I was waiting for my wife and saw a guy randomly grab a woman and slam her violently into the side of the building. Cops came and it took 4-5 officers to wrestle him into the back of the squad car.

For real, it’s easier to find late night food options in suburban New Jersey than it is in the city these days.

There’s stables near the corner of Cecil B Moore and Hancock, which I think are for the horses uses by the company that does the horse and carriage thing for tourists.

As best as I can determine, the processing plants assumed the grease would fuck things up, so they wouldn’t take them. But after Dominos pizza kept getting shit for producing so much trash, they paid someone to test it, and it turned out it didn’t cause many problems, and the industry has since come around to the belief that it’s ok, and the majority of plants currently accept them.

https://www.afandpa.org/news/2020/afpa-and-industry-partners-aim-set-record-straight-pizza-boxes-are-recyclable-grease-and

That being said, I think it’s still Philly’s official stance that soiled cardboard should not be recycled.

As someone that has worked in low-income communities for decades, one thing I don’t think “normies” get is that when you have multiple generations of severe poverty in a row, shit gets really fucked up in deep and profound ways that there’s no quick fix to. It takes like half a century (if not more) of sustained and committed work to create incremental progress one generation at a time so that the grandkids of today’s severely poor have a decent chance.

But if you’re thinking geography, not people, sometimes you can revive areas via gentrification and displacement.

This is my main gripe with the whole “Krasner sucks, no PPD sucks!” Arguments on this thread.

Shit is so broken. Mayor, PPD, FOP, DA, City Council, Harrisburg…everything.

There is no side anyone should be proud of supporting.

I do think you can argue that some are worse than others, and I’m not espousing some “both sides are equally at fault” but no one one’s hands are clean, and no one should feel proud.

It’s a fucking shit show.

I split my time between Philly and another city in another country, and I was watching a mayoral debate there recently, and it’s so weird to see a debate where, honestly, I’d be ok with any of the candidates, left, right, or center, because they all seem reasonable and competent, just with different priorities or philosophies for how to approach the city’s problems (eg, change regulations to make it easier for private companies to fix it versus raise taxes to fund a govt initiative to fix it).

It’s so fucking depressing to come back here where it’s just such a disgrace of incompetence all around with zero good options.

It was really good too! I miss them. I haven’t found a good replacement yet.

When I first moved here, a local described it as going “trash blind.”

I don’t know though. Five years in, and it still bugs me.

I clean up my block every week in an attempt to keep it at bay because it gets me down to come home to filth every day, but I swear, some days, I’ll fill up a 30 gallon bag and an hour later and it’s covered in litter again.

Trash, litter, dumping. There’s often lots of trash and garbage on the streets, especially outside the central core (where businesses pay to have trash cleanup).

It’s just a dirty city.

The neighborhoods you mentioned are all fine safety-wise.

You can use the Comptroller’s map of shootings as a rough proxy of safety:

https://controller.phila.gov/philadelphia-audits/mapping-gun-violence/#/?year=2022&map=11.09%2F40.03930%2F-75.11034

For moving trucks, you can get Temporary No Parking signs:

https://www.phila.gov/services/cars-parking-transportation/apply-for-a-parking-permit/apply-for-a-temporary-no-parking-permit/

You fill out some forms, and you’ll then have to go pick up the signs yourself. You’ll want to put them up a couple days ahead of time to give people a heads up. If the spot you want opens up you can try a combo of the no parking sign and cones to try to hold onto the spot till your truck comes.

From there…it’s a bit of a crap shoot. Like, if someone is parked there, I think you have to call the police to get the car ticketed (which they may or may not bother to do), then call a towing company. it’s hard to enforce, and usually more trouble than it’s worth.

And if they don’t…no worries. People deal with road inconveniences and double-parkers every day. Someone may get mad. Eventually the task will be over. By the next day it’ll all be forgotten. I think this is a good time to pay for pro movers, preferably locals, and just kinda pay them to have it be their problem.

