Phreaky Phriday

In honor of Philadelphia, I am going to start spelling every "f" word with a "ph." No wait, just kidding. I won't do that to you.

Everything today has felt slightly off-axis.

*

On Wednesday I rearranged everything in my apartment, which in a 550 sq. ft. space involved a lot of three-point-turns and otherwise unnecessary shuffling to get things reoriented. Yesterday I was barely home, so today marks the first full day I have spent in what feels like an astonishingly different setup. I forced (er, phorced) myself to part with a desk I'd held onto for twelve years because I finally owned up to the fact that it is too large for my current place. The bed is where the couch was and vice versa, the cat is in full panic "things are different and a mess so we must be moving" mode, and I can't find a thing.

*

This morning I got a haircut, which makes looking in the mirror a little funhouse, as well. And on the way back from the hair appointment I had the following conversation with the woman who works at the coffeeshop next door:
B: Nice haircut
A: Thanks! I just got it.
B: Next door?
A: Yep!
B: It looks really good. [pause] Is that your natural color?
A: Yes.
Let me be clear: my hair color is unchanged. I have not dyed my hair since 2006. There is a smattering of grey in there, too, but thankfully it always seems to hide under other hair that is still brown. For now, at least.
But what was horrifying about this was not the dye mistake, but the realization that I am at the precipice where in a year or two or three being asked if my hair is its natural color mutates from being an innocent, curious question to being an inappropriate one. And I felt really old in a way that startled me.

*

Since the 4th of July or perhaps even before the 4th, I have been home alone. There are only two other tenants in the building and both are very quiet. The only reason I know if they're home at all is that from the stairwell I can sometimes hear my next door neighbor's TV and my downstairs neighbor's dogs bark when anyone opens the front door to the house. At first it was kind of cool but alone and quiet always feels slightly wrong in a city. When I went down into the basement to retrieve my laundry and saw a giant water bug scurry across the floor, I screamed like a girl. Then a few minutes ago when I was trying to make the kitchen somewhat presentable, I found myself with my back turned to the rest of the apartment, washing dishes to nothing but the sound of running water. I tried humming but that really ratcheted up the crazy. There I was, methodically scrubbing the inner workings of my French press and laying them out in a grid to dry. Next on to the carving knives. I felt like I'd accidentally stepped into the opening scene of a gruesome horror film.

*

All of everything giving me the heeby-jeebies is really just a redirect for my anxiety about traveling tomorrow. I love being in other places but I dread the getting there part and the prep time that goes into it. It becomes a perpetual "did I leave the stove on?" feeling that cannot be tamed by even the most precise to-do list. An epic series of what ifs parades around in my head starting a day or so before I depart somewhat against my will. What if my cat sitter loses my house keys? What if I read my ticket wrong and I leave from another terminal? What if I don't remember to pack something really important like shoes or a toothbrush or my passport? What if my alarm doesn't go off tomorrow? etc etc etc. This particular trip is the perfect storm of triggers for this behavior cycle: international trip (1) to a non-English-speaking country for which I know enough of the native language to try but not enough to feel totally comfortable (2) on a plane (3) for work (4).

I would like to say that most of this problem is having to make arrangements for my very old and very sick cat, combined with my seemingly uncontrollable trending towards the absentminded professor end of the organizational spectrum. But I was always a wreck about travel - even back when the cat was healthy and I had so many housemates that finding a cat sitter was a non-issue - and even back when I had many fewer obligations and fewer things to keep track of. Unsurprisingly I am a bad flyer (not like "STOP THE PLANE!! LET ME OUT!!" right before takeoff but definitely some white knuckles gripping the armrest during ascent and descent and any remotely significant turbulence). There were a few terrible years about a decade ago where I refused to go anywhere because I didn't want to deal with it. It has gotten much easier since then but I still feel like I lose a day or two to double-checking what I'm packing, cutting up pills for the cat, making phone calls, and taking antacids.

At the heart of it all: I am such a homebody. I like to sleep in my own house in my own bed and wake up in my own city. Travel requires me to put this nesting instinct on hold. I always enjoy these times away from home so much, and in the last two years I have been fortunate to see many places new to me because of my job. Every time I go somewhere I marvel at the unfamiliar sights, sounds, and smells and exclaim "I could totally live here!" And I could. But I just couldn't easily leave it.

Philadelphia

Philadelphia, you should have been my hometown.

