philly

Above is a photo from one of my first reservations as a member of PhillyCarShare 3 years ago in the summer of 2006. Wow has a lot changed since I took that photo. Two months after that photo was taken, I was working at 50th St & Baltimore Ave on the 3rd floor of the firehouse for PCS. I toiled away doing more than my share (and my boss's share and his boss's share) of 70 hour weeks, 7 days a week (all for no overtime!). One day after my yearly review, I quit because I was treated like shit. In the last roughly 2 years since I've left PCS, they've been treating their customers like shit in addition to their staff which is a shame. I felt the need to write this post after reading my friend Roz's post about why she's done with PCS and numerous complaints about PCS buzzing through my tiwtter. You can see all twitter comments with "phillycarshare" here. As you can see, nothing positive to be said in a bit. Oh, and the @phillycarshare account has been a FAQ on how to not effectively use twitter as a company.

So, I saw the guts of PCS for a year; fuck it, I basically was the guts of PCS for a year. I still know people toiling away in there. For one reason or another, they're still there dealing with this shit. If there were more jobs available out there, I'm sure they wouldn't be. I worked in the Marketing Department, but I did everything. I set up events. I planned events. I worked events. I did customer service. I fixed people's computers in-house. I took over the old website. I set up mobile devices to sync email. I did some car maintenance. I took photos at events. I did final layout and some design work for printed and web material. I managed the newsletter. I even had to do some investigating to find evidence to get a co-worker fired (which was actually my direct boss's job, but he didn't know how to do it so guess who did it!).

While I was there, I believe membership grew 7 fold to 30k or something. I'm not sure what they're saying the official number is now, but months back, they were touting a number somewhere around 50k or something. With all the culling of their rolls, don't believe the hype of the numbers. While I was there, I also managed to get my director fired. It was no small feat. It took the better part of 6 months. She was not the right person for the non-profit gig she signed up for. Money wasn't spent wisely in many places. But all that is petty shit really (except for poor monetary decisions), when you see how PCS is treating their customers.

It was almost all okay as long as the shit happening behind the big magic curtain didn't have any repercussions to the end user. But the shit has certainly been hitting the fan, or in their case, the near-silent, regenerative-breaking powered, gas-electric hybrid engine of the Toyota Prius (different from the old skool original Prius at the top of the post).

A flurry of confusing emails have been sent out from PCS to it's members. A longtime ago, they sent out an email about how the gas card system was changing over to a universal number, 0988, so you didn't have to punch in your own PIN each time you filled up your car. Why? Who the fuck knows, but that lead to a shitload of gas being stolen. I wonder why: NO ACCOUNTABILITY. And what was their solution? Remove all gas cards from the cars and you'd have to pay for gas yourself and then email/fax/mail in the receipt for reimbursement. How about going back to a PIN system where gas purchases could very easily be linked to a PIN and time of usage + reservation? I'm 99% sure that was within the capabilities of the back end database they used at the time.

Rates have gone up and down and up again. To the end user, all this price changing looks arbitrary and idiotic; symptomatic of a company that doesn't know what it's doing and not like a multi-million dollar company handling a fleet of cars used by the staff of 5th largest city in the US and 30k other people. Of note, PCS lost their city contract a year and change ago when ZipCar came to town. If I recall correctly, PCS's daily rates changed a bunch. Their insomniac rate was removed and recently, brought back, but under a different rate.

Recently, they cleaned a shitload of house by culling their rolls of people who hadn't used the system in x months. What the exact timeframe for lack of use or amount of money spent in a timeframe was, I have no idea. But people were just cut. I don't think real reasons were given as to why this was happening.

But then just last week, PCS dropped the biggest bomb: they were dropping their Basic Freedom plan. The email sent out to Basic Freedom members started off like this:

Rate Plan Change to Benefit You: Please read on…

Benefit, eh? The Basic Freedom plan started over 3 years ago after the company had grown enough to no longer need a large cash deposit (was it $250 per person? I forget). People were given one week to cancel their membership or automatically be bumped up to the, formerly, Advantage Plan which costs $15/mo; now it's the only plan which they're calling the Philadelphia Plan as if there's a Manhattan Plan, Chicago Plan or otherwise? Is there a need to call it a plan if there's only one?

