Benjamin Franklin, the vagabond consumed, observed once the house was not only a place, or a thing or a food. “A house is not a house,” he said, “unless he contains fire for the mind, as well as the body.”
Centuries later, JP Teti, the accidental ambassador of Philadelphia in England, also learned that: a city – no, a people – cannot survive on cheese alone.
If the headquarters of the American Power in London lies at the Embassy, a good part of his mind can be found on Cleveland Street in the center of London, sandwiched between traditional British architecture, in the form of A grainy philly diving bar: Passyunk avenue, named for the famous artery of South Philly.
Entering inside is being transported. The pendants of Philadelphia schools frame the windows; T-shirts and jerseys hang on chevrons. Tickets of a dollar with scribbles scribbled paper the walls. Among the many American bars made in London, Avenue Passyunk is distinguished for the simple fact that it is not a gadget.
Mr. Teti’s original idea, the bar is a kind of Mecca for American sports fans far from their home. Comfortable, hoarse and strongly drawing from the famous sporting obsession of Philly (EN), Avenue Passyunk addresses almost all those who hope to look at the general public sports. But it has cornered an emerging market: the NFL, which Popularity increases among international audiences. Commissioner Roger Goodell said he was hopes that the league could develop abroad And, one day, even see a super bowl played in Europe.
Such high aspirations, however, feel away from the comfortable perch of a bar stool on avenue Passyunk this week, a few days before the Philadelphia Eagles put themselves in a revenge championship match with the Kansas chiefs City. Sitting among the tchotchkes and the trophies, it is not really a question of football or steaks with cheese. It’s never Really been about it all.
“We are not a sports bar. We are a diving bar.
Mr. Teti remembers exactly where he was in January 2018, just before the last (and first) victory of the Super Bowl of Philadelphia: painful and discouraged under a rail arc in southeast London, exciting his native cheese truck for good.
The truck had been a brief experience for Mr. Teti, who grew up between southern New Jersey and southern Philly, where he had a group of Italian cousins, before moving to London to work. Convinced that he could win the city, he moved away from his corporate work in 2016 on the bet that the British could come to the appeal of glopy of the famous philadelphia sandwich.
But the elimination of the steaks of a trailer had not favored the community that Mr. Teti had hoped.
“This is not what I imagined,” he recalls at the time. “I want to keep him away from steaks with cheese. We are going to create a cultural outpost in the form of a Philly diving bar. »»
Despite the many pubs in the center of London, an authentic dive could not feel further. This did not prevent many pubs from trying, but efforts often look like a Disneyland American legion. Lost are the details experienced over time, missed that once they are an ocean outside: a sparkling neon. Football in the background. Gummary stools and impetuous sockets to talkative strangers.
These small touches are taken seriously in Philadelphia, where Diving bar culture Planned country itselfAnd words like “grain” and “filth” are less denigration than badges of honor. (An Atlantic City bar once continued Philadelphia magazine after a critic called it “diving”. According to the magazine editor: “This is a case of a place that cannot make a compliment.”)
At the risk of emptying tea in the proverbial port: the culture of advertising is simply not the same.
With a sense of renewed objective, Mr. Teti rented a space in the Fitzrovia district of London and opened its doors in March 2018. The company, known as Liberty Cheenesteak Company when it was missed From a truck, was renamed Passyunk avenue after the main artery of South Philly, where Rocky Balboa trained and where Pat and Geno (overestimated) The cheese houses always put their generational war. Mr. Teti had bought the name as a website on a whim for years ago.
“I don’t sell steaks with cheese. For me, it is always a question of sharing the cultural heritage which made my special education, ”said Teti, leaning at a wooden table in Fitzrovia in Passyunk Avenue. He is now one of the three – soon four locations, which all have hundreds of depths waiting for the match on Sunday, despite the time of local kick -off at 11:30 p.m. This Super Bowl is very different here, now, in 2018.
“It should not really have survive six months,” Teti said about his bar while laughing. “But that did it.”
“It’s Philly, from start to finish”
Passyunk avenue does not only concern cheese and, like Mr. Teti and any fan of Philadelphia, just permanent, just bitter, the Eagles are not only on football. The Lombardi is holy grail than the trophy, the end of what can only be described as a tortuous emotional pilgrimage. Indeed, the eagles are less hobby than religion, as inherent in the collective identity of the city as Benjamin Franklin, like soul music, like a Citywide Served from a striped counter on Two Street.
Mr. Teti’s bar is a dedicated disciple. He horrible late evening licenses to solve the problem of time difference for American games after hours. The bar found a Dutch butcher who can cut the steak in the right direction, and has developed its own whiz when British eating codes would not leave the real things (?).
“It’s a very specific Americana, do you know what I mean?” said Jessi Riley, from South Jersey and Culture Head for the franchise. “It’s Philly, from start to finish.”
Avenue Passyunk has good faith on the part of the stars. The Kelce Brothers, including the retired eagles center, Jason, recorded their popular podcast “New Heights” bar. The Manager of Phillies, Rob Thomson, Arrested to pull pints When the team played a series in London last year. Brent Celek, retired eagles Once it is part of it with the Lombardi trophy.
But the real references of Passyunk avenue are its walls, with a naked thumb in sight. It is a sea of familiar messages: scribbled like “Delco” or “Wooder from the Crick”, in tribute to the famous accent of Philly. A fanfare jacket from Marching South Jersey. A reusable Wawa provisions bag, perfectly crumpled as removed from a rear seat and glued to the wall.
(A disbursement in disregarding has already succeeded with what, for a foreigner, probably seemed to be an harmless accessory: an eagle head in a plush. It was actually the head of a given costume swoop, the Official Eagles mascot. International viliated by online philadelphia fansThe mortified man made his head, unharmed, the next day.)
Each piece of decoration, said Ms. Riley, has been given, often customers thus moved by the feeling that they took a back jersey at the bar.
“I have worked in several museums,” said Riley, Historian of Trade. “I have the impression of providing more culture in this place than ever in any museum in which I worked.”
‘Go Birds’
I walked in Passyunk avenue for the first time on Tuesday before the Super Bowl, dark and sucked in for the week riot of Philly. I left the city for years ago, but I went back regularly to watch big games with my brother. Surrounded by an ocean, we will pass this Super Bowl aside.
The house is not a cheese, or even a football team. Instead, I found it in the subtleties of this Fitzrovia dive, reserved only for those who know how to look: the sweet section of an “o”, which transforms it into “OWH. “The occasional” yo “, as punctuation and separation. The sweet”Shh ” That Mr. Teti adds to the second syllable of “Passyunk”.
It is deep from the bones, for anyone who has already left a place they like.
Ms. Riley will look at the match on Sunday in the same start -up team jacket in the 90s that she has had for decades – she withdraws it from a chair and displays the internal name label, always wearing the echo of A childhood scribble. Mr. Teti will be at the Leake Street tunnel, near the Passyunk Avenuea location. There, they organized a tailor-style festival, in tribute to the pre-match scene of Lincoln Financial Field, the domestic stadium of Eagles.
At the bar, we move away from the predictions, suspicious of jinxes. I will be back for a cheese soon, I get involved, pressing the door forward in the gray cold of London.
“Go birds,” I said by my shoulder.
Behind me, a familiar and separate refrain: Go Birds.
