Empty Lot of the Week-- October 30th

Old City Tri-Cornered Lot

The Northwest, Southwest, and Southeast corners of 4th and Vine Streets.

Image from Google.

                        This is fucking pathetic. THREE unrelated surface parking lots on the same corner? That's ridiculous!! How did this happen? Why didn't anyone stop it? Old City is infested with NIMBYs that claim to care oh so much about their precious neighborhood. Why have they allowed a confluence of surface lots to exist for over 4 decades? This place is like a tri-cornered hat, but as an empty lot. A tri-cornered lot. We'll have to look at these three surface lots one-by-one.
                        Read more at the Philadelphia Citypaper's Naked City Blog!

Dead-Ass Proposal of the Week-- October 23rd

Calder Museum

2100 Ben Franklin Parkway

The only known rendering of what could have been.

                This is one of the most disappointing Dead-Ass Proposals ever to hit Philadelphia. This project wasn't killed because of NIMBYs, zoning issues, or crooked developers. This one died an agonizing, ass-achingly painful death. People might have been pissed off about the construction of the Barnes Museum, but at least that got built and is kicking ass all over the place-- despite being in a butt-fugly building. This one didn't even get that far.
                   Read more at the Philadelphia Citypaper's Naked City Blog!!!

Re: PSFS Mural Outrage. Keep Yer Fuckin' Pants On.

PSFS Building

12 South 12th Street

               I've always hated the humongous blank party wall on the PSFS/Lowes Hotel Building. I know its just the back of the elevator bank, but fuck... they couldn't think of something better? When I first moved to Philadelphia in August of 2003, I lived at the Arts Tower (originally the Sylvania Hotel, now called the Arts Condo) at 1234 Locust. I had a great view of the ugly-ass Interpark Parking Garage, the butt-fugly Holiday Inn Midtown, and that shit-ass blank party wall.   
               That big black party wall really fucking irked me... it was the worse thing I saw out my window that year besides that time I saw a guy shot in the chest at point-blank range in the middle of the night. Just recently, the dude at Streets Dept made the SUGGESTION that the huge blank wall on the PSFS should have a mural on it... not just any mural, but the nation's largest. That little 150-word post made the entire Philadelphia blogosphere and media LOSE ITS FUCKING MIND:

Inga flips her shit

 

Art Info has a goddamn coniption

 

Philadelphia Speaks holds some milk and makes a milkshake

 

The Second Grade Level Metro exposes the tweet and blog wars about it

 

The Clyde Fitch Report snobs the fuck up about this "terrible, terrible idea"

 

Barstool sports gets on its high horse

 



                ... and that's just a few of them. To add insult to injury, people who support the idea figured that the shitbird behind those buttsmack Love Letter Murals or this other fuckbag (whose stuff is not that bad) should be the ones that execute this theoretical mural. Some guy named Mike Meulstee then made a mock-up of what it would look like:

 

 

               Well, of course people didn't fucking like it... that looks like crap. That mock-up basically confirmed the fears of people that think the PSFS is too sacred for a mural. I agree that this building is iconic and probably doesn't NEED a mural. But that doesn't mean I should jump out of windows and flagellate myself over it... people are going fucking apeshit like they built the building themself. When's the last time you've heard ANYONE. EVER. mention the BACK of the PSFS Building? Half those articles I linked to above don't even show the back of the building.

                So, since everyone has been asking me lately what I thought about it... I'll say this: I don't hate the idea. I think it could be quite good if it was done right. Its not like they want to put it on the front of the building. As far as I'm concerned, the PSFS was ruined in 1947 by the installation of that 300+ foot antenna. No one seems to give a shit about that...

              I think we should all come up with ideas of what could go on the wall. Photoshit your best ideas and send them to me at rhaandarite@gmail.com. They can be by known artists, unknown artists, or yourself. I'll post a nice gallery of the ideas to show the possibilities of what could be done here. Here's how it would look if David Choe got a crack at it:

 

 

              Or maybe it should be kept simple:

 

Perfect.

               I guess the point of this post is to tell everyone: Calm the fuck down. It's not that big of a deal.

                 



Surprise!! Yet Another Highly Inaccurate Depiction of Philadelphia

                      So if you've never seen the show Revolution, this is kind of a spoiler, but not really. The program depicts a twisted future that takes place 15 years after electrical power has mysteriously shut down throughout the world. In the show, the bad guys, a paramilitary dictatorship called the Monroe Republic, have their headquarters in Philadelphia. Until this last episode, the only Philly outdoor scenes showed a post-apocalyptic Independence Hall with accurate buildings in the background.... I was proud to see our city portrayed, as most post-apocalyptic cultural depictions ignore Philadelphia completely (except 12 Monkeys, of course).

                      
                   Then came this last episode... *spoiler alert*. In this one, the bad guys re-activate an old-timey train and use it to travel to Philly. When they arrive, there is a brief outdoor scene that shows a disturbing number of inaccuracies:

Uhh...

