Oracle of Philly: SEPTA knows all.

The Mysteries of This Burgh

Come August, everything around me seems to defy comprehension.

by Liz Spikol

Summer is the time of year I actually look around me. In winter and even fall, my sensitivity to cold means I’m so smothered in fleece and down, I’m unable to move a ski-gloved pinkie, let alone lift my swaddled head.

So I’m always surprised to see the city again. Once we get past the rainy spring, I see the sun alight on lovely things—fountains, trees, line-drawn stickers on dumpsters.

People seem more alive, and less fully clad, and I feel fondness toward them. I find myself striking up conversations at the bus stop, holding doors open and saying “God bless you!” when someone sneezes, even if they’re 50 yards away. Because though they won’t hear it, the Cosmic Being Who Lives in My Head will, and he’ll know I am kind, even in the presence of a stranger’s mucus.

I always tell people how much I love the heat. I lived in Texas for a few years, so I came to think of it as sensual rather than head-spinningly revolting. But my self-satisfied proclamations fizzle when it’s 99 degrees out with 99 percent humidity. Then I get cranky, and think, “Hold the door yourself, bitch.” Only I say it in my head as “beyotch”—I guess because I’m a dork.

Lately I notice most of my thoughts are prefaced with, “Why the hell … ?” It signifies the end of summer: Things that were passingly strange for two months have now taken on an impenetrable veil of inscrutability. After frustrating weeks of trying to solve the mysteries below, I’m sending out the alarm and hoping you can help. If not, I’ll just call SEPTA. About all of them.

On the Broad Street Line, there’s a recorded female voice that warns the doors are closing. Why does she say, “Da-aws closin’,” as though she’s from the South? Did Philly buy Alabama’s subway recording? (If we did, it’s because we could get it for cheap.) Personally, I’d prefer a nice, wide Philly accent for the Broad Street Line, along the lines of a dipthongy, “Doaws cloh-sing, airight?”

Why don’t conductors on the regional rail know how to pronounce town names? You’d think they’d be the experts. I know they don’t live in Daylesford, necessarily, or Upsal, but I feel like the two prerequisites of the conductor job are to be able to enunciate, loudly, and to have some familiarity with a hole punch. Is that asking too much? A native Tupelhockonian needs to interrupt the next time one of those sonorous baritones mangles their town name. They need to take a stand. Rise up, Tupelhocken! Rise up!

I know everyone talks about how Philly smells in the summer. It’s passe to even mention it. I’m guessing it was first discussed in the summer of 1776. Yet I must ask: Why does the parking lot of a certain 43rd and Walnut supermarket sometimes smell like poo? I was there with a friend visiting from L.A., and she was horrified by the odor—which of course, being a Philadelphian, I hadn’t even noticed. We determined it was emanating from a giant brownish puddle of water (we hope, we hope), which we wisely avoided. It made L.A. smog seem like Febreze.

Why do people feel smug when they’re seated at an outdoor table? They peer out at the pedestrians with pity and condescension, whispering about us in low tones as they feed each other calamari and sip overpriced wine. So what if I’m plodding by with one of my cute flats mangled beneath my heel because its cuteness gave me a blister? So what if my sweater’s on backward and you can see the tag is the old-font Gap (but before the old font became new again)? It’s not like you sit down at Rouge and a Boxer dog-fairy turns you into a royal. Hear this, sidewalk superiors: Your reign lasts only as long as your post-dinner coffee.

In one subway or another—I can’t keep track anymore—there’s a McDonald’s ad celebrating African-American franchise owners in Philadelphia. It features a photo of about 20 men and women laughing and pointing as if they’re in the same room, though it looks like (and this might be intentional in a horribly misguided way) they’re just cut out and pasted together. The poor quality of the ad isn’t baffling—seen one local-yokel ad campaign, seen ’em all. What is baffling is that the woman at the center of the photo—the one around whom all this bonhomie swirls—is white. And blond. And white. Months of study of this advertisement hasn’t made her blacker. Who is this mysterious pale ingenue?

Some questions are better left unanswered, I suppose. For all the rest, there’s SEPTA.

Just the Facts

>>Website that trumpets African-American franchise ownership: www.black365.com

>>Legume alternative to smelly West Philly supermarket: Produce truck on 48th between Locust and Spruce streets.

>>Outdoor eating where no one acts superior: Saigon Cafe, 43rd and Spruce streets.

>>New Jersey shore town that’s not like the Riviera but has some great old glamour, national rock acts and a gay resort: Asbury Park.

>>Last day to take advantage of SEPTA’s Mann Center Bus Loop, which goes from Center City to the Mann Center for the Performing Arts: Sept. 22.