If you really are forced to truly block traffic entirely on your block, a cone at the end of the block to keep people from turning onto the block and getting stuck may be a good idea.

There’s two main residential parking situations in Philly.

There are PPA permitted blocks that have parking time restrictions unless you have a PPA parking permit for that district (only available to residents of that district), and the PPA will aggressively ticket violators.

Then, there’s the non-permit residential blocks where, in theory, the police enforce parking rules, but never do, and people do whatever they want, like park on the sidewalk.

I’m assuming this person is talking about the residential PPA district parking permit.

real snow storms are infrequent and things tend to melt quickly. You’ll probably really only have to worry about it 1-3 times a year.

Technically, you’re not supposed to shovel into the street, and you’re supposed to have a three foot white path on your sidewalk. This generally means a little mound/wall right at the curb.

But, the real answer is that the city won’t enforce shit, but I’d ask for you to be considerate to others and not bury someone else’s car or sidewalk, or make it harder to drive down the street. Do the best you can to pile it wherever you think it’s the least bothersome to others.

In all seriousness, never expect anything to function properly or any basic service to be done.

That way you’ll be pleasantly surprised when something actually does goes right, instead of consistently mad for the 99% of the time the city fails to do the bare minimum.

Kinda gets at the fundamental question of whether it’s a drop in violence that opens the gates of gentrification, or if the money comes first, and that increase in wealth causes the violence to drop (either by enriching and/or displacing the original more crime-prone residents).

If it’s the drop in violence that comes first, then yeah…still a little rough to draw in folks. But if it’s there latter, then the drop in violence will come after.

One story you hear is that after we hit peak crime in 1990 and crime started consistently dropping, people became more comfortable returning to urban environments, and this happened to roughly coincide with when millennials, the largest generation ever, were hitting adulthood (and desperate to escape the boring suburbs of there youth).

So, falling crime + huge generation of young people desiring city life -> urban renewal.

But now, millennials are (belatedly) hitting family formation years, which traditionally means move to the burbs [see note]. And with increasing crime and Gen Z being smaller in size, I’m not positive the right conditions are there for that to happen again.

And I think between richer millennials leaving and poorer Gen Z coming in, and crime going up, whether you believe money chases out violence or a drop in violence welcomes in money, conditions don’t seem ideal wide either.

[note] the urbanism of millennials tends to mean they favor the denser “streetcar suburbs” that still have walkability and city rail access, while also allowing for the “bigger house with a yard and better schools and less crime” that drive families out of the city.

So my personal guess is the current/next wave of renewal will continue to be millennial driven, but be in places like Collingwood, Ardmore, and the other walkable urban-adjacent suburbs….but I do think many are trying to raise families in the city. (Personally, in my friend group, the city leavers are outnumbering the stayers.)

I’m kind of on the fence about whether America’s urban renewalism has already peaked, and we’re now on the decline, or whether it’ll rebound after we get past the current hurdles of high rates, inflation, energy issues, and the lingering effects of the pandemic.

Genuine, non-facetious question…

Do the policies about not conducting traffic stops over minor infractions make this issue worse, or is the ability to exploit the system with phony tags separate?

Like, if you changed traffic enforcement policies to pull over anyone with a temporary tag, can they actually check the legitimacy of the temporary tag, or can PA LEOs just not check out of state temp tags with their systems period, so it wouldn’t really matter if you stopped them or not?

This is so true. The overlap of cars with FOP plates and illegal tint jobs and plate covers is nuts.

It screams, “I intend to break traffic laws, and I fully expect to get away with it. The rules don’t apply to me.”

It’s such a selfish and entitled mentality.

Until I started reading about this museum I never knew that this Calder, the modern sculpture Calder who did the colorful mobile art, was related to the Calder that did the William Penn statue on city hall.

Probably common knowledge for Philly natives, but I’m a transplant.

Totally off topic, but I was reading about his descendants and if there are any Penns alive today.

