Author’s Note: Episodes 1 and 2 of Song of Lynchadelphia (Season 3 of Hidden City’s Song of Philadelphia Podcast) focused on the creative big bang that took place during David Lynch’s time in Philadelphia, between 1965 and 1970. Episode 3 examined the wild ways in which the city—Lynch’s impression of the city—manifests itself in Eraserhead, Mulholland Drive, and the Twin Peaks universe. Episode 4, available today on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, explores the Lynchian happenings in Philly.

Over a beer and a glass of white wine, Hidden City co-founder (and Song of Philadelphia supervising producer) Nathaniel Popkin told me about Salvador Dali’s method for locating one’s center of the universe.

“In your case,” Nathaniel said, “you would measure the distance between your house and David Lynch’s house when he lived in Philly.”

The idea made sense: Lynch’s work on the screen and the canvas can be seen as an extension of the surrealist canon. But it raised a practical issue: between the end of 1965, when he joined Jack Fisk at 21st and Cherry, and 1970, when Lynch moved out of the house he’d bought with Peggy Reavey at 2416 Poplar, he lived in four different places in Philadelphia—not to mention where he studied (the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts), worked (Roger LaPelle’s fineprinting shop in Germantown), or bought second-hand clothing and objects (the Goodwill at Broad and Girard).

Which one of those locations was I supposed to pick to figure out where the center of my universe was? How could I think geographically, even in a poetic or symbolical way, given the number of portals in the Lynchverse?

In this episode, I tell you about four gateways to the David Lynch dimension in Philadelphia. First, there is PhilaMOCA, at 12th and Spring Garden, where Eric Bresler has been cooking up Lynchian events since 2012, including the annual Eraserhood Forever festival. Watching Laurel Near perform The Lady in the Radiator’s In Heaven with a chamber orchestra there feels like an immersion in the radiator, in Philadelphia.

Josh Hitchens loves Eraserhead as much as Bresler. This past January he screened the movie at the Starr Garden Recreation Center, as part of his Monday Macabre film series. Before the event, Hitchens told me about the phone interview he did with David Lynch in 2022. At the end of the interview, which you will hear in the episode, Lynch wishes all the best to his interviewer and to Philadelphia. More than half a century after he left, his love for the city feels more than intact. It comes through as bigger than any other source of inspiration.

Love and tenderness for Lynch’s work is what drove Dennis McNett to create the mural-memorial that sits on the back wall of Love City Brewing, 1025 Hamilton Street (the mural is on Buttonwood). With the support of the Mural Arts program, he imagined a scene filled with Easter eggs: Lynch himself with the Eraserhead haircut, the Blue Velvet ear and robins, the Mulholland Drive blue key, the Twin Peaks floors, curtains, blue rose and Judy symbol.

Because things like that only happen in Philadelphia, a creepy figure that looks just like Judy stands behind the window of a building down the street.

Lynch and his lifetime friend Jack Fisk, who studied at PAFA with him and was production designer on Eraserhead, The Straight Story and Mulholland Drive, came back to Philly 15 years ago to look up locations for Lynch’s unmade “Ronnie Rocket” project. What Lynch was after was the “decay and destruction” that had made such a powerful impression on him in the second half of the 1960s. Much to his dismay, he found none of it in present-day Philly. The film was abandoned, and Lynch made Twin Peaks: The Return instead. At the end of the blue rose dialogue in Part 4 of The Return, Lynch’s Gordon Cole character asks his sidekick if he still knows “where she lives.”

“I know where she drinks,” Albert answers. She is Diane. Not only does she drink in Philly; she is the embodiment of Philly in the Twin Peaks universe.

Although this is my personal favorite in Lynch’s entire body of work, I wish I could have walked around with him and Fisk as a decay and destruction consultant. I can think of a couple places that would have swayed the decision.