Signed “Depressed In Philadelphia”
“Maybe it was all those years of futility for the Phillies.” Nope. I don’t follow hockey.
“Or the shadows cast by New York City to the north and Washington, D.C., to the south.” We have two suns?!
“Whatever the reasons, Philadelphia has earned the melancholy distinction of being America’s most depressed city.” [source Men’s Health]
Oh really? By their metric, it must be true (you can prove anything with the right statistics), but are you going to trust a bunch of ripped dudes hopped up on, ahem, supplements, or are you going to trust me? I’m telling you Philadelphia is a great city. By one important metric, population growth, Philadelphia is in good shape. While Philadelphia’s overall population continues to decline slowly, the downtown (“Center City”) population has grown substantially.
I wish I knew what we are all supposedly so depressed about. It certainly can’t be because of New York and Washington. New York is a great city, and I love going there, but there are some things about Philadelphia that are incontrovertibly better than New York (our Flower Show, for example). As for Washington, I have friends who fled to Philadelphia for the weekend in the dead of winter just because they couldn’t stand being in Washington for another second.
Don’t get me wrong. Philadelphia is not without its problems, but Philly is just so eminently (for lack of a better word) livable. Plus it’s located so conveniently close to New York and Washington! [Full Disclosure: Although I grew up in Germantown, a neighborhood in northwest Philly, I now live just outside the city.]