A Day in the Life of a Newark Resident Without a Car

I drive my car pretty much everywhere I go. This is because I don’t live in China. I live in AMERICA, where the only thing we’re killing faster than our own will to live is the ozone.

I have a 2005 Honda Pilot with about a gazillion miles on it and whose horsepower best compares to a rickshaw pulled by a dozen doped-up squirrels. Of course, you don’t own an SUV for its gas efficiency; you own it for the amount of people/junk you can cram into it. Since my average weekday takes me from my home to my office to (sometimes) the gym to (occasionally) the grocery store to my home once more, I usually don’t cart around other human beings, so the extra seven seats plus trunk space are primarily dedicated to junk food, cases of bottled water, throw blankets, footballs, basketballs, orange cones, scattered glow sticks, hand-me-down tweed jackets my uncle gave me three weeks ago, campfire skewers from a camping trip I took in May, a bottle of mouthwash,  golf clubs, bags of garbage, 25 pounds of raw ground beef, the entire collection of “Sanford and Son” DVDs, about seven or eight raccoons, and Jimmy Hoffa.

I took a trip to Ohio/Western Pennsylvania this weekend and, knowing that driving the Pilot the entire distance would not only accelerate its inevitable demise but also singlehandedly cause the Keystone Pipeline debate to reopen, I chose to rent a smaller, more fuel-friendly mode of transportation, and was thus assigned a Toyota Yaris by the God of Car Rental, Hertz.

As I returned on Sunday night after putting the Yaris through an absolute beating, I thought about a column of Bill Bryson’s I read recently. Bryson’s been a recent discovery of mine…and by that, I mean my esteemed co-blogger and my brother have been telling me about how awesome he is. Bryson spent one of his columns in the late 90’s lamenting how residents of his town would drive to stores mere feet apart from each other, rather than getting out of their two-ton metal contraptions and burning a couple calories.

Bryson’s affinity for the simplicity of small-town living hit me in the right spot, even if Newark, DE bears few similarities to Bryson’s town of Hanover, NH (though I have it on good authority Newark also has a grocery store and at least handful of trees)

So when I returned my rental car to the Hertz about a mile and a half from my house, knowing I had an errand or two that needed attending to, I decided I’d take the scenic route home and get to know Newark on the strength of my tattered sneakers.

The first thing you notice about doing your errands by foot is that you have to do them by foot. Like, walking. The whole time. I’m going to sneak in some boasting here: on Saturday, I completed Tough Mudder in Belmont, OH with my brother and my friend Reezo, and I’ve been virtually incapable of basic motor functions since. My first few steps were not-so-gentle reminders of the gauntlet I’d run about 48 hours prior. You fool. What are you doing? This is nonsense. Just walk home, sit in your nice, cozy, air-conditioned monstrosity of an automobile and bang out your errands in about 20 minutes. Heck, why even walk home? They have cabs here in town. Hey, that guy with the big white van sitting outside the Toys R Us looks like he’s got plenty of room in his ride and nothing to do. You’ve got options.

Yet, I continued.  I needed a haircut, a new pair of running shoes, a bunch of bananas, and an excuse to not sit around my house watching ESPN all Monday morning and afternoon.

On the way to my haircut, I found a row of about four or five eye doctors on Main Street, the major street running through the University of Delaware’s campus, more known for brick-exterior bars and takeout food than anything considered remotely adult (though if beer and pizza aren't “adult,” I definitely don’t want to be one). About two months ago, I’d tried to set up appointments with a primary care physician, a dentist and an optometrist for the first time since moving to Delaware, with no luck. I’d gotten some curt receptionist every time I called one, who very quickly advised me that no, they were not, in fact, accepting new patients at this time, so could you please get off my phone because this episode of Basketball Wives I’ve got cued up on my computer isn’t going to watch itself.

I entered the second one I saw, strolled to the front desk, and asked the woman at the desk if the office were taking new patients, to which she surprisingly answered, “Yes. When would you like an appointment?”

