My Open Love Letter to The City of Brotherly Love

It’s the city I grew up in. Where Mitch Williams went from hero to hated in less then 7 seconds and Chase Utley turned a city's long awaited citizens into world fucking champions. Where the winters are cold and the pretzels are warm, unless you bought it from one of the homeless looking gentleman that sell them on street corners and the I-95 off ramps.
It’s where they signed The Declaration of Independence and where cops shit all over your imaginary amendment rights just because they didn’t like what their wife made for dinner the night before.

You can’t tell us shit about being let down, Donovan McNabb was our quarterback for a decade. We know all about getting knocked down and getting right back up, Rocky Balboa was born here.
Most of us couldn’t name the state bird or identify the state flag but we can name every single sub par Philadelphia 76er that averages less then 9.2 points per game, who we’ve been forced to watch year after year as we’ve trusted the process.
Of course they suck, as Philadelphians, were allowed to say it but you aren’t. Sixers 2022 baby, watch out for us.
Our public school system resembles your prisons. I refer to my high school years as my five year bid. No, you didn’t read that incorrectly, I said five.
For some folks here, standing in front of Wawa asking people if they have any spare change is a career choice. And don’t even get me started on the by passers that ask me if I have an “extra cigarette”.

Sections of our city look like war torn Iraq, if war torn Iraq had an opiate epidemic — before The United States Government spent millions rebuilding it, rather than doing so in the parts of my city that look like war torn Iraq.

I love this place as much as I hate its guts. I don’t love it, until I leave it; and then I need it. Even when I leave it, it never leaves me. For better or worse, it’s instilled in me. It’s made me who I am — the good, the bad and the ugly.

