One Thing at a Time @zachthomson - Tumblr Blog

#suburblife

this is a pretty good way to live

the end of an era

just remembered I own this because privilege.

did I used to be interesting AND insufferable or has it always just been the one thing #packing #moving

Heritage

I waxed (a little too) poetic on food and neighborhoods when I wrote about Helm. But seeing a disused space in a well-traveled neighborhood transform is just as romantic as seeing a scrappy start up blaze a trail into an untamed wilderness.

There is a yellowed newspaper clipping next to the register of The Foodery at 2nd & Poplar with the headline ‘Is Northern Liberties Over?’ I’m sure the people who asked that question years ago would agree now that it is. It’s been about five years since the tide of un-ironic, post-hip yuppies like me began to rise, and it has yet to crest. There is hardly an empty lot or abandoned building left in the neighborhood. In their place stand million dollar town homes (literally), and flashy, expertly finished consumer spaces like Heritage.

The building Heritage now inhabits has been empty since I’ve lived here. The drab cinder block exterior of an old garage cum barbecue joint, long shuttered, was a little incongruous even for NoLibs (un-ironic, see?). It sits across from long lived joints like Northbowl, Dos Segundos, Rustica, and Standard Tap. That side of the street has always been a little dodgy, I guess - we used to call the crumbling warehouse at the end of the block the ‘zombie house.’ But there was a while there we worried Northern Liberties really was over. Not in the a priori way that the hipster trailblazers worried, but in the way that real economic prosperity had skipped us over. The veritable monopoly on commercial real estate in the neighborhood pushed folks like Starr and Garces past us into Fishtown, while perfectly suitable spaces that just needed a little love went ignored.

Enter Jason Evenchick (from Vintage, Time, Bar, Growlers and Garage) and Terrance Leach (also from Time).They’ve finished the grand, high-ceilinged space with polished concrete and rustic, knotty wood, making it warm, inviting, and upscale all at once. There is live jazz every night. There is an entire class of dish on their menu called “Boards” (the food is really good, by the way). It could not be more spot on to the hipster-yuppie ethos of the neighborhood. Importing pedigree like this signals a sea change in the fabric of the place. It’s exactly the kind of change that the people who made this neighborhood possible feared the most. It’s also exactly the kind of change that people like me were counting on when we bought our houses.

Shortly before they tore down the crumbling shell of the old Ortlieb’s brewery, someone risked their lives to scale the structure and plant a flag on the roof that read ‘I’ll miss you.’ I don’t miss it, but I’ll always cherish the stylishly gritty wedding pictures my wife and I took in front of it in 2010. While some people lament that the yuppies have won, they’re missing the point. Northern Liberties isn’t over. Nothing is ever over. No one ever wins. It’s just that it’s no longer the permanently up & coming middle space it had been for so long. Whether it stays that way is another question. Heritage recently added brunch, a move that smacks of desperation and makes me skittish. And blocks of ritzy town homes standing empty aren’t much better for a neighborhood than blocks of abandoned industrial buildings, left crumbling.

#philly #nolibs #food #restaurants #real estate #business #investing

#parenting101 @medlockames (at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania)

#parenting101

Japan

Tokyo is maybe my new favorite global city. It’s hilarious to me that anyone compares it to New York, London, or Paris - those places don’t even come close. It’s big, it’s bright, it’s exciting, but it has none of the attitude, entitlement, filth, or frustration of those places. You can choose between a Michelin starred restaurant (the most of any city in the world), or eat at the counter of an outdoor stall under the train tracks. Both will be life altering. You will never be treated like you’re lucky to be there. A word of caution: The shops don’t open till 11am. Its damn near sleepy.

We were lucky to be visiting family in the city of Yonago, in the western prefecture of Tottori. We stayed in Kaike, where a string of hotels featuring hotspring baths dot the shore of the Sea of Japan. It was beautiful and relaxing. It’s unusual to get a true local experience when you’re travelling, much less one led by expats - very rare in a provincial area. We ate Okonomiyaki, and really good farm to table food at a joint with a very western, urbane vibe. No one (except the expats) spoke English.

Kyoto was beautiful, hilly, ancient, and cool. The temples were mostly original, unlike the ones in Tokyo that had been lost to American bombing in 1945, and rebuilt later. In the morning the smell of burning incense permeates the city. Pagodas dot the skyline. We ate street food, broiled eel on rice, and hit up a tiny gastropub on a back alley, that served western craft bottles alongside interesting Japanese drafts.

We did all this with a 1 year old baby. That’s not a boast, it was really hard, I’m just saying that’s how easily navigable Japan is. You can do it with a 1 year old baby. Or you can do it without a baby and really have fun.

#travel #japan #food #restaurants #tokyo #kyoto #japanese food #parenthood