We exchanged information, by which I mean I told her my name, address, date of birth, social security number, insurance provider, favorite color, worst fear, fondest memory of my childhood, expectations for the upcoming episode of “Breaking Bad,” and number of times I’ve woken up in the middle of the night with a charley horse in my right calf, and in turn, she let me know how much my co-pay would be.

I handed her my insurance card, and before she even had a chance to see the information on the front of the card, she asked whether I worked for Bank of America or Capital One. (This was after I had to convince her I was not, in fact, currently attending the University of Delaware, even though I had time in my life to show up at an eye doctor’s office at 10:30 AM on a Monday) There are hundreds, thousands of employment opportunities in the Newark area, but thanks to Delaware’s relaxed big business laws, the only ones of consequence are with credit card companies. I felt momentarily insulted that this woman, a complete stranger not two minutes ago, felt confident enough to pigeonhole me. Then, that moment passed, and I sheepishly informed her I worked for Bank of America.

After scheduling my appointment, I continued down Main Street and across four lanes of Capitol Trail traffic to College Square, a shopping center with vast parking lots and little else. Among its relatively few shops was a Hair Cuttery, though, so I walked in, chatted with the barber Catherine about our thoughts on Newark, beaches, and reality television, and went on my merry way. This put a thought in my head: Catherine hadn’t done any sort of styling to my hair, just washed it and hacked it off. Yet I felt compelled to call her a “hairdresser” or a “hair stylist” simply because it was Catherine and not, say, Carl, doing the work. I looked it up later and learned a “barber” is one who cuts men’s hair, but is gender neutral with regard to the person doing the actual cutting. It still feels weird to me for some reason, though, the same way I’d feel like calling a male a “hair dresser” was wrong even if they were cutting women’s hair. I’ve decided I will avoid this problem in the future by cutting my own hair off with a hatchet.

After doing a little more exploring (there’s an emergency pet hospital just two miles from my house, which will be very convenient if I ever acquire a pet), I got lunch at Jake’s Wayback Burgers, a local chain with the best hamburgers and milkshakes in the area, reading the Delaware County Times in the process and noting how the paper’s baseball writer was quite fond of stating that a player had “but four home runs this season” or had played in “but ten games” since the All-Star break.

Next door was D&S Music, a guitar repair shop that also sold second-hand guitars, picks, straps, and songbooks. I walked in wearing my Philadelphia Flyers T-shirt and, using a Visa credit card (only after finding my American Express card wasn’t accepted at this particular establishment), purchased a set of picks and a Dream Theater guitar songbook from a middle-aged man also wearing a Flyers T-shirt, in what I believe will go down in history as the whitest transaction in American commerce.

On my way back to Main Street, I came across the Newark Free Public Library, hidden in the shade of a row of trees. I already knew about the library, but hadn’t graced it with my presence in a few weeks, so I spent 30 minutes reading “Plato in 90 Minutes,” then checked it out, along with another book on religion and three CDs.

I stumbled across an actual barbershop, peppermint color scheme and all, on my way back down Main Street, which will throw a wrench into my aforementioned “hatchet to the head” method of cutting my hair. Just a few shops down was Bing’s Bakery, a classic bakery with enough frosted goodness to wreck even the most steadfast of health nuts, a class of folk  which I am proud not to consider myself one of. If you’ve never been to a bakery outside of the paltry five-by-ten area of your local Acme with no more than a basket of Italian bread and a closet of stale donuts on display, you are cheating yourself out of some truly decadent desserts. I limited myself to a small cannoli (the cashier’s recommendation) and a chocolate cake-like French pastry square laced with raspberry sauce. 

I was now wandering around Newark with three books, three CDs and two desserts, which means I was probably being followed by the police the rest of the day. At the very least, I got several confused and worried looks from the college students who weren't preoccupied with finding out whether they were even headed in the right direction to reach their new classes or dorms.

