College chameleon

Here I am.



A West Philadelphia wi-fi cafe that sells...cereal.

The revamped Penn campus is like nothing I remember from my freshman year. Glass-and-iron buildings have sprouted out of parking lots and from street corners. Chic bookstores and movie theatres have replaced worn-out campus diners. Most jarring, Ghettomagic has closed; a yoga studio has opened next door. You can't drink 40s in there!

This post already feels like a cliche--"college grad returns to alma mater, is stunned by changes." But it's not like there were a few new trees planted or a new building finished (though that's happened multiple times over). The Penn that I graduated from--the Penn that this year's college graduates saw as freshmen--is being built over, brick by brick. And with a mugged roommate, a stolen bike, and way too many trips to crappy Thriftway for groceries among my college memories, this generally seems like a good thing.

Elaine, we've both seen gentrification firsthand; you, first in the pockets of NYC around Columbia and then down in DC; me at college and also in the District; both of us in Baltimore. Yet I can't think of a single moment when I've been more astounded by an urban transformation. Maybe it's because I haven't set foot on the campus in several years; maybe it's because the concept of an Internet cereal cafe would have been laughable three years ago and is still-amazing. But mostly it's because Penn has pumped billions into a few city blocks over a decade and the results today are mind-blowing.

When Penn's projects took the form of "Penntrification," the locals were pissed by the rising housing prices. When it took the form of Izzy and Zoe's, we were pissed by the rising sandwich prices. But when it takes the form of a mid-city oasis, I'm just pissed that my four years at Penn came four years too early.