philly

Roosevelt Island Tram Craziness

The air-tram in NYC connecting Manhattan Island to Roosevelt Island stalled yesterday stranding seventy or so people 150' above the East river for a total of twelve hours. Gothamist has coverage here and here with this great photo via flickr.

I've never been on the tram, but I've always wanted to take a ride across on it. This doesn't stop me from wanting to make that trip on that thing. If they find some kind of fatal flaw, now that would change my mind, we'll see. And a random tidbit of NYC knowledge. Main St, New York, NY is on Roosevelt Island. One of my college friends was actually from there.

Fireman's Hall Museum

I've never been inside the Fireman's Hall Museum, but I walked by it over the weekend and it's a gorgeous building from the outside. I'd like to head back to Old City to have a looksy as to what's inside this building and the rest of the museum

It's a 100+ year old building which underwent renovations in the late seventies [a thorough cleaning, installation of a stained glass window, climate control and an additional wing] via some special Philadelphia Bicentennial funding. More on the history of the building here.

South St Bridge Graffiti

I took a stroll across South St bridge for the first time over the weekend. I had crossed it several times by car, but never on foot. I had been told by Miss Plum [one half of The Unharshed Mellow] that there was a good amount of graffiti all over the bridge and indeed there was.

The grouping above was my favorite out of them all. The double pasteup of W with his codpiece flightsuit with the infamous "Mission Accomplished!" as a header and footer juxtaposed by a graphic "No War" illustration. The "No War" illustration brings to mind Edvard Munch's The Scream, but this time, the eyes are covered, not the ears.

There still exists a blood-curdling inaudible scream coming out of the mouth of the person in the illustration, but now, s/he cannot bear to look at the atrocities behind them either. A soldier with a boot on top of a seemingly dead civilian and more soldiers standing on top of a tank. The tank draws me to the image of Tank Man from nearly two decades ago.

Politics aside, it's a nice walk and has a busy view back towards Center City. Twenty-three shots up in a flickr set.

G-Ho

Easily one of my favorite photoblogs out there, let alone here in Philly is Brad Maule's PhillySkyline.com. A collection of incredible photo essays of Philly's myriad neighborhoods and beyond. I interviewed him at Philly Future a few months back and got to learn a little more about him in the process which was really cool. And today, everyone can read about him in the Metro on his quest to rename the Graduate Hospital area "G-Ho" as he stated in this photo essay.

Go grab a copy of the Metro and look at the bottom of the front page or download this .pdf of the whole paper.

Help Brad spread the word and convince the South of South Neighborhood Association to adopt G-Ho! Yes, the name is one part joke, but also at least one part reality. Sometimes it's something as stupid as a catchy name to get people to move there. SoSo isn't the best nickname for a neighborhood, makes the area sound, well, so-so and that's not good.

Franklin Fountain

While there is no new food blog entry over at Messy and Picky this week [Messy's on Spring Break!] we did head over to Franklin Fountain this weekend after seeing Why We Fight over at the Ritz East - a great film.

Back to Franklin Fountain...

We've been meaning to get over there since about the first week we moved down to Philly. One of us had seen an article about the place in either the City Paper or the Philadelphia Weekly, can't remember which. But we don't spend much time in Olde City other than to see movies at the Ritz theaters - we're not big on the yuppie crowd over there dominated by dudes in button down striped shirts and their fan-cay jeans. Not sure which crowd is funnier, the dudes of Olde City or the guidos of the NYC club scene. Both are hilarious in their own ways.

Franklin Fountain is such a cool throwback. Pressed tin ceilings and walls. A pulley motor set of ceiling fans and the waxed handlebar moustache on one of the owners. Wonderful. And of course, the old school sodas which are hand syrup'd right there. The signs in the place are old school looking too. The whole feel is great. But that's enough for now, a M&P review of the place will surely be seen in the coming weeks as we will definitely head back there for more yummy food. In the meantime, go there! Experience things as they once were. And they're open until Midnight on the weekends and 11p otherwise.

