Philadelphia is in its usual sunny summer Sunday mode, which is to say there is some kind of festival, demonstration, or roadblock pretty much everywhere. Today, what affected my neighborhood was a combination of the Pride march on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and the shutdown for the FIFA Fan Fest.

The problem was, that meant that on a quiet Sunday, two normal routes to fast roads out of town were blocked off, and everyone had to come through my neighborhood.

I stood at the bus stop at 29th and Poplar, being highly entertained. The jam was considerable coming up 29th, which is normally pretty empty. It was backed up for several blocks. Periodically, someone who knew the area tolerably well would pull out of the line, zip up the wrong side of the street, and swerve onto Poplar to take the short-cut.

Poplar, however, is also impassable right now. A police car has been sitting on the block past 30th Street with its lights flashing for a week, and with orange cones marking the no-go zone. So the would-be short-cutters came to a stop at the sign and either turned left down a side street (where they would rejoin the jam) or did a U-turn in the intersection and came back (to rejoin the jam).

It would make sense for the city to put up a sign at 29th & Poplar saying “Road Blocked,” but this is Philadelphia. The police are surly and disinclined to be helpful about anything. The city itself is run by a weird bunch of incompetent hacks on the Council and supervised by yet another in our series of ineffective mayors. It isn’t so much that this large Mid-Atlantic city is corrupt, as that it’s run like a back-woods beach village.

My bus eventually came, and though it was detoured a half mile out of its route, eventually it swung back. I wasn’t in a hurry, and there was air conditioning. There were young people everywhere with rainbow socks, rainbow flags stuck in their hair, and cute outfits; they looked like my middle school students at the first school dance of the year. It was charming.

I got on a different bus home, also detoured, and had an animated conversation with two guys about Pride, the Fan Fest, the Phillies, the 76ers, and air conditioning, and wandered home past 29th Street, where cars were still backed up and enterprising drivers were still zipping up the wrong side of the street and getting stuck at 30th Street, doing a U-turn, and coming grumpily back.

I am so happy I am retired and don’t have a car. I am so happy I am not one of those frustrated, tired drivers whose bright ideas didn’t work out. I’m glad I’m not the guy on crutches who had to walk three extra blocks because he decided to go to church when all the buses were detoured, even though he was pretty cheerful about it. And I’m glad the sun is out, I’m still alive, I live in a ridiculous city, and the Phillies are winning against the White Sox at the moment. Everything is subject to change, mind you, but right now, this is it.