A Philadelphia Product You Couldn’t Give Away

The Khian Sea really isn't a Sea?

Scarfo’s gunmen were killing on a grand scale. Ira Einhorn was on the lam.
Dr. Martin Specter was selling human body parts through the mail.

Crazy killers like Gary Heidnik and Joseph Kallinger were titillating the public.
The most astounding killers were an English teacher and the principal of Upper Merion High School.
Negative news was overflowing in Philadelphia during the 1980s and early 1990s.

One negative news story that received international coverage was emblematic of Philadelphia in that era. It involved a ship roaming the globe, seeking a place to dump Philly’s toxic garbage.

The city was burning a lot of its trash during those years, but the process left tons of toxic ash to be disposed. In 1986, just about every landfill on the East Coast refused to accept 15,000 tons of Philadelphia ash.

The contractor hired to get rid of it, finally had it loaded onto an old tub the Khian Sea.

Its first destination was an artificial island in the Bahamas. However, the Bahamas refused the gift.

For almost two years, the Khian Sea traveled to every poor nation it could reach but none would take the toxic cargo. Some of the ash was dumped in Haiti when no one was looking, which the city eventually had to clean up.

Here is a list – we are not sure if its complete – of the Khian Sea’s travels to find a welcome port: Bermuda, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Senegal, Morocco, Yugoslavia, Sri Lanka and Singapore.

Along the way the ship changed names a couple of times and had a near mutiny of the crew. The problem was solved when the captain dumped the terrible cargo into the sea.

The co-owners of the ship were put on trial, and it cost the city big bucks to clean up the mess in Haiti, ship the ash to Florida and eventual bury it in an upstate Pennsylvania landfill.
An odyssey that started in 1986, finally ended after 16 years in 2002.

Looking For Broad Street But The Sign Says Avenue Of The Arts

Philadelphia's once-famous bank

Nothing is more certain in Philly than change – name changes of streets, schools, banks, hospitals, neighborhoods etc.
Remember Beaver College? Columbia Avenue? PSFS Bank? 

Well. Beaver College is now Arcadia University.
Columbia Avenue is Cecil B. Moore Avenue.
PSFS, once Philadelphia's premier bank, became Meritor and then Mellon.

Perhaps, the name change champion is First Pennsylvania Bank which was consumed by PNB then CoreStates then First Union then Wachovia and finally Wells Fargo Bank.

About 1980, Grover Washington Jr. wrote a song called East River Drive. If he wrote the same tune today it would be Kelly Drive.

The most common name in this city is “Franklin.” More than a dozen places are named to honor Ben Franklin including a bridge and three streets. And while there is still a “Franklin Mills Boulevard,” there is no longer a Franklin Mills Shopping Mall. Now it’s Philadelphia Mills Mall.

This is rather hard to believe:
About 5,000 people submitted new names for the former Electric Factory which became North Second music venue (because it is on 7th Street). Guess the winner.

You are correct – another “Franklin.” It’s now the Franklin Music Hall.

Remember Philadelphia Textile College?
Not too long ago it became Philadelphia University.
And now it’s Jefferson University.
Standby for the next name change.

The University of the Arts has seen four name changes since its founding in 1876 as the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Arts.

Sometimes rich guys pay for a name change. So, Glassboro College became Rowan College in 1992 when inventor-engineer Henry Rowan – who did not attend Glasboro – donated $100 million to the former teachers training school.

Billionaire Stephen Schwarzman thought $25 million would get his alma mater Abington High School to suddenly become Schwarzman High. At first, the school board agreed, but a public outcry scotched the name change.

Neighborhood names come and go.
Southwark has given way to Queen Village and Pennsport.
Old neighborhood names die: Branchtown, Bricktown,
The Neck and Jewtown are gone.

Now we have to learn many recent names for old places such as Sharswood, Passayunk Crossing, Pelham, Ludlow and Hawthorne, just to name a few.

Soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Evening Bulletin asked readers to suggest names for the war. The British were just calling it “The War.” The Bulletin got scores of ideas and 15,000 citizens wrote directly to the War Department with names. Without thinking a lot about it, President Franklin Roosevelt just called it the Second World War - the name that stuck.

Want to Film Urban Decay? We Welcome You With Open Arms

It seems that Philadelphia reached its lowest point in the early 1990s.

Industry was totally dead. 
Mayor Rendell was wrestling with a $250 million deficit and the lowest bond rating of any big city.

But what really symbolized the decay and decline of the city was the filming here in 1995 of the dystopian film, Twelve Monkeys.

Director Terry Gilliam (of Monty Python fame) said, “We went to Philadelphia looking for rotting America. It turned out to be the perfect place. I loved the feeling of sadness and melancholy.”

Did the city film office think this statement was a compliment?
However, the city was so desperate it jumped at the “honor” of a Hollywood film being shot here.

Gilliam shot at several locations in the “rotting” old city, including City Hall. Unbelievably, the city allowed City Hall and the street outside to be transformed into a nightmare landscape of decay.
Phony vines were glued to the east side of City Hall to make it look abandoned and decaying. Trash was sprinkled on the street. Rusted hulks of burned-out cars were placed on the sidewalk and street.

Of course traffic was rerouted during filming. Anything that Hollywood wants, it gets in this city.

Other locales of decay and squalor included Eastern State Penitentiary, the deserted Met at Broad and Poplar and the High School for the Performing Arts.

Incidentally, the phony vines glued to City Hall left long-lasting marks. 

Again-and-again the city has rolled-over, stopped traffic, eliminated parking – anything film-makers ask, they get.

The City Had A ‘Bastard Problem’ in the 1790s

Mederic-Louis-Elie Moreau de Saint-Mery.
Artist: James Sharples

Imagine a Frenchman with the nerved to declare that Philadelphia is a city full of bastards. 

He wasn’t referring to our politicians but an abundance of fatherless children.

During the French Revolution, a chap by the name of Moreau de Saint-Mery escaped to America and opened a book shop in Philadelphia. He also wrote a good deal about his experiences and thoughts on the new nation and especially Philadelphia.

“Bastards are extremely common in Philadelphia,” Saint-Mery wrote in the late 1790s. He declares there are two reasons for the problem – religious and economic.

“The city is full of sects, but none of them give their clergymen any authority to enforce obedience. Consequently there is no way of inspiring shame in women who become mothers for no reason but for the pleasure they get out of it.”

Saint-Mery continues: “In the second place, once an illegitimate child is 12 months old, a mother can disembarrass herself of him by farming him out for 21 years. This makes it possible for her to commit the same sin for a second time.”

A few observations:
Saint-Mery was accustomed to the strict rules of the French Catholic church. And, yes, there was an apprentice system where children could be indentured to a craftsman or farmer, but we seriously doubt that anyone would take a 12-month-old baby to help on a farm or shop.

Also, Saint-Mery seems to forget that bastards are created by men who then refuse to be fathers.

Dr. S.M. Landis: Fearless Failure At Everything

He was a physician (maybe), a clergyman (of his own denomination). He churned out and published book-after-book. Simon M. Landis also wrote plays and starred in them, while dodging a variety of missiles thrown by the audience.

Mostly, the good doctor is a footnote in Philly history because he wrote a sex manual in 1870 which got him tossed into Moyamensing Prison for obscenity.

The verbose Landis was pardoned by the governor after serving less than five months of a one-year sentence. He immediately published the transcript of his trial and a second book about his thoughts while in prison.

Neither his books, plays nor his obscenity trial are very interesting. Most of the trial transcript is taken up by Landis’ lawyer making windy speeches and a grumpy judge refusing to allow any part of the sex book to be read in court.