Franklin Fountain - 116 Market St

Mosaic Mural

I walked by this mural over on Chestnut St between 7th and 8th Sts yesterday. It's mostly made out of tiles! Tiny about 1/2" tiles on what seems to be 2' x 2' square boards which were then transferred onto the side of the building. I'm told that the northern half of the mural was painted by inmates from a nearby jail somewhere.

More photos of Philadelphia on my photoblog

Ardmore, A Village at Risk

There's a battle going on just over in Ardmore and the Save Ardmore Coalition have been fighting like hell for their community which is at risk. In conjunction with Scribe Video Center, they've put together a short documentary which will be showcased next Tuesday. Some info:

The Save Ardmore Coalition's 8 minute documentary "Ardmore, A Village at Risk" will be featured at Scribe Video Center's upcoming screening of 4 documentaries produced through its Precious Places Project. All of the documentaries focus on the use of eminent domain for private development and the threat that it presents to the existing community. The video documentaries are the Save Ardmore Coalition's "Ardmore, A Village At Risk", the Cramer Hill Residents Association's Pride of the Hill, the Community Leadership Institute's The Taking of Bodine: Never Forget and Odunde's The Taking of South Central... Philadelphia.

The screening will be followed by community conversation and discussion about the future of our neighborhoods. This event will be held on Tuesday March 7, 2006 at 7:00PM at St. Mary's Episcopal Church, 36 Ardmore Avenue, Ardmore, PA. It is free and open to the public.

I've never been out to Ardmore, but I may be heading out there to see this film and see first hand what's going on just around the way.

What's happening in Ardmore has national significance.

Rindelaub's Row

Well, it's all gone now. I took that shot yesterday evening.

And when I went to take a closer look at the gaping hole in the ground which was once a historical site, I saw the above sticker and it made me chuckle out lout.

My flickr set of Rindelaub's Row.

Previously.

An Hour Outside at Temple

How cold was it outside on Sunday? Well, after about forty-five minutes of shooting around the main campus of Temple at around 2.30p, I went to open my camera bag and one of the plastic buckles just snapped off as I pressed it. It wasn't just a defective buckle. It was the cold. How do I know? Because about fifteen minutes later, when I went to open the bag again, another buckle snapped due to being so frozen.

It was so windy, a little piece of schmutz blew into my camera and landed on the CCD sensor and it showed up in a few of the shots as a little black splotch against the gorgeous blue sky. I just cleaned the sensor last week so I know that it was clean. I cleaned it again tonight after the outing.

I spent an hour walking around in the 35mph winds which resulted in a below-freezing, plastic freezing wind chill. I wasn't worried about my camera though, it's been documented to work fine well below 0°.

It was the most time I had ever spent up there taking photos. There's a good amount of stuff to explore and take photos of, but it was so fucking cold I called it a day after an hour. I barely walked around maybe four blocks in any direction from the Student Center. I was east of Broad St for the full hour. I'll head back up there to explore some more once it gets a little warmer and less windy.

Above is a shot of that weird bell tower that is in a little quad just north of the main library. Exactly as-is out of the camera. No post processing for color adjustment or contrast or sharpening, just resizing. Came out perfectly. f/8, 1/500 sec, @12mm with the 12-24mm wide angle.

I took about sixty shots or so. A flickr set of twenty-two here.

Market East Walkway

I got off at the 13th St stop on the El the other day with the intention of getting to Market East to buy a weekly TransPass [I lost my fucking monthly pass last week, arg!], but I noticed that I was at the wrong stop and that I'd have to hoof it over to the next stop underground. Not bad I thought, I'd never taken this walk before. Bad idea.

Holy shit does it reek down there! The above shot is representative of that fetid effluvium. I pushed the yellow as a simple representation of the overpowering scent of piss. So there. It's not simply a shot of the beauty of tile and glassblock and stainless steel that is SEPTA's palette of style, it is an overt tug at the olfactory senses via the optic nerve. For the colorblind out there, bear with me on this one color wise, but you can get a whiff of it if you'd like by taking a trip down stairs between the 13th St and 11th St El stations.

Happy smelling.

Click the photo for a slightly larger version on my photoblog.