One thing I’ve never gotten used to is people from other parts of the city looking puzzled when I mention I am going uptown. Uptown is downtown to them. Just a difference in direction, but from such simple differences do big differences grow.
I took the "2" bus uptown. It hadn’t gone two blocks north on 16th Street before the driver announced a detour. There is always a detour when you take the "2" bus. Since a detour is defined as a deviation from the norm, when does a routine detour stop being a detour at all? The "new" route took the bus north on Broad Street. Along the way, the bus stopped at every corner and the driver yelled, "Detour!" The people hesitated, not knowing whether to get on or not. Some did, some questioned the driver and one lady got into a shouting match with him over how much intelligence is needed to understand the concept of a detour.
One thing you notice when riding a SEPTA bus in the off hours: Passengers are mainly seniors and inner-city blacks. The rest are obviously in cars because Center City’s streets are crowded in mid-morning. The cars honk their horns angrily at one another. The big city is a concert of noise. Noise is something city dwellers learn to ignore early on, but it is always there, always loud, always pressing in on your thoughts. Cacophony is the soundtrack of our lives.
I like to eat lunch in town. Today I decided to eat at Upstairs at Di Bruno’s on Chestnut Street. Other people like to go to museums, I go to Di Bruno’s and hang out among the Abbruzzese sausages and the amazing array of prepared foods. The range of food available to us would have staggered our parents’ imaginations. Nothing is simple, not even lunch. Imported cheeses and meats are mingled with exotic greens and drizzled with balsamic vinegar, aged in oak casks. Choose a bottle of water and it’s from an artesian well in Fiji. We are no longer simple people. The patrons, mostly Center City office workers, revel in 1,001 taste sensations. None consider this lunch a luxury, not even at 10 to 12 bucks a pop. Examine the complex life of 30-something Americans and wonderful food from all over the world is viewed as a necessity. Generation X has both been cursed and blessed by the munificence of capitalism. They will probably never be able to really retire without giving up what they have had all their lives. This generation will live longer than us and will have to work longer than us to support the expensive habits we have passed on to them.
Ours is not an easy culture in which to dine alone. You feel somehow less worthy than the others grouped together busily chatting. People who eat solo try to bury themselves in a newspaper or a book. They have that furtive look like men in a dirty bookstore.
The omnipresent large flat-screened TVs are tuned to the 24-hour sports channel. Even the finest restaurants have large-screen TVs tuned to sports, with the sound muted. Nobody ever watches them, but every public place has them. It is as if an entire generation rebelled against the notion "the world is too much with us." I myself am among the addicted. On my 40th wedding anniversary, celebrating with my lovely wife on the beautiful island of Bermuda, I was worried about missing "Meet the Press." It’s as if there is so much happening so fast in the world, we need constant reassurance from CNN or MSNBC or Fox News that we have not yet blown up Planet Earth.
The overhead TV at Di Bruno’s switched to a stock shot of Cardinals Manager Tony La Russa, the latest public figure to be shamed by a Breathalyzer. The big drawback to being a public figure in today’s world is you can never make a horse’s ass of yourself without someone videotaping it. Nick Nolte will always be remembered, not for fine acting performances, but his mug shot after a DUI.
Celebrities can’t win with the public. If, like Paris Hilton, they seek pleasure, oblivious to the pain of the everyday world, we scorn them. If they take up a cause, like the genocide in Darfur, such as George Clooney or Mia Farrow, we also scorn. You could argue Farrow or Angelina Jolie are actually modern-day saints for the kids they’ve rescued through adoption. Most of us react to them the way we do to more conventional saints — we think they’re nuts. I can more readily identify with Jolie’s ex-husband Billy Bob Thornton, who probably came home one night and said, "You want to adopt a kid? From where?"
The bus ride back home was uneventful. At one stop a young guy wearing a grocer’s apron stood outside a store. He yelled a greeting at the bus while it was stopped at the corner. The driver gave him a friendly yell back. I think some of us often feel more warmth toward strangers than we do with people we’ve known for a lifetime. It’s the familiarity that breeds the contempt. That’s why we greet a bus driver stopped at a light like a long-lost friend.
