As a 30-year resident of West Philadelphia, I always identify myself as a West Philadelphian first when someone from another part of the region asks me where I live.
As a 30-year resident of Spruce Hill, I've seldom met anybody outside West Philadelphia who knew where that is. In fact, I didn't myself at first! For the first six years I lived here, I thought I lived in "Cedar Park" and told everybody as much (I'm actually two blocks outside Cedar Park's boundary). Truth to tell, if I polled 100 fellow West Philadelphians, I'll bet more than half wouldn't know where "Spruce Hill" was. They're familiar with the area, they are just unfamiliar with the name. Why this is, I can't explain. Fishtown, for instance, is a neighborhood no larger than Spruce Hill. Yet everybody in Philadelphia seems at least to think they know where it is. By contrast, its larger affiliations are intensely debatable. Does Fishtown belong to North Philadelphia, Northeast Philadelphia, the River Wards or Kensington? A myriad bar squabbles along Frankford Ave. can be sparked by this debate. Spruce Hill inspires no such debate. Nobody cares what part of town it belongs to. Spruce Hill isn't a "marketing scheme" either. It goes back more than 100 years. It just doesn't resonate outside a very narrow circuit. "West Philadelphia" doesn't narrow down your address very well and it doesn't tell much about you socially. So canny Philadelphians from other parts of town will want more detail. I've learned always to answer that second question, "Oh, yeah, whereabouts?" by saying, "In University City." Everybody knows where it is, and also some basic socio-economic information about me. There was a time when most other Philadelphians thought that information was largely defamatory; today, it is largely flattering. The fact remains, it works as a neighborhood name for people from other parts of town in a way that nothing else does. That's why I use it. It's not a marketing scheme, it's a descriptive tool. -- Tony West ----- Original Message ----- From: Vincent/Roger To: Anthony West ; [email protected] Sent: Saturday, April 07, 2007 7:16 PM Subject: [UC] New Marketing Campaign When we opened Abbraccio Restaurant, a local real estate person (not anyone regularly involved on this list) said we should NEVER refer to our place as being part of West Philadelphia! Considering that the distance from us to the heart of the Drexel campus is about the same distance to Cobbs Creek Parkway and most of Southwest Philly, I found this just a little bit strange. Our customers come from all over this range. Nowadays we much prefer to call ourselves a "West Philly" place. (Although I do like Lew's "Western Liberties" also). Roger
