PHILADELPHIA....

is my new favorite place.

Tuesday:
Tuesday morning about 12, Nora, Winnie, and I decided to drive down. After packing about 12 outfits, and no sneakers (which i later regretted) I picked them up. It took us maybe a little over 2 hours? I can't remember, but there was pretty evil traffic around exit 7.
We arrive with no place to go, so we're driving around in the afternoon heat for an hour or so trying to find a cheap place to stay so we don't have to sleep in the car. Every place we find is about 180 a night. Finally we're driving around 3rd and chestnut, and nora spots a little hole in the wall. "Society Hill Hotel". We go in, 120 a night. Check in is at the bar below the hotel, and we pay cash, and they don't ask for any id, very shady. Anyways, we unpack, lounge around, and get dressed.
The area's very safe and a pretty trendy little place called "Old City". We're right outside center city, and a few blocks from the Liberty Bell. We hike through center city, around the museum district, and through a small Chinatown that didn't have any Asian people. We stumble upon the Black Sheep bar, and get some drinks and hummus. The hummus sucks and the drinks are alright. Barely any places card in Philly. We walk back home and start to get ready for the night.
It starts pouring while we're getting ready which completely spoils our plans, but we're not going to let it bring us down. People tell us about Skinner's bar around the block, so we head over there. For a Tuesday night there's a nice sized crowd and its kareoke night. None of us are daring enough to engage in the antics, so we leave the place. We find this place that looks like a church, or some old greek revival building that once upon a time might've been a small courtroom, who knows, but we get in and there's pews on one side and a bar on the other, and once again kareoke. We meet these boys, one who's like an air force pilot, and the other that's wearing a hurley t-shirt. We talk with them for a little while, until something happens, and we start bitching them out, and we leave to go back to our hotel. Get a 6 pack and eventually sleep.

Wednesday:
Two hour parking starts at 8am, and I guess I don't really take Philly parking cops seriously, so I don't wake up at 8. I wake up later to find a ticket on my car, which ended up being cheaper than the parking tickets in Rutherford. ::::TIP; PHILLY COPS ARE SERIOUS ABOUT PARKING! don't fuck with them::: I get in the car trying to find a walgreens or something, it takes me about an hour, and I pick up about 5 bottles of water and a tooth brush. We're all sick and hungover since we basically did not eat anything the day before. I skipped the "continental breakfast" in the morning, which I semi-regret cause I would've liked to try a Philly bagel. We do some more walking around and shit like that. Head over to the Franklin Institute and walk through the giant heart with about 22 other little children. Parents gawk at us strangely, and we see a lot of cute babies. The place wasn't as fun as I remembered but it was still cute. We walk back to the car about 5 blocks away and notice that they're filming It's Always Sunny basically next to my car. Winnie sees the guy Charlie and we hang around and eventually meet DANNY DEVITO who's very small and falls in love with us.
We go back into New Jersey to get a free, classy dinner at my uncle's restaurant. We get the VIP treatment, and I WISH that we had a fridge in our hotel so I could've brought the food home. My uncle and his girlfriend tell us some places to check out, and we head back to Philly. Getting back to Philly isn't as difficult as getting to Collingswood.
Once again, we go home and get ready for the night.
At night we hit South Street and meet these weird heavy metal kids that bring us to some shitty bar that plays Evanescense. Those idiots are singing the songs, while the kid next to me thinks our accents are Australian, we inevitably leave this place, although on this rainy Wednesday night there was NO ONE OUT. I mean no one, I mean, Rutherford would've had more transients walking around then this supposed mecca of bars. We walk around trying to find a place before the bars close at 2. We stumble upon a drunk frat boy who tries to party with us, but in the end it's his friend that tells us about a cheap dive bar that's open and comes with us. The drunk boy wanders off and we follow his friend to "Dirty Franks". There's more people at this place, thank god, and although its a strange crowd, we have a nice time. We tell the friend about our nomad situation, his name was Alfred (i think). Anyways, Alfred, like almost everyone else we meet, tells us if we need a place to crash we could stay with him if worse comes to worse. Now this wasn't creepy, he put it out there in a truly hospitable way. Over the course of the week we found more than a handful of people that were willing to take us in, strictly out of kindness, not creepy at all. We start to buy drinks by the handful since we realize that the bar is going to close in about a half hour. I buy a tequila shot, buttery nip shot, and a rum and coke FOR ONLY 10.25! The bartender is this crazy, fucked up woman, sweet, but totally wasted but definately not drunk. Anyways, upon leaving Winnie buys two drinks, two shots, and a 6 pack of beer to-go for only 18$. Crazy prices, we fall in love with the place. It's a long back to the hotel in the pouring rain, and we start drinking the beers on the walk. I'm hiding mine in my closed umbrella when I accidentally press the button to release the umb. which hits me in the mouth. Pretty painful, there's some Philadelphia street peeing going on, and we make it back to our hotel in one drunk piece. Share some drugs, tell some stories, drink some more, Winnie passes out. Nora keeps me up till 630 and I have to wake up at 8 to move the car.