The short version is there’s no living descendant named Penn, as the surviving ones are through lineages via women who changed their name for marriage.

But a random bit that I found funny was that he had kids in both the US and the UK (from different wives I believe), but all the descendants from his US kids eventually returned to the UK (one dated Prince William) and all this descendants from his UK kids eventually moved to the US.

https://billypenn.com/2017/09/04/no-youre-not-a-descendant-of-william-penn/

And if you’re not from here, people don’t knock on doors to trick or treat. You sit outside on your stoop and hand out candy.

My bedroom used to have a lovely view of a big beautiful magnolia tree. The owner of that house sold, and the flippers that bought it cut it down to build the ugliest fucking deck I’ve ever seen in my life (it’s cement, covered with astroturf, with a cheap plastic fence).

Not my property, but it sucks that my once gorgeous view of blossoms is now some ugly astroturf patio.

Earlier this year, there was a former Philly corrections officer who was also arrested for gun trafficking.

https://www.pottsmerc.com/2022/03/11/former-philadelphia-corrections-officer-arrested-on-gun-trafficking-charges

And Philly PD has its own problems with cops engaging in criminal behavior:

https://www.inquirer.com/news/eric-snell-philly-police-corruption-gun-trace-task-force-baltimore-20190429.html

https://www.thefishmanfirm.com/former-philadelphia-narcotics-officers-federally-indicted/

It’s hard to have much faith that our law enforcement officers can or will do anything about crime, when some of them are active participants in that criminal activity.

It’s a dumb tautology.

I can go legally buy a gun, then commit a crime and then I’m not longer a legal owner. But being “illegal” had no effect on my ability to get a gun because it happened after.

The point is, when that person originally bought the gun, did the seller know of any legal reason to not do that sale?

I can go into a store with the full intent of legally reselling it, and sure if you could read my mind you’d know that means it’s not a legal sale.

But since mind-reading is not possible, all you can go on is the known information. and per that known information, absolutely nothing would distinguish me from a legal purchaser.

So if the difference between a legal and illegal purchase depends on mind reading, it’s not really a difference in any practical sense. A difference without a distinction - that’s the saying, right?

And you know that.

And I’m sure you also know that many other countries have figured out that because mindreading isn’t real you need to add multiple other steps to dissuade that type of situation from occurring, including much more involved pre-purchase requirements, and much more thorough post purchase tracking and registration to make it so that it’s just too big of a pain in the ass to get a gun if you’re just going to turn around and sell it. And too likely that it’ll get traced back to you and some illegal sale you were involved with should the sketchy person you sold it to use it in a crime.

And you also know that while it’s kind of a pain in the ass, if you’re legal, and you have no intent on an illegal resale or to use it in a crime, other than it kinda being a pain, it doesn’t prevent legal ownership.

So the trade off is we can cut down on illegal ownership by making legal purchasing and owning a bit more annoying and require a bit more responsibility.

Or, we can keep legal purchasing super simple and accept that illegal ownership and increased gun violence are a cost of that ease and simplicity.

Municipal govt is an absolutely maddening place to work if you like it when things get done.

Some non-enforcement, like when it conflicts with state or federal law and creates legal liability, or when there’s legit resource constraints and enforcement needs prioritization, I am sympathetic to.

But it’s bullshit when it’s just a philosophical disagreement, like when people say it amounts to criminalizing poverty, or disproportionately affects some group negatively, or it only makes rehabilitation harder so it won’t be enforced.

That shit pisses me off. If that’s what you believe, then you gotta do the work to change the law.

The Pandora’s box that you open is that you can’t point to a bunch of laws and say, “Ignore these because I think they’re morally wrong” but then get mad when someone else ignores laws that you do want enforced.

It’s a very bad precedent once you open the door to the idea that enforcement is optional, arbitrary, and up to the discretion of whomever holds power.

Rhynhart has my vote, but this is probably the most likely outcome.