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"You call this a fucking slice of pizza?" asked the 28-year-old native of Oyster Bay, Long Island.

If only the young online marketing consultant, recently relocated to Philadelphia from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, had judged the situation a little more carefully; if only he had kept his question — however rhetorically it was intended — to himself, many of the tragic events that followed might have been avoided.

If only he had asked the question of someone other than the counter staff of Lorenzo's, the famously short-tempered South Street pizzeria. If only it hadn't been quite so hot, or the barometric pressure had been a bit lower, then the recently emigrated New Yorker, his girlfriend, and their sweater-bedecked two-year-old corgi might have returned safely to their recently refurbished Fairmount row home, instead of being chased by an angry mob all the way to 11th and Cherry where they were barely in time to jump aboard a departing Chinatown bus.

This, and the copycat incidents that followed, were tragic. But they were doubly tragic in that they led to the events known collectively as the Sixth Borough Independence War.

Evan M. Lopez

There is conflicting evidence as to where the hated designation "Sixth Borough" originated, or the identity of the first Philadelphia journalist to sell their soul for a byline in the New York Times lifestyle section by using the hated phrase. But by 2016, it had become an emblem of the collective resentment felt by angry, native Philadelphians over rising rental prices, and over the perceived Gothamification of their city. For their part, the rapidly increasing expat population was amazed at the natives' hostility and their unwillingness to engage in hourlong conversations about the comparative size and expense of various apartments, or the staggering importance of being able to purchase a Vietnamese tofu hoagie within two blocks of one's apartment at 3 a.m.

This was the kindling waiting for a spark when news of the young web consultant, his girlfriend and their dog reached the motherland. New Yorkers demanded retribution. There were now more than 50,000 of them living in Philadelphia. If the city of New York couldn't protect its own citizens, then what good was it? Mayor Clinton was under tremendous pressure to respond: So preoccupied with scandal was his first term that his only significant mayoral act had been to repeal Michael Bloomberg's 2006 trans-fat ban. (His motivations were said to be personal.)

Thinking back to 1999, when the NATO bombing of Serbia had provided weeks of blissful distraction from his impeachment hearings, Clinton had an idea. As the first former U.S. president to hold such an office, he enjoyed power and influence that his colleagues, like Mayor Albom of Detroit or Mayor Hilton of Los Angeles could not imagine. And certainly not Mayor Beanie Sigel of Philadelphia.

On the morning of Oct. 9, 2016, Mayor Clinton addressed his constituents on WNYC:

"My fellow New Yorkers. For decades, large numbers of us have chosen to live and work far beyond the confines of this city, selflessly sharing the fruits of our advanced civilization with other American metropolises, asking little in return except for cheaper rent, larger apartments, and the right to talk incessantly about New York to anyone who will listen. And for the most part our neighbors have been grateful, energetically imitating our art, our culture, our small-plate menus. But sometimes, sadly, our generosity is thrown back in our faces.

New York, I stand here before you today, saddened to report that this is one of those times. In a decrepit, post-industrial hellhole someplace south of here — I don't know, somewhere off the turnpike — a terrible wrong has been committed against our citizens. Because this provincial city has become home to some of our best installation artists, handbag designers and under-employed sommeliers, we must act. It is for this reason that, as of this morning at 6 a.m., I have authorized the New York State National Guard, along with all NYPD SWAT units to enter Philadelphia and remain there until such time as the safety of our citizens there can be guaranteed."

It was true. Early-morning commuters and late night truck drivers had been puzzled to find themselves muscled to the shoulder of the turnpike by a seemingly endless convoy of ATVs with "NYPD" stenciled on their sides.

Upon crossing the Ben Franklin Bridge, the vehicles and their passengers quickly fanned out across the city, with groups of three or four uniformed police officers occupying blocks and buildings of strategic importance. Air support was provided by helicopters that targeted bridges and substations with limited-range explosives. By the time the sun set and the mandatory dusk-to-dawn curfew went into effect, it was clear that, while Philadelphia may have never truly been the figurative Sixth Borough, it was now the literal one.

Life under New York occupation was grim. Longtime residents of Fishtown, Bella Vista, Cedar Park and other neighborhoods close to Center City were forcibly relocated to the lower Northeast to make room for what was now an avalanche of New York émigrés. Huge quotas of locally brewed beers were earmarked for "mandatory export" to New York City. The prices of the remaining stocks skyrocketed. The sudden ubiquity of Brooklyn Lager, usually nearing expiration by the time it arrived in Philadelphia, was little consolation. Neighborhood curfews remained in place, and woe to the suburban commuter whose train was late and found himself attempting to hail a cab on Walnut Street or walk home across the South Street Bridge when night had already begun to fall. 

Resistance was not long in coming. Tiny, secretive militias with names like the Thatcher Longstreth Martyrs Brigade and the PFLM (People's Front for the Liberation of Mantua) carried out devastating attacks on NYPD and National Guard targets and popular gathering places for expat New Yorkers. Spontaneous at first, the guerrilla cells were quickly brought under the organizational sway of the Philadelphia City-Council-In-Exile, rumored to be located in Wildwood, N.J. The scope and frequency of the attacks increased. Their perpetrators were encouraged by the increasingly slovenly behavior of the patrol officers. Far away from the military-style discipline that had been imposed upon them during the Giuliani years, New York's Finest fell back into their old ways, noisily demanding free lunches from Chinese takeout restaurants and then napping in their squad cars for hours afterward. The entire imperial project in Philadelphia came to be dependent upon an ever-decreasing number of New York National Guard members. Their presence, like everything else about the occupation, was flagrantly unconstitutional, but no one in Washington, D.C., was in much of a position to do anything about it ever since the "Neo-Federalist" craze that had gripped the country during the 2012 presidential election.

The occupation and resistance forces remained more or less in stalemate through the early part of 2017. This lasted until one morning in June, when headlines were splashed with the news that a Dutch mining company had discovered large oil reserves off the coast of Cape May. American military power was perceived internationally at the time as being at somewhat of a low ebb. As a result, Iceland, Greenland and several Caribbean islands laid territorial claim to the lands surrounding the new oil deposits. The National Guard units stationed in Philadelphia were quickly redeployed south, leaving the remaining occupation forces in a precarious way. By the end of the month, New Yorkers were fleeing Philadelphia as quickly as they had arrived, sometimes on foot. None of this was enough to convince Mayor Clinton to cancel his scheduled July 4 trip to Philadelphia to preside over Independence Day festivities.

The mayoral motorcade arrived at Independence Mall to find the area in considerable disarray. Unable to establish radio contact with Colonial Viceroy Katz, the motorcade headed west to City Hall. In the ensuing melee, Clinton found himself atop the roof with hundreds of other New Yorkers, waiting to be airlifted to safety. As the Hummer carrying Mayor Sigel and his staff back from exile screeched to a halt below, a rescue squad struggled to get Clinton aboard the helicopter.

"First black president my ass," quipped Sigel to an aide, as he watched the ex-president struggle with the rope ladder. As the last New Yorkers fled, and the orange, white and blue flag was lowered for the last time, Sigel and his cabinet hurried inside to get back down to the business of governing.

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