- I'm Janae Price, and welcome to "Ride With Me,"
the show where we talk to people we love.
- Philly is tough.
- About the places they love.
- You know, that is the place that,
I'm not DJ Jazzy Jeff, I'm old school Jeff.
- Today, we're catching up with Philly royalty,
DJ Jazzy Jeff.
We're gonna get his recommendations
for Philadelphia's South Street area.
- If the first part is surreal,
I haven't figured out what the second part is yet.
- And of course, I'll be heading there myself
to check them out.
So come along, and Ride With Me.
- Hey, Jazz, how are you?
- I'm good, how are you?
- I'm good.
It's such an honor to speak with you today.
This is such a cool space you got.
Is this like your studio, or where are we right now?
- Yes, this is actually my area.
I don't really like big studios,
because they're a little bit impersonal.
So I have everything I need right here.
So this is my Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory.
- Ooh, okay.
So tell us where you're gonna be taking us today.
- Today, I'm taking you
to the South Street area in Philadelphia.
South Street was one of the streets
that has been world-renowned from anybody from Philly.
I probably was about 18, 19 years old
when South Street became the thing for us.
Me and all of my friends just discovered
that we could go to South Street,
and there were pizza shops, and there were clothing stores.
And it was just, it's really vibrant.
If, you know, people who are familiar with New York,
it was almost like the Village.
That became the place every Friday and Saturday night.
Philly is tough.
You don't necessarily want to give it that stereotype,
but that is the honest-to-god truth.
They expect you to give your best.
And this goes with music, sports, anybody.
If you give your best, you can lose,
but if they know that you gave your best,
they're gonna ride with you.
It's a blue collar town.
But what that did for me, especially, you know, musically,
is I don't take any shortcuts.
Everything that I am today, I owe to Philadelphia.
You don't ever forget where you come from,
because who I am is a result of where I come from.
- Thank you, good, sir.
Huzzah!
I don't know which way we're walkin'.
So where are we going to first?
- So the first location that we're going to,
it is Ishkabibble's on South Street.
Ishkabibble's, and no disrespect to Geno's and Pat's,
but Geno's and Pat's are the places that you take tourists.
A true Philadelphian would be really, really upset
if you put Cheez Whiz on a cheese steak,
that's a tourist thing.
- I'm sorry, Jazzy.
I'm sorry, I had to do it.
- Ishkabibble's is the real place that you go
to get a cheese steak.
If we're on South Street and somebody's like,
"oh my god, I wanna get a cheese steak."
You stop them, "Nope, nope.
We going to Ishkabibble's, and I'm gonna get you
a cheese steak and a gremlin, and you're set."
- What is your go-to order
when you're going to Ishkabibble's?
- I don't eat cheese,
so I get me a plain steak with mayonnaise, ketchup,
salt and pepper, and fried onions.
- Can I do Philly cheese steak
with mayonnaise, ketchup and fried onions.
- No cheese? - Yeah, no cheese.
- And I get a gremlin,
which is a lemonade and grape juice mixed together.
- Thank you so much.
Thank you.
- We never really sat in Ishkabibble's.
You would go to the window, and you would order,
and you would stand outside,
and then the guy would give it to you,
and you would walk up South Street drinking your gremlin.
- It's addictive, and I'm not gonna lie.
I'm gonna go back for a little bit more.
- The next stop is Copabanana.
I never realized how hard it was to say Copabanana.
We never said the whole name.
We would just say, "Yo, meet me at Copa."
- Oh, this is cute.
- Copa is very, very known for their burgers,
and Copa is known for their margaritas.
And they have these fries that have onions and jalapeños.
They're called, oh man, Copa Fries, see, listen.
You are going back.
Where it gets dangerous,
is because the jalapeños make the fries hot,
and you try to cool your mouth down with the margarita,
which is not the thing to do.
So the margarita is really, it should be the dessert,
and you might need to get you a lemonade or something
to cool your mouth down from the from the Copa fries.
- How long have you guys been here?
- 45 years. - 45 years, wow.
I'll get a jalapeño on there.
Honestly, the whiz fries are really yum.
Thank you so much.
- You know what's funny,
is the Copa is not an eye-catching place
But to me, that kind of reflects what Philly is.
The Copa is real.
The vibe is the people, the vibe is the place.
- Okay, where are we going next?
- The next stop is Belmont Plateau.
The Belmont Plateau is very, very special,
especially growing up in West Philly.
