Philadelphia Weekly

When I came home and found a package from Bruce Buschel, I figured there'd be money in it for me. That's the kind of relationship we have. I see him every couple years, and he gives me dough to say something nice.

One time at a boozy Christmas party clotted with editors, he passed me a 10-spot. I circulated. "Did you hear who's here tonight? That writer from New York--yeah, the one with the sprouting white facial hair. Man, what a wordsmith."

Another night, at a noisy restaurant, he slid a quarter my way. I said to the waitress, "You know Buschel?"

"Bernaise?" she asked, leaning in. (Less successful gambit, it turned out.)

So I wasn't surprised to open Buschel's new book Walking Broad and see a $20 bill slide from between the pages and do a papery pirouette to my floor. But I soon understood why he sent $20 instead of $10. The whole "I'm a nostalgic, worldly yet parochial, hyperliterate, humorous Jewish Philadelphian"--that's my shtick. And walking down Broad Street and writing about it was my concept. Not that I ever told anyone.

Buschel was better suited to the execution anyway. First of all, he's spry. Broad Street is 13 miles long, and Buschel walked every bit of it, from Cheltenham Avenue to the Navy Yard. And he's the genial (pushy?) sort who can talk to anyone--a halal butcher, a meditative sock salesman, the gatekeeper at a blood bank. He approaches each interviewee with humor and the right amount of entitlement.

I'd be too deferential; I always feel I'm ruining someone's day by interacting with them.

Interviews with quirky Philadelphia characters aren't unexpected in a book subtitled "Looking for the Heart of Brotherly Love." Nor are evocative descriptions of the urban landscape. What does surprise about Buschel's chronicle is its complexity and elegance. His walk down Broad serves a larger psychic purpose.

As he ambles (and does the Mummers strut, it should be noted), Buschel recalls his childhood--not romantically, but in anguished passages about growing up in a home for fatherless boys. He grapples with his troubled relationship with his mother as he tries to reconcile his enduring connection to a city that rarely loves him back.

The autobiographical material could've been cloying, but Buschel's boyhood misery, I'm sorry to say, served him well as the engine for this book. His memories are catalyzed by city landmarks--something that happens to all of us. You see a CVS where a movie theater used to be (19th and Chestnut, I'm talking to you), and it's impossible not to contemplate your own deficiencies along with the city's.

Some of Buschel's observations made me laugh out loud: "Philadelphians have thin skin and deep insecurities; they are skeptical by nature and zetetic by training ... It's not a simple matter of the glass half empty: Philadelphians question the size of the glass and the quality of the liquid."

I also liked this: "The Garden State is a double espresso in the afternoon for Philadelphians. Every misbegotten city needs a state to look down on."

Buschel breezily contemplates--in writing, recipe and song--unions, Jerry Blavat, Temple University, hoagies, public art, childhood obesity, Stephen Smith, Bacons pere and fils, independent filmmaking, religion, songwriting, the Olympics and lots of Philadelphia history. To continue the urban-journey metaphor (though departing from the straight-street one), you never know what's around the corner in Walking Broad.

As Buschel concedes, however, the plan to find oneself by walking Broad Street can be "baby boomer perdition or Walt Whitman rapture." And there are times when his boomer orientation is just a bit too obvious. Glowing recollection of American Bandstand and Gamble and Huff's heyday are appropriate, of course, but Buschel hasn't lived in Philly for 20-plus years, and it shows. Yes, Philly has always been a blue-collar town, but that no longer defines it.

I'm the classic cynical Philadelphian Buschel writes about--but my naysaying on Philly's future has been proven wrong for a decade now. That reality hit home most forcefully when my boyfriend moved here from Chicago. He loves it here for so many reasons. He'd find Buschel's Philadelphia largely unfamiliar.

Walking Broad dwells a lot on row house stereotypes. What Buschel doesn't seem to know is that row houses are being torn down so condos can go up. Fishtown ain't Fishtown anymore, yo.

At one point Buschel suggests that making a life in Philly is the "dance of death." I sometimes buy that myself. But if you go one generation younger than mine, you'll find a very different point of view.

The melancholy theme of Walking Broad is that things don't always work out as you plan--whether you're Bruce Buschel or William Penn. And cities don't stay trapped in amber just because you're afraid to lose your center.