Yesterday morning I hopped a train to Philadelphia with two of my Flickr friends, Shoehorn99 and LunaPark, to scope out street art in the City of Brotherly Love. We rode down on New Jersey Transit and then on SEPTA (apparently much cheaper than taking Amtrak) and got there a little after 11 a.m., which gave us several hours to explore.
The street art in Philly seems to be much more about stickers, at least in the areas we walked (around the Penn campus, down South Street and through Center City near the Liberty Bell). They’re incredibly ornate, colorful little jewels, often with cartoonish characters. Fun stuff!
We also checked out some amazing mosaics by Isaiah Zagar, who is something of a Philly folk art legend. He covered walls with broken tiles, pieces of mirror, pottery and other stuff, creating vast murals that throw spatters of reflected sunlight on the surrounding walls and pavement. Amazing.
Naturally, we stopped for sandwiches (Luna had a cheese steak, Shoehorn had soy chicken, and I got a rice-and-beans chimichanga). A few hours later we were back on the train for New York; I got home about 10 p.m. Watch for photos on Flickr in a few weeks -- after I work through my existing backlog!
(Photo: Street art by Ticky, Philadelphia, May 2008)
How cute! Philly is a very fun place, such a singular city unlike any other, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteI wonder what Baltimore street art is like? Charm City is also really distinct.
it's so great that you take time to run off on a field trip for the sake of photography.
ReplyDeleteDennis would go for the Cheese Steak. or two.
ReplyDeletethough I do enjoy cleveland, I definitely miss the convenience of living on the northeast corridor and being able to jump on a train and be able to wander around one of the neighboring eastern sister cities from boston to washington!
ReplyDeletein cleveland we have some street art, but we have a ton of train corridor art that i want to capture, just a problem with trying to figure out how to get down to shoot it....
I've only been to Philly once, but it was an amazing experience.
ReplyDeletesteve! i have some pics of philly sticker art! it was raining, so i used my little compact camera....
ReplyDeletewill post some soon, i wonder if we have some of the same