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).

Pics With New Phone

It still amazes me that I actually have a smartphone that's among the newest on the market (Samsung Galaxy SIII). Without going into the whole story, we'll just say that circumstances arose and I ended up getting enough of a deal to make it feasible. Plus, unlike the last time I got a new phone, I actually got my number ported over to the new phone. Anyway, it takes decent pictures (although the originals were extremely large because I didn't check the settings, so I resized them to post them here). And although it doesn't have a flash,   the ones I took at night look really nice.

First two are of Jewelers Row on Sansom St. decked out for the holidays. Taken on Tuesday.

These two are of the historic Christ Church, taken Wednesday evening not long before sunset...

On Friday I found one of those ubiquitous sticker art displays, but this one actually hasn't been tainted. So many newspaper boxes have multiple stickers, some of which are peeling or have been written on, as well as graffiti on the boxes, and they look a mess. Not this one.

The Comcast Center standing tall in the background. Taken Friday evening on Market St. just east of 18th.

On Saturday at Frankford Terminal, I noticed this exit sign looking like it was growing hair.

I got the phone as high as I could and got a look at a portion of the top of the sign. What is this supposed to be? Anyone?

The other side of this building faces Rittenhouse Square, if I'm not mistaken. I think I was on Chestnut St. near 20th. I just liked the zigzag look of it.

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.

Today's Inaccurate Street Art

Can you identify what's wrong with this picture?

If you answered, "The Kardashians have no significance," you are correct!

Creepy Girl Gets Around

You may recall my post about the sticker featuring what I referred to as "Creepy Starbucks Girl" because of its proximity to, well, one of the eight million Starbucks locations.

I've actually seen her multiple times since then, often on newspaper boxes. Here's the most recent example, which I found on a Philadelphia Weekly honor box. She's got a new outfit...and a friend!

I'd really like to know if this is from a street artist and if there's any particular significance to this girl.

Meanwhile, I updated this post from Sunday.

Haunted Starbucks

This is the 16th Street side of the Starbucks at 16th and Walnut Streets. It's haunted. Check it out:

Here's a closeup:

When I emailed the pics from my phone so I could easily save them to a folder, I referred to her as "Creepy Starbucks Girl."

I'm assuming this is another example of street art, although it's not as easy to spot as you'd think. You kind of have to be looking in that direction.

Picture With A Message

Today I took another one of those photos where the sun makes an appearance. I saw the sign from a short distance away and thought it might have been adorned with street art such as this. I was mistaken. It was a protest.

I was trying to show the image of the sticker placed on SEPTA's Route 23 sign but the sun may make the words difficult to see. It says, "Where's the trolley SEPTA promised?" Route 23 used to be a trolley line, the longest in the city and possibly one of the longest trolley lines in the nation. Twenty years ago it was replaced by buses, but there are people who want the trolley back. SEPTA has said in the past that they would restore it. Another line, the 15, had its trolley service restored in 2005.

Riding a trolley as compared to the same old bus is a pretty cool thing, especially if the weather's warm and the windows are open (although I don't know if the new trolleys on the route 15 actually have windows that you can slide up and down to let in some air).

What Does This Mean? (Plus An Update)

First, the update:

As you can see, this box that I wrote about finally has its door, or lid, or whatever, back in place. I'm not sure exactly when it was done. I noticed it on Thursday. Not sure who did it, but there it is, with some sort of band holding the cover in place. I think that's because it got dented while it was lying on the ground, most likely from being stepped on a time or twelve.

Now then, here's a photo I took last week. This has been on the wall at the 15th Street station on the El for as long as I can remember. Someone wrote a message on it, and for the life of me I have no idea what it means. It's not just regular graffiti. There seems to be a message, but I can't figure it out...

Click on the photo for the large version and tell me what you think the writer is trying to say. The only part I really understand it that it was someone's mother's 116th birthday. Is it possibly some form of street art?

Eeeeek! A Bug!

And we've got some big-ass bugs here in the big city!

 

Okay, so it's not a real bug. It's a sticker on some sort of pipe or something sticking out of the ground. This is located on the 1700 block of Walnut Street between the Jones New York and Ann Taylor stores. I guess this qualifies as street art. Would you go to the trouble of putting a sticker that low to the ground, though?

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.