philly

I've known about the pending bike lanes coming to Pine St and Spruce St from river to river for a good while now. I can't believe it's actually happening. I was walking down Pine St on Friday and I saw this scene at 20th St. The biking dude (with helmet in this one) painted onto the right hand side of Pine St at the SE corner of each intersection. To the left of the bike lane were the markings of a 1 yard buffer zone which will be painted in westerly facing white arrow points.

I think Pine and Spruce Sts were perfectly fine without the dedicated bike lanes. Why? They were relatively low traffic compared to Chestnut/Walnut/South Sts and were wide enough to accommodate 2 traffic lanes, 1 lane of parking and the occasional cyclist. I never had a problem, but then again, I'm a fairly aggressive biker so I don't really need the city looking out for me too much.

I see the problems with the bike lanes as being a false sense of security for bikers who aren't accustomed to biking in city traffic. Cars will undoubtedly still take up 2 lanes a lot of the time, cabs will still park in the right lane, delivery trucks won't give 2 shits about new traffic patterns. In the end it's truly a matter of enforcement. I don't know under whose jurisdiction it falls under. Will it be a PPA matter since it'll be cars parked on the road? Will it be a PPD matter since they aren't in dedicated PPA-related spots? I don't know and somebody out there please inform me or point me to an article somewhere. I don't see anything on the Bicycle Coalition page or Philly.com or Plan Philly or anywhere else I've looked.

But anyways… I was walking home after drinks Saturday night and noticed that Spruce St was properly striped already with just the buffer arrows to be painted in. And according to this Bicycle Coalition blog post, the Mayor's Office of Transportation said the painting will be done by September 26th (next Saturday).

I'm hopeful, but woefully pessimistic as per usual. Chestnut St's right lane is supposed to be only for bikes and buses; just sayin.

After a quick real estate shoot on Friday, I walked and rode my bike around Center City in search of the creative installations of Park[ing] Day Philadelphia 2009.

Park(ing) Day seeks to reclaim parking spots and transform them into engaging, people-friendly public spaces for one day a year.

Above is a shot of the [parkEDGE] at Broad and Walnut by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson.

Here's the interactive map of all the locations of parking spot parks throughout the city. Looks like I got to 9 of the 35 or so on the map. Updates were sent out all day via their twitter feed @parkingdayphila. Above is a shot of the crew from 350 philly!. I've seen them around town at a few events and I have no idea what they actually do but their group's mission is cool:

350.org is an international campaign with a mission to inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis. Our focus is on the number 350–as in parts per million, the level scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere. We are already above the safe zone at 390 ppm, and unless we are able to rapidly return to 350 ppm this century, we risk reaching tipping points and irreversible climate impacts.

The largest in scale park I came across was one by the good people at SMP Architects on the 1600 block of Walnut St – their .004 Acre Wood.

I ran into Bianca [I just met her last week!] at her company's [VizThink Philly] SketchPark on the 1600 block of Chestnut St. In the shot above, Johnny is showing me what people had sketched earlier that day.

Above is Emily of the Center for Architecture who was responsible for the coolest space I saw all day. Set up on the 1300 block of Arch St was a lovely houseplant garden, hammock, rain barrel, benches on re-purposed barrels all on what seemed like discarded carpet squares. There was even a table with a bunch of urban sustainability publications like Next American City and GRID.

Last but certainly not least is the coolest spot for a reclaimed park I came across all day. It was a spot on the south side of the Market St Bridge. These two, didn't catch where they were from, were giving away cups of grass for people to have mini parks on their desks. Since I don't have a desk job (Hallelujah!) I didn't take one. They had given away most of the 200 cups they brought out for the day.

Check out more photos in this flickr set and check out shots from around the world in this flickr group.

More coverage from Plan Philly.

Kate and I went back to NY last week for my Dad's 70th birthday. There he is above kicking back with a Corona. While he has horrendous taste in beer (he loves him some Corona and Budweiser much to my chagrin), he doesn't look a day over 50 and he's 70! I hope those genes were passed on to me and will come alive in a few years.

Here's a shot of Kate and my nephew Dylan in my parents' front lawn. He's a gigantic baby. Apparently, he's does this strange thing in the car where he pukes on longish car rides. It happens after eating a lot of food. It happened on the drive from Westchester back into NYC. But my brother in law caught all the puke in a towel; they were prepared.

Here's a shot of Kate helping my mom with dinner. My mom taught her some secrets to how she prepares some pan seared tofu with a bit of very versatile marinade/topping used in a bunch of Korean dishes. Kate has yet to try and re-create the dish at home.

Some more shots in this flickr set.

Last Sunday was the first annual Philly Naked Bike Ride which was part of a larger network of naked bike rides around the world. I went out to find the bikers, but was late getting out so I didn't head to the starting point. Instead, I trekked around Center City a bit listening for honking and hooting. Didn't see them until they went down Broad St while I was walking towards Rittenhouse.

But then I finally caught up with them as they rounded Rittenhouse Square for a second time. By then, the estimated 200 or so participants of varying states of undress, the crowd had dwindled to about 20-30 riders. But they still got their share of hoots from the onlookers.

Lots of coverage from PW, CP, Philly.com and flickr.

