Philadelphia... punk rock wonderland?

Coughing fits still wracked my body as I stepped into the open air of Center City. Outside the greyhound station the street was covered in the blue tint of the dying night, surrendering to the coming sun that had yet to rise above the horizon. Looking around I realized I was still in unfamiliar territory, yet grateful I was out of Detroit.

I began to wander somewhat aimlessly around Center City, attempting to get my bearings while the sun rose, warming my face and revealing clear skies overhead. "God," I thought, "This feels sooo good." Back in the freezing winds of Detroit, I met a punk kid at the greyhound station that told me I should check out South Street, where my feet had finally taken me. South Street consisted of all the 'hip' stores and bars all the rich college kids flocked to on the weekends. It was similar to what I was used to in Los Angeles on Melrose Avenue but with a few pluses. One was that it had somewhat decent record stores like Digital Ferret and even a Relapse Records store. The second was all the pizza stores that kept me fed through trash scores. Finally I hit up the anarchist bookstore located on 5th and south street, The Wooden Shoe.

The small bell attached to the door gave a slight jingle as I walked in, and I was welcomed by a smile and hello from the girl standing behind the counter. For a bookstore it ws only medium sized, but crammed full of literature on every political subject I could think of.

I thumbed through their large collection of zines while talking to the girl behind the counter about the past week and how it had been the worst of my life. She was extremely helpful, telling me about the area and where I could meet people. Locking up a bike outside, a familiar looking person walked into the store.

"Jakie!!!" I practically tackled her.

"Oh my god, Matt!" she returned with a warm hug. "How are you?! I see you finally made it."

"I had a hell of a time too," I said, explaining the whole story. A lot had happened since we last saw each other in Chicago. Jakie's trip back to Philly with Liz was quick and fairly uneventful. "I'm so glad I ran into you."

"Me too," she said, stepping behind the counter. She was taking over for the girl I had been talking to before. "You should come crash at my place for a few days until you find a place." I thankfully accepted the offer and said I'd come back after she got off of work. Now that I had at least one person I knew here and a place to stay, things were definitely looking up and I continued exploring the length of south street.

Walking out of the Whole Foods grocery store with some newly liberated goods, I ran into the first traveler looking kid I had seen here today. I stopped to ask where he was coming from. "I just got here from Louisiana," he said. I told him my story while he told his.

"What's your name?" I asked.

"Charlie Brown," he replied. I laughed. The name was fitting. With his bald head, the yellow 'Charlie Brown' tshirt with the black stripe, and a ragged army napsack, he looked very much like an older version of Charlie Brown that had gone traveler-core. A friendly guy, we exchanged travel stories for a few hours until it was time for me to meet Jakie back at the Wooden Shoe.

"Take it easy Charlie Brown," I said as I walked away. Somehow I felt we would meet again. At the Wooden Shoe I hung out with Jakie while she closed up the store. Taking the local bus to west philly, I discovered that the public transit system here was one of the most expensive in the country costing two dollars for one ride. Ouch. Jakie told me it was another reason why most people in philly rode bikes.

Jakie's home was a house affectionately called the Shoddy Shack. Like most buildings in west philly, it was a three story townhouse split down the middle with a small front porch and long front steps. The left side of the house belonged to Jakie and her other housemates.

While Shoddy Shack was a rented house, west philly was also home to one of the largest centralized squatter (people who make abandoned buildings their homes) communities I had ever seen, and what I still think is one of the biggest in the united states. Over the next few days I explored west philly's community of anarchist co-ops, squats, and abandoned places.

I would eventually meet a kid named Johnny Coast on the front steps of Not Squat, a co-op house a few blocks walk away from Shoddy Shack. Johnny told me he had just 'opened up' a new house a few blocks away next to 1505 squat. The name rang a bell. I remembered that punk kid a the greyhound station in Detroit again. It was another place he said to check out if I needed a place to stay...

Johnny was a guy who looked like he fit into the west philly scene pretty well, wearing a pair of black double-knee carhart bibs, a brown coat and a knitted scarf draped around his neck and tucked under his long brown dreadlocks.

Johnny and his housemate Levi were looking for someone to fill the third room of the house. At this point I was liking what I saw in the community of west philly and expressed interest in helping establish a squat of my own here. After talking about it for a while, Johnny told me, "Come by the house tommorow so Levi can meet you, and we'll talk about you moving in."

I was excited about finally having my own place in a community with so many like-minded people. I arrived at 1503 squat the next day and met Johnny's housemate Levi. He was quite a contrast from Johnny, wearing a black pair of pants and tshirt, blond hair, and tattoos sprawling up his forearms he looked pretty goth, and was. Talking to him was a bit of a slap in the face at first. His no-bullshit attitude was blunt and confrontational which made him seem like a complete asshole sometimes, but at the same time was something that I admired about him.