Next, I crossed the street to a natural/organic foods store, where I bought my bananas, a bag of lima beans and a box of “Puffin Cinnamon Cereal.” You may recognize this cereal as the only one at your local grocery store with a puffin on it, a box usually surrounded by several other cereal boxes with much happier-looking, sugar-crazed animals on the front. I tried the organic cinnamon cereal later, and concluded the main difference between Puffin cinnamon cereal and say, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, is that CTC is made with “cinnamon,” while Puffin’s cereal is made with HOLY SHIT CINNAMON YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW MAN.

I asked the cashier, an older, white-bearded gentleman, for an extra bag for my books and such, which he gladly obliged. I’m convinced this was because he was wearing the type of straw hat you’d see Harold Hill wear in “The Music Man,” which seems to automatically make its wearer 15 percent friendlier. (Is there a name for this hat? I can’t figure it out) As I loaded my books in a bag, he noticed one of my library books, How to Be Secular: A Call to Arms for Religious Freedom.

“Good subject,” he said, gesturing towards the book.

I looked down and saw which one he was referring to. “Yeah, it looks interesting,” I replied. “It’s about how religious and non-religious people need work together to protect freedom of belief and live more peacefully.”

“Imagine if you had that in the Middle East, if it weren’t dictated by dogma and extremism.”

I nodded. “It’d be a whole different ballgame. Well hey, if it’s any good, I’ll come back and let you know.”

“Good deal.” He then discounted me about 15 cents on my bananas because they looked “like they’re at the end of their shelf life.” I will sing the praises of Internet shopping all day and night, but I haven’t had any quick talks on faith and current events or received any discounts on my items for no apparent reason from Amazon.com. That’s as good an argument to support small business as anything.

My checklist was almost complete: I’d gotten everything I’d needed and more, save for the sneakers (I’d “cheated” on my small-town afternoon and used my iPhone to determine the nearest sneaker store was seven miles away, something my calves weren’t feeling at the time). I was ready to return home until I spotted a sign for “Captain Blue Hen’s Comics.” The Blue Hen, for the uninitiated, is the mascot of U.Del’s various athletics teams, but more importantly: there’s a real-life, old-school comic store in Newark? I had to see this.

I’m no comic book junkie by any means, so I figured I’d just see a few of the classics and novelty items and be on my WAIT A MINUTE IS THAT THE SONIC THE HEDGEHOG-MEGA MAN CROSSOVER SERIES I NEED IT.

Sadly, they only had a few issues of the 13-issue mini-series available (more would be coming in a couple weeks, the manager told me), so I simply bought issue one, along with a comic called “Key of Z,” written by Coheed and Cambria frontman Claudio Sanchez. The store manager gave me the prequel issue of the Sonic-Mega Man series for free as a gift, and with that, I was walking home with the most eclectic collection of trinkets, books and snacks this side of the Schuylkill River. (If only the farmer’s market were around that day, I probably would’ve brought a whole raw chicken home with me, too)

As I walked back home, past the beat-up town homes now occupied with college students and the small church and parish daycare that gave Chapel Street its name, I reflected on my day. I was an economics major in college. I know the benefits of big businesses like Wal-Mart, and the advantages that impersonal online shopping present for consumers like me. I love getting groceries delivered to my door, because I’m lazy as hell. The rational part of my brain knows this is all, for the most part, good.

The other half of my brain that spends $5 on cannolis and pastries, though, felt gratified to spend a day in the fresh air and sunny, 75-degree summer weather, seeing the sights of my small town, stumbling upon its secrets (like a segment of the United Church of Christ hidden in a run-down concrete building that’s certainly seen its share of back-alley drug deals, a kung fu school, a sign for the Newark chapter of the Rotary Club – more on that at another date), and actually talking to the folks selling me their wares. I’ve never really understood the appeal of being a “regular” at a bar, store or otherwise, but you know what? Maybe I would like to go back to that organic grocery store and talk to that cashier about my religion book. Maybe I’ll go to a barbershop and not just take whoever the next person is.

In the meantime, I’ve got a half-melted French pastry to take care of. And I’m doing it with two hands all over its sloppy exterior, because I’m an adult.