Defense attorney John G. Kilgore declared: “The book shows how to generate a new race of men and women that will be beautiful and healthy and pure instead of criminal and diseased persons.” The lawyer said Dr. Landis “has gives us instruction…to produce moral and holy offsprings.”

Apparently, the good doctor had some new sexual positions that produced these healthy, holy kids.

The book warns against “coffee, tea or other artificial beverage that will steam heat, irritate and excite the organs.”

Landis writes about the “magnetic attraction” between ovum and sperm. However, he has a “special demagnetization technique” to avoid conception.

As far as the judge was concerned, the book was pure smut that might fall into the hands of children and the jury agreed.

Landis was the pastor of something called the First Progressive Christian Church. During the trial it emerged that Landis had no church building but rented meeting halls where he packed in 1,000 or more Philadelphians to hear him preach. Some referred to it as “The Love Church.”

At one point he proposed establishing a church in Reading, Pa. The Reading newspaper suggested Allentown as the proper location for Landis since “they still believe in spooks and hobgoblins etc.”

We only know bits and pieces of the life of S.M Landis, M.D. D.D, from a few newspaper clippings. Why he gave up medicine for a life in the theater is never clear.

We have a fascinating front page clipping from 1888 when 1,200 came to see Dr. Landis and his troupe performed a play Landis wrote called, “Dick Shaw.” There was a net in front of the stage to protect Landis from “the howling mob without chivalry or mercy hurled volleys of missiles. . .. eggs, potatoes, oranges, lemons, beans and small baseballs.”

When the audience exhausted their supply of fruits and vegetables, “one of the worst mobs ever gathered within the four walls of a Philadelphia building" smashed the chairs and hurled the pieces at Landis.

There were several cops in the theater to protect the actors, but an enraged Landis shook his fists at the crowd and finally quit the performance.

The article does not explain why Landis was so hated. Interestingly, the news article claims the violent audience was composed mostly of ruffians from “Port Richmond, Manayunk, Southwark and Grays Ferry.”

Landis tried bringing his act to other cities. A New York newspaper critic wrote: “He came to New York last winter after inflicting himself on long-suffering Philadelphia until there was signs of riot and revolt in the air.”

The New York writer goes on to say that Landis “astonished and for a time amused audiences."

But his attempts at Shakespearian tragedy were so terrible that he tried "a burlesque tragedy which seemed to be his strong point.

“In it, he killed everyone in the cast at least once and was himself killed four times. Multitudes would have rushed with fond anticipation and delight to witness the proceedings had one of the four times been real.”

A Witty Name Can Attract More Business

Copabanana

BOMB BOMB ITALIAN RESTAUANT
In 1936 this South Philly corner bar-restaurant was bombed twice by racketeers. The second time the owner took the hint and got out.

HAPPY TO BE NAPPY
A Germantown Avenue hair salon for black women who like natural hair styles.

COPABANANA
South Street bar-restauant whose name is a play on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janerio.

BOXERS PHL
Center City gay bar where staff are shirtless and wear red boxer shorts.

THIRD BASE 
The place you go before going home.
A former Roxborough tavern

JOSE PISTOLA’S
A Mexican-themed bar owned by Joe Gunn.

SMOKKEY TOKKEY
A tobacco and head shop in Rockledge

ROBIN’S WIGWAM
A North Philly wig store.

Headlines Even Too Risqué for the Daily News

Daily News headlines are witty and often naughty, but occasionally raunchy enough to be killed by a puritanical editor.

So this headline about a woman who fell in love with a Greek sailor while on a cruise appeared in only one edition:

"SHE LOVED HER GREEK SEAMAN"

Several decades ago someone (only his first name Mike is remembered) was building without the proper permits. The city told him to tear it down. The headline in the first edition read:

"MIKE’S ERECTION IS NO LONGER HIS TO HOLD"

However, here’s a headline that plays off a common expletive that did not offend the editors. When a 76er player accidentally spit on a fan, the headline read:

"SPIT HAPPENS"