A couple weeks ago, I got the chance to go into The Drexel School at 16th & Moore Sts; it's a huge brick building taking up 1/4 of a block in South Philly c.1888. It's been vacant since the 1970s and it's now crumbling. Amazingly, the exterior brickwork (120+ year old bricks) is still gorgeously intact. It's the roof which is the weak link. It collapsed a few years ago and the interior of the building has been rotting away since. You're looking at the view from the south entrance straight through the building to the back.

I got to tour the inside of the building with the current owner, David, who inherited it from his father who bought it at auction from the School District of Philadelphia in the early 1980s. He found me via a photo on flickr I posted from a January 2008 photowalk with my photog buddy Andi. He shot me an email and I eagerly said yes! Above is a shot of what I think is the east side of the building. The building was partitioned into rooms by floor to ceiling chalkboards.

I wandered up the fortified concrete stairwell (the building was a bomb shelter) with David using some of those 2' long Maglites (the building was made pre-electricity and David told me it was retrofitted years after its completion). We stopped at the landing of the 2nd floor when he turned to me and said: "The only thing in there is certain death" as he pointed his flashlight to the lack of a floor in the 6' x 6' space between the stairwell and the main part of the floor. You don't hear that too often. The shot above is from a very precarious perch on the 3rd floor. I walked across a 2" x 8" plank to get to a brick doorframe "It's like crossing a plank when you were a kid" David said to me. I remembered the days when I was 1/2 the weight I am now crossing planks and sauntered on. The view was awesome.

How big was this place? So big I could use my Nikkor 80-200mm telephoto lens to get details of things (the shot above is with a 50mm). The floorboards of each floor were rotten as 5 Philadelphia summers and winters passed right through the building with no roof.

Back downstairs we went to the north side of the building where there were no stairs. The arched doorframes from the first to third floors stood like giant negative space ghosts. I couldn't figure out why there were ceramic sinks the middle of each hallway though. Any old timers out there go to school with sinks in the hallways?

And here's one final shot, a long exposure, of some of the junk inside. David's father was a hoarder of the 1st degree. He collected stuff and stored it in this building. His father had grand plans to turn the space into a community center (David grew up right in the neighborhood), but the plans never came to fruition. The site was deemed a Super Fund in 1998. David would love for somebody to come along and rehab the building and not destroy it. Ideally, a charter school would be born. But if a developer were to come along with a plan to preserve the structure, all the better.

A flickr set of my hour inside the building. And here's a short video I took on my Blackberry from my perch on the 3rd floor

Hopefully, I'll be able to go back during the demo and reconstruction of whatever the Drexel School becomes. If you know of somebody who could help preserve the building, please contact David through The Drexel School website.

One of my coworkers at Fair Food Farmstand, Emma, is a wonderful musician. She plays the fiddle, guitar, sings and I'm sure she dances too. She, her husband Jake and friend Scott were moving out of their lovely house in the Graduate Hospital area and decided to throw one last party: a bluegrass BBQ. Scott was slow cooking pork shoulders all day for some delicious pulled pork sandwiches – with tomato and vinegar based sauces. They asked their friends to bring some grub or booze to share and any instruments they new how to play.

I didn't know quite what to expect as I didn't know anyone other than Emma and Jake, but I walked into an awesome night. There were 4 guitars, 2 banjos, 2 fiddles and a mandolin passed around by the guitar players. Awesome. There were a couple hours of music after we chowed down on pulled pork sandwiches, BBQ chicken, corn, chips and salsa and a host of other delicious things.

Also in the house that night was wonderful Philly photog JJ Tiziou; singer-songwriter Birdie Busch who joined in for a few songs while munching on some peach pie [who I saw perform last year]; and Eric Berley, the younger of the Brothers Berley – the duo behind my favorite ice cream shop in the city Franklin Fountain who came with 2 containers of ice cream (I made an open faced oatmeal raisin sandwich with some vanilla bean ice cream).

I can't wait until the next time Emma and Jake throw a party at their new digs. Some more photos from the party in this flickr set.

Photos made with my new Nikon D700; Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D at ISO6400.

So a couple weeks ago, me and the Lady got officially engaged. I gave her a Ring Pop at 4a the day after her birthday. Doesn't she look great at 4a?!

A couple months ago, a good friend of mine, Jill went and got herself some tenure at a fine institution here in Philly. To celebrate, she and her baller husband threw a bash at her house complete with delicious Brown Betty cupcakes and everyone's favorite cookies which I baked up for the occasion. I also told her I'd be bringing along my photo gear and she obliged. After some standard portraits Art Director Kara called for props to which Jill produced animal snouts and an old timey stick on mustache. Above is one of the Philly area's finest fine art photogs Laura Kicey as a tigress. I only needed 2 frames to nail this one down because she rocked it.

Here's one of the many professor buddies of Jill's posing with the old timey mustache. It was a perfect fit. Think she might look like an old timey pugilist with the pose and those rocking arms? Well, that's because she is.

And who else was there? None other than The Most Interesting Man in the World Jim Zervanos.

And last but not least, the host and hostess with the mostess at 2.30a or so; still looking good.

Congrats to you again Jilly!

A flickr set of more photos from the night.

Photos were made with my new Nikon D700; Nikkor 80-200mm f/2.8ED; Nikon SB-600; Nikon SB-800 x2; Lumiquest Softbox III; Manfrotto Super Clamp; Manfrotto Justin Clamp; and Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D for the final portrait.