Behemoth Billboards Proposed for South Philly; Whale of a Wall-Wrap Would Be Largest in Nation
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
A General Interest Miscellaneous Newspaper The Periodic Journal of Urban Particulars NOSTRE MANES TOO BIG TO READ SUNT INFANTES. ON THE SUBWAY. ∂ ∂ IT’S ALL HERE & BEHOLDEN TO IT’S ALL TRUE. NO ONE. VOLUME ONE, ISSUE NO FIFTEEN SPRING 2004 $1.00 IN PHILA. $2.00 ELSEWHERE BEHEMOTH BILLBOARDS PROPOSED FOR SOUTH PHILLY; WHALE OF A WALL-WRAP WOULD BE LARGEST IN NATION THE PUBLISHING REPORT Old Hollow Husk of Bushels Past May Become Feast For The Eyes hiladelphia’s three new independent publications all have promis- ing content, miniscule budgets and online origins. But besides Mammoth Signs By I-95 P THE TIDEWATER GRAIN CO. ELEVATOR: being produced in the same city, the online art journal Work, the online Would Mesmerize fashion and culture magazine Philth, and the socially committed WISHFUL THINKING’S CONCRETE TOMB B.Informed have almost nothing else in common, which is probably as Million Eyes A Week it should be, as all are driven by their staff ’s desire to present material Can Bush Stop Leaks? that isn’t available anywhere else. BY JESSICA CHIU Work was launched by co-editors Tony Smyrksi and Melissa Farley riving north along Interstate wake of the French Revolution, crip- THE COLOSSUS OF ROADS The President Wets in March. “I hate going to stores and looking at magazines and seeing D95 into Philadelphia, you’ll pling Europe’s capacity for agricul- all the same stuff,” Farley said. “Whether it’s art magazines or enter- see the remains of the Tidewater tural production and trade. The His Daily Briefs tainment magazines, it’s the same artists and the same people. It’s just Grain Co. elevator sitting on the mid-Atlantic states raced to meet Schuylkill Signpost’s 5 Adverts whatever’s trendy at the time and who you know. We want to give peo- city’s southernmost tip, a giant the exploding European demand, To Be Seen From Two Bridges: ple the opportunity to show their work in a painless, harmless way.” block of cylindrical concrete silos and Philadelphia—along with rival Girard Point & George C. Platt SOVEREIGN SOIL SOILED Work’s first two issues are full of fine art submissions from places as packed together like a pipe organ. Baltimore—suddenly became an far-flung as Germany and San Francisco. Recurring tropes include sig- Upon its construction nearly a cen- international center of the grain Condi, Cheney, Rummy nage (both commercial and personal), housing, portraiture, and tury ago, the Pennsylvania Railroad trade. 25 TIMES PERMITTED SIZE moments of decay, where the man-made and natural worlds begin to Company boasted that the In 1815, Philadelphia was twenty Play at War and Lose; Disney Shareholders Meet at 12th & Arch; mix and blur. The two issues have a light touch that’s more curatorial Tidewater would stand “high above years into its international grain Owners Would Fix Up Aging Pier Pass the Pacifiers than editorial, beginning with open-ended titles (“You’re Either In or Who Will Manage Mickey’s Money? the flat lands which surround it … boom when Napoleon was defeated You’re Out,” “Manners Are Free and Soap is Cheap.”) and proceeding the first sign of Philadelphia’s at Waterloo, and international With $15 Million in Revenue; straight to the art. No big preface, no clumsy or fancy frame. A new issue industry which presents itself to demand for American grain sub- ALL MEN CRADLED EQUAL DISNEY VS. EISNER FOR $27B IN CHEDDAR Pledge 110 Jobs in Five Years of the screenzine comes out on the first of each month at www.work- voyagers coming up the Delaware.” sided almost immediately. The vic- mag.net, and they’re strict about the deadline. “It was a couple of hours Today it towers two hundred and torious European monarchies were BY HENRY WILLIAM BROWNEJOHNS BY LOREN HUNT turn to PUBLISHING, page 5 forty-seven feet into the air, with on the brink of a century-long PIER THREE, Phila.—Too big America tells itself things, to CENTER CITY, Phila.—Inside morning and drive two hundred and the golden hue of a thing grown peace, and they erected protective to easily demolish and too old to please itself and to satisfy a civic the halls of the Pennsylvania forty miles to an annual sharehold- quietly impotent. A former fortress tariffs—such as England’s restric- cheaply renovate, the Tidewater vanity; as a nation, it surpasses all Convention Center, the micro- er’s meeting to confront the CEO. of industrial might, it haunts the tive Corn Laws, which prohibited Grain Co. elevator has one last the others for its remarkable nim- phone is slowly moving up the aisle, But this is not a story about most city’s edge, its grandeur frozen the import of all grain, except