Ben Rittenhouse

Ben Rittenhouse fell hard for Philly on his very first visit to the city, when he saw a magic trick. 

He was a little kid, riding SEPTA’s R5 from his home in Oreland, Montgomery County, into the city to see the holiday lights with his mom and two brothers  

He wasn’t paying attention to the gradual shift in scenery from suburban-to-urban. So he was gob-smacked, when the family arrived downtown, to enter a thicket of skyscrapers whose size dwarfed the modest homes and shops of tiny, quiet Oreland. 

It felt like an act of wizardry.  

“After that, I thought of Philly as ‘the place where all the big buildings are,’” laughs Ben, 25, “the place where everything is happening.”

The perception broadened over the years, with sorties to Phillies and Sixers games in South Philly, class trips to Old City’s historic district, and peewee football games in Roxborough, where Ben chowned down on cheesesteaks at D’Allessandro’s and Chubby’s on Henry Ave. 

“I was so happy when I was old enough to drive there with friends,” he says.

When he applied to college, Ben knew he wanted to live in a city. “I liked the idea of walking places, jumping on a train, being surrounded by people,” he says, the way it was not just in Philly but in New York, too, where he’d spent a lot of time visiting relatives.  

When Temple accepted him as a computer-science major, he couldn’t have been happier.

“It was the best choice,” he says. “I could live downtown but still be close enough to home to have dinner with my parents or get my hair cut.”

At Temple, Ben leaned hard into Philly’s rhythms. He and his friends hopped the subway to Sixers games, hung out on the piers, wandered quirky parks and world-class museums, discovered hole-in-the-wall restaurants and classic bars. “We never ran out of things to do,” he says. “That’s the best part about being in Philly — you’re always part of something happening.”

He still feels electric joy about the night in 2022 when Temple’s Owls beat Villanova’s Wildcats for the first time in ten years at the Liacouras Center, where he stormed the court with other jubilant Owls fans. 

“I lived only two blocks from the stadium. It was so cool to walk home through the celebration,” he says. “It was one of those core Philly memories — you’re just in it, you’re part of the city’s heartbeat, part of what everyone else will read about the next day.”

He loves how Philly’s sports-fan vibe shows up everywhere: the guy on the Broad Street Line handing out free sandwiches before an Eagles game; strangers high-fiving at Citizens Bank Park; or Ben himself passing beers to fans at a tailgate. “It’s like one big family,” he says. “Everyone’s in on it.”

That sense of connection can transcend sports, Ben learned. One night on the subway, for example, he and his roommates struck up a long, genuine conversation with a man who turned out to be newly homeless. “He didn’t ask for anything – he just wanted to talk,” Ben recalls. “Afterward, people who overheard us gave him a few dollars, but what mattered was that everyone listened. That’s what Philly does. You treat people like people.”

Currently, Ben lives in Arlington, Va., where he moved after graduation in 2023, for a tech job. His familiarity with urban living has made the transition easy. He’s comfortable with crowds, enjoys the richness of ethnic diversity, and happily avoids traffic by riding the Metro.

Spending time in both D.C. and New York City has deepened his appreciation for how confidently Philly flies below the radar of those shiny, high-status meccas.  

“Philly is two hours from New York and three from D.C., so outsiders tend to overlook it,” he says. “But it has everything those cities have – great food, sports, history, and people who care” – without needing to get all show-offy about it.

“It’s like, ‘We’re already great, so why would we have to prove it to anyone?”

Philly also has what those cities don’t – an enviable, livable pace and a sense of permanence, or at least the possibility of it. 

“In New York and where I live now, people come and go,” he says. “In Philly, families stay; my mom bought my grandpa’s house. In some neighborhoods, you even see different generations living on the same block.” 

That comfort is balanced by surprise, says Ben. On his last visit home, he hung out with friends in East Passyunk, an area he’d never even visited. 

I loved it,” he says about yet another loveable micro-city within a city that’s both big enough to surprise – and welcoming enough to call home.