Remembering Dan McQuade, a Philly journalist like no other

Sometimes, the text was all pragmatic: he wanted to set up a private yoga session, or to get together for lunch.

More often it was delightful. A lengthy commentary about the movie Lone Wolf McQuade, which I had never seen but that he was pleased to report revolved around a character with his last name, living in the city where I grew up. An “ADHD moment” that had him looking for his yoga mat when it was strapped to his back. Screen grabs from a 1994 police training video about satanic cult murders.

Non-sequiturs in the middle of WXPN countdown events, sent on the assumption that I was also tuned in. Questions about Dungeons & Dragons (which he didn’t play, but knew I did). His thoughts on the Eurovision Grand Final. So many texts about bootleg t-shirts (which he collected) and dead or dying shopping malls (an obsession of his).

A future friendship?

Over the last two years, our texts often turned to the joy we both found in being parents to our sons, born three months apart. Of having them fall asleep on us. Of watching their first steps. Of seeing their eyes light up when they saw big trucks and small animals. We made plans to get together with the boys, and even managed to do it once or twice. We figured they’d be friends someday, too.

They may yet be. It’s too soon to say. But it won’t be a friendship forged because they’re tagging along to brunch at Morning Glory Diner while their parents are having a spirited conversation about which politically-themed special has the punniest name. It won’t be at an “inevitably disappointing bootleg character event” that Dan also texted me about, and couldn’t wait to take his son to. We won’t have the chance to share these experiences together with our sons, extending our friendship to the next generation.

Compelling from start to finish

Dan McQuade—the journalist, sneakerhead, and “unofficial mayor of Philadelphia,” as someone called him on a social media post that I should have bookmarked—died from a rare form of cancer this week, on his 43rd birthday. I have chosen to believe, with absolutely zero evidence to support my hypothesis, that the symmetry was somehow on purpose. Dan was a writer of enviable skill, and one of the things that I always admired in his work was how compelling it was from the start and how cleanly it wrapped up at the end.

That Dan’s writing will survive long past him is some cold comfort for those of us who knew him and loved him. Every tribute I’ve seen to Dan—Philly Mag, Defector, The Inquirer, and more—has been followed by dozens of comments from other people paying him tribute. On these things everyone seems to agree: you couldn’t meet a nicer guy, a bigger fan of Philly, or anyone with a greater sense of wonder.

These qualities all came out in his writing: in piece after piece, publication after publication, Dan’s clear, quirky voice told stories nobody else would even think to tell. His style was so unique that you could often tell a Dan McQuade piece by its headline alone, the same way you can identify a Van Gogh painting from its brushwork or a Wes Anderson film from its color palate. His choice to focus mostly on stories in and around Philadelphia, even as Dan moved from local publications to those with a broader focus, was a feature, not a bug.

Philadelphia Magazine and Defector are among the publications paying tribute to Dan by featuring some of his greatest hits. I’d make some specific recommendations, but you can’t really go wrong. Choose a Dan McQuade byline at random and buckle in for a delightful read. Or go over to Bluesky and scroll the thread of “stuff Dan texted his friends about” that local journalist Jen A. Miller has been compiling. Because I wasn’t the only enthusiastic recipient of Dan’s delightful texts. That was a gift he shared with many of us.

“Love is all around me”

Back to those texts.

About a week before he died, and a week after a decidedly not delightful text that his death was imminent, Dan and I were texting about whether we could get together, probably for the last time, hopefully to finally watch Lone Wolf McQuade together. He missed yoga and told me that his hospice team had said some gentle chair yoga might be okay. I said I’d be happy to facilitate that, and also asked if he wanted some related resources. And here, after that, are the last few texts we ever exchanged:

At top: Dan McQuade in a Halloween costume he texted to his friend Jill Ivey. (Image courtesy of Jill Ivey.)