The Future of Downtown Harrisburg

On the day his used bookshop officially closed for business, Eric Papenfuse invited me over for a tour of Fissel’s Antique Department Store in Midtown. It was there, in the fusty old building which once housed a 1920s theatre, that he was making serious headway on his new venture: the first independently-owned coffeeshop, bookstore, and lecture hall Pennsylvania's capital has ever seen.

For a man with so much responsibility, Eric is surprisingly upbeat. He shakes my hand and talks effusively on our way up to the second floor veranda—the open space which he hopes will become outdoor seating for an upstairs café. On my tape recorder, there is a moment of silence as we both revel in the view of the capital building, which, stepping out on this particular day, is offset by the dramatic mis-en-scene of a stormy, late afternoon sky.

In lieu of the majestic cityscape, though, Eric is circumspect. Harrisburg has needed retail for a long time, and in his mind there is only a weak excuse for why it has not been created before. "The independent entrepeneur is definitely a less controllable agent, and so small business has been purposely avoided in this area for years. It's a sad but true phenomenon," he says. "Because it is the entrepeneurial class which is going to begin to question, agitate, and push for more than mediocrity."

Since 1981, when Harrisburg was marked as the second most distressed city in the nation, a $3 billion investment helped turn things around, into what the Washington Post recently called a “lively” and “exciting” locale. But the largely subsidized, top-down, city sponsored—and not individual-led–development is how residents of Harrisburg have come to identify. And it shapes who they are.

“Look,” Eric said, pointing down at the unembellished front doors of Broad Street Market, in front of which two hooded adolescent boys stand, holding plastic bags and drinking from gigantic Styrofoam cups. From our parallax view, there is no one else on the block but an older woman pushing a babyless stroller up the street. A lone plastic bag floats out of nowhere, blowing in circles, as if strategically released by a film crew.

“How can the Broad Street Market not have a sign with its hours?” Eric asks. “How can the Broad Street Market not have a kiosk, which announces local things in the neighborhood?”

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The Broad Street Market is by all accounts a prime example of the underutilized, relatively mismanaged buildings that have long inhibited economic development and population growth in Midtown.

In the 1840s, the Broad Street Market—then known as Market Square—was the centerpiece of Harrisburg city. Vendors came from the surrounding counties to sell their goods, and because the market was centrally located in town, it was also a site for civic events. Residents gathered for political rallies, firemen’s musters, and election night bonfires. They came to see and hear the great heroes of the day. The square was an impetus for neighborhood rapport.

Today, unless you know to look for it, Broad Street Market is highly invisible. As Papenfuse said, the hours of operation are not clearly posted, and it is not open when people are off work, except for the weekends.

“Were some of those tourism dollars currently being spent on the Whitaker Center and Civil War Museum being spent on the Broad Street Market, you could have far more people coming on a daily basis,” he says. “But the city keeps thinking about having people drop in and leave, not about having people come, park, stay, and develop a view. So the Civil War Museum, for example, where was it built? It was built way up in Reservoir Park. This is the same mentality as what happens on restaurant row. It’s a sort of getting people to come in, use the city, but not really expecting them to want to stay and linger, and talk and develop.”

It sounds obvious that devoting more money to the community development of midtown would increase pedestrian traffic and improve the interpersonal relationships within the neighborhood. But the city budget is tight, and there's no room for such things.

“You could say the reason midtown has been deserted for twenty years is because of limited resources. And that’s fine. It's true. I’m not discounting it,” he says. “But the city does have the money and resources for the Civil War Museum, and they put that money into that, and other certain things. What I’m saying is they’re putting it into the wrong things.”

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Like squatters, Eric and I wander around the neighborhood of North Third Street for almost an hour, peering into windows of abandoned shops and musing about the community that could exist if things go as planned. I take note that the walk through midtown is a different, less scenic route than the footpath that carries you along Front Street. The architecture and narrow streets possess a unique, old-timey charm that is unmatched by the view of the purling green waters of the Susquehanna Riverfront. It possesses different hope, it seems. It delivers a unique gaiety to the observer.

When our tour of the neighborhood finally takes us back to the door of Fissel’s, the sky looks grim but acts nicely as a shared antagonist. Eric has plenty more to say to me, but it is getting late, and the interruptions from his cell phone have become more frequent. We shake hands and part ways, and as I stand idly on the sidewalk, looking out into the street, a voice from behind emerges–“excuse me”–and a man on a bike passes, ringing a scanty bell. My gaze follows him southbound, landing on a forlorn parking lot overrun with weeds and graffiti.

A few ghost towns manage a second life. Midtown Harrisburg is not exactly dead, but it’s in a sort of coma. If it can support the renovation project by reacting to retail in a positive way, it may officially shed its harum-scarum past and become a place where people are not just likely to visit, but to stay.

intuition over reason.