Why is PCS doing all this? Simply, it's a money thang. Bigger picture? Seems like their mismanagement has finally caught up to them; it's been a long time coming. It hurts a little bit to write this, but I've seen the writing on the wall for a good long time. I left PCS 2 years ago without a job and no prospects other than a growing photo business (which thankfully grew quite a bit in the last 2 years!). I couldn't take it there anymore.

While it may seem that the "free" members don't cost PCS money, they do. It's 50k, or whatever their number is now, people covered under their fleet insurance. That's a shitload of insurance. Each one has $1M liability coverage. Yes, they're not paying the same amount as a single person would pay for private insurance, but that's a whole lot of cheddar to carry on their books each quarter. Gas prices have gone up and come back down. However, the mileage rate, which was once I believe 9¢/mi is now 22¢/mi, has not come down nor, from what I can see in my email inbox, have they explained why it will or won't come down after the price of gasoline has normalized (I'll digress for a second and state that the unnaturally low price of government subsidized gasoline in America is a luxury we won't have soon. We should be paying something closer to $8/gal to truly pay for gas and simultaneously change driving habits).

All this hasn't effectively been told to the end user. But I just did. There you go, that's a lot of why shit has happened. There are other reasons I know of, but I could probably be sued for talking about them in a public forum like this here blog of mine. PCS has an email list of something like 50k members, but information is sporadic, disorganized and unclear. It has roughly 400 cars out there where information can be disseminated. It has access to a [currently] free social networking system, twitter, which companies like Comcast has used incredibly effectively, to critical acclaim you might say; but they choose to make it a one-way conversation, a shitty one at that.

There will be an end to PCS's downward spiral and it can have a few endings. 1) PCS's mistakes catch up to them so bad that they're fully in the red with no sign of coming back to black and a wonderful, local, non-profit project started by 5 UPenn graduates with a dream ends. 2) ZipCar gives them an offer they can't refuse and the Board of Directors, which has had it's own issues, takes it and runs for the hills. 3) PCS somehow, (perhaps by hiring my ass as an expensive consultant, heh) turns their money hemorrhaging ship around and does more than limp along.

I don't want to see PCS fail. I'm seriously rooting for them. I'm not giving up my Advantage Philadelphia Plan in solidarity for my now maligned Basic Freedom cousins. But how long can you root for a team which seems to be sabotaging itself? If my former co-workers are reading this, and I hope you are: I feel for you and you know who you are. There are greener pastures out there, but if you want to stay with this ship and believe that it can be turned around right, more power to you. But damn, shit looks bad from the outside now and that wasn't the case when I left.

Around the time I left, PCS had roughly 40 people on staff. About a quarter of them left within 3 months before and after my final notice. Many more were fired or left since.

Worst case scenario: Could PCS could be gone by the end of the year? I guess I'd have to join ZipCar in that case as I rely on PCS for those every once in awhile times I need me a car to go do stuff. I'd rather not like to be forced to do that. I hope the good times I remember as an employee helping to make PCS what it once was don't all end up in the shitter. I'm rooting for you PCS, but you have to root for me a little bit too every now and again. You talk a lot about community building, but it's been more like an abusive relationship for most members as of late.

Elsewhere:
stellargirl: why i'm done with PhillyCarShare
Philebrity: Repo Men, Shady Charges, And Mass Confusion: Philly Car Share’s Season In Hell
Tim's posterous: A Member's Letter to Philly Car Share
as seen through my eyes: They raised their rates, and???
Phillyist: It was good while it lasted
bits and pieces: My correspondence with PhillyCarShare
Philebrity: Emails From The Dead: The Offending (Apparently Very Offending) Philly Car Share Sheisty-Missive
The Illadelph: Philly Car Share Shits Bed, Eliminates Free Membership Plans
twitter: phillycarshare

The full contents of the email via Roz (more…)

After seeing Zoe post about Alec Soth [rhymes with 'both'] being in town and giving a talk , I cleared my already unobstructed schedule and made my way across the way to UPenn's Meyerson Hall. Soth is one badass photog and is a member of the Magnum elite [no, not the Zoolander Magnum.