It was a narrow miss. From what I understand, although I have (unintentionally) had very little contact with my extended family, they are all from here. At the end of the 19th century my great great great grandparents climbed off a boat from the Ukraine and headed here. Their daughter, my great great aunt, lived much of her long life just a few blocks from where I live now. I know much less about the rest of the lot but the relatives on both sides of my family as far back as my great grandparents lived in Philadelphia or within a fifty mile radius of it. I have never met most of these people but living here now makes me long to.

I have only lived here two years, much less time than I have spent in half a dozen other cities and towns. But within months of landing here I felt entitled to the rights of permanent residency - eagerly learning the city's history, defending it against all incoming jabs, extolling its virtues to anyone who would listen with a feverish, preacher-like urgency. I made fun of the tourists clutching their bags close as they waited in line for crappy whiz cheesesteaks at stupid Pat's. I stomped around in the freezing winter in the 2 Street Mummer's Day afterparty. I went to some baseball games and cheered for the Phillies. I ate my weight in water ice. Just now I looked into how to become my Block Captain, though I gotta tell you it is the possibility of getting the hydrant key that prompted this google search. Philly summer is truly a solid three months of swamp.

The first 14 years of my life I called Cape Cod my home. It was only after I left that I realized how wrong a fit that was. I don't know how to analogize this to anything but it was truly revelatory. Something clicked when I saw how much more comfortable I felt in a gritty city - away from the phoniness of a tourist haven and the (generally) embittered and surprisingly conservative cranky people who inhabited it year round. (please note: I've enjoyed living in places that felt pretty phony (Princeton NJ) and others that were very conservative (Georgia) - but as far as I'm concerned, the combination of the two is a lethal one) This profound uncomfortableness in my hometown was a feeling so overpowering that I never looked back. I have immediate family there but no roots of my own. I go back to visit sometimes but I've never had a pang of nostalgia for anything there.

When people ask me where I'm from I always say "Boston." I lived there for almost a decade - all of my 20s. It's not a matter of preferring to say that I'm from a city than from the 'burbs, but rather that Boston is where I think I actually grew up. It is where I had my highest highs and lowest lows; it's where I figured out what I did (and didn't) want to do with my life, it's where I met most of my closest friends, it's where I learned to love art. I know that city in a way that only someone who calls it home can - not just certain neighborhoods but all of them. I've amassed nearly every trade secret it could offer up - best hidden restaurants, cheapest watering holes, smartest bar trivia, prettiest stretch of the waterfront, coolest junk shops, and where to buy a typewriter. The family with whom I am close and the friends I consider my family all live there, or else have moved but still consider it home. Every time I go there to visit friends I am completely overwhelmed by the desire to pack up my things and move back. It's hard to face the fact that in my line of work this probably won't ever happen.

Boston will always be home, but Philadelphia will always be the kindred city that should have been home. When I was small my great great aunt Kathryn - the one who lived down the street from my current apartment - wrote me long letters about her love of Philadelphia. In her letters I learned everything I know about my family. I learned about my cousin who writes for the Washington Post (probably this guy) and another cousin who reports for the BBC. My great great aunt stayed in Philadelphia when others fled. She sent me picture postcards from the 1930s and 1940s of Phila landmarks and outlined their histories on the backs of the cards. She told me about her world travels and about why her family left the Ukraine. Unlike my immediate family, Kathryn was concerned with all the things I have come to value highest and to study - art history (she wrote incessantly about the Philadelphia Museum of Art), history, travel, languages, preservation, writing, reading. I may have only met her twice or three times in my life but I wrote and wrote and wrote to her. And when I walk through Philadelphia, and happen upon her old apartment building, or a building she mentioned in a postcard, or an antique shop bearing her last name (perhaps owned by another relative I've never met?), my sense that Philadelphia should have been my city swells until it bursts. When my fellowship is done this time next year I will not want to leave. I will try to get a job here but will end up elsewhere. I will come back to visit and marvel at the fact that I managed to leave. And I will open the hydrants with the Block Captain key I will keep.

Moving Right Along

Hello from my new apartment! Moving is about 95% complete at this point - just a few things left to grab and to do at the old place, and I can relinquish keys for good to the slumlord management company that runs my first Philadelphia apartment. I am very excited about this.

I owe you, dear readers, a week of On my way to Trust Markets. I have been diligently and dutifully taking these pictures, but until today I had no internets over here, which has caused quite a delay. But a nice gentleman from Comcast came to my house between 9 a.m. and 11 a.m. today (read: 11:35 am) and I'm all hooked up. Internet withdrawal - begone!

