I was in Philadelphia yesterday, passed an important part of my childhood, and posted a picture of One of the spots where I was mugged for a bike when I was a kid.
If you weren’t raised in a place where you were targeted for violence and theft, it might seem unusual for someone to have had been mugged and multiple bikes stolen, among other violent crimes. Actually people ask me what I did to get mugged so many times—often people who would recoil or attack in anger if someone with a different identity were asked what they did to be victimized. Obviously, I didn’t choose to victimized, so you’ll have to find and ask my assailants why they attacked me.
In any case, today I passed by another spot where a bike was stolen from me, also when I was a kid. You might recognize the spot, just next to the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Rocky Steps:
Here’s a panorama of the spot:
You can see someone running up the stairs. For half a century, tourists from all over the world have run up those stairs. The space is world famous for a character digging deep and reaching his potential.
It means something different for me, though I love the Rocky character and have been influenced by him, as evidenced by my daily calisthenics. It means something different for me because on summer day in my childhood, a friend and I rode bikes down to the Art Museum and cooled off in the fountains in the west side of the Rocky steps, which is why I took the picture above from the west side of the steps instead of the center. The fountains weren’t operating today.
The fountain on the next level is the one where we cooled off, leaving our bikes to the side. Here’s that fountain:
You can see the Rocky statue surrounded by tourists at the top of the stairs. Imagine water in the fountain pool and two boys cooling off in that water, their bikes leaning against the foreground wall.
Now imagine a bunch of kids stealing those bikes and riding away with them. Now you’ve imagined a part of my childhood. Some day I’ll fill in more details, but I’ve been lectured too many times instead of just being listened to, let alone supported. People don’t seem to be able to accept something about me being a victim.
Anyway, as long as I was at the art museum and the day was beautiful, I took a picture of the parkway, center city, and city hall, once the tallest building in Philadelphia, now dwarfed by glass office buildings.
I’ve lived in several cities in the world. New York City and Philadelphia feel like home in ways no other cities do.