Soth began his talk by explaining the title: a paralyzed cyclops in the democratic jungle. He broke down the title into two parts. First the "paralyzed cyclops" which is a quote by the British artist David Hockney who once said:

Photography is alright, if you don't mind looking at the world from the point of view of a paralyzed Cyclops - for a split second.

Second, the "democratic jungle" is an ode and critique of William Eggleston's Democratic Forest, published 1989. Soth talked about Eggleston (the man credited with making color photography a fine art form) and the notion of everything being worthy of being photographed (yes, he also brought up Garry Winogrand, who died with thousands of undeveloped rolls of film).

Soth discussed, in depth, his frustration with photography in the few years. The proliferation of digital cameras and the internet results in 4,000,000 images uploaded to flickr every day. He sees so much similarity in single, fragmented photos that he can pick random images and put them on the screen next to ones shot by Eggleston, Richard Prince and others. He specifically noted the 2 billionth flickr upload and how it looks just like an Eggleston photo - just something. But how were all these random images different from those of accepted masters?

The rise of the amateur photograph pushing news stories leads to the question of the absolute need for dedicated pros. Soth pointed to two images made by fellow Magnum photog Elliott Erwitt. One was a famous photograph of Richard Nixon shoving his index finger into the chest of Nikita Khrushchev in 1959. The other photo was one shot just a few months ago during Obama's inauguration with the Obamas greeting a sea of peoples' digicams and cellphones. All you see is a sea of bluish LCD screens. Soth asked: Do you really need Elliott Erwitt there?.

Further pressing the argument, he presented two more amateur photos. The twitpic of the Hudson River plane crash landing by Abu Gharib hooded detainee photos. The photos that report the news first have increasingly been taken by amateurs with their cellphones. It's almost impossible to compete.

But instead of competing, Soth spoke of two mediums where the photographic narrative - something fragmented shots don't show - shines: the slideshow and the photo book (preferably without text).

Soth traced back his photographic lineage back to his roots in Minneapolis, MN and college at Sarah Lawrence (right around where I grew up). He pointed to a photo lecture he attended (didn't catch the name of the photographer) where the photographer traveled the country in his car taking photos and during the slideshow, he showed a photo of a landscape of just-turning-to-fall foliage, mountains and a parking lot. In the lot was the photographer's car. Soth realized that he too could just get into his car and drive. So he did. During spring break one year, he drove from Minnesota to Memphis, TN and made some photos. He told of how he used to be scared of taking photos of people right through college. He's obviously gotten over that, but it took time.

After graduating from Sarah Lawrence, he had a job in a lab which resulted in him being in bars a lot late at night. It was here where he first started taking photographs of people in depth, strangers at that. Those bar photos launched him into his "From Here to There" series where each photo he took connected, admittedly ham-fistedly, to the next. A photograph of a kid with a chicken leading to a guy with an egg who has a Superman tattoo which lead to a photo of a Superman outfit on a hanger. But the leaps were too literal. He switched mediums to color photography and his leaps became larger with more of a story to them, more of the narrative he was seeking. A photograph inside a church in Alabama, the World's Smallest Church, actually. The next photograph in the series took him to Iceland (what is it about Iceland that attracts photographs like a moth to a fire?!) where he photographed another World's Smallest Church [cue laughter].

He started using the internet, the very thing he feels is killing photography to an extent, to find his subjects. A photograph of Sunshine, a lady sprawled on a Memphis bed with blue painted fingernail (about halfway through this set) leads to a man in Israel who photographs fetish fingernails. Soth is intrigued and tries to learn about "fingernail fetish" photography. Which leads him to Kym (10th photo in same series), who had never left Minnesota except for a single trip to Alabama. Kym tells Soth that she took a trip there and took lots of photos, but forgot her camera in the cab to the airport back home. Soth tells her he'll go to Alabama and retake those photos for her and launches his next series: "Sleeping by the Mississippi" – all this through wandering through free association jumbling.