There are some really awesome things about my new apartment, the most important of which is that it is all mine. No roommate/s! In all my years I've never had my own place and I think it is going to be really good. From my bathroom I can hear some traffic noise and my neighbors but in every other room in the apartment it's whisper quiet. Since in theory I'm supposed to be writing a book and a dissertation and a few talks right now, this is the greatest thing ever.

Here is something else wonderful:

Look, it's taken with my laptop iSight camera, and it's a weird picture, to be sure. BUT CHECK OUT THE TREES! From every window in my living room, bedroom, and kitchen I see a whole lot of trees. It's amazing. I know that in the winter all the leaves will be gone and I'll just see a bunch of backyards. But it's sunny and green and pretty to look at now, and the cat is super stoked to finally be able to bird watch again after four years of apartments with crappy views.

The slumlorded place I just left looks like something out of a Jacob Riis photograph. Since one of my dissertation chapters is on Riis, I didn't mind this so much. The front of the building was a looming, imposing Victorian townhouse, but the back - where my apartment was located - was a maze of fire escapes and brick, and you could probably reach into your neighbor's window from your own if you tried. Back in the air shaft - as my housemate called it - every sound reverberated and you couldn't always tell if it was sunny or overcast. You always knew if it was raining, though, because the sound of it pounding down on the metal fire escape maze was deafening.

Before that I lived in a graduate student apartment in another town. It was a ground floor apartment that happened to be right next to the bus stop for the campus shuttle. So there was always a smattering of stressed out graduate students mulling over math problems or whatever and staring into space outside, except staring into space usually meant they were staring into my bedroom and living room. Also, the path of least resistance to a cluster of other apartment buildings entailed walking between the bus stop and my window, so there was always a lot of foot traffic about a half meter from my bed. That combined with the contraband cat in a no pets apartment complex meant that the blinds were always down. It was dark and sad in there - fitting for graduate school, but not good for me or for the cat.

The new place is not perfect - it is small, and it is really going to break the bank for me. It's on one of the Grand Boulevards of Philadelphia which is much less desirable than the cute one-way street the air shaft apartment was on. But I don't even care. I'm glad to be here, and without any further ado I shall resume listening to old episodes of This American Life and unpacking.

Look Around You

Look Around You is some sort of brilliant British spoof on those ridiculous educational films we all had to endure in the 1970s and 1980s. Here are links to a few episodes:

Look Around You: Maths

Look Around You: Iron

Anyway, I've had the introduction to these episodes lodnged in my brain - the part in which the narrator calmly repeats "Look Around You" to the bad synthesizer soundtrack - as I spend more and more time wandering around my neighborhood. Note that this wandering is not because I did not pack a lunch, though I can promise you that there will be an On my way to Trust Market post tomorrow. Instead it has been because I am moving in a few weeks, and the real estate company who owns my current apartment has been showing it every other day, and I do not want to be present for this. Thus for an hour or so in the evening I go find something else to do.

Mind you, there is no rule that requires me to be out of the apartment when prospective tenants come by. But I feel it's best for everyone involved. When I moved to Philadelphia last year, I only had a few days to find a place, and there was just not a lot available. I took the best of what I saw, but this apartment has tons of problems. It's very poorly insulated and doesn't get enough sunlight. There are repairs that need to be done that the management company has ignored. I could go on, and I could also point out that the ads for my apartment on Craigslist list the rent as over $200.00 more than what I currently pay, which was already too much for a place that's falling apart. But anyway it's because of this that I don't want to be home when they show the place: I wouldn't have the heart to lie to prospective tenants and tell them the place is great, and I wouldn't have the nerve to be honest in front of the people who still owe me my security and refundable pet deposit. It's a real moral quandry, and so I've opted out of it every time I get a (less than 24 hours notice) message telling me when my apartment will be shown.

Many of these times I have just gone to a friend's place to hang out, or done some work in my office. Today, though, my friends in the neighborhood were not home and I really didn't want to go to work on my day off. And in observance of Labor Day, nobody was laboring and so all the coffee places were closing up when I needed a nice place to sit for an hour. So, I decided to take a walk around town, knowing that I couldn't go too far because I had things to do up the street soon after today's showing.

In large part I was enthusiastic about this wandering. My Trust Market project has made me realize how little of my neighborhood - which itself isn't terribly large - I've actually deeply explored. In particular, that little hobbit door (mentioned in my most recent post below) prompted me to look around me - I have crossed that intersection so many times and never actually managed to notice that door, which is just absurd. I want to know my neighborhood in such a profoundly deep way - the kind of familiarity that allows you to notice when someone has painted their front door a different color, the kind of looking that will end with a mental map of historical site markers, every corner deli, all the good graffiti, quirky architectural details, funny bumper stickers on cars regularly parked on certain blocks. I love Philadelphia so much, and making a point of learning it like this will help me love it all the more.

