My Sports Tees And Miscellaneous Caps, Part 7

With all that's going on related to my cancer, things are kinda tough, including with this blog. But last night I finally got a picture of EVERY baseball cap I own! (For now. Some are quite old and have sweat stains so it may be time for them to go, and there's a Phillies cap or two I'd like to buy if they're available/the right price.)

And so I present the final batch of caps...followed by some cool throwback t-shirts I got recently...

OMG! A 76ers cap! And the 1997 Flyers Eastern Conference Championship. That was a fun ride. Until it wasn't. #chokingsituation

Baltimore Orioles giveaway from a game in 2002, some time when I gave money to Human Rights Campaign (something I'll never do again), and from the golden days of Outsports.

These tees are from Shibe Vintage Sports, and I love them! There are a few more I hope to get soon.

Except for the above, which also comes in red for the Vet's other main tenant, so far I've got some long-gone teams...

Note: this pic is from the Shibe website. My pic turned out a brown color(????) The Bell, from something called the World Football League, looked like a success story when they initially drew over 50,000 to JFK Stadium. Turns out they gave most of the tickets away. It killed the team. The WFL soon followed.

The Star were able to play at the Vet because USFL played their games in the spring. And they won a chapmionship! (See, Eagles, it IS possible!) Then this happened. The Stars were forced to move to Baltimore until the league was killed. #NeverTrump

The Blazers played here for one year before moving. They were from the WHA, the league that the NHL eventually took some teams from. Not the Blazers, of course. The NHL did get a team from Edmonton. Had a kid named Gretzky. Whatever happened to him?

Before Oakland, before Kansas City, they were the Philadelphia Athletics. And look at this list of championships won while they were here (before things went sour and they...you get the idea.)

World Series titles: 1910 1911 1913 1929 1930
AL Pennants: 1902 1905 1910 1911 1913 1914 1929 1930 1931

Phillies? Any comment?

The Firebirds were a minor league hockey team that played at the long-gone Civic Center (fun fact: the building's gone but Civic Center Boulevard keeps the name to this day!) I was at their final home game in 1979 before they moved to Syracuse. Someone outside handed out fliers asking fans to chant "Keep the Birds in Philly!" midway through the 2nd period. The result: dead silence. #ByeFelicia

Birthday Month Extended: Day 12 (Mother's Day Edition)

I'm telling you, I'm doing 30 of these! But this is only going to contain one song, in honor of Mother's Day: from Philly's own Gamble and Huff, the Intruders with "I'll Always Love My Mama." (From a Soul Train broadcast!)

Birthday Month: Day 5

Check what Wikipedia's entry on disco music begins with!

Disco is a genre of dance music containing elements of Rhythm & Blues, funk, soul, pop, and salsa. It achieved popularity during the mid-1970s to the early 1980s. Its initial audiences were club-goers from the gay, African American, Italian American, Latino, and psychedelic communities in Philadelphia during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

So, it it weren't for Philly we'd have no disco???? Well, that may be a reach. But when you think of some of the stuff that came out of the Philadelphia International Records talent pool, from "The Love I Lost" by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes...



...to the O'Jays' "Love Train..."



... to "T.S.O.P. (The Sound of Philadelphia)" by M.F.S.B. -- which soon became the theme song for Soul Train...



...and many more, clearly we were a major influence.

More in the coming days. I vowed to do 30 posts and I will. With my last day of work for the summer being tomorrow(!!!!) I have no excuses!

Art Institute Building...

1618-22 Chestnut St. Not sure how I didn't look up at this before. From the article I read, it's art deco. I like. The same article said the lower three floors are becoming an Old Navy. Meh.

P.S. I posted something to this blog! Yay!

I'm Feeling The Bern

So this happened over the summer when I was at the Navy Yard taking pictures of the new development (including park space) there...

And then this happened last night on my way home from work...

A few minutes later it hit me: this is why I should vote for Bernie Sanders.

All of this paranoia and the extra "security" that doesn't really protect anyone, all of this crap that began after the 9/11 attacks, annoys me more and more with each passing day. (Well, pretty much everything annoys me more every day, but that's another story.) And, as much as I like her and much of what she's done and what she wants to do, Hillary Clinton -- previously a United States Senator and Secretary of State -- is part of the political machinery that has led to this steady erosion of our freedoms. This has to change, and I don't think Clinton will be as willing to make the needed changes as Sanders.

