The Yankees, the Mets, the Giants — all the inhabitants and players, their accents and their attitudes. Philadelphians and New Yorkers just don’t mix well.
This just doesn’t make sense to us. If you’re going to serve a cheesesteak outside of Philadelphia, why call it a Philly cheesesteak? It’s obviously not going to be the same, or as good, so it’s idiotic to even label it “the best” or connect it to Philly at all.
Also known as the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, SEPTA is often late, smelly, dirty, full of a motley crew of characters, and leaves some parts of the city somewhat unreachable. (Hey Manayunk!) Philadelphians love to complain about the infrequency of its trains, the abrupt cancellation of its services, and the generally unreliable time schedule. But we’ll attempt to use it in an effort to avoid tickets from…
The PPA is one area of Philadelphia’s government that takes its job very seriously. A friend of mine got a $300 ticket for parking in a shoddily-marked handicapped spot outside of the Franklin Institute. If you’re parked in a 2-hour parking spot for 2 hours and 5 minutes, you can count on a hefty ticket.
A Jersey driver is essentially someone who shouldn’t have been given a license. These motorists love to forgo turn signals, drive at a speed recklessly higher than the limit, ignore what might be considered a “safe driving distance” between the car ahead of them, and piss off all drivers who are actually abiding by these laws of the road. Someone cut you off? The Jersey mentality is to switch lanes without a blinker, get in front of them and slam on your brakes at the last second. We know who you are Jersey. Please go back.
Philly accents are mocked so often because they’re difficult to actually imitate. We get it! We said water and it sounded like wooder. Sometimes bagels come out like beggles, and the Eagles sounds like the Iggles. We drop syllables, we know. Philadelphia can start sounding like Fluffya. While we’re on it though, we know yous is grammatically incorrect, but what is yinz?
As the other major Pennsylvania city, it’s easy to see why Philly and Pittsburgh have deep-rooted rivalries when it comes to sports. Pittsburgh likes to trash Philly for being “classless” and “dirty” in terms of our players and fans. But we Philadelphians can brush all that off with a snide little laugh.
Every Friday afternoon between Memorial Day and Labor Day, it’s smart to stay off any major highway in the area. The turnpike will be stopped as far west as King of Prussia and you’ll have to crawl all the way down to the shore points. Yet we can’t stay away. Week after week, year after year, we join the parade of ocean-craving Philadelphians all the way down to Wildwood. 