Thursday:
We have to wake up every two hours to put money in the meter, which is a giant pain in the ass, and this is the latest we sleep in all week. We wake up at 12 and around 1 the maid tells us check out was an hour ago. We get ready + pack up real fast. Give back the key, and get in the car. During the week someone tells us about this neighborhood a little outside Philly called Manayunk, so we make the trip. We find a restaurant called Winnie's (she took a picture with it) don't eat there, but eat at the Bourbon House off the Main Street. The whole neighborhood is absolutely adorable but pretty far from Center City. We take some pictures, and try to find what we're going to do, where we're going to go, where we're putting my car, and where we're going to sleep. We don't have enough money for a parking garage. By some grace of god we get back into Center City, and find 12 hour street parking. We put in about 5 hours of change, when Nora realizes it's 6 and that after 7 we don't need to feed the meter, we're asses. Since we have no place to go, we just walk around in circles. Actually walk around for miles in circles. Walk from 33rd street in University City to try and get into an M.I.A. show. The oldest people standing outside the show were us, and every stupid little girl there was wearing horrible neon leggings. We decided to skip it, especially since I had 35 dollars left, and between Nora and Winnie they had about 80. We walk across the bridge in University City down to Walnut and 16th to get into a bar that some guys said was legit. I bet this place would've been a lot of fun if I had money or if we weren't the only people in the entire place. We have one drink and bounce. Winnie gets a French Martini and I love that drink now. We walk back down to South Street. For you people that don't know Philly, we probably walked about five miles from U.C. to South Street. There's a lot more people out tonight, which makes us a little bit more excited. We stop into O'Neals Pub around 10 and meet these three guys who seem a little whack, but we end up chatting with them anyways.
They're telling us about this club uptown called Silk City. They leave to go there and we tell them, we'll meet them. They said it's a happening little hipster club, so why not? At least we'll meet some young peoples. We take a cab there and it's pretty packed. There's dancing and 90s hip hop. We meet up with the kids, Nelson and Kyle, and start drinking and dancing. Kyle's on the floor doing backflips in the air and dancing the worm. Nora and I keep making circles and pushing the crowd back and all these crazy dancers are getting down in the middle and going crazy. It's a lot of fun, a lot of dancing, etc. The place packs up, and theres not much room to move, but whatever!
We go outside with our new friends, smoking cigarettes with about 100 other kids. Some little kid starts picking on Nora and the kid Nelson gets all in his face about it. He's friends with the bouncer, and gets the little one kicked out. The kid starts yelling about his boys, blah blah blah, but nothing happens and he eventually bounces. Kyle and I start skateboarding, while going up to strangers and asking them where we can find a diner in horrible Australian accents. A "corny" chant starts, and it's a really good time. The bouncer yells and tells everyone its time to go home.
The boys ask us if we wanna party at their apt. with them and we take two cabs to South Philly. We smoke a blunt, joke around, meet their pitbull that they rescued from euthanasia, and basically just chill about. They live in a pretty huge 2-story apartment that they each only pay 200 a month for. THATS ALMOST HOW MUCH MY CAR COSTS. anyways, they tell us we can stay with them (no creepiness at all) but we can't. Although, if we did, they invited us to party with them at Bam Margera's the next day. We walk with them to a diner where we call about 5 cab companes and wait about an hour for one to arrive.
21st and parkway, gyro mom, corny, i said you'z a hoe, I love Philadelphia, I can't wait to go back and party with our crazy boys.