FDR AND A PHILLY VEGGIE OPTION
December 20, 2008 @ 8:52 PM - Mike O
I travel quite a bit for my job, predominately in the Mid-Atlantic region of the US. Anywhere from Atlanta to New Jersey is the area I typically cover. A large part of my traveling consists of short, quick trips to customer sites and leaves me with little time to indulge in the cities I’m at. This sucks, because a perk of going to a new place (or one that you may have already been to), is exploring, finding things to ride, places to eat...etc...etc…
So, this past weekend I had to go to Philadelphia for a data migration (one of things I do for my job) and wanted to make the most of my time. When I was packing my rental car in Pittsburgh on Friday afternoon, it was about 25 degrees and snowing pretty hard. I checked the weather in Philly, and though it was to be cold, it was going to be dry. After all these years, I’ve somehow missed out on riding FDR, and I figured “it may be cold, but at least go check it out.” I threw my bike in the rental car and planned on waking up early on Saturday to venture out to the park.
I woke up at about 7:15 Saturday morning, and ventured my way from my hotel in Conshohocken to the south side of Philly. When I arrived at the park, it was about 28 degrees, the sun was just barely above the horizon. There was one skater there. A guy named Brian who was working alone at bucketing up water to dry out the many puddles that were scattered throughout the park. I quickly joined him, and as we would get one puddle dry, we’d take a break and ride/skate the park. After about 20 minutes, we’d stop and start to bucket up another one. Eventually a couple more skaters and a couple more bikers showed up, and we were able to get the bulk of the park dry.
I rode the park for about three hours, and my impressions were a lot different than I was expecting. For one, this park is a heck of a lot more difficult than I had ever imagined. Every transition in that place is unique, and you really need to learn each one before you can fully utilize the place. In order to get some good lines going, you need to take a lot of speed through the park, and for me, I only take speed into quarters when I’m comfortable with the transitions. I’m not Chase Hawk, I can’t go into things full speed in my first run (do you know what I’m referencing?). After three hours I was becoming more comfortable with the place, and was able to put a few decent lines together, but by that time my fingers were frozen, my lips were burning from the cold wind, and I had to start heading back towards my hotel to get ready for work later in the day.
The place was a ton of fun, and if I had the chance to ride it more often, I think I would enjoy it even more as I would be fully comfortable riding it. I must say that I give a ton of credit to the riders I have seen in videos and photos who rip that place apart. They make FDR look a lot easier to ride than it really is, and now as I see photos of people riding the place I have a newfound appreciation of how well they ride it. I certainly hope to ride it again in the future.
After I was done riding, I wanted to grab a bite to eat. That Friday I had let Tunney know that I was going to Philly, and he told me to check out a vegetarian deli called Govinda’s (I guess it was one of his favorites when he lived there). It was up Broad Street from FDR, so it was really easy to get to. I made it there a bit before 12, which is when they opened up, so I went up a couple of blocks to Starbucks to warm up (I was about frozen by that time). This Starbucks was across from the University of the Arts, and I’m pretty sure every patron in the place was a student at this University. I love (meant sarcastically) the art culture (actually, I do love art, but thats not my point here), how there is a set way all of the artsy kids are supposed to dress, to appear as if they are real artists. It’s quite worse than the tight pants trend of a few years back, or the current bandana trend we see now (actually....maybe not as bad as the bandana’s....I see way too many Garrett Reynolds wannabe’s around Pittsburgh and in the BMX world these days....). I would love to see their actual art work, and check to see if they are just dressing for the part or if they actually have any talent (yes, if you read James Nerwick’s one pager in Ride UK a couple issues back, he says something similar, but I totally agree with what he had to say.....).
Anyways, after I had my coffee I went back down to Govinda’s, and indulged myself in a Philly Chicken CheeseSteak sub, veggie chicken nuggets and some of the best vegan brownies I’ve ever had. I ended up with so much food that I couldn’t finish it, and had leftovers for dinner later that evening. The food there is AMAZING! They double as a deli, then an actual restaurant at night. It’s so nice to find a place where you can get good vegan food on the go, and it not being Whole Foods (I love the place, but nice to find just a good deli that has vegan items). Thank you Brian, for your recommendation!
After eating, I had to venture my way through the neighborhoods of (I think) south Philly to get back to I-76, and it was cool to see more of the city that I had never seen before. Prior to this visit, every other time I had been there was on the outskirts, or right in downtown, so I really hadn’t seen a lot of the places that probably make Philly such a likeable city. So, even though the bulk of my weekend was work, I’m glad that for even just a few hours I was able to get out and enjoy a new spot and some good food.
Oh, and for anyone who wants to check Govinda’s out, it’s at 1505 South Street (Corner of South and Broad).