He described his photographer-subject relationship as such:

I don't live with these people for weeks to find out who they are. I'm like a bird who circles and circles and then [snap] swoops down to grab a fish… It's kind of crass.

He showed a short video of how he frantically uses hand gestures to talk a subject, standing on the side of a snowy highway, to pose for him and his 8×10 view camera complete with dark cloth. He notes that during his fiddling with his equipment, the subject gets to think about other things like what he's going to eat for lunch or if Soth is ever going to actually take a photo. This way, the subject doesn't stress so much about how he looks. I'd argue that the opposite might very well be happening most of the time.

Soth was asked about how his travel has affected his family. He summed up by saying, "It's hard" and that it was a constant struggle. He doesn't bring his family along in a car like Robert Frank shows in his final image of The Americas: a shot of his wife and son in the front seat of the car while traveling to Texas. Soth exclaimed "I hate photography and I'm ruining my family. All part of the cheery lecture series!"

It was an interesting talk given by a contemporary photographer I was somewhat familiar with, but not to the extent I want to be after hearing him talk. I'm quite interested in his work now. His switch from large format (his begrudgingly "signature" look) to digital. His struggle to find the narrative work giving a set of photographs a true body. He's been up to a few projects recently which have rekindled his faith including a 2.5 week stint in the Republic of Georgia. But he still feels the immense weight of the internet and the digital age loaded on his shoulders. The disconnect from image to image. The constant shutter clapping to nowhere perhaps reinforced by what I'm assuming to be a Penn student clicking away from about 5' for the entire 1.5h hour talk – that was annoying for us all.

Soth [at right] gladly stayed in the auditorium after the talk to take questions and talk to those who came by. I quickly snapped a few frames for this post.

Top photo by Alec Soth from his Dog Days, Bogotá series.

I'm not a baseball fan (anymore), let alone a Phillies phan, but I am a sports fan and I know the relationship a city has with their longtime announcer. Harry Kalas was an institution here in Philly. I'm happy he got to see his Phils win one more time last year. The above is a shot of Harry showered with ticker tape during the Phillies championship parade.

Relive the parade here.

I'm going to share a bit of information with you because I wasn't able to find it on the PPA website and it's some very useful information to have regarding temporary parking permits in Philly. First off, why aren't temporary parking permits on the website? I looked. I did a google site search – nadda other than that they exist. Also, there's no phone number to call for such an easy request. Instead, they list the PPA's Director of Customer Service as the sole contact person – is that really necessary?

Well, Sue Cornell, the Director of Customer Service, got back to me within 48 hours which I think is quite quick for the Director to respond to a very basic customer service request which could've been dealt with by an informative FAQ or simply a dedicated page to something as simple as a temporary parking permit.

So, back to the permits (I did horribly in journalism class in college, I buried the lead all the time see, this post)… Sue wrote:

You have two options with regard to visitors. You can come to our offices 3101 Market Street, 2nd Floor, Mon-Fri between 8:30AM – 4:45PM to purchase temporary or day permits.

Temporary Permits are $15.00 for 15 days, or you may choose to purchase our Day Permits (which are $35.00 for a pack of 5 permits). You have up to one year to utilize our Day Permits.

I thought both were reasonable rates for temporary permits. $15 for a fortnight+ or $7/day. I'm going to assume the permits are good for one's neighborhood zone and that one would have to bring some kind of proof of address for the permit to be issued. I might be headed over to 3101 Market to pick up a 5-pack for when friends visit.

And now I'll leave you with a link to the show that truthfully and faithfully depicts Philly and its citizens' relationship with the PPA: Parking Wars.

I mentioned before that I'd have some photos in an upcoming issue of grid, a 4 issue old magazine, based out of Philly, about urban sustainability. Well, it's out on shelves (find a location here by entering your zip) and on pages 22 – 23. Looks great. The photos accompany a story on the Philadelphia Orchard Project which I've been working with for the last couple of years. You can read it online here or download it from the website.

All those photos are mine except for the group shot in front of the blue wall. The photos are from 2 different plantings in North Philly and a trip down to DC to take photos of an installation at the US Botanical Gardens. The full sets of photos can be seen here, here and here.