Walking Philly and Making Friends
Finding art, birds, critters, and people
Friday of last week, I joined
on a segment of Walk Around Philadelphia, a project started by JJ Tiziou, where he leads people to walk the entire perimeter of the city. What a wonderful meet-up it was! We started at the aptly named Waterfront Gourmet Cafe, practically beneath the Benjamin Franklin bridge on the banks of the Delaware River. (They make a good coffee and bagel.) I met JJ, and fellow walkers Shawn, Marla, Daisy, Chad, Caroline, Jillian, Steven, and Nia, plus others whose names I don’t recall—unlike the ones whose names I’ve recalled and likely misspelled—and we all hit it off immediately.
I think we were all delighted to find other adults with a childlike sense of wonder, who wanted to walk the edge of the city just to explore and discover what might be found along that imaginary line. JJ himself has an infectious glee for his project. We were all sharing our newsletters and portfolios until we had to start hoofing it. This segment began and ended in urban locales. JJ set his map down inside the Cherry Street Pier space and set out the path and rules. Because this segment followed the waterfront—the actual border would be in the middle of the Delaware River, and we weren’t swimming or kayaking—we would decide how close to get to the water, without trespassing.
The first mile or so was sidewalk with peeks toward the river, until we came to inlets and piers and parks that touch the water. I found a woman I call the Goose Whisperer, who was feeding Canadian Honkers who knew her by sight:
The Delaware is a working river, but sparkles in the sun and Philadelphians love it. We found people at every park, and Graffiti Pier, a ruin that serves as a makeshift art gallery for taggers. Other than all the wonderful, smart, curious people I met for this walk, Graffiti Pier was the highlight. A former railroad trestle, it juts into the water and makes for a lovely walk to enjoy the river and some art. For now, the pier remains unofficial and At Your Own Risk. There’s a tree growing against the concrete trestle that’s been turning into a makeshift ladder with railroad spikes hammered into it.
Younger people than I, like Shawn and Steven, climbed up for the view. I clambered up a few hills for a better look instead. A resident groundhog posed for us and demonstrated how well their coat served as camouflage; we barely noticed them until they moved.
After the pier, we explored some of the trails in the nameless woods nearby, which then led us to enormous liquid storage tanks at a rail terminal. We walked the right-of-way and the rails, then cheated and hopped a ride with the Philaport shuttle for the Tioga Marine Terminal. This brought me back to the early 2000s, when I worked at shipping container terminals in Newark, Baltimore, and New Orleans. This was a breakbulk terminal that received loose cargo and not containers. They didn’t have a ship at port, but we got to see a barge being towed by a tug, and a large breakbulk ship heading to Delaware Bay after leaving the Bucks County terminal, which is much further upriver.
By then we’d walked about six miles, and due to lack of access to the shoreline, we headed up Bridge Street toward the train station, hoping for a pub. Around this point, my hiking boots began to feel like they were filled with gravel. I hadn’t known we would be mostly on pavement, and chose my footwear unwisely. Thankfully, I had good company to talk with! Antonia “Nia” Malchik is the author of A Walking Life, and her newsletter is
, which is how I found out about the Philly walk in the first place.
We weren’t the oldest people there, but thanks to my boots and her knee, we were the slowest. Which let us talk more. We listened to birds as they sang down the sun, and followed JJ as he led us to what looked like a cool neighborhood bar… that happened to be closed for filming that night. The next closest bar was Fibber McGee’s, a full-fledged gin mill with smoke pouring out the windows, which meant no kitchen. I called a ride to get back to my train, and bid everyone a good night.
Most of the people I met lived in Philly, and it made me want to visit the city more often. There’s an afterparty in a few weekends, and I signed up. I traded contact information with a couple of people, and maybe we’ll meet there. Steven wants to explore the Pine Barrens but doesn’t have a car, so we might go looking for ruins and nature and whatnot. And I’ll be meeting Antonia when I visit Montana in September.
I’ve ordered a copy of A Walking Life, because we proved its premise: Walking is often solitary, but it is also a social activity. I buzzed around the group talking to many people. I would not have played musical chairs in a coffee shop. Go take a walk, and get back to me.
I love this. Antonia is one of my favorite people and seeing you two together makes me very, very happy.
Oh my gosh, Tom, I LOVE this! You have no idea what a similar smile to that top photo this all brought to my face, alone in my office while everyone else in my house is asleep (although there is a very persistent chickadee outside). I was really hoping you were going to share your Graffiti Pier pictures, since you had a great camera and knew what you were doing. 😀
There is so much to be happy about and respond to here. I've been thinking about how to write about this walk, but mostly I'd rather read what you wrote here, about what walking brings us and how it throws some serendipity and meeting-the-world-as-it-is-ness into our lives. That leaves me free to also own the grumpiness I was trying to quelch as the prospect of a bite to eat and a cold drink got further away. 😅 The tater tots I eventually found were a lifesaver but came pretty late in the evening. Despite my aching knee, I'm glad you and I got to linger back and have more conversation.
My only two regrets are that we didn't take the route that would have gone where those people were fishing (don't know why, I just wish I had despite or maybe because of the no trespassing warnings), and that I didn't dunk in the river like JJ did. I know it's probably a health hazard. But meeting water is . . . well, it's meeting water. And I'm excited to see you on your trip out west later this year!