Today I discovered an Indian restaurant I didn't know about. And I also saw these two wonderful things:

1. A stair railing of decorative lyres

2. The weirdest window décor ever

I mean, what is up with that? It is not a shop window unless it's an unmarked storefront. I even walked around to the block parallel to this to make sure it wasn't a building that went through the block - it isn't. Is there some cultural reference I'm missing - is this a narrative that makes any sense to anyone? And moreover, why would you do this to your front window? And most important: how long has it been four blocks from my house?

Hurricane thoughts

1. I remember being in at least three of these as a kid, and back then I lived less than a quarter mile from the ocean. Far from my mind as a child were the things that usually trouble people during big storms: mortality; property damage; an entire refrigerator full of rotten food; clearing heaps and heaps of brush from the lawn; lost crops. My main memory of these storms was this: This is really, really boring.

Looking back, "boring" was really a good thing, as it meant that our roof didn't blow off or anything dramatic. I think we lost a few windows here and there to high winds, and the yard was a total wreck - a potpourri of fallen branches, fallen trees, and who knows what else, all heavy with water. It's just that there was nothing to do. My parents, my slightly a.d.d. little brother, our two cats, and this mysterious old lady neighbor who only seemed to come over during hurricanes would all huddle in our basement, beginning well before the storm hit and lasting long after it seemed reasonable to go back upstairs. I'm pretty sure this old lady came over becaue her house didn't have a basement level, but it always made the quarantine even more uncomfortable as she was clearly one of those adults who hated children (or maybe just the stir-crazy, locked in the basement with no electricity kind).  While the power remained on I was okay. I'd bring a pile of chapter books down to read, and other than the cement floor issue and the inability to shut my brother out of my space, it was more or less how I would spend any other day.

The trouble always began for me when the lights inevitably went out. My brother would get even more fidgety and sitting in the dark with this old lady I didn't know kind of gave me the creeps. And of course there was the plain fact of not being able to read anymore. I wasn't allowed to read by the one window in case the glass blew in and I wasn't allowed to squander flashlight batteries on keeping myself entertained. The radio was on but it was forever news, news, weather, news, weather and it bored me to tears. I tried to just go to sleep but that never worked, either, probably again because of that whole lying on a concrete slab stuffed into a Care Bears sleeping bag business.

A bathroom and food break was permitted as necessary, but the best time to do this was as the eye of the storm passed over. For those unfamiliar with hurricanes, this is when the winds and rain stop and everything gets eerily quiet and still. With the imminent threat of smashing glass and trees tumbling at a standstill, I could go to the bathroom and get a snack without my mother shrilly calling from the basement for me to hurry up and get my butt back down there.

Even once the storm ended, the boredom didn't. The power stayed off for days - once over a week; the phone lines were out almost as long. The yard was off-limits, and the meals got stranger and stranger as we plowed through whatever we had in the house. I remember one time just begging and begging to go to McDonald's - which I didn't even particularly like - just becuae I had heard that morning over the radio that they had re-opened and this seemed like a viable way to get the hell out of the house.

*

Now I am an adult with a few (though not all) of the adult-type storm worries that never concerned me as a child. But I will say this: even with the internet, and the power still on, and adulthood levels of patience and nobody here to interrupt my reading I am still bored.  So now I have the perhaps paranoid fear / nervous anticipation of my windows blowing in or a tornado striking plus an unfocused attention, a strange inability to just zone out and get absorbed in a book. I could even read by flashlight later if I wanted, or turn the radio on to rock-n-roll. These are the choices I can make as an adult, but at this particular moment this revelation is alarmingly not as gratifying as I'd imagined.


2. Another thought, 12 hours later: Irene, thank you for being such a wienie. I didn't even lose power. The basement didn't flood. Thank you for that.

A Random Assortment of Philadelphia Occurrences, May the 28th, 2011

1.
Overheard snippit of a conversation between a heavily-tattooed guy in his late 20s and his girlfriend:
Guy: Yeah, so, the thing about this tattoo (points to cobweb tattoo on left elbow) is that all these bitches keep getting them even when they haven't been in the slammer. Like the other day I saw this girl with one and I was like "Yo, where were you locked up?" and she says, "Huh?" And I say, "What prison were you at?" and I point to her tattoo. And she's like "Ummm, I wasn't in prison."  Let me tell you, that bitch is lucky nobody's walked right up to her after that answer and cut that tattoo right off her fucking arm.
[pause]
Oh hey, you want to go into H&M?

