1.) Nothing opens until 10 a.m.  What is this, San Pedro Sula?  Even Miami gets up earlier.  Hell, even Atlanta gets up earlier.

2.) The only place open for breakfast (excepting Starbucks, which doesn’t count.  I mean, they have Starbucks in fucking Pocatello at this point) was the Reading Terminal.  There I ordered a sage turkey-sausage  pretzel dog sold to me by a towheaded lass in an Amish snoodie.  A pretzel-dog that would have given me food poisoning had I not spat out the last two nauseous bites and then went to dry-heave in a toilet of the nastiest men’s room (truck stops included) this side of Cuzco, where they shit out in the open and don’t provide TP.  This, approximately 12 hours before boarding a transatlantic flight, when spending the duration doubled-over with stomach cramps (or worse, driving the tin-plate bus) is the kind of event that usually ends with an emergency landing in Gander, NF.  Fuck that noise.

3.) I was fraudulently sold a day-old New York Times at a Starbucks on South Street.  Yes, yes, buyer beware blah blah blah.  Stocking day-old newspapers does no-one any favors.

4.) Could find no copies anywhere of any work by Philly’s own E. Dibgy Baltzell.  Worse, when I asked at the independent bookstore where they stocked sociology, I was pointed toward political science.  When I repeated my request, I was referred to economics and philosophy.  I considered for precisely three seconds the possibility that the clerk was making an elaborate joke at my expense about the original disciplinary training of the three greats — Marx (economics), Weber (political economy) and Durkheim (philosophy) — then decided I had spent 2.9 seconds too long considering the question, and that the most likely explanation was that I was being served by an idiot.

5.) For a “foodie” town, the hot new “Peruvian/Chinese” place was, in fact, Ecuadorean and Vietnamese.  Which promised intriguing fusion, but actually delivered mediocre banh mi (pork belly and mayonaisse is simply too much, I’m sorry.  And how do you get cilantro to have no flavor whatsoever?).  To be fair, the soy-bean and mzithra salad was excellent, but it bore a more direct releationship to tossed fresh favas and feta than to anything produced in either South America or Southeast Asia.  There very well may have been awesome ceviche, but I was in no mood to tempt fate (see item #1).

6.) Finally, when you install a new exhibition at your art museum, try spackling the holes left in the wall from the last collection shown in that room.  For crying out loud, people.  At least make an effort.