelphia is that there were tons of local places that had a dish or 3 that were really spectacular — the Lamb Curry at Tangiers (an otherwise completly shabby and tiny bar, entirely fantastic) , which was a total of .5 blocks from my apartment. Pine St. Pizza, and your tasty, tasty cheesesteaks, my hangovers miss you and your greasy goodness. The places are too many to mention — I just miss the sheer numbers and variety.

• Cultural events. Call me a snob (oh quiet you..) but donning a tuxedo ala Bond, spending $200+/ticket and heading out for a really good fun time in the upper crust of societal events was a thrill. I think part of it was the “Young Professional” scene — a self-fufilling dream where just being in a crowd with 25-40 something folks who all were at least psuedo interested in seeing the theater/opera/ballet/symphony and not just nailing the open bar for the ticket price equivalent in booze. Just being there made you feel that you were on the top of the ‘game of life’ and had truly made it — mainly because that is what everyone there thought. Perhaps it is the conversation with folks that had drive and passion for work or life or achieving something that at least appeared good and honorable with their lives. I don’t take anything away from people here — life is just different and I truly think the character of people here is far above and beyond that of the East Coast — but I miss the discussions about politics or art. I do get a large amount of this thanks to a few friends here, but perhaps what I really miss are the events dedicated to it. It is true to a certain degree that you had to be at least partially successfull to attend such events — you had to have the extra Benjies to blow, but the real trick was getting invited on someone elses bill — a feat that was accomplished more than once. BTW, yes I look like a younger-but-manlier Bond in a tux.

• Shopping. (In a manly sense. Like some folks I am not a woman deep down inside — at least not completely.) I’ve been accused of being part old woman (I have plants, birds, can cook, knit, crochet, cross-stitch, like to garden and generally hold an intelligent conversation while looking a large breasted woman in the face), but that is not really true. I was just raised to be open minded– yeah that’s it! Anyways… how freaking hard is it to have shopping for things that just approximate current styles? Am I now required to purchase casual shoes with a minimum sole thickness of 2″? Why OH F@#$#ING WHY is there not a good place to get a hot shave ? (Ok, that one appears slight dandy, but if you have never experienced one — shut up. You know not of what you ridicule. Besides at somepoint we men get married and need equal ability to spend $50 on “spa treatments” — I prefer mine to be functional as well.)

• Housing. Ok — here is the big one bugging me of late. Perhaps I was just spoiled in my apartment, but is it really that hard to build a house today that does not look like either a complete cookie-cutter subdivision nightmare or that the “architect” (and I only use that word because they insist on calling themselves that..) went to the Helen Keller Corel Draw School of House Design by Number? Good god — let us take 10 parts fucked up layout, knee walls, vaulted ceilings and pre-fabbed furnishings, mix with 42 parts assbarn derived roof lines (seriously — 40% of your front eleveation is shingles — Hellllooooo!), toss in a sprinkling of insanity with siding choices — honestly, neutral brick and greyish-beige steel siding. HAVE SOME DAMN imagination. The real horrors come on the inside of these places — carpets, gas fireplaces, odd shaped rooms, sanitized wall coverings, and just BAD decorating. I’m just about to put the pool of architects designing these monstrosities into the same pool as laywers — Flabby Hunks Of Whale Shit, Inc. Also — would it be impossible to design a large house that doesn’t take the GNP of a small country to heat and cool ? For fuck sake.