Geno, no offense (and I generally respect all of what you had to say in your various posts), but this is the third or fourth time I've noticed you put up a posting saying that you suspect that an original poster is fake. If I recall correctly, one of those times happened to be in a thread that I myself started (and I'm obviously not fake).

The result each time this has happened, has been that the thread is taken less seriously and people feel less willing to post. This is even when some very serious issues of concern to anyone who cares about this city are being discussed such as the causes of urban violence.

I personally don't think that a person from China using the user name "Chandler Bing" is suspicious. In fact, "Friends" *is* big in China as it is elsewhere in the world. Is the use of "Chandler Bing" any more suspicious that other people's user names??? Also, the frequency of that person posting is also not a clue as to whether that person is fake or not. In this case, the purported original poster is living in China which means that, by the time he/she logs in again, he/she would have seen that 100 or more posts have been made since heshe last logged on. Whatever questions he/she may have had would have been answered and thus there would have been no need to make a follow-up post. Would it have been proper netiquette to have made a "thanks for all your responses" post? Perhaps, but consider that he/she might not have as easy of an access to the internet as we here in the US do. He/she may have been posting from an internet cafe, which is quite likely.

In any event, I looked up "Chandler Bing" in the PhillyBlog archives and he/she has started another thread askign what "mpennsky" meant. In that thread, he/she also noted that he/she was living in China and not used to "Philly expressions" (not knowing that that was another users name). This hardly sounds like a flame-starting post. Further, that post was also on May 9 (same day as the post that started this thread) and just a little over a day and a half ago. So it is very plausible that this poster first started posting on PB on 5/9 and hasn't logged in since (it's only May 11).

All that said, I do want to note that I think much of what you (Geno) has had to say on various sisues on PB has been very respectable and I enjoy reading your posts. But please be less suspicious of some of the newer users who post stuff here. I do think that you have a tendency to yell "fire" a little too soon on these things.

I'm rubber your glue what bounces off me sticks to you

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hmmm, are we sure you're not fake?
Anyway, maybe you're right, point taken. If I was hasty in that judgment I apologize to Mr Bing.

Nobody does "big government" like the hypocrites in the GOP. Maybe you should read a book instead of listening to those right wingers on the radio and TV.

You will hear the people who are stuck in Philly (locked into mortgages and/or jobs they can't get out of) tell you it's safe- because they don't want to believe anything else.

It's like the corporate (conservative) U.S. news media trying to tell us there's no recession.

The OP is concerned about his/her safety while here in the USA. We can honestly say that our air travel and passenger rail networks are extremely safe, more so than at home. We most likely have a higher crime rate than at home, but it is generally limited to the ghettoes, and even then mostly to bad guys in the ghettoes. What the OP really needs to be careful about is the automobile. Either as a pedestrian or more likely occupant of a car they are far more likely to get maimed or killed by an automobile than a bad guy, and all this advice on this string is doing the OP a disservice. As a matter of fact, I believe that for non-thugs Philly is safer overall than the American average, if (as I suspect) the OP is trying to avoid getting maimed or dying.

I just don't get this attitude. In forty years in this city I have never had a problem and I've spent time in rough neighborhoods as well as in center city. And, no, I'm not stuck here...

Yeah, and you hear people living in the suburbs who like to pretend that their existence isn't deadly boring.

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"Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness."

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973)

Please don't knock Detroit. It's already taken it's fair share of criticism and abuse, it doesn't need any more from you.

And really, the gun violence there could be said to be very similar in nature to what happens here. It's all people who know each other killing and shooting, tourists aren't really in danger. Not that there's much to do as tourist there, but still.

I had a super time in Detroit as a tourist about 10 years ago. We stopped on the way to Mackinac and stayed over to see The Henry Ford Museum (worth the trip all by itself) and Greenfield Village. Also it was facinating touring downtown on the people mover with all the abandoned skyscrapers although I understand they got rid of quite a few in the last couple of years. We had lunch on the top of the Weston? hotel overlooking the city. I also toured several of the suburban business centers and places like Gross Pointe. It was a great trip. I highly recomend it.

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STAY WET AND STAY HAPPY!