Will Ulrich: Of chicken wings and Le Bec-Fin

Although I never made it to class last Friday, the 24 hours between my 6 a.m. awakening and 6 a.m. slumber typify what I have found most stimulating about my time here in Philadelphia -- and my time here at Penn.

The day ran the gamut: from a breakfast of beer, wings and topless women only Rubens could be proud of, to a lunch of snails and Gallic pretension, Friday really drove home why I've enjoyed college. From highbrow to lowbrow, from egghead to anti-intellectual, Philly and Penn have offered the kind of yin and yang that make me tick.

My alarms clicked on earlier than usual on Friday. Faith tells me that the big one started at 5:25 and the little one at 5:30, even though my drunk brain wouldn't acknowledge their existence for another half hour. Truthfully, I didn't give my brain a fighting chance, having only nodded off two hours before.

I didn't fight the alarms once I heard them, however. I hopped out of bed, brushed my teeth, had a pair of granola bars and grabbed a beer to begin my breakfast in earnest. After all, this was no normal morning.

This was Wing Bowl X.

The DP has already dropped some ink about Wing Bowl this week, so I won't belabor the basics. It suffices to say that this is the morning when 23,000 sons and daughters of Philadelphia -- which feels one part metropolis and two parts backwater that morning -- gather to celebrate what is usually the Friday before the Super Bowl.

What is on paper a publicity stunt for Philly's sports talk radio station winds up looking in person like New Year's Eve in Gomorrah.

First, there's the competition itself, a contest in which 30 intrepid souls inhale wings at a rate that would make the late, great glutton Chris Farley reach for the Rolaids. Each of the competitors enters the First Union Center with an entourage, most of which are heavy on strippers from the clubs that sponsor the heavy eaters.

These "Wingettes" -- along with a bevy of local sports celebrities and side-show acts -- whip the mostly male crowd into a frenzy. In my corner of the arena alone, three women were successfully coaxed into flashing their breasts, while all the others were given lewd invitations to do the same.

A good time seemed to be had by all -- even by the seven or eight sober attendees and by the poor guy behind us who passed out only to have his friends pour a beer in his crotch and take pictures of his "accident."

When I got back home from the festivities, I was still somewhat full from the beer and wings and worn out by the fun-on-no-sleep morning. There was no time to rest, though. I had to change gears, shower, put on a tie and head to the 11:30 a.m. seating at Le Bec-Fin, one of the nation's finest French eateries.

Wing Bowl and Georges Perrier's culinary haven on Walnut Street are at opposite ends of the Philadelphia cultural spectrum. While the crowd at the First Union Center barked obscenities at strangers, the staff at Le Bec caters to your every need, making you feel like a well-fed member of the Old Regime.

The escargot was an exotic treat for this Bronx palate; the swordfish was succulent; and the dessert was almost good enough to make me want to learn French. Once our meal was complete, my three friends and I started to walk home.

As I made my way back toward campus, it dawned on me that this is always the kind of stuff I enjoy. Don't get me wrong, I'm not in the habit of dining at four-star restaurants. If not for hard-earned gift certificates, nary a souffl‚ would I enjoy.

Rather, I always seem to gravitate to these stark highbrow/lowbrow contrasts. As my teacher in high school Mr. DiMichele used to put it, my fate in life is to run a bar like Cheers, with Noam Chomsky as a regular, instead of Norm Petersen.

Because of this tendency, Philly is the ideal collegiate venue. This is the city of both Le Bec-Fin and Wing Bowl. It boasts both the PMA and Pat's and Gino's. It celebrates Bloomsday like it's Dublin and Mardi Gras like it's New Orleans (only trashier).

Although Penn never really acts lowbrow, its undergraduates often walk a thin line between intellectualism and anti-intellectualism. There are pockets of genuine scholarly activity, but this place isn't Swarthmore. Its preprofessional, anti-egghead streak is unmistakable, but that suits me fine.

I've enjoyed going to a school that both takes it self too seriously and not seriously at all. I've liked feeling free to both join a reading group and get sloshed on a Monday.

After a four-hour nap on Friday, my day picked up again. That night, I played blackjack in Atlantic City until 4:30 a.m. Although I can't quite remember, we might have talked Shakespeare at the tables.

Will Ulrich is a senior Philosophy major from the Brox, N.Y.

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