Eric Obenzinger: Moving on to a metropolitan area

By ERIC OBENZINGER - Guest Columnist

Quaker Shaker, my column in The Daily Pennsylvanian, has come far this year. I wasn't quite sure what its legacy would be until you all named "Quaker Shaker" the best nickname for Penn's mascot in 34th Street's "Best of Penn" issue. Now I know that, even if you weren't reading my columns, you were at least checking out my head cut.

The history of the Quaker Shaker name begins in my high school with our school newspaper, which I co-edited with two of my friends. While the paper had many titles before -- including Quaker Shaker, The Inner Light and GENESIS -- all the editors agreed that Quaker Shaker best fit the journalistic masterpiece that we expected to put together.

While we put out only three mildly readable issues, I think our first issue was the best. It was hurriedly printed on computer paper at a copy shop and distributed in time for Quaker silent meeting on the morning of September 11, 2002. Called One Year Later, the issue contained essays written by many of my friends about the September 11th attacks. The back cover featured a 1970s mural of King Kong smashing a jet plane above the World Trade Center.

The writings expressed our thoughts and experiences over the preceding twelve months. Only students at a Quaker high school in lower Manhattan could have written those essays.

Growing up in New York City -- especially in that year after September 11 -- was a formative period of my life. I didn't quite realize this until I came to college and met people whose high school experiences were very different from mine.

I never drove cars in high school. I took the subway to school every morning at 7:15. In fact, most of my high school friends still don't have driver's licenses. In retrospect, I can't believe that my parents let me wander around so much, apparently unbothered by the thought of my riding the subway at any hour of the night. We never went to malls, and I've never stepped-foot in a Wal-Mart in my life.

My friends and I once went to a bowling alley that turned out to be bankrolled by Yassir Arafat. While my drinking tolerance has remained pretty much unchanged since 10th grade, I never heard of beer pong until I got to college. Many of my friends used to go smoke in a park near school and hang out with a homeless man named Tommy Wiley, who made frequent trips to rehab at the hospital near by before fatally overdosing in 2001. We often had track practice in the same park, and my team competed on a track built on top of a sewage treatment plant.

I don't mention these things because they are subjectively better or worse than anyone else's pre-college experience. However, I hope that they convey how alien I sometimes feel compared to the majority of people here who grew up in the suburbs.

At graduation time, I can't help but notice how many people are planning on moving to places like New York, San Francisco, Washington, Boston and even sticking around in Philly.

I don't appreciate all of you New York-bound people increasing the demand for housing in my hometown and increasing the chances that I will live with my mother after graduation. But I do welcome so many people making a foray into urban environments.

A small wave of privately-funded urban revitalization is sweeping the country, with residential development in many Northeast city centers long thought finished by industrial migration and suburban sprawl. Quintessential suburbs such as Stamford, Conn., and Glenn Ridge, N.J., are home to new multiple-occupancy dwellings in their centers. The death of Jane Jacobs provoked a national evaluation of urban life in America. Recently, the renowned architect Frank Gehry unveiled his contribution to a $1.8 billion project to create something like a real downtown in Los Angeles.

One of our generation's many challenges will be reducing per-capita energy consumption. To this end, urban life makes a lot of sense. Urban layouts position more people and jobs into smaller geographic spaces. And "the less space people travel across, the less energy spent on transportation. Public transportation is more energy-efficient than people getting into their cars," said Elaine Simon, co-director of the Urban Studies Department.

Many of us who chose Penn chose it because of its urban location, which makes Penn unique from the cookie-cutter liberal arts schools scattered across the country. The reason I chose to transfer to Penn is because few top-notch universities have bars, restaurants, shops and theaters in such proximity.

My advice to this year's graduating class is to follow through: If you're moving to a city for the first time, think about staying there. When the time comes to start thinking about raising a family, don't write off cities as unfriendly places to raise children. By joining the urbanization wave, you can take part of what makes Penn so great and redefine the American lifestyle.

Guest columnist Eric Obenzinger is a College senior from Manhattan, N.Y.

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