I’m torn over this weekends game between the Eagles and the Panthers. On one hand, my dad was a huge Eagles fan and he died without seeing them win a Super Bowl. On the other hand, I live in Charlotte now and it would be great to see the hometown team go far. But lately, in the local media of Philly and Charlotte, there’s been a lot of trash talking about which city is better. It started with this column in the Philadelphia Daily News. The Charlotte Observer fired back with this column.
As someone who has lived in both cities let me tell you that Philly sucks ass. Now I don’t mean the outlying areas like Media, PA and the like. Those places are fine and are great places to live. But given the choice between Philly and Charlotte, I’ll take Charlotte any day. Philly is a dirty city. It’s garnered the nickname Philthadelphia. The neighborhood I lived in while I Was in Philly I referred to it as a vertical trailer park. Growing up as a kid it was a decent middle-class neighborhood that my mom’s family came from. Over time it degenerated into a white trash hell. Nobody had a job. They all just hung out on their steps and sometimes mine. All they did was play the lottery. They let their kids run the streets at all hours of the night. On Halloween they let their kids go trick or treating in bars which is almost a necessity considering there is a bar at every corner.
When I moved to Charlotte I was amazed by how friendly everyone was. The whole stereotype of the racist south is untrue. If you want to see racism walk down the street with a black woman in my old neighborhood in Philly. You’ll see some racism then. The first day I moved down here I was at a gas station and I dropped a $5 bill. A complete stranger picked it up and gave it back to me. In Philly, a stranger would have picked it up and tried to get 5 more. In Philly, you don’t park in front of your own house. You park wherever there is space and there’s usually not much. If you don’t get home from work until 7 PM, forget it, you’re screwed. You have to park 3 blocks away if you’re lucky.
The only thing I miss about Philly is the food. No cheesesteaks, Tastykakes, or scrapple. But barbecue, Krispy Kremes, and country ham do help to soften the blow.
The Trench Reynolds Report 