Memory Lame

Yesterday, Facebook reminded me of this memory that I captured via Instagram exactly 3 years ago. It's a nice photo, for sure, but other than that, it might not mean much to the average viewer. You see, that day I was on my way to sign a one year lease on a house after living in month-to-month limbo above a bar for the previous 8 months, and I just happened to look to the left when I spotted that beautiful sight. Kinda made me feel like I was moving in the right direction, even if I was still a little uncertain. Hell, I even wrote as much!

Seeing that picture yesterday made me feel a bit nostalgic. The weather, although temperate, had been a bit lackluster the last few days. By contrast, there was not a cloud in the sky yesterday, and it almost felt like that same day 3 years ago. After being indoors most of the day, I needed to enjoy at least a little bit of a seemingly rare gorgeous Autumn day, so I left Center City and took a quick post-work ride down memory lane. Or up, if you're looking at a map:

Actually, that's just the bike lane on Spring Garden Street near 10th, but it's a rather auspicious photo. Back when I frequented this area on the daily, it wasn't buffered. The street has since been re-paved and re-painted. Granted, the buffer is only about a foot and a half, two feet at most, but progress is progress, right?

Unfortunately, things took a slow turn for the worse from there. I encountered a lot of traffic on 3rd Street as I continued to head north, which was really just an annoyance. I paused briefly outside the building that used to house the Strengthening Health Institute, the macrobiotic education center that gave me my first regular job in Philly. They've long since moved to South Philly (in part due to my efforts) and the building has been vacant ever since, save for one short stint when a cafe/catering business called it home:

I already knew this was the case, but it's still a bit sad to see. I had a lot of great memories in my short time in this space. I used to live literally right around the corner, so I could walk to and from work with ease. I think one of the main reasons I fell in love with city life was that I had everything so close by: work, a grocery store, my coffee shop, concert venues, and of course, night life.

On that note, I continued on just a half block north and paused near the former site of 3rd & Girard, which used to be my favorite neighborhood bar:

Again, I kinda knew already what I was going to see. This place closed up shop sometime around October 2015, around a year after I moved out of the area. When I found out about it, I was pretty bummed. To give you a little more insight, this was pretty much my utopia for more than a year: 180 craft beers, music on Fridays & Saturdays, open mic nights with a tight knit crew of regulars, even a Bad News Bears-esque softball team that I joined along with my roommate. Oddly enough, I'd written a blog post about that, barring anything crazy or unforeseen, I'd be back for 2016.

The place has been vacant ever since, and it's a shame. It's a neat building, complete with a roof deck. I've been hoping someone would buy it and reopen it but...if you look closely at the above photo, you may notice a bright orange object that's NOT my bike. It's in the window of the bar. Bright orange signs in windows mean only one of two things (usually): either the place has applied to sell alcohol, or they're about to be demolished. This one was the latter:

Sad. To quote a friend, Philly has a rich tradition of old buildings that some cities would love to have. Sadly, we're seeing more and more of these buildings being demolished and replaced by new construction that can be custom-tailored to the owner's desires, be it for apartments or commercial space (which is a whole separate debate I don't want to get into).

So basically, after I left my hood, almost everything changed for the worse. On the other hand, the bar I used to live above, The Fire, appears to be doing OK:

It's safe to say that I moved here at just the right time and in the right circumstances. I guess you could say, I moved on at just the right time, too. Someone once told me that we tend to look at the past through rose-colored glasses. Sadly, that's not the case here, and I know that if I were plopped into that apartment at any other time, I might not have fallen in love with Philly. At least yesterday's ride and the weather were nice, and I'll always have the memories...