2.
Overheard conversation between two guys on the street near City Hall:
Guy 1: You know what? It's fucking beautiful outside today.
Guy 2: Yeah. But you know you've said that maybe a dozen times today already.
Guy 1: Well fuck you cuz I'm gonna say it at least 100 more times today. Because it's fucking GOOOORGEOUS out and I FUCKING LOVE PHILADELPHIA!!! WHO'S WITH ME HERE PEOPLE??

3.
Noticed, better late than never:
When you stand in the middle of the Parkway, you can see all the way from City Hall (Broad / 14th Street) clear to the Art Museum.

4.
Observed at Market and 9th (thereabouts):
A Ramones cover band set up - amps and all - and got through two great and extremely loud songs before some cops figured out they didn't have permits and shut their shit down.

5.
Observed at my house:
Two squirrels trying in vain to enter my neighbor's apartment through their cat door.

6.
I love this city.

xoxo

Philly.com has taped up like eight thousand xoxo with love, Philadelphia ads all over Penn Station, which I guess is just fine by me.  It's loads better than sneaker ads, I'll give them that.

However, the text is just - I don't know how else to put it - weird.  I think there was one that said something along the lines of "let's conspire by the fire. with love, Philadelphia."  What does that even mean?  And then there's this: "Pack an extra set of pajamas and stay an extra night. xoxo Philly."  Do people seriously pack a pair of pajamas for every night they're staying somewhere?!  And can it instead read, "Pack a fucking snow plow and stay an extra night! xoxo Philadelphia."  Because we really need those more than a second set of flannels.

Can someone please explain these ads to me?  Am I missing something clever?  Otherwise, I'm just filing this away under "Yet another reason Philadelphia is broke."

Goodnight.

Snow Day

First of all, let me just say: Philadelphia, you look ravishing in white.

Work is closed today.  I can't tell you how much love I have for snow days.  I loved them in middle school a lot because I got to sit at home and watch crap tv all day and this was about 1,000,000,000 x more awesome than middle school.  But the whole day was also spent dreading the next one, by which time all the snow would be cleared and I'd have to go back to school.  Now that I'm an adult and I love my job, snow days are even cooler.  Mother Nature calls a time out, and I get 24 hours to fuck around and watch movies and walk around the neighborhood in giant boots and pajamas.  And then everything is back to normal again the next day, and I just pick up where I'd left off.  No problem.

And now I am going to go finish reading Just Kids and find some Price is Right reruns on the internet.  Get your pets spayed and neutered, people.

Philadelphia, 1955

So I had absolutely nothing to post, but then a friend found this gem:
Philadelphia, 1955

A lot has changed in ~half a century.  I'm fascinated.

MUMMERS! (part 2, nighttime)

After the parade ended, we took a break and ate some delicious food at Jamaican Jerk Hut.  Ali saw a pair of earrings hanging off their fence:

A lot of the 2 Street night pictures are blurry.  Sorry about that - but to be honest, that's how the whole event feels, anyhow.  It's fitting.

One of the many things I learned from others regarding the Mummers parade:
Mummers = cool.
Mummer = weird.
It's really true.  Collectively, they're awesome but there is something really creepy about an aimless, wandering, solitary Mummer.  This guy seems to have lost his people somewhere:

Silly String : Daytime :: Beer cans : Nighttime:

Salvaged parasol!:

Other moments:

After 2 Street, we went to Franklin Fountain for ice cream and headed home.  2011 has begun, and it is awesome.

Things I learned about Mummers Day from others that turned out to be true:
* you will be offended at least once.
* if a Mummer approaches you in a staggering-type way, just run, because that means they're going to try to make out with you.
* there are good soft pretzels and bad ones, and a way to tell the difference (which I am not sharing with my blog readers! Ha!)
* it is unlike anything else you will ever see.
* "it's like third-world party strategy in a first-world city"
Things I learned on my own:
* unless you are transporting lots of beer cans, you don't need a bag and you will be happier without one.
* don't wear anything you ever want to wear again, because it will probably smell like warm domestic beer forever.

Philadelphia: I love you.

MUMMERS! (part 1, daytime)

So I promised a whole bunch of people that I'd try to explain the Philadelphia Mummers Day Parade, and, frankly, this task has been stressing me out a bit.  There is something about the whole experience that seems completely indescribable to me.  It's unlike anything I've ever seen, and I don't think I have the vocabulary (written or visual) for it.

