What Live 8 really taught us

Philadelphia usually gets the shaft in the media. We're the fattest city in America, we have the meanest sports fans and we suffer from the curse of building skyscrapers above William Penn.

We're known for things like slinging snow at Santa, dropping incendiary devices on homes and having major parts of a stage fall on Supreme Court justices. We host the Wing Bowl. We pronounce water so that it rhymes with quarter. We're "the City that Loves you Back," but we're also like the relatives you don't want to visit and then make fun of after you leave.

Like many natives, I was patting myself on the back this week for a job well done. Unlike many natives, I could actually reach my back. As a city, we successfully hosted Live 8, Welcome America, fireworks, parades and Elton John -- with nary a scratch. Sure we could have used more Porta Potties at the concert. But that's part of the charm of Philadelphia -- we don't let a lot of shit get to us.

And we shouldn't, because we have a lot of great cultural attractions to offer to the rest of the country, which may or may not appreciate our use of the proper noun "Youse." But they come to Philadelphia anyway. The Art Museum, the Free Library, that weird guy with the Q102 flag who bikes around the city -- these are all things that people need to see, and we have an obligation to show them.

We can't show them if they can't get there. On Saturday, I waited an hour underground for a trolley that never came, with people who were clearly exasperated with the lack of information underground. We had already paid our token fee -- there was no turning back. I went to the SEPTA booth to see what was going on and no one was there. The public transportation system obviously wasn't part of the city loving me back.

Even the Live 8 organizers seemed to be aware of the public transportation gaffes in Philly. The motto for Live 8 was "The Long Walk to Justice." Nowhere was this more evident than at the various exits of the subway stations on Saturday. I watched as a stream of people emerged from the PATCO station at 16th and Locust, looked around and wondered where the Art Museum was. "I have no idea why this isn't connected on SEPTA," I heard as a man looked around, clearly confused. "How far do we have to walk?"

Too far. Live 8 will pump millions of tourism dollars into the Philadelphia economy. People will want to see the spot where Dave Matthews played way too long, where Elton John played way too long and where Alicia Keys played way too short. But unless we provide a safe, clean and economical way of getting the tourists where they want to go, Philadelphia won't ever be considered a first-class destination on par with Boston, New York or San Francisco, where tourists can easily ride underground.

Cara Schneider, the spokeswoman for the Greater Philadelphia Marketing Corporation, notes that most tourists don't use public transportation when they come to Philly. "Tourists walk, they take cabs, they take the Phlash or the carriages or the duckboats," she says. "A very small percentage of tourists actually take public transportation. That's more for the locals."

But even locals struggle to get to places in and around the city. And this is where the city of Philadelphia can drastically improve itself. Sure it's nice to take a Duck Tour around the city of Philadelphia and give money back to Milton Street, brother of the mayor and one of the Duck investors. Once. But it's equally important to consider that tourists don't just come from really far away. Day tourists from the area rely on PATCO and SEPTA -- not duck boats and carriages -- to take them around the city. And carriages and duck boats are pricey options for far-away tourists, leaving them without money to spend on things like cheese-steaks and Elton John CDs.

I'd like to see SEPTA get a portion of the long-term tourism profits from Live 8, to repair and improve existing infrastructure. I'd like to see public transportation improve to the point where people in Philly won't literally have to take the "long walk to justice." We'll be able to take SEPTA to it instead.

Melody Joy Kramer is a junior English major from Cherry Hill, N.J.

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