Stanley Hall, founder and first president of the American Psychological Association, described women as different from men in every organ and tissue:

"She works by intuition and feeling; fear, pity, anger, love, and most of the emotions have a wider range and greater intensity. If she abandons her natural naivete and takes up the burden of guiding and accounting for her life by consciousness, she is likely to lose more than she gains, according to the old saw that she who deliberates is lost"

in defense of the heedful.

Jim Webb's only been in office for a term, and it shows--he still has an ability to think through issues.

In the June 26 NYRB, Republican Chuck Hagel remarks on the Virginia Senator :

"He questions, he probes, he thinks through the consequences--we almost never do. We take an action--like going to war--without thinking. He listens."

Reminds me of this friend I once had. We'd hang out for an hour, and he wouldn't say a thing. We met at a local show. I liked him because he was dark around the eyes, and in that room where he was taking care of the music, he didn't seem interested in anyone who approached him.

When we hung out he would act nervous and intrusively shy. But then he'd speak. And whenever he would, he'd say these profound things. I hung out with him more just out of the sheer joy of waiting for him to open his mouth. Also good was driving around with him after sunset, because we could always hear the sounds of night through our open windows. He'd never want music playing or anything. He wouldn't want to discuss this or that personal pain. We'd just drive in silence and we could hear the crickets and the solitary car moving across open country road, balmy breeze in the face.

Many years ago, hanging out with this guy would have made me way tense. But then I moved to New York, where sometimes I'd be in a room with six or ten people I didn't know, all of whom I really wanted to know, but with whom I understood I could not speak unless I had something important to say.

People talk all the time, especially to their elders, and it's completely meaningless stuff just coming out without limitation. It's often a mixture of nerves and personal uncertainty. Most of the time, if you listen, you hear a cacophony of self-deprecation and self-importance. So to make an impression, I knew I would have to engage. And that was okay, I could do that, and I wanted to tell every loose-lipped stranger I'd ever met: So Could They.

After reading Emily Gould's piece in the NYT Magazine a few weeks ago (which I won't bring up again), I've done a lot of thinking about what it means to think before you speak. I decided the point of speaking at all is to connect with someone, right? to convey meaning, to engage two or more brains. But conversation is like a car, and that's why we'd--my friend and I--sometimes drive in silence. Like a car, you get inside for a purpose--you're hoping to move somewhere. If you haven't got something to say just then to propel you, or if you can't make conversation move you both beyond where you started, then turn off the engine and get out.

Quick. You can't afford to waste gas.

Narrow Minds Use Beer as Defense for Narrow-Mindedness.

CAPTION: The oldest lesbian couple in history at last legally bound

The news was coming over the little 13-inch screen at my house, on which there are all of five channels. California legalized same-sex marriage, the newscaster was saying. My mother looked up from the sink where she was watching vegetables and started doing that clicking thing with her mouth.

“If being gay is a choice, Mom, then surely you remember the day you chose to be straight?”

“It wasn’t a choice for me," she said, back to the zucchini.

“So, but, it’s a choice for gay people?”

“All sex is a choice.”

“But you just said it wasn’t a choice for you.”

“Of course it was.”

“Mom.”

“Yes?”

"What's the hardest thing about rollerblading?"

"I don't know. You want a beer?"

"Yeah, Troeg's. Thanks."

And that was it.

Listen and Learn.

The best shrinks, much to the chagrin of their patients, are the ones who do not advise but listen. They are those who provide, I think, a forum for consciousnesses connecting; they are not there to tell a person how to live their life, but to give the individual verification. "You think therefore you are"

So, too, I think, is the role of the philosopher. Open any critical theory book--the point of research is not to assert but to suggest; not to demand but to postulate.

What's different about philosophers and psychologists is that the former are prone to rant, to insist and assert without listening.

Pourquoi les oignons?

If, upon waking, the apartment smells like onions, or whatever your roommate ate for dinner last night, and that smell irks you, and makes you feel unhappy, you should vanquish all worries, turn on the coffee percolator as usual, and take out the trash yourself. Your roommate has many perverse faculties of the senses which make it impossible for her to know how she impedes the good air with her processed casseroles and herbed sausage. The day goes on as you consider all that is still favorable.

Hard Review.

Your friends, you know, who are sweating and drunk, in the corner of some cavernous Lower East Side beer hall, will all be talking together, perhaps at some point, about you, and the same will be true when you die; they’ll be together again, in some cavernous Lower East Side funeral home, deciding what your life—that unfair task, that series of unpaid internships—meant. And what it will amount to is what it meant to them. That will be your life, when someone says, “Oh, she was so ______________”