So despite the icon of Rocky Balboa and Jersey being right there, Philly’s “white ethnics” were never that Italian, there were a lot of Irish and Poles too.
Which I guess made them Catholic, but not as definitionally as in New York or Chicago, let alone Boston, Philadelphia was historically the American culture where sect meant least.
By the ‘80s if anything that seemed to have transmuted to an identity of Iggles-loving unionized public workers, beyond the cops/fire that get all the “first responder” cred \u2013 but possibly as a legacy of Pennsylvania being built in a pre-networked utility era and not really worth rebuilding after \u2013 sewer guys and especially linemen got a lot more respect too.
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