in asset: high concrete walls that greet bleness as a mass-conscience. Every passed from Disney shareholder to people. It is a story about people around it. Once a technological times of famine—to support every visitor who enters the city thought and gesture you make as an Disney shareholder, finally reaching who own stock in the Walt Disney marvel and a symbol of domestic farmers. By 1820, the from the south. Forty years after the American citizen is figured into the Scene Queens Come Into Their Own a 22 year-old in jeans. Calmly, Company, the thousands who gath- Philadelphia’s dominance as a port, grain trade in Philadelphia and last bushel of grain left its walls, the whole circuit of the American New Jacks Make The Straight Flush loudly, she addresses Michael ered one balmy March week in the elevator was built at the mouth Baltimore was in rapid decline. Tidewater may soon announce mass-mind, and in this way, we are Eisner, chairman and CEO of the Philadelphia to restore their com- of the Schuylkill, within yards of Both cities looked to the expanding Philadelphia’s national preemi- joined together as an enormous, Walt Disney Company. pany’s “soul” and bring back its the main channel of the Delaware, American West for new markets, nence in new industry—billboards. ungainly, admirable, and deeply COAL & COKE FUELED FAME’S FLAMES “My name is Jen Dziekan from “magic.” where it could receive barges and investing in turnpikes and railroads The building’s owner, Preston flawed individual. This is why Longmeadow, Massachusetts, and I It was the cast members at the rail cars by the hundred. Today it heading westward, hoping to reme- Ship & Rail, wants to crown the America is so subject to faddishness own four shares of Disney stock. I Holyoke Mall Disney Store who stands inland, within weak reach of dy flagging demand. But these last- Tidewater’s mammoth concrete and reactionism. As deluded as you bought it not for the five cents you first turned Dziekan on to the an economy at work. Two stray tug- ditch efforts were also thwarted, grain silos with five illuminated may be in your own personal self- give back to me, the thirty-three notion that the company of which boats, the Tenacious and the this time by the 1825 completion of “wall wrap” billboards, a total of perception, so too, is the nation you cents you give back to me, or the she owned four tiny pieces might be Athena, are docked at its pier, the Erie Canal. The canal, the first 38,786 square feet of advertising, are a part of. We are perpetually one dollar that I might get back in headed in the wrong direction. For which is slowly coming apart and successful route between the according to the company’s zoning whispering praise into the mirror. the future. I bought it for a piece of years she had been visiting the sinking into the water. Eastern ports and the farms of the application. That’s four times the We harbor a panoply of nonsensical the magic. store, in earlier days to buy Little The elevator may be my favorite Midwest, established New York size of the largest billboard in impressions of ourselves: that we “I bought it because I love going to Mermaid dolls and picture frames structure in Philadelphia. For years, state’s control of the grain trade for Times Square, and more than half are especially good; that we are the park. I love going to the stores, and Mickey Mouse hats and key- I’ve stolen glimpses of it driving the remainder of the century; by the the size of a football field. Taken especially industrious; that we are and I love feeling that magic. Have chains, and in more recent months into and out of the city. Its present Civil War, Buffalo would emerge as alone, the 14,446 square foot sign especially rational; and, of particu- you been to a theme park lately?” simply to chat with the cast mem- abandonment and position at the the world capital of grain shipment, proposed for the Tidewater’s south- lar import, that we are winners. Most people buy stock because bers, which is what the Walt Disney helm of the city have always made moving 50 million bushels annually. ern face would be the largest bill- Thirty years after we were routed they think it will go up. If their Company calls its employees. She the building seem mythic. By the 1850s, with the competi- board in the United States. Added out of Southeast Asia, the diligent stock has gone up fifty percent over wished she could offer support, but Abandoned buildings like the tion for grain leadership all but over, together, the Tidewater’s five signs history texts have yet to make a the last year, as Dziekan’s has, they the merchandise had gotten too Tidewater are a testament to city the privately held Pennsylvania would be larger than the largest tally in our Loss column.