City No. 2: Wilmington, Delaware, or, “Wilmington, how you disappoint me so…”

Our Honeymoon, or, How We Got to the Midwest One Interview at a Time: The Northeast Cities According to Me, the One Who Wanders the Cities While Peter Completes the Interviews.    

Disclaimer: This should by no means be used as a real resource to the northeastern cities.  While I am an observant person, I have no background in city development, nor do I have expertise on the cultural or historical background on these cities.  For the most part, I am reviewing these cities based on my personal preferences, as we will be moving to one of these cities in the spring.  And, if you are hoping for a lot of artwork (as this is my art blog), sorry to say, but you will be sadly disappointed if you continue to read this blog in the upcoming two months.  Apart from my photographs of the cities, I doubt I’ll get to very many art and craft projects.   Lastly, please forgive any spelling or grammar errors.  I'm typing these out pretty quickly, sometimes battling failing routers at these coffee shops.  There's just no time to proof-read. 

  

Just like Baltimore, I knew nothing about Wilmington before we got here.  Unlike Baltimore, however, it was not due to the fact that it is underrated and unappreciated, but rather because there’s really nothing here to rate or appreciate, and therefore nothing to hear about outside of the city.  I’m being harsh, aren’t I?  Well let’s just say that I have not enjoyed my time here.  To emphasize my point, I have included a photo that describes my feelings for the city.  And don’t you worry, it was taken here in Wilmington, so it is a dual-function photo.  You get to see how I feel about Wilmington, and you get to see how Wilmington feels about me. 

Anyway, some things about Wilmington that I must mention: It is about 30-40 min. away from Philadelphia, and about 50 min. from Baltimore, and 2 hours from New York.  These facts are very interesting to the daily routine that Wilmington endures, as the result to being so close to where the “action” and “real cities” are, is that no one actually lives here in Wilmington except for the very poor, and people who don’t enjoy long commutes.  Wilmington houses many bank companies here, and it actually has a very impressive downtown area surrounding the bank buildings.  The bankers and company come down for their 9-5s, eat lunch in the city at the restaurants down the street, and then leave when they’re done with their workday.  To any of the cities that I mentioned above (except for NY, maybe.  That seems far away to me…).  The population of the city plummets at this hour in the day.  We even went into a bar and the bartender told us she would be surprised if she had many more customers after us.  This was at around 7 pm.  “If I ever owned my own business here, I would close at 2.  It’s just not worth keeping it open.  It costs more to pay for the utilities and the employment than to just close.”  This was on one of the main drags in town. 

Now before I keep harping on how much I think Wilmington sucks, I must mention that I was not properly informed on the city before I went in to explore.  Our couch-surfer hosts did not have many suggestions as to where I should go, except for “Trolley Square” which I kept mishearing every time she said it because she said it so fast.  I ended up not finding the “cool” part of Wilmington (which was Trolley Square!  “Aah!  She was saying “Trolley Square!”) until last night.  This was after a day of driving and walking around town TRYING to find the hidden jewel—the hip part—the “redeeming attribute” of Wilmington.  While I came close (I think I was a block away at one point), I just never drove far enough into that section of town to see it. 

Anyway, after I’ve had some time to think about why this happened, as well as having a chance to speak with a local about it, it is because of this:  Wilmington is not localized at all.  While it appears to be formatted like any other city out there (a down town with some close neighborhoods), Wilmington is completely spread out and offers neighborhoods, but they’re quite far away from each other, as well as from down town.  You really have to know where they are before you start trying to find them.  This was my mistake.  Sorry Wilmington, I didn’t quite understand you, but still.  You should know better…

After seeing Trolley Square last night, my opinion was a little more neutral, rather than “I hate Wilmington,” but after thinking about the mentality that is so common in this city, I must stay that I still rather dislike Wilmington.  I’ve lived in a feeder city before (DeKalb, IL), and my experience seemed similar to the ones people here are experiencing.  Because they’re so close to Philly and Baltimore, no one really cares too much about improving this city, which would be an incredible feat.  Instead, the common theme seems to be that people are saving up enough monetary resources so that they can move out of this city, into a better one.  And because this is the overall consensus, people are constantly leaving, and no one is investing into the positive change in this local community.  Also, it appears that the local visual and performing arts are also overshadowed by the arts in Philly and Baltimore (and New York in this case).  Any time anyone wants to go to a good show, they don’t expect it to be local and in Wilmington, they automatically expect it to be out of their city.

Basically, what is great about Wilmington, DE?  Answer:  It’s close to Philly and Baltimore.  Enough said.