Open Line: On Philadelphia

The Bicentennial Babies share a mini love letter to Philadelphia — a city of rowhomes, radical histories, and family stories. 

Bicentennial Baby was created and produced by Yolanda Wisher for ArtPhilly’s WhatNow 2026 Festival. The series was stitched and spun by sound engineer V. Shayne Frederick. 

Transcript

Laurie: I think of patriotism. And then I think about my own love of Philadelphia, the idea of loving a place and feeling like proud of it, warts and all, and feeling connected to it.

Michi: Like I was born at Booth Maternity Hospital, which doesn't exist anymore on City Line Avenue.

Naila: You know, I don't know if that's also a Philly thing coming from, you know, a city that has the largest Muslim population outside of a Muslim country.

Michi: Do you know who Connie Clayton is?

Laurie: I realized how much I thought about Constance Clayton. She was the superintendent of Philadelphia schools. I just feel like she was very important.

Michi: Did you go to public school?

Kenny: So any time the Flyers would come on PRISM. People don't know about PRISM.

Naila: It was one of my, um, my grandfathers. I met him one day when I was at a protest at Temple, and he walked up to me and said he was my grandfather. I said, okay, well, that works.

Maleka: I went to Temple University. I met a lot of people. They didn't grow up with a lot of different people. And I was like, oh, so America looks different wherever you are.

Laurie: We cut school to go to like Independence Hall because we'd gone there so many times in like middle school, we'd gone to the Liberty Bell, you know, we'd just gone there so many times, as little kids, and we wanted to go one last time before we went to college.

Naila: I mean, one of the things I like about being in Philly is like, I love walking around downtown on those cobblestone steps in Old City and being like, wow, like, these are the same steps that Benjamin Franklin walked on. Like, that's just, that's cool to me.

Michi: “The Greatest Love of All” I have so, there was something I think was, was it, must have been the summer of 1984. That song is just, it's just playing out of every car. Like I'm going to summer camp at the Y in Vernon Park in Germantown. The older girls are like jumping doubledutch, and that song is just playing.

Maleka: Does Boys II Men realize how much of a moment this is? “We've come to the end of the road and now we can't let go.”