I do not watch soccer. When I have an urge to watch a long slow game with only occasional scoring, I watch baseball. However, Philadelphia is one of the cities in the USA that is hosting World Cup games this year, so soccer has come directly to my neighborhood.

That’s because in honor of the World Cup, FIFA and the city have taken over the wedge of Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park, Lemon Hill, that borders on my block. Starting a couple of weeks ago, workers shut down the roads around the wedge and erected all kinds of temporary festival structures, including fencing, security checkpoints, tents, booths, buildings, and some immense displays like the ones they have at concerts. Traffic immediately became utterly chaotic in the immediate area, because a lot of people used those roads as back routes to the major highways.

The city made us residents get temporary parking passes. They forbade Uber and Lyft from picking up and dropping off in most of the vicinity, they increased public transit, and they assigned many parking enforcers and twenty or so tow trucks to patrol the neighborhood. We residents could get a couple of free visitor passes, as well. I don’t have a car, but I went and got the visitor passes, one for my cat-sitter and one for my friend Rebecca, who gives me rides home and who often parks in the affected area.

Apparently people are already selling their free visitor passes on the side. We are entrepreneurs here.

I signed up to go to the Fan Fest on Lemon Hill yesterday, strolling around the corner in the baking heat and implacable sunshine. A collection of cheerful people, mostly in Mexico team colors, waited on the corner for the guards to begin letting people in. Periodically everyone would start getting in line, and periodically a young woman would tell them to go back to the other side of the road so that vehicles and staff could pass.

Eventually, we were permitted to line up and straggle in, though a nice young person made me take my hat off for a moment before I was allowed to breach the entrance entirely. I am accustomed to getting searched, scanned, and interrogated everywhere, but it was still pretty funny to be around the corner from my house and being treated as if I was smuggling drugs, weapons, or alcohol in my old-lady hat.

I strolled past all the food vendors, past the huge displays showing the pre-game warmups in Mexico (Mexico was playing South Africa), and listening to the booming music coming from everywhere. There were sensory activation tents for anyone overwhelmed by the sounds and activities, medical tents, water stations, porta-potties, beer gardens, a car booth, a tent for kicking soccer balls sponsored by our city’s team, and a vast sales tent for merchandise.

The sales tent was air conditioned, so I went in and got the grandson a USA jersey, and got one for myself. They were very expensive. He has been attending a vague sort of soccer practice lately, having lost interest in his previous activity, which was circus tumbling, and it will perhaps be a bit of status to have a proper soccer jersey.

Everyone was cheerful, employees and attendees alike, because it was the first day. Families were settling themselves in chairs or at tables to watch games, wearing Mexican flags draped over them, wearing Mexican jerseys, happy to have a place to go on a scorching, oppressive Philadelphia day in the park.

I have spent a lot of time on that hill in the twenty years I have lived here. I went to Christmas activities at the historic park mansion there. I brought my grandson to the playground on Lemon Hill many, many times, and though I used to stick him on a blanket under a tree as a baby, he can now pump a swing all by himself because he is a big kid, six years old. I even held an outdoor picnic as a memorial for my husband in that park. Lemon Hill is where I used to wander, during COVID, when we weren’t sure how the disease was being spread and I had to get out of the house. Homeless people often sleep in the paths at the fringes, where they are unlikely to be harassed. Summer holiday weekends, local families take it over for picnics, and last summer there was a bit of a mass shooting there. People set off fireworks at the top of the hill. Right now, though, it’s a fine display of urban hospitality, accompanied by hordes of security guards, and with (often intoxicated) strangers surging through my block on the way.

Mexico beat South Africa 2-0 and there was a concert in the Fan Fest soon afterwards. I didn’t hear much of it; I have air conditioning, so my doors were closed.

Late at night, I heard glass breaking, and went outside to sweep up a broken bottle. It’s one of the downsides of being a sort of through street to various urban festivals, and I’m used to it; when there are fireworks down at the Art Museum, or parades on the Parkway, or foot races or art festivals, people walk down my block all day and into evening, and they don’t always act as if they’re walking past someone’s front step.

And even later, there was thunder, and a downpour onto the roasting hot pavement outside, whereupon my cat Uncle Louie, for the first time all day, went and hid behind the armchair, because Louie can put up with people, noise, loud music, and mild vandalism, but acts of God are the real dangers. I’m not so sure he’s wrong.