Pirates Plank

Archive for February 20th, 2010

Do you ever wonder how and why cities may get a particular nickname? I do and I’m not really sure but at one point it become somewhat of an obsession. A few years ago I developed a plan to categorize all of the city and state’s thematic labeling phrases and various nicknames and then tour all of them and evaluate the accuracy. Then I was going to write my feedback and give my rating and create a website that reflected this. I was really interested in it and had gotten started when I realized how long it would take me to visit every single city on my list. I’m still interested in it but I can’t spend all of my time traveling and to be honest the entire project will take me years so I’m not considering other ways of establishing the same review. I did get to a few different places before my ambition waned and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was one of those. One of the things I realized quickly was that in visiting each of these cities I became fascinated by other aspects of them and Philadelphia is one of those.

It is really an incredibly beautiful city. The phrase that is commonly associated with Philadelphia is the city of brotherly love. I was interested in this aspect and wondered how it might have affected the continued development of the city throughout the ages. But let me say that I really didn’t get that far in my pursuit but think it’s an interesting concept to consider when gazing out of a hotel room in Philadelphia at the city skyline. There is some beautiful architecture in the city and there is really just an incredible historic and relevant atmosphere in it. That’s what I first became captivated by. It’s interesting that the brotherly love phrase is from the Greek and that also places a sense of historic wonder on it. Then I added to that the musical history and its importance, well and Philadelphia’s importance to music as well. Sometimes I feel like music is a direct communication with our spirit and soul music in this city is a big part of its culture and Philadelphia has had an impact on the development of soul music.