Who writes Love Letters anymore?

Some would say that February rolled around just in time after a messy, snow-laden January that put everyone in a foul mood, bringing with it the hope that the worst winter weather had passed.

However, February also ushers in the annual rite of the commercialized Valentine's Day holiday, bringing to bear immense pressure on coupled folks to shower their significant other (S.O.) with the requisite gifts, flowers, and expensive dinners.

I had an epiphany on my first visit to Philadelphia in five years, fittingly enough while taking photos of the murals on the "Love Letter" train tour conducted by the city's Mural Arts Society. Consisting of a series of fifty rooftop murals along the Market Street corridor in West Philadelphia (a stone's throw away from Center City), Love Letter collectively express a love letter from a guy to a girl, alternating between humorous and touching lines as their relationship goes through different phases.

Created by the renowned artist Steve Powers, the bright, huge murals are best viewed from the station platforms on the elevated Market-Frankford rail line. You'll see some of them whiz past as the train rolls along, making it hard to take pictures, but quite a number are viewable at each stop.

The epiphany went like this - instead of buying the cliched roses and chocolates, and lining the pockets of restaurants who've jacked up their prices for the manufactured holiday, writing a sincere love letter to your S.O. seems like a great, if somewhat quaint, idea. I know, who writes love letters anymore when it's easy to use Facebook or Twitter to shout-out some sentiment like "XXX, you're the only one for me!".

on top of a Jamaican restaurant which explains the beef patties

Personally, the traditionalist in me has found the use of social media for these purposes to be somewhat...umm, distasteful. Although I derive many hours of amusement from reading such pronouncements, I also see my reflection on the computer monitor, cringing. Just sayin'. While your views on this topic might not be in agreement with mine, I'm sure you'll agree that the murals are both entertaining, inspiring and instructive - the lines on them are simply waiting to be copied and pasted into the love letter you'll be writing.

For more ideas, check out the pictures below.