A lot of the intricacies of it are totally lost on me - I know a native Philadelphian could explain much better to you how the different brigades work and where their clubhouses are and what the costumes mean.  I can't do that.  What I can tell you is that some time in the mid-eighteenth-century, Mummers grabbed some instruments and costumes and played and performed at various houses for money.  And if you didn't pay up, they'd punch in your windows and stuff.  At some point in the 19th century the whole event ended up more structured, and became a parade that included all sorts of whimsical stuff like giant six-story cakes made of wood and live elephants in costume.  Lots of gun-firing into the sky, too, of course.  And there is a long history of sexism and racism woven into the spectacle -- even this year, I saw some cowboys and Indians nonsense that made my blood boil.

So this feels like the first field day for an anthropologist - everything new and confusing.  But here is what I've figured out, told by way of uncertain words and crappy photographs (disclaimer: I just got my first digital camera a few months ago.  I want it to work like an analog camera, but it won't.  This camera and I are new friends, the mixed results of which are shown here).

First of all, this Mummers Day business really separates the men from the boys.  It's on New Years Day, which means it follows the amateur night of amateur nights -- New Year's Eve.  The parade itself lasts seven hours, and is then followed by this wild gathering at night on 2 Street (note: not Second Street. 2 Street) where all the Mummers unwind and everyone else who's already been drinking all day keeps doing so.  Almost everyone I talked to had been drinking since 5pm on New Year's Eve and planned to sleep all day today.  I didn't drink a thing, but feel a little hung over by proxy.

The parade makes its way around Philadelphia -- slowly.  It consists of four different types of clubs - Comics, Fancies, String Bands, and Fancy Brigades - I don't know how many of each kind there are, but they all have these clubhouses (most on 2 Street) where they spend all year preparing costumes, rehearsing, building props, etc.  They compete for best performance, so everything is over the top and really elaborate.  These clubs are mostly men -- mostly white men, really.  So cross-dressing becomes a huge component of the humor.

Over the course of this seven-hour event, the clubs march along the parade route and stop at pre-determined intersections along the way, assemble their props, and perform.  The city sets up bleachers at some of these intersections, and the whole thing is super crowded -- full of [again, largely white] Philadelphians wearing silly hats and drinking beer out of cans.

I should say that I have no idea what Philadelphia's laws are about public drinking, but whatever they are, they get brushed under the carpet on New Year's Day.  There are beer cans everywhere - decorating dirty snow banks, hanging off discarded Christmas trees, all over the sidewalks and streets and gutters and windowsills and stoops.  I saw at least one 10 yr old pounding a Coors Lite.  There was lots of weed, too.  Cops everywhere but they seemed only present to break up fights and make sure nobody got hurt.  There were lots of arrests that could have been made but weren't.  Most people were walking around with huge duffel bags full of canned beer.  On 2 street in the evening, this included the Mummers.

Here is what I saw:

I started out at City Hall, but this was not the best move because it was where all the tourists go.  It was really crowded, and I couldn't get a good view of the performances.  But I did get some idea of what I was missing as I watched the props roll by:

This one seemed to be Russian-themed, because there were also some eggs:

And then there was this one:

Time out for Claes Oldenburg, who was also present for the parade:

Santa?

These ladies are fucking amazing:

Besides beer cans, there was silly string all over the place:

I'm pretty certain the Mummers single-handedly keep the glitter and feather factories in business.

Eventually we wanted to actually see these groups perform, so we headed south.  On our way we spotted a guy selling pretzels who was keeping them hot by burning coals in a grocery cart.  Seemed up to health code inspection to me.  He was really excited about showing off his genius contraption and having his picture taken:

Eventually we found a place by the University of the Arts where we could watch the performances.  Supposedly each performance has some sort of narrative thread.  I don't know that I knew what the fuck they were, but this one had something to do with railroads?

(side note: that guy in the Kangol hat was fucking hilarious)

This was followed by scary clowns:

(love the prop guy with the mouths so much)

Then there was some strange fruit-themed thing?  To which the Kangol hat guy responded: WE'VE SEEN THE FRUIT BEFORE, YA FOOLS.  LAST YEAR.  OR THE YEAR BEFORE:

Then a string band.  I'm not sure which one of those parasols I ended up with, but Alison totally salvaged one off 2 street sidewalk for me later:

Next: some 49ers:

[continued in next post]