The meeting went well, and they both agreed I could move in that day. We were squatting the house, so there was no rent to be paid, but there was a lot of work to be done. The foundation was sinking into the ground, there was no plumbing, support beams were needed in the kitchen to hold up the floor in my room upstairs and Johnny speculated that the face of the house might soon fall off. I would later find out the value of the property was 1,400 bucks. But it was our home, and I was happy to have it.

The house next door was 1505 squat, a building that had been around for almost six years now, infamous for its reputation as a flop house for a lot of the transient scum fuck punks passing through, and the first place the police always came to when looking for someone with an outstanding warrant. It was a pile. People shit in bags and pissed down a hole in the second floor. The whole place was caving in and no effort was ever made to fix it. It was a miracle it had lasted this long.

1505 had the added reputation of being the house were everyone got drunk, broke things, and kicked each other's asses at three in the morning as well. What we wanted at 1503 was something completely different. It was agreed that our house was to be the "kick back" area, a place to drink a beer, smoke a joint and relax with a few (but not too many) friends. If you wanted to fuck shit up, go next door.

Down the street was our playground, an abandoned oil refinery where people discarded their unwanted things by the truckload and where we scavenged many of the things we needed to fix up the house. Further beyond that were the firepits, a place hidden in the woods past the tracks where someone had built a firepit long ago.

West philly was a friendly neighborhood for the most part, but the activist community had a lot of elitism, and I often felt inferior to other activists. It was something I despised about the scene. It seemed like that's all it was, a scene. If I had difficulty feeling included in what was supposed to be "our" revolutionary community, how was a non-white, non-male gendered minority person supposed to feel? I knew it was something that was scaring off a lot of the comrades we needed most, and most in the west philly scene couldn't even see that.

It was a sad thing to see a scene that had so much creativity yet so much ignorance towards the community around them. Everyone lived like their community was all they needed. No one was reaching out. Just another scene. I didn't want another scene. I wanted revolution.

These things were becoming clearer to me now towards the end of November. I was participating in a drug study at one of the local pharmacutical companies to get money for building matrials for the house. I had no idea how to fix anything in the house, but Johnny promised to help me learn what I needed to know.

My drug study had finally paid off, but Johnny was no where to be found. He was too busy juggling his three girlfriends (who never knew about each other of course) and humping whoever else in his room to give a shit about helping me out, and then he would give me shit the next day about how I wasn't helping out around the house. Johnny and his friends were coming over all the time now and giving Levi shit about some of the local kids harrassing him. A week after he moved out I found out it was because he thought no one at the house had his back. I wish he had known I did.

Without Levi's bullish attitude to keep the house rules enforced and with my passive aggressive personality of the time, Johnny completely took over. A flood of crustier-than-thou punks came to the house, most of them c-squat kids from new york. Johnny didn't even ask me if they could move in. They were loud and didn't have any respect for the house, getting drunk, breaking plates, and intentionally banging pots and pans together at three in the morning just to keep me from getting any sleep upstairs. Total scumfucks. All the rules went out the window. It was no longer a co-op house, it was Johnny's Clubhouse.

Next door, 1505 had degraded even further. It was like the two houses had switched places. Everyone at 1505 was doing heroin now, so I started sleeping on their couch. There was just barely enough concrete in the wall to muffle the sounds of the drunken screaming coming from my house, and the place still smelled like shit, but at least it was quiet.

Alone in the living room curled up on that urine stained couch, I thought about everyone around me. What losers. Ironically, I had more respect for the junkies upstairs than the drunks in my house next door. They were good people... and at least they knew they had a problem.

Finally I had enough and started stuffing everything into my pack. 1503 was nothing like what we had aggreed it to be, and it was clear no one, even Johnny, wanted me there. I could hear them talking about me in the next room. "He isn't going to be here much longer anyways." Johnny's friend Heidi had said. It didn't feel like anyone in west philly wanted me there, including one of my best friends Reese who I had gotten into a fight that ended with her storming out of the house.

I walked past the oil cans with the two kids I had picked up from a party the night before, Nick and Seth. We were heading for the tracks that would take us to Baltimore. Light shown down from a street lamp at the end of 49th street where a hotshot sat waiting for us. Even the train was telling me it was time to go.

The three of us climbed up the ladder unto the platform of that car and I took a final look around at philly's dark skyline. I thought about it for a moment, and knew I wasn't missing anything. I jumped into the well with Nick and Seth, and a few seconds later the train started moving.