Why there’s nowhere to hang out at night in Philly anymore

The Penn Bookstore at 36th and Walnut Streets looks like any other urban campus bookstore. Operated by Barnes & Noble, it sells university paraphernalia along with artfully organized bestsellers.

On the second floor, looking toward University of Pennsylvania’s campus, is a Starbucks with floor-to-ceiling windows and plenty of seating.

That’s where Cesar Guzman-Ortega, a Southwest Philadelphia resident, is enjoying a quiet night out. He has no affiliation with the university or much else in this prospering corner of West Philadelphia.

That’s because Guzman-Ortega lives more than two miles away, on 58th Street, in a senior citizen apartment complex. But the bookstore is accessible by trolley, and it’s one of the rare non-bar businesses in Philadelphia that stays open relatively late (8:30 p.m.) and lets people socialize or just read in peace. It’s one of a shrinking number of semi-public spaces that constitute Guzman-Ortega’s social world.

“I’ve gotten back to the routine of coming here every week, browsing among the books, and buying a beverage,” said Guzman-Ortega, who returned after being vaccinated against COVID-19. “You can just sit down and relax.”

In addition to Guzman-Ortega on a recent evening, the bookstore hosted a few students and a man weighed down with bags bursting with his belongings. Another older gentleman walked aimlessly around, gazing out the window.

This bookstore is just one part of a constellation of semi-public spaces around Drexel University and Penn that are open at night for those who aren’t looking for a raucous or TV-lined bar.

As a result of the pandemic, in West Philadelphia and elsewhere in the city, hours have grown short at many coffee shops and other “third spaces” ― a term for social environments that aren’t home or work — where customers can idle away the evening hours.

The Green Line at 43rd and Baltimore used to stay open until 10 p.m. It now shutters at 6. The anarchist standby Satellite Cafe now ends service at 4. Pre-pandemic, the Gold Standard served dinner; now its hours don’t even last until 3. A handful of coffee or diner-oriented businesses stay open until 8, but the overwhelming majority are either restaurants trying to move customers quickly or alcohol-fueled bars.

The Free Library of Philadelphia’s system ideally could serve as a noncommercial, truly public venue. But even before the pandemic, library hours were uneven and nonexistent on weekends at locations like the ornate building at 40th and Walnut. In recent years, staffing shortages and budget cuts have made service even worse.

“I worry things won’t ever be the same,” said Guzman-Ortega. “These were all haunts, public spaces that were really nice to be in. Then the pandemic for a couple of years wiped out all of that. It’s going to take a while to get back into the swing of things.”

Beyond the Penn Bookstore and its counterpart at Drexel, businesses that still stay open late include a Starbucks at 39th and Walnut and a Panera Bread at 40th and Walnut. Just to the south, the Last Word bookstore stays open until 10.

Across the street from Panera, the cafeteria atop the Acme at 40th and Walnut hosts a varied crew of neighborhood denizens. On a recent evening, a young man played video games on his laptop next to a woman and her children eating a dinner purchased at the hot bar downstairs. An older fellow in a skullcap studied from a pile of religious texts, and several more people watched TV.

“The thing about the Acme [cafeteria] is that you can hang out up there, even if you haven’t bought anything,” said Gina Renzi, director of the Rotunda, a Penn-owned venue that is catty-corner to the grocery store.

The Rotunda is an all ages community arts venue and does not serve alcohol. Many of its attendees are teenagers or college students.

“We know that folks are hanging out in that cafe space before or after shows because a lot of times people don’t want to just go home,” Renzi said. “That’s the thing with the Rotunda, too: You can come in and spend absolutely no money, and nobody’s going to ask you to leave.”

University City is home to so many “third spaces” partly because Penn and Drexel see them as part of a larger strategy to improve relations with the surrounding neighborhoods. Many of the businesses that allow community members to hang out lease space from the universities. Penn and Drexel negotiate with their tenants over the hours of operation and push for later closings, in part to keep the streets surrounding campus active, inhabited, and safe.

This policy dates to the mid-1990s, when Judith Rodin became Penn’s president. She launched a revitalization effort along 40th Street as part of an effort to address public safety — two Penn grad students had been murdered in the area during the same period — and to repair relations with the neighborhood after an urban renewal strategy that resulted in demolition and displacement of many Black residents in the 1960s.

It was during Rodin’s tenure that Penn opened the bookstore on 36th and Walnut, previously a surface parking lot. The university also bought the rundown commercial block of 40th between Walnut and Locust, which now includes the Panera Bread and a popular movie theater. Almost all of the “third spaces” around Penn date to this time. Notably, the current president of Drexel, John Fry, was then Penn’s executive vice president and oversaw planning at the time. He has brought many of the same ideas to his current job.

“We can’t always control the operating hours, but we can have some influence,” said Anthony P. Sorrentino, an associate vice president at Penn. “We want there to be vibrancy and activity on the street. We don’t want darkened storefronts. Even if a store is closed, we forbid in our leases those roll down metal gates so there’s always luminance coming out of the storefront.”

In the 1990s, too, the city’s Office of Mental Health — now the Office of Behavioral Health — located many of its housing programs for people with mental health disabilities in University City. Then, the property values were relatively low, the old Victorians were already carved into apartments, and the population was dominated by transient students who were less likely to push back at neighborhood meetings.

This resulted in a large population of residents who didn’t have normative daytime schedules and often hung out at area coffee shops. As the university-backed “third spaces” came into existence at the same time, their clean, well-lit confines also came into use.

“There’s a disproportionate concentration of these units in University City,” said Dennis Culhane, a professor at Penn with expertise in homelessness who lives west of 40th Street. “These are good neighbors, good people, but they don’t have daily activities. One of the ways they can integrate in the community is through these commercial locations.”

The Penn police force in University City has a policy of non-harassment for those hanging out around campus, according to Culhane, which extends to homeless people and buskers.

“Historically they’ve been accommodating to people in the area who might be lingering, or even panhandling,” said Culhane, who served on Penn’s advisory board for public safety for 20 years. “The university has tried to not be on the side of trying to criminalize or move people along.”

While the university-sponsored “third spaces” are available in their limited geographic sphere, the evening coffee house culture has shriveled in the rest of West Philadelphia and elsewhere.

Few coffee shops in Center City or South Philadelphia stay open past 5 p.m. The city’s all-night diners are dwindling away. The Barnes & Noble on Walnut Street is downsizing, causing an outcry over the loss of a public restroom and accommodating public spaces. Fast food restaurants have largely vanished from downtown.

The few evening spaces left can be found in Chinatown’s Boba tea cafés and a handful of Starbucks.

Mike Lannutti, who has been living in Philadelphia on and off for 25 years, remembers coffee shops in Center City that stayed open until 8 or 9, if not later, that drew active crowds.

“Now on my nights off, it’ll be like 8 or 9, and I want to go out, but I don’t really want to drink,” Lannutti said at the Starbucks at 39th and Walnut with his coffee, cookie, and book arrayed around him.

“I’ve been surprised by [this Starbucks],” Lannutti said. “There are a smattering of college students doing work or eating together. But a lot of it seems to be folks like me who live out in West Philly.”

Lannutti is a night shift worker and likes a place without alcohol where he can relax before work. But Starbucks has been pulling back, too, shuttering a location at Eighth and Chestnut and planning for a new takeout-only venue.

“In the summertime, I use Rittenhouse like a living room,” Lannutti said. “But now it gets cold and dark. Now if you don’t really drink, there’s nowhere to go.”