Results tagged “goosegirl”

Unfortunately, we never got a chance to ask them who they were or what was going on after the dancing either. (There are few imperious commands you can issue at this Phillyist and actually expect results. "You - you're coming to dance," is, generally speaking, one such command. We like to get our groove on. Besides, as another recruited dancer said to her friend - "We get to go dancing on a Saturday night without paying a cover? Awesome!!") The police, being in receipt of a complaint, shut the whole thing down not long after we got there.

Is it Phillyist's imagination, or is the city much emptier than usual? We realize that many locals go down-the-shore 4th of July weekend...and what's further, there's no Live 8 this year so we shouldn't be expecting last year's swarming crowds...but it's almost a ghost town around here. There were no crowds Sunday when we strolled through the kid-friendly festivites at Penn's Landing, the sidewalks were clear in Old City...and just look at this picture we snapped of Rittenhouse Park's Goose Girl over the weekend. Any other hot Saturday afternoon (or even lukewarm Saturday afternoon for that matter) the fountain would be full folks cooling their heels. This weekend she looked positively lonely.

Long before Robert Downey Senior made it the subject of a documentary film, and before and the Project for Public Spaces named it among the Top 12 Public Squares in the U.S. and Canada, I fell in love with Rittenhouse Square. It is, without question, one of my favorite spaces in the city. When high school friends and I would come to into the city for a Saturday escape from the pseudo-suburban wilds of Northeast Philly or as an after school diversion via the Broad Street line, Rittenhouse Square was often among our stops. We visited it often, so I know the park well; I have lain on its lawn, gathered 'round the goat statue, climbed the lion, splashed my feet in the Goose Girl Fountain and kissed the frog statue. And yet, after years of harmless, youthful loitering amongst its foliage, Rittenhouse Square has lost none of its allure for me.