Belmont Plateau is in Fairmount Park,
and it's basically a place in the park
where you have a complete 360 degree view
of the city of Philadelphia.
- Hi, hello.
Just a curious guy
in a curious world.
- That is the location that the summertime video was shot,
because that is what we did on a Sunday.
Friday night, Saturday night we're going down South Street.
Sunday afternoon, you make your way out to the park.
You make sure your car is clean, and it's polished.
And you would just sit and chill.
- I feel like that video perfectly encapsulates,
like, just being black in the summertime.
You know what I mean?
- The feeling that you have coming out of the winter,
the way the trees bloom, it's a special thing.
And to have an amazing park like Fairmount Park
in Philadelphia, you know, that's what summers were.
You would stay out there, and as the sun starts to go down,
the city lights up, and now you're watching
the skyline of Philadelphia.
It was beautiful
- And we're off.
- The next stop is Penn's Landing.
Penn's Landing was the date spot.
You would catch the bus, and the end of the stop
would be on the waterfront.
You would get off, you would walk down the ramp,
and you're right on the water.
You would find a bench, and you would sit down,
watch the boats go by and hear the water splashing
and kind of talk and chill.
You know, it's very scenic down there,
and it's completely different now.
They have the ice skating, and they have food trucks
and all the rest of this stuff, you know.
To have this location and just watch how they changed it.
There're outdoor hammocks now that people just lounge in,
and I'm like, "it wasn't like this when I lived down here!"
- There's a guy getting off that boat, though.
Is this your boat?
Ah!
Who are you going to Penn's Landing with?
You said in the past, you would go there with a date,
but is this more of a family spot for you, or?
- I would take my wife there,
just to show her that this is, you know,
because it's a beautiful location,
but just to kind of show her
some of the landmarks in Philly.
- Oh! Well.
- That's one of the places,
that if someone had never come to Philly,
that you would take them and show them.
- Woo, yes, thank you.
Okay.
Okay, what's our last spot?
- Finally, we're ending the night at Lorenzo's Pizza.
Lorenzo's Pizza is the best pizza on the planet at 2:00 AM
when the club lets out.
It don't taste great, if you bought it at 2:00 AM,
and you ate it at 2:30.
It don't translate, it don't travel well,
they're turning the pizzas over like this.
It's gonna come out the oven,
they're gonna put it on the paper plate.
It's gone be grease on the bottom of the plate,
that if you let the tip of the pizza lean over,
it's gonna spill on your sleeve.
So you just know to bite that first piece, in the beginning,
as soon as it comes out of the oven.
- Is it weird that I kind of wanna, like,
slap someone in the face with this?
- Oh, really?
So have you heard of the Philly taco challenge?
- Not at all.
- The Philly taco challenge
is when you take a slice of Lorenzo's,
and you wrap it around a Philly cheese steak.
- You know... at the age that I am now,
I would never do that.
If this was in my twenties,
I would've probably had to try that, at some point in time.
- For the love of Philly, we're gonna do it.
- No, not at all.
- After the club lets out and everybody goes,
sometimes people will kind of let you go,
because if you did a good job in the club, they're like,
"Yo, let Jeff get his pizza, so he can get outta here."
And you would dap everybody up,
and that was really the place that you could go,
that no matter how big you got, it was home.
You know, that is the place that
I'm old-school Jeff, I'm not DJ Jazzy Jeff.
I'm not the television guy.
That's Jeff.
- Thank you so much for taking us, you know, around Philly,
down memory lane, this has been great.
I feel like I know so much more about Philly now.
Tell the good people, what all you have going on nowadays.
- Once the pandemic hit, I started live streaming.
I do a magnificent lunch break every Wednesday
from noon to one.
We do a magnificent house party every Saturday
or every Friday night.
It's basically, I'm the DJ, and you have the club.
And that has been really, really good, and a lot of fun.
I can reach more people in a stationary location
than traveling all over the globe.
And I'm in the studio making a bunch of music,
so I'm in my happy place.
- Well, thank you so much for talking to us today.
It's been great, once again, to talk to Philly royalty, man.
- I have to now make a special trip to Philly,
that I know is gonna add about six pounds on.
And I hope it's good,
because it won't be 2:00 in the morning,
because I'm old now,
and I don't like staying up at two o'clock in the morning.
- Yes, have a Philly day.
You deserve it.
- Absolutely.