On the Map: Return to Philly, the Morris House Hotel, and Eddie Izzard at the Miller Theater
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By Mark McNease
It was a whirlwind two days, as Frank and I headed to Philadelphia for another two-night getaway in a favorite city. After having spent decades in New York prior to our permanent move to rural New Jersey, we now enjoy taking trips to Philly just an hour away. It’s an easy drive, an easy city to be in, and it offers everything you could want in a major metropolis: museums, restaurants, theater, walking (and more walking), lots of history, and our preferred place to stay: the historic Morris House Hotel, located within a short walking distance of everything we enjoy.
This trip was my gift to Frank for our 10th wedding anniversary, and I didn’t want to scrimp. Fine food? You got it! Hotel we love to stay in? You got it! Surprise show at the Kimmel Center? You got it! And while we remember all our trips, this was special. I got a foot massage within an hour of arriving, while Frank racked up his multi-thousand-step daily routine. We had dinner at Buca D’Oro with his niece Jessica, who just started attending Drexel for her graduate law degree. Day two saw us walking with Jess, hitting 25,000-plus steps on my own pedometer and seeing her school up close.
That night we had a delicious pre-theater dinner at Volver, one of celebrity chef Jose Garces’s Philly hotspots. It was Restaurant Week, so we ordered off a pre-fixe menu, then headed across the street to the Miller Theater to see Eddie Suzy Izzard. If you’re not familiar with her, Suzy Izzard is a boldly trans comedian and actor, and one of the clearest examples of being nonbinary that I can think of. Since coming out as trans, she has not so much transitioned as emerged, presenting fully as herself, with no feminine affectations at all, beyond the skirts, dresses, and makeup. “I prefer she/her,” she told the media, “but I don’t mind he/him.” She also continues to go by Eddie (for the brand, I imagine), and doesn’t mind being called by her pre-Suzy name. I have to say I find her very refreshing in her complete disregard for what we think of as gender norms. Suzy Izzard reflects her own definitions of normal, and it doesn’t depend on what anyone else thinks.
This was a trip I’ll remember fondly for years to come. We love Philly, we love the Morris House Hotel, and we love the ease of getting there. A short morning drive and we’re pulling into the parking garage just across the street from the hotel, knowing we’re going to have another great time – and we did! Enjoy the slideshow.
“Built in 1787, The Morris House takes its name from the generations of the Morris Family who occupied it for more than one hundred and twenty years. Today the Morris House remains one of the finest lasting examples of Colonial residential architecture in Philadelphia.
Though construction did not begin until after the struggle for American Independence the design of the Morris House is Colonial in style and pre-Revolutionary in character. Thanks to a dedicated preservation effort, the building remains true to its original architectural design, making it one of the most handsome historic brick residences in Philadelphia.
The elegance and distinction of the façade are unexcelled in early American city architecture.
The year 1790 opened Philadelphia’s most brilliant decade as the first capital of the United States. In those days, residents of the Morris House could wave from their windows to Thomas Jefferson returning from an evening stroll to his home on High Street (now Market), only three blocks away.”
About the Miller Theater on the Kimmel Cultural Campus
“The Kimmel Cultural Campus is comprised of the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts (Verizon Hall, Perelman Theater, SEI Innovation Studio, and the Merck Arts Education Center), the Academy of Music (owned by the Philadelphia Orchestra Association), and the Miller Theater (formerly the Merriam Theater).
The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts began to take shape in 1996 when two projects came together: The Philadelphia Orchestra’s ongoing plan to build a new home for itself, and a plan of then-Mayor Edward G. Rendell to provide a much-needed venue for some of Philadelphia’s most prominent performing arts companies and for touring presentations. With the generous consent of The Philadelphia Orchestra, which had acquired a property at Broad and Spruce Streets, the two plans were merged under the supervision and management of a new organization, the Regional Performing Arts Center (RPAC).
Today, the original dream has grown into a full Campus of buildings and represents 164 years of artistic inspiration along Philadelphia’s Avenue of the Arts. The Kimmel Cultural Campus incorporates public amenities and operates three major venues:
- The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, which is home to Verizon Hall (2,500-seat concert hall), Perelman Theater (650-seat recital theater), and SEI Innovation Studio – a 2,688 sq. foot black box theater,
- A renovated and upgraded Academy of Music (2,900 seats)
- And the Miller Theater (formerly the Merriam Theater) (1,841 seats).”
“The Early Years
In which Eddie provides an account of childhood.
Hailed as the foremost stand up of a generation. Star of stage and screen. Tireless supporter of charity. Runner. Political campaigner. Fashion icon. Human. Eddie Izzard is all of these things and more. But what of the formative years?
EDDIE: I was born in February ’62 in South Yemen. Dad was a fifties hippy with very short hair. He wrote essays on communism and stuff when he was sixteen. He joined BP as a filing clerk, not really knowing what he wanted to do. One of the first things he did was redesign the whole filing system so no-one knew where anything was except him, which I thought was a good move.
He ended up taking this post in Aden, which is a bit like saying, ‘I’m going to the moon.’ It’s still miles away, but this was in the fifties. Aden was a British colony at the time; BP had a refinery there and they built a town, roads and a hospital. My mother went out later when she’d decided she was going to be a nurse in Aden. So you had two people separately saying, ‘I’m going to go to the fucking moon.’ So then they met and got married and I was the second kid to come along.”
On the Map is a feature at LGBTSr.com offering travelogues, reviews and recommendations. Copyright MadeMark Publishing, narration by Wondervox.