Philadelphia. The city of brotherly love. A hotspot for rowdy diehard sports fans, sandwiches of steak, whiz, and onions, and a culture that rivals New York and Los Angeles combined. It’s a place where you either grow up and leave as fast as you can or (if you have friends) stay and get a daily dose of amusement like no other. As someone who grew up in a suburb of the city, I can say that television and movies rarely capture this image of Philly and its surrounding neighborhoods perfectly. Even the Rocky movies, which are loved by Philadelphia natives and are praised for how they display the city don’t actually do a great job of depicting it. Of all of the media that have attempted, only a few stand above the rest. The television shows It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The Goldbergs depict a version of the city and its surrounding area that most closely represents reality.
Background of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, also known simply as just Always Sunny, was created by Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day, and Glenn Howerton (also the actors of the three main characters in the show). In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, McElhenney explains that the concept of the show was born when he had a nightmare one night about “a cancer-plagued man and his insensitive pal.” This concept eventually evolved into the character of Charlie and his multiple insensitive pals running a bar in South Philly (where McElhenney is originally from) after a lot of workshopping the idea. The original idea was for the show to be about a group of wanna-be actors living in Los Angeles but when McElhenney pitched the show however, the network said that Los Angeles is overused as a setting. This led McElhenney to take inspiration from his own life having grown up in South Philadelphia.
Always Sunny and Depicting the City
In Philadelphia, everything below South Street is considered to be part of South Philadelphia (makes sense right!) Paddy’s Pub, the bar in Always Sunny is famously known for being located here. The show depicts the area as a dirty run-down neighborhood where a bunch of crime happens while in reality, it’s a major cultural staple of the city. Everything from most of the city-agreed-upon best cheesesteak spots, to the Stadium District, and even the Italian Market are located there.
The show doesn’t only take place in South Philly though, According to an article from Philly Voice, a local news website, “The Gang” as they’re referred to in many of the show’s episode titles (seventy episodes to be exact) travel all over the city going to a little over one hundred and fifty locations in Philly. These locations include City Hall, all three of the stadiums, the airport, and even the art museum. What’s crazy is a lot of the show isn’t even usually filmed in Philadelphia. The exterior and interior of the building used to film scenes in the show’s bar is actually in Los Angeles. The exterior is a building called the Starkman Building and has been used in 48 other movies and television shows including National treasure, Criminal Minds, House, and many others. Additionally, the sets for the characters’ apartments and various other locations are also filmed in Los Angeles. Despite this, the show still does a really good job of putting the city on display when it includes shots and scenes that were actually filmed in it.
Background of The Goldbergs
The Goldbergs was created by Adam F. Goldberg as a show to highlight what life was like growing up in the eighties. He took real home videos that he had recorded while growing up and used them as the basis for each of the episodes, making the show based on his real life experiences. Each episode even ends with the real home video footage he recorded as a child that the episode was based on. Goldberg grew up in Jenkintown, a borough in the suburbs of the city and because of this, the show naturally took place there. This gave the show a more involved story as it could depict more than just life in the eighties. It could depict life in the eighties… growing up around Philadelphia.
The Goldbergs And My Real Life Connections
I have always loved The Goldbergs for multiple reasons. The first reason is that I grew up fifteen minutes away from where the real Goldberg family lived and subsequently where the tv show takes place. The second reason is that they are Jewish and I am also Jewish. Judaism is rarely depicted so nonchalantly in television apart from maybe shows like Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. The next reason is that throughout the show, the main character Adam, who is a depiction of the creator of the show, has always been fascinated by movies and wants to grow up to be a director. I have also always been obsessed with movies and although I would love to be a movie director, I see my career more in directing television.
Even though I was a huge fan of the show, my parents loved it more than I could imagine. Take what I have already said about growing up near Jenkintown and being Jewish, now add actually growing up in the eighties. Every time me and my family watched the show, my parents would be mesmerized by how extremely niche things from their teenage years were being shown to them on a nationally watched television show on ABC. It was like they stepped into a time machine and saw everything from the characters going to a local Wawa to their favorite players on the Flyers at the time being talked about right in front of them.
With growing up so close to the real life Goldbergs, I have stuff in my own personal life that ties into the show. First off, in the show they go to the mall a lot. The mall they frequent is the Willow Grove Park. That’s one of the malls I grew up going to. The next tie into my life is that in the show and in real life, the Goldbergs had friends named the Kremps who owned a flower shop. One of my friends in highschool worked for the Kremps at their shop. The last biggest tie into my life is that in the show there is a recurring character named coach Mellor who is the highschool gym coach. The real life coach Mellor’s nephew was my seventh grade history teacher.