Let's Lift Our Glass to Charlie, He's the One Who Brought Us Here

On Friday, Charlie Manuel ceased to be the manager of the Philadelphia Phillies.

He didn’t quit. For damn sure he didn’t quit. “I never quit nothin’. And I didn't resign,” the folksy skipper insisted during his farewell press conference Friday afternoon. Not his farewell game, mind you, nor his farewell address to the fans before his last home game, neither of which he was afforded. His farewell address to local baseball scribes and camera crews.

Beside him sat the man responsible for ending arguably the most successful managerial tenure in franchise history, Ruben Amaro Jr., who shed a tear while announcing the coaching change, insisting this was the hardest decision of his time as general manager. This is true in the sense that blaming someone else for your own failings is probably at least marginally more difficult than tossing a Koosh ball at an office door basketball hoop and signing Ryan Howard’s biweekly paychecks that would bankrupt most small African nations, activities that take up a majority of Ruben’s time.

I could use this space to mention how the team has taken a step back in terms of playoff performance (or lack thereof) every year since Ruben assumed the role Pat Gillick abdicated following the team’s 2008 World Series win, but I won’t. I could talk about how Ruben hanging the millstone known as the Ryan Howard contract around the team’s neck, backing up a Brinks truck to Jonathan Papelbon’s house, or trying to fix an old, bad team by adding more old, bad players hamstrung the team’s success for years to come, but I won’t. I could mention that the Phillies are the only team in Major League Baseball that doesn’t employ a single analytical statistician, and how Ruben throwing just one college dropout with a working knowledge of Excel and a general understanding of how to navigate baseball-reference.com a bone could have kept him from (or at least slowed him down before) making most of these decisions…but I won’t. (Michael Baumann already handled the more rational take on this anyway)

Instead, I want to talk about October 29, 2008.

I was in my friend Kevin and Stanczak’s dorm room with three or four other friends of ours, fixated on a small television set showing Brad Lidge warming up in the ninth inning of the fifth game of the World Series. As it was with your standard college dorm, any gathering consisting of three or more people was standing room only, but by that point, everyone was on their feet anyway.

This was Night 2 of Game 5, because the first six innings were all the Phillies and Rays could get in on Monday night before Citizens Bank Park turned into a Vietnam jungle.

So there were three innings between the Phillies, currently up 3-1 in the series, and a World Series crown. By the ninth inning, we'd seen Geoff Jenkins and Jayson Werth come up with huge hits, Rocco Baldelli equalizing the game with a solo home run, Chase Utley throwing out Jason Bartlett at home on a beautiful fake-out move, Pat Burrell earning his first World Series hit, and Pedro Feliz inexplicably knocking in a go-ahead run in just two and a half innings – not inexplicable because it was a particularly difficult pitch to hit, but because it was Pedro friggin’ Feliz who hit it.

Now Lidge was preparing to lock down a 4-3 Phillies lead. In pretty much every game since this one, a Phillies closer entering a game with a one-run lead usually meant fans were going to head home later that night ready to pound a fifth of Jack or strangle their dog or something. But in 2008, a one-run lead in the ninth inning was about as sure a thing as you could get in baseball when Brad Lidge was tossing his worm-killing slider. Lidge was 47-for-47 in save chances to that point this year, counting the postseason, and the Phillies had yet to lose a game that year when taking a lead into the ninth inning.

After Dioner Navarro fought off a one-out, two-strike pitch with a single to right, though, and after Fernando Perez came in to run for him and promptly stole second off Carlos Ruiz, the inner Philadelphian was coming out in those of us in Kevin and Stanczak’s room. Oh hell no. This is how it’s gonna happen. This is how we start to unravel and the friggin’ Rays scrap their way back and win this in seven games. First it was the rain thing, and now this. This is it. Where’s my dog? Where’s the Jack?