                 Is that supposed to be South Broad Street? It has to be... the angle of City Hall is unmistakable. Where did this singular outdoor train track come from? What the fuck? So from what we see here, the Monroe Republic, despite having no electrical power, was able to knock down scores of buildings and construct a railroad that crosses Broad Street, along with an open-air sunken parking lot.
                 Next to the railway, there's a huge old building that says "Pennsylvania Railroad" on it, which seems to have an addition that sticks out halfway across Broad Street. I guess that's supposed to be the old Girard Bank/Ritz Carlton in the background, but it looks weird. Then there's this:

                  The skyline shows the Saint James and some other building that's not really there. What the fuck? What is the Saint James doing northeast of City Hall? Are we to believe that this loosely organized paramilitary dictatorship disassembled the Saint James and rebuilt it elsewhere? With no electricity? Why the fuck would they do that? And how?
                 I know i'm probably reading into this shit way more than I need to, but this is worse than 10th and Wolf's Pittsburgh-filmed Philadelphia and Rocky's mysterious EL running through a South Philly that looks like Kensington. If someone really did get an old-timey train working well enough to travel between Indiana and Philadelphia, they would arrive at 30th Street Station, underground. Failing that, they would arrive at Suburban Station, underground. Failing that, they would have arrived at Market East Station, UNDERGROUND!!! Instead, the show-makers took the time to assemble this super-inaccurate post-apocalyptic Philly where a rail line comes right up to Broad. Of course, in a powerless Philadelphia, all of the underground tunnels would be completely flooded. Maybe they (the fictional people) used a freight line. Even so, why would the train arrive from the East like it does in the scene? Did they drive the train backwards?
                Wait a minute... if 15 years have gone by, shouldn't there be vegetation growing every which way out of every street and sidewalk? You see how our streets get after a single summer, where 6-foot-tall weeds pop out of solid asphalt in a matter of months... how is post-apoc Philly so clean? You can see some shit popping up behind that little wall that blocks Broad Street, but the rest is completely weedless. Does the Monroe Republic employ or enslave a fleet of weed-pullers that do a better job than our current city workers who have access to electricity? Fucked up.
                 Look.. I know its just a stupid TV show made in California, where people couldn't give a shit what Philly looks like... but even a slight bit of accuracy would be nice. There's over 1.5 million people in this city, many of which are going to see the program. That's 1.5 million people who know an incorrect Philly when they see one. Fuck, Angie was more accurate than this shit. Shooter had a sniper shooting the front of Independence Hall from Kensington, and even THAT was more believable than this crap. Bunk, I say. Bunk.

Another angle of the concourse above some underground parking lot that's been built under South Broad Street. I guess they park their horses there? What did they do with the subway?

Empty Lot of the Week-- October 16th

Franklintown Shituation Lot

Bounded by 18th, 19th, Buttonwood Streets and Baldwin Park

                 
                   This right here is a lot with some really shitty luck. Though a surface lot for nearly 40 years, it still hasn't beaten its own record for long-term emptiness. Now that's fucked up. Though there is some hope for the future of this space, its currently mired in a shitty shituation.
                    Read more at the Philadelphia Citypaper's Naked City Blog!

Old-Ass Building of the Week-- October 15th

The Consortium Child and Adolescent Services

26 South 40th Street

                            Adaptive Re-use is usually a good thing, but sometimes it goes horribly wrong. This is one such example. Under that incredibly ugly facade lies a Furness masterpiece. A once-great building stifled by good intentions...and ugly paneling.

                      Read more later today at the Hidden City Daily!

The Philaphiliamobile Has Been Stolen!!

1000 block of Spruce Street

10/5/12-10/9/12

It looks just like this, but all fucked up.

                     Good ol' Philadelphia... I suppose, in my 9 years of parking on the street, that something like this would happen some time. My piece of shit 1996 Honda Accord LX was stolen over the weekend... I parked it on the 1000 block (or maybe 900 block?) of Spruce between 3:30 and 4 pm on Friday, October 5th. I returned to it this morning to go to work, and it was gone. After calling the police and searching for blocks in case it was moved or towed, it was confirmed that it had been stolen.
                    I've spent all day going around to all the surface parking lots and parking garages I know of in the area (many of which I've written about) and have been unable to locate it. So, in an act of desperation before I go to even more lots and garages, I ask all of you Philaphiles out there across the city to check out your block and see if the elusive thief just happened to park there by some extreme coincidence. In the (extremely small) chance that you see it, please e-mail me at rhaandarite@gmail.com and I will confirm the tag number with you. Then I'll turn it over to the 6th District.
                  While searching, I've learned that about 9 million other people in the neighborhood also drive white '96 Accords that are not mine. However, the Philaphiliamobile has a very distinct patch of paint missing on the left of the rear bumper. Once, while taking a picture of a building, I happen to catch it within the frame. Here it is:

Only known picture of the actual Philaphiliamobile. 

                      Anyway, this is a huge longshot but if you see it, let me know. Here's more angles of the exact same model:

Mine looks much much worse.

Find me!!!