Rocky: The Biggest Philadelphian Celebrity Ever
Rocky Balboa, quite possibly the biggest celebrity Philadelphia has ever had, and yet he is just a fictional movie character. The first Rocky movie came out in 1976 making it almost half a century old. The movie, if you haven’t seen it (stop reading and go watch it if you haven’t because that’s crazy) is an underdog story about a club fighter/loan shark who gets an opportunity to fight against the undisputed world heavyweight boxing champion when his planned opponent gets injured. The movie follows Rocky as he prepares for the fight as well as having to deal with all of the press that comes along with being a local celebrity. The movie was such a success that it developed a franchise that features eight sequels and counting.
The Rocky Statue
To say Rocky put Philadelphia on the map is a humongous overstatement but nonetheless, he definitely became synonymous with it. One of the if not the biggest tourist attractions in the city is the Rocky statue. The statue was featured in the third Rocky movie and was donated by Sylvester Stallone to the city when the movie was released. The statue has been moved all over the city since its erection in the early eighties and it has sat everywhere from outside of the Spectrum sports complex to atop of the steps that Rocky famously climbed in the first and second movies. Currently, it sits next to the museum in a fenced off area.
How Accurate Were the Rocky Movies?
The first three Rocky movies have become almost a staple of depicting Philadelphia culture in the seventies and early eighties. Besides simply just displaying the city, the first two movies were actually filmed in the city completely except for a couple of scenes to try to show what the city was actually like in the seventies. According to Movie-Locations.com, in the first movie, Rocky lives in Kensington. 1818 East Tusculum Street to be exact. Despite being filmed there, the movie doesn’t give a good representation of what living in Kensington would have been like at the time. In the seventies, it was an epicenter for heroin use and violent crime (the same is still true today). The movie attempts to depict its criminal background but doesn’t really do a great job of showing it accurately because of Hollywood restrictions. Also, nobody wants to see someone shooting up heroin on the big screen so it makes sense why they left that part out. Ignoring the fact that the movie is supposed to take place in Kensington, it could have easily been a spot on representation of a different Philadelphia neighborhood at the time.
According to Sports Illustrated, in the second movie, Rocky and his wife Adrian move into a house at 2313 S Lambert St which is in Girard Estates in South Philly. Besides for a brief scene where the two are buying the house and say that it’s in a nice neighborhood, nothing is really shown about the area where the house is. In reality, Girard Estates is a really safe and nice place to live. So because of that, the second movie does a better job of displaying where Rocky lives realistically than the first movie does by limiting how much of it it actually tries to show.
The Rocky Run
One of the first scenes that comes to mind when you think of the Rocky movies are the training montages in each of the films. Each movie has its own individual montage for how Rocky trains. In the first movie, Rocky trains in the gym and does a run around the city ending on the top of the art museum steps striking his famous slow motion jump up in the air with his arms above his head. The second movie’s montage is similar to the first in that Rocky trains at the gym and runs around the city again. The difference is that the two parts are separated into different montages that play one before the other and in the running one, Rocky is being followed by a swarm of Philadelphian’s. The running montage in the second movie, although is a great scene, it’s filled to the brim with inaccurate Philadelphia geography. The “Rocky Run” as it is known is notoriously impossible to be run as the locations he runs past are not in any logical order. Filmed on location, Rocky starts at his house in Girard Estates, goes to train tracks in the North East, then somehow comes down to the Italian Market in South Philly only to find himself even more north than before. From there he goes all the way to Kelly drive along the Schuylkill river down into center city where he just runs in a loop. Eventually he finds himself atop the steps at the art museum just like in the first movie’s montage. According to an article from Philadelphia magazine, It is estimated that, based on the supposed route he took, Rocky would have run just about 30.61 miles which is over four and a half miles further than a full marathon.
Conclusion
Of all of the pieces of media that exist, I believe that very few seem to capture the essence of Philadelphia perfectly. Even the Rocky movies, which are widely regarded as a very tried and true display of the city are actually filled with inaccuracies that flip the city on its head. Many try and only a few get close enough to be thoroughly appreciated. Whether it’s using primary sources to tell real stories that actually happened, making up completely new ones, or just doing a good job of referencing aspects of city culture, the television shows It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The Goldbergs do it the best I’ve seen.