This is how Philly sports fans operated before Charlie Manuel, before 2008. We were bested perhaps only by Cleveland and Seattle in the “Murphy’s Law Sports City” contest. If the Phillies, Eagles, Flyers or Sixers had a chance to blow a big game, chances are, they’d search high and low to find a way to do it. We almost prided ourselves in our masochistic devotion to teams destined to break our hearts.

Particularly in this showdown between Manuel, a simple “players’ manager” whose familiarity with “strategy” was likely limited to “that weird ol board game Grampa had in his storage shed next ta tha buckshot and fertilizer,” and Joe Maddon, considered the most progressive and strategically savvy managers in baseball, it seemed likely Maddon was going to will his team to victory on the basis of his many lineup and defensive changes, as he swapped out the next batter, Baldelli (who, again, already had a homer that night) for Ben Zobrist, who had better success against pitchers like Lidge.

But Manuel, like he did so many times the following year (to the detriment in the team in many circumstances), stuck with Lidge. And two batters later, after Zobrist lined out to right and Eric Hinskie struck out on three pitches, the Phillies were, to put it colloquially, world f***ing champions.

And we went ballistic. We ran up and down the halls of our dorm in celebration. I called my friend Vince and screamed at him while he was at work. I called my dad and screamed at him. I called my girlfriend and screamed at her. We sprayed champagne anywhere that had a rug we could ruin and drank the rest.

We'd won for the triumvirate of Utley, Howard and Rollins, for career journeyman Matt Stairs, for the long-maligned Pat the Bat and the resurgent Jayson Werth, for ace Cole Hamels. And we'd won for Charlie, who, having lost his mother just a few weeks prior, added another layer of humanity to the celebration.

At that point in my life, Philadelphia major sports teams had one a total of…*recounts in head*…one championship. That one. And it came at a time when my devotion to sports was at an all time high.

I still love sports, still love watching my teams, but things have changed just a bit. With my entry into the so called rat race, I don’t have as much time to look up every news story on every team and keep up with every stat for every player like I did when I was in school. I was talking football with my pal and podcast co-host David Bennett a few nights ago and claimed Cary Williams, new starting cornerback for the Eagles, had one career interception to his name, which is unequivocally wrong. Nowadays, while I still strive for a career in sports media at some point, keeping up with sports is already becoming…well…like actual work.

And things are only going to progress further in that direction. Bills have to be paid. Families will have to be started. Homes will have to be purchased, and settled on, and closed upon, and refinanced, and sold. I’ll know more about my son’s OPS on his Little League team than I’ll know about the starting shortstop for the Phillies in a few years.

Even if no Philadelphia sports teams win another title as long as I live, though, I’ll always have 2008. We’ll always have 2008. I realize I don’t recall the 2008 Series fondly simply because my team won the whole damn thing or because the guys on the team were likable or fun to watch, but because I loved the people around me at the time, and I loved the celebration.

So thanks, Charlie. You made that happen. You were never the most brilliant tactician, and many of your bullpen moves the past several years made about as much sense as an MGMT music video, but when you had the right guys around you, you made sure they were happy and made sure they knew you had their back, which, for teams as talented as the Phillies had in 2007-2011, was as important as knowing when to bring in your lefty specialist or make a double switch (or when to bring in your backup infielder as a reliever)

Now, the longest-tenured coach in Philadelphia is Flyers walking orange tie Peter Laviolette, who’s been with the team for all of three-and-a-half years and could very easily be on his way out with another poor showing this coming year. Andy Reid, who was coach of the Eagles for more than half my life, is gone, and with it memories of my dad and I watching games in our den at my old house on Township Line Road with equal parts joy and horror at what we were witnessing. (The day Matt Bryant kicked a record-tying 63-yard field goal to reverse a Donovan McNabb-led comeback left the two of us speechless for 25 minutes)

Gone is Sixers coach Doug Collins, who was here three years but at least made the team interesting for two of them. Gone is Charlie, manager for a third of my life. Holy hell.

But  I can say this at least without fear of contradiction: Charlie, you will never buy another drink in this city as long as you live. It's the least we can do.