Make no mistake: I'll vote for whichever candidate the Democrats nominate to go up against the survivor of the RepubliScum Clown Gang Wars. But when Pennsylvania holds its primary (which is so important with the number of delegates at stake, the state schedules it for the day before the first party convention begins) I'm voting for Bernie Sanders.

All he has to do is be competitive and make my vote meaningful. In 2008 I voted for Hillary even though by the time the PA primary occurred it was a foregone conclusion that she came from way ahead to lose the nomation to Barack Obama. At the time I honestly had doubts that he could win in November. Oops. So maybe I shouldn't think this way, but I see no chance one of the GOP clowns can win in November 2016. They've painted themselves and each other into the most extremist corner. None of them (not even John Kasich, who's probably the most sane of the GOP clowns) can escape this when the general election rolls around.

So do your part, America, and make my vote count!

And look up at the sky!

Cropped version:

The Gay Porn Boxer And "Journalism"

When these stories first appeared in the Philadelphia Daily News a few weeks ago, I said I had to discuss them here. Well, I procrastinated again, so here we go now.

I laughed at the first one and cringed (and laughed) at the second. The first one reported a tale told by a one-time local boxer, Yusaf Mack, who said he was offered money via a Facebook message to do a porn scene in New York. Desperate for money, he accepted the offer and showed up at an address in the Bronx during the summer. He claimed there were naked women walking around. When the time came to start the scene, he said he needed a drink and someone gave him a shot of vodka and a pill. He claimed the next thing he could remember, he was on a train at 30th Street Station being awakened. He didn't remember getting on a train but did find $4,500.00 in a pocket.

Cut to October, when he says people were acting strangely around him, and finally someone told him about a clip online in which he was in a threesome with two men -- no women in sight. He denied it until he got a look at it. He said he had no memory of anything between the time he downed the shot and pill and when he woke up on the train. He aggressively said he was straight: "My whole life, I've been what they call a whoremonger. I love females...the only time I touch a man is when I'm in the ring fighting." He has ten kids and was engaged to a woman.

A week later, after the story went viral, the porn company denied drugging him and reports began to surface about there being possibly more than one scene with Mack and other men, he admitted he lied. He's gay, or bi, or something (his story changed a time or two just in the course of the followup interview), he admitted doing the scene because he was unemployed and need the money to help his ten kids and three grandkids. His fiancee reacted by leaving him. But hey, he got some assistance from one Anthony Cherry, who contacted Mack via Instagram and offered to represent him for free.

The article says Cherry is "a Los Angeles-based hairstylist/crisis public-relations manager" -- so hey, when he's done with Yusaf's PR he can work on the do!

Okay, it seemed fairly likely from the beginning that he wasn't telling the truth. That turned out to be the case. But what is more sad is the tone of the original article. The writer, Jenice Armstrong, seemed to go out of her way to help make the story seem plausible, using a gee-whiz tone that, I believe, belies her own experience as a writer. This portion, in particular, got to me:

But bizarre things can happen when you mix drugs, alcohol and illicit sex. I did some poking around online yesterday and someone pointed me in the direction of GHB (gamma-Hydroxybutyrate), a/k/a Liquid Ecstasy or Georgia Home Boy, a colorless and tasteless so-called party drug that has been known to lower users' inhibitions and also leave them with severe memory loss.

Could someone have slipped it or something similar into Mack's drink? I asked an expert if it was at all possible for him to do something out of character sexually and then forget it.

Of course, the expert said it was certainly possible. But we knew that already, didn't we? How many stories have we heard in the media about date rape? About sexual assaults where drugs and alcohol were involved? How many stories have we heard about women at parties or in bars having their drinks "roofied" by men they met? How many articles has Armstrong herself written about such stories? Hell, just in the last year she's written about Bill Cosby's attacks on women, hasn't she?

Her website says she has over two decades of journalism experience! And here she says she had to go online after hearing Mack's tale to learn about GHB? Come on.

I don't know what her agenda was in writing the story, but she ended up getting burned. Of course, a good portion of what she writes about is celebrity fluff, stories about clothes and hairstyles, local and national celebs, women's issues, African-American culture, and of course, she basically curates the annual Daily News Sexy Singles promotion. (Go search for my posts about that, why don't you?)

Journalism is so loosely defined nowadays.

