Categories: Shopping; Eat & Drink

A Cheapskate's Guide to Philadelphia

By darlingnikki
updated about 1 month ago

Philly is a great place for starving artists and poor students. Unlike New York, it is still possible to get dirt cheap rent, buy ridiculously inexpensive groceries and keep oneself entertained on a seriously restricted budget...you just need to know where to go.

Location Location Location

When I first moved to the city, my rent was $300 per month. Not knowing what areas were hip, cheap or even livable, I found myself in the butt-end of South Philadelphia, by the stadiums. Now there are an increasing number of hip, inexpensive neighborhoods for boho and student types.

South Philadelphia: Populated by artists, hipsters, young families, Italian Americans, Vietnamese and Mexican immigrants.
Pros: Great bars, cafes. A very extensive selection of ethnic restaurants and food vendors. Within stumbling distance (or at least a cheap cab ride) from downtown, South Street and Old City.
Cons: A serious dearth of greenery but an abundance of trash in the streets. Housing prices are creeping up as gentrification takes hold.

West Philadelphia: Hippies, locals, granola families and African immigrants populate this colorful neighborhood.
Pros: cheap communal living, co-ops, great inexpensive restaurants, big parks
Cons: Isolated from the rest of the city by the river. Reeks of patchouli.

Port “Fishington”: The nexus of Port Richmond, Fishtown and Kensington. Hipsters, artists, bikers and Polish immigrants constitute the neighborhood.
Pros: A growing number of cool bars, cafes and other hipster hotspots. You can still buy a house fairly cheaply.
Cons: A hike from the rest of the city. Overrun with hipsters.

Get a Cheap Bike!

There are a few shops in the city where you can buy a used bike for under $100. I got a brand new Schwinn for less than $200 at Mike’s Bikes. Cheap bikes are the best because rat bastard bike thieves troll the city nightly and have no morals or souls. Make sure you have a U lock and a chain. Lock it down like Fort Knox. Also, be extremely wary of SEPTA busses: they are renegades for whom traffic laws mean nothing!

Get your Gear

Philly has a few thrift stores that are in fact really thrifty. These are not for the weak of heart and require whole days of thumbing through oversized amateur league bowling shirts and ugly eighties power suits in order to find treasure.

Consignment shops, while not as cheap as thrift stores, often have higher quality items for a few dollars more. I was able to find a fairly new Ann Taylor suit for $50 at Green Street Consignment.

Grub

When I was a poor student I refused to live on a carb-only diet of bagels and ramen noodles. I needed fresh vegetables, seitan, beans, fruit and fish. By far the cheapest place to buy groceries is the Vietnamese grocery store. It may be a little intimidating at first what with the unusual items, the dried fish and all the calligraphy, but you can stock up for the week for around thirty dollars. The Italian Market is also good for veggies…but don’t let the vendors bully you into buying a bushel of rotting blueberries!!!

Eating Out

Sometimes you just don’t feel like cooking, even when you are on a seriously restricted budget. My favorite place to go for dinner for under $10 is Pho Ha, also Vietnamese. Pho is a rice noodle soup which can easily be pimped for more protein with chicken, beef or seafood. The bowls of soup are huge and you can add leafy greens and sprouts for free. For a quick lunch, Vietnamese Sandwiches can be found for under three dollars. They are light, chock full of protein and veggies, and pretty damn tasty. If you need a quick carb blast to get you through the day, a pretzel from a vendor is still less than 50 cents. Load it up with mustard and it’s a meal in your hand.