Trenton Thunder 9/1/15

Last September I went to three minor league baseball games in the span of 8 days, with two being first-time
visits (and the other being the Camden Riversharks, who have since moved out of the area). I started with the Trenton Thunder, and what did I find when I left the light rail stop nearest the ballpark? The New Jersey State Prison!

Thanks, Google! Good to know they're open 24-7.
Wouldn't want crooks waiting outside all night to get in.
And 3.8 stars!

Along the wall of the prison there's a mural...

I noticed that structurally all three parks sort of look the same. Did minor league parks go through a cookie-cutter phase like, for example, the Vet, Three Rivers in Pittsburgh and Riverfront in Cincinnati?

Thanks, Bill Cosby

This is a mural that I found on North Broad Street, near Glenwood Ave., when I first started working for the state...

This is the same location now...

This is why it's gone.

Some Recent Street Art Pics

These are pics I took recently on various wanderings around town...

The amazing Kid Hazo installed this, as you can probably guess. Unfortunately, by the time I got there the fake cameras were taken down.

Most of the stickers I spot are in places like Center City. This is actually on Frankford Avenue near Linden, not far from my house.

These next few, including the WRDSMTH works above, are in the vicinity of South Street. (A shame one of them ha been tagged). I was looking for another Kid Hazo work that was there, but once again I got there after it was already removed.

Above is a work from another of my favorites, Joe Boruchow. Sad that it's been tagged by graffiti.

This last one I found on my way to the Fringe Festival's Opera Philadelphia/Bearded Ladies collaboration, "Andy: A Popera."  (Highly recommended if you can get a ticket for any of the remaining shows, but I think it's pretty much sold out.) I don't remember exactly where this fence was but I think it's on Front Street, under the El, somewhere between Berks St. (where I got off the El) and Oxford Avenue (where I turned from Front St. to go to the venue for the show).

City Hall Courtyard

The compass mural in City Hall Courtyard was recently restored by -- who else? -- the Mural Arts Program after years of being worn down by foot traffic and the elements. These pics really don't do it full justice. If I could get to one of the windows on an upper floor inside City Hall...

Megawords And Scientology?

So there's this old building on the 1300 block of Chestnut Street that has been vacant for many years. It's been owned by the "Church" of Scientology since 2007, and the most recent information I can find is that the city of Philadelphia, as of December 2013, planned to take them to Blight Court. (I didn't even know there was such a thing as Blight Court.) Anyway, this has been sitting in the window in the front of the building for years...

A couple of closeups which I took in 2013 (the pic above is from about 3 weeks ago)...

I always wondered what this was. It seems to be related to this, although the Facebook page hasn't been updated in a year and the website which led me to the Facebook page has gone nearly two years without updates.

Sadly, as I was walking on Chestnut Street last week...

I'd love to know if this means the Scientologists are finally doing something with the building, or if the Megawords people just reclaimed their work.

Monday's Photo Walk

So on Monday, when it was 70 degrees for probably the last time in quite a while, I decided to take the El into town and wander around with my camera. (This whole photo-taking thing is really becoming something serious. I need to do something about this. Maybe lessons or something to learn more about editing, framing shots, and so on.)

I had one specific thing I wanted to get -- a mural from the Mural Arts Program I had seen recently and wanted to discuss. It's actually not one of my favorites. It's called "Wall of Hearts" and, as you can see, features a design from Jane Seymour.

This mural is little more than an advertisement for her jewelry collection. I love looking at murals and I've often expressed my love of the Mural Arts Program on this blog -- but this saddens and kind of offends me a bit.

Anyway, beyond that I got some other pictures, and if you click on this link you'll see them all. (Decided to use Photobucket for this even though I haven't figured out how to embed their slideshow.) Besides these below, there's a preview of Christmas, a famous old theater, street art on a billboard and some other stuff.

Philly Photo Day 2012

For the second year in a row I decided to take some photos for Philly Photo Day. Last year I was working. This year I'm not. So I actually got to hit a couple of areas of the city and take almost 60 pictures. Circumstances prevented me from taking more. Maybe next year. Once again, I can submit a photo (just one) to have exhibited in a show which will take place in December.

Below is a slideshow for you to view. If you have an opinion about which pic I should submit (or if I should crop any of them to improve them) let me know. I have to decide by the 30th which one to put into the show. There's a new twist this year: selected pictures will be on display on buses, trains and even billboards for a month. So I really need to pick a good one.



A few I'm slightly leaning towards:

The Doctors

You can find this meeting outside Penn Presbyterian Medical Center (although most people still call it Presbyterian Hospital).

This illustrates some important points. First, when four doctors "consult" each other on your case, all four of them can bill for services rendered. Notice that fellow in the background, rushing to join the others. His urgent stride seems to say, "Wait for me, fellas! I want to get in on this gravy train, too!"

Also, it appears that all doctors are white men. (Actually, the statues could be really old, as the hospital itself was founded in 1871, so perhaps they just reflected the times?)

PIFA Street Fair

One of the final events of the 2011 Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts, which went on for nearly a month, was a street fair which took up a stretch of Broad Street on Saturday. The festival was inspired by the scene in Paris in the 1910s. (Thus, the 80-foot Eiffel Tower ensconced inside the Kimmel Center, above.)

I took some pictures and video ...before the battery on my phone died, that is...the photos are in a Flickr set which can be found here. I've included a couple of them below (after the jump), along with the videos I took.

NOT Street Art

One of the local blogs I check out (and follow via Twitter) is Streets Dept., which features photos (and sometimes video) taken around the city, focusing on things like fashion, art, things happening on the streets, or just some nice scenes. (See what I did there? Photos, video...focusing...there's no "off" position on my genius switch, I tell you.) Often you will see on the blog examples of street art -- stickers, graffiti, wheat pastings, even that yarn bombing stuff that seems to be so popular that it still brings some hits to my blog.

I bring this up because (1) I wanted to give a shout out to Streets Dept. and (2) to point out that the picture you see here is NOT street art.

I found a number of these stenciled onto the sidewalks around center city the other day. The Philadelphia Soul is our Arena Football team (in other words, not real football since they play it indoors on the floor of the hockey rink with artificial turf laid on top). They used to be part-owned by Jon Bon Jovi, and they won the league's championship in July 2008. A Philadelphia team winning a title (remember, this was before the Phillies broke through in October of that year) so freaked out the powers that be that the league went out of business, denying the Soul an opportunity to defend their crown. That, and they mentioned something about the economy tanking.

The league came back in 2010, but without the Soul. However, this year...well, you can see from the picture when they return to action. Before they were shut down, they did get some good crowds to the CoreStates First Union Wachovia Wells Fargo Center. We'll have to see if the buzz picks back up after two lost years and one departed rock star/owner.

As for those stenciled ads? I'm assuming this weekend's rain will have washed that stuff away.

Yarn Bomb!

While I was doing the Mural Mile tour last month, I happened upon an example of yarn bombing. I'd never heard of it before I read some posts about it on the Philthy Blog, which focuses on the local scenes in art, music, fashion, etc. Yarn bombing is like graffiti or street art, except instead of paint, the artists use yarn. There are a number of examples of local yarn bombs in these archived Philthy Blog posts.

I took these photos on South Street. That is quite a way up that pole. I wonder how the artist managed to do this without being stopped by the police or someone else? I would think a ladder would be needed. I also wonder how well these yarn bombs can last, between the rain and the hot sun and idiots who can't resist yanking at it. This one's been up since at least mid-May, when it was featured on a Philthy Blog post. Hmmmm...maybe I should make a return trip and check it out?