Cira Green

This just opened, and I went there and took pictures today since I didn't have to go into hell work. I wanted to post these right away so I just uploaded without cropping or any kind of editing. Maybe I'll put some edits on Instagram later. (Or maybe not. I have to go into hell work tomorrow and I'm having my latest brain surgery the next day...update: surgery actually happened a week later.) This includes a couple of skyline shots and one or two were taken through glass panels.

A park on top of a parking garage? What a time to be alive.

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.

Philly Photo Day 2015

So, as I wasn't feeling up to snuff lately and had to work anyway, this is the only picture I took for this year's Philly Photo Day (edited most of it out to turn it into a panorama shot). And I didn't even submit it in time to be part of the exhibition. So here it is.

Sometimes I Love Dumb People

Presented without further comment...from me, at least...

 

The Onion article in question...plus a bonus!

Craigslist Follies! Or, How I Sold Some Papal Tickets

The Phillies gave this card out to
fans one night recently.

(If you're offended by foul language, you should be warned that towards the end of this post, there are a few nasty words.)

In case you haven't heard, perhaps because you've been visiting relatives on the moon, Pope Francis is coming to Philadelphia this weekend for the World Meeting of Families. It's an event I have no interest in. It's been extremely overhyped, whether because of security plans or just because of things like the item you see on the left. And most of the news coverage is either fluff (mostly ignoring the Philadelphia archbishop's extremist anti-gay bigotry or support for child-molesting priests over their victims) or downright useless. There are three public events at which Francis is appearing: a speech on Independence Mall, a Mass on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway and the "Festival of Families," featuring host Mark Walhberg and performances by Aretha Franklin, among others. After some confusion, it was announced that certain areas closest to the front would require tickets for admission. The tickets would be free, but they would be distributed online.

Although the demand for SEPTA's special weekend passes turned out to be nonexistent, the event tickets were snapped up in minutes. But with lots of clicking on the "refresh" button on my browser window I somehow managed to get four tickets each to the Papal Mass and the Festival of Families.

Having no real desire to be in the crowd for either event or go through security checkpoints, I decided to sell the tickets on Craigslist and see what I could get. Unlike most of the ads, I didn't request a specific price. I just said that people could make an offer and if I accepted, I'd send them my email address for PayPal and email the PDF documents when I received the payment. The first couple of days I got a couple of nibbles but no one followed through. I also had the post flagged for removal a few times by people who either took offense or just wanted to eliminate competition for their own tickets. Naturally, I just re-posted the ad each time.

Today, whoever was flagging them got more intense. At least three times my ad was deleted between overnight and mid-afternoon today. Then one of the people doing the flagging emailed a reply, perhaps by accident, because it seemed to be written to someone else.  He wrote: "Another scam. Will try to shut it down." I decided to reply, and I kind of didn't hold back: "NOT A SCAM, YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT! WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?"

He replied with: "i can flag or we can meet to buy the tickets and then i can show you my badge and take it downtown. what will it be?" Yeah. Like he's a real cop or something. I wrote back: "Right. Who's scamming now?" (Interestingly, while in the middle of this my ad was still active and I was making a sale!)

He wrote again: "Stealing from religious pilgrims. Ask yourself if its worth it." I replied: "Not stealing at all. No one's forcing anyone to pay for them, you sanctimonious prick." He wrote back one more time, saying "You took those ticks from others for your own greed. You can't justify your actions." Instead of going back and forth, I flagged him. Each mail sent through Craigslist's relay system includes a link to "Please flag unwanted messages (spam, scam, other)" -- including mail that is "annoying/inappropriate/abusive." Boom.

First, ticks? Ewwwww. Second, there's no law against selling something you legitimately own. I didn't steal the tickets. I followed the process to get them. It's not my fault I was lucky for two out of three events. Third, as I said, I didn't demand a particular price. One woman said she was willing to pay $100 for two tickets ($50.00 each) to the Mass. I accepted (once she used the right email address in PayPal). The other buyer (the one going on during the email exchange) offered $100 for two Mass tickets and two Festival tickets (or $25.00 each) and I accepted his offer as well. And I'm not a bit sorry. I'm far from being in great financial shape, even before the medical bills from the last three months started rolling in, and even the fact that I go back to work for LIHEAP on Tuesday won't dramatically change that.

Hey, even though I'm not placing any more ads on Craigslist -- well, except one more, see below --there's still time to snap up the last two Festival tickets for Saturday night. :)

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).