![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
The Ghosts of Christmas Past and Present
Dec. 30th, 2008 09:45 pmToday we went on an excursion into Philadelphia, that bruised city, riding a bus to 69th Street and then a train to Market East. We found random and quite good phở in Chinatown (the place was called Phở 75, if you'd like to follow in our footsteps), with iced Vietnamese coffee for me. This was a novelty: on top of the coffee cup (which contains half an inch of sweetened condensed milk) sits the little coffee filter pot, filled with coffee grounds and hot water. Over the course of five minutes coffee percolates down through the grounds and drips into the condensed milk, which mixture is then poured over the ice. Strong and sweet and (briefly) black, mmmm.
We wandered through the arched undervaults of City Hall (supported on massive pillars and the backs of sweating stone laborers) on our way to our main destination: Macy's, formerly Wanamaker's, where, every two hours, they put on a five-story Christmas light show with thunderous live organ music and narration by Julie Andrews. My parents used to take me when I was very small, and I had only vague, magical memories of the show; I was pleased to see dozens of awestruck children making their own vague, magical memories at the feet of the big bronze eagle. Now, all the lights are LEDs instead of chunky incandescents; the show is run by computers instead of dodgy relays; the tree doesn't go up and down; the magic fountains are gone — but it's still pretty awesome. They've also got a half-scale animatronic Dickensian village tucked away on the third floor, where Scrooge cowers from genuinely spooky chain-bedecked ghosts and Tiny Tim does what appears to be the Chicken Dance. (Sweeney Todd is buried beside Scrooge, I noticed.) It's actually a rather heartwarming afternoon, if you like traditional Christmas.
By chance, the Biggest Denim Event of the Year! was going on while we were there, and since all my jeans but my olive-green ones have holes in the knees I grabbed two pair of Levi's 505s, black and blue, for $64. Joy!
We wandered through the arched undervaults of City Hall (supported on massive pillars and the backs of sweating stone laborers) on our way to our main destination: Macy's, formerly Wanamaker's, where, every two hours, they put on a five-story Christmas light show with thunderous live organ music and narration by Julie Andrews. My parents used to take me when I was very small, and I had only vague, magical memories of the show; I was pleased to see dozens of awestruck children making their own vague, magical memories at the feet of the big bronze eagle. Now, all the lights are LEDs instead of chunky incandescents; the show is run by computers instead of dodgy relays; the tree doesn't go up and down; the magic fountains are gone — but it's still pretty awesome. They've also got a half-scale animatronic Dickensian village tucked away on the third floor, where Scrooge cowers from genuinely spooky chain-bedecked ghosts and Tiny Tim does what appears to be the Chicken Dance. (Sweeney Todd is buried beside Scrooge, I noticed.) It's actually a rather heartwarming afternoon, if you like traditional Christmas.
By chance, the Biggest Denim Event of the Year! was going on while we were there, and since all my jeans but my olive-green ones have holes in the knees I grabbed two pair of Levi's 505s, black and blue, for $64. Joy!
