Social Media Wins the Day

Last Thursday's brutal attack on two gay men near Rittenhouse Square was slow to make traction in the news. The papers buried it under stories about casinos sixty miles away and when it found its way on television, it was wedged between the weather and puff pieces.

One of the victims suffered skull fractures, a deep laceration on the face, and has his jaw will be wired shut for eight weeks.

However, the Philadelphia Police Department and the online community took it a little less lightly. After the police released very clear video surveillance footage of ten to twelve suspects, social media proved just how little we rely on newspapers and the six o'clock news. Even more, it proved just how swift we can be when we work together.

In a matter of hours, Facebook and Twitter turned these suspects into Philadelphia's Most Wanted. The Citizens Crime Commission initially offered a $1000 reward for information on the suspects, followed by three local businesses putting a $10,000 bounty on their freedom.

For a few tense hours, ten to twelve of the tristate's worst citizens must have been shitting their pants as they watched their faces walk across surprisingly clear surveillance footage. But that's when things took a 21st Century twist and went all Justice Leaguey, virtually speaking.

Shortly after posting the video on his Twitter feed, @greggybennett, former cast member of Real Housewives of New Jersey received and posted a photograph from a "friend of a friend of a friend" that showed a group of individuals matching those in the surveillance footage. 

The red vest is undeniable, and several others can be clearly made in the rest of the surveillance video.

It was almost immediately retweeted by @FanSince09. Minutes later followers had noted that the restaurant was Rittenhouse's La Viola. 

@FanSince09 used Facebook Graph Search to find profiles checked in at La Viola prior to the attack and managed to match a number of faces and clothing to the surveillance footage and the photograph which, at the time, was still available on Facebook and conveniently tagged by a few of the suspects.

By the time Detective Joseph Murray was contacted by @FanSince09, the hunt was essentially over. Late last night, lawyers representing a few of the suspects had contacted the PPD to make arrangements to surrender to questioning this morning. The police have not yet announced any arrests or additional information, short of deserved praise for @FanSince09, @greggybennett, and social media in general.

Despite the excitement that unfolded last night and the expectations many may have had this morning, Murray was quick to remind everyone that this is not an episode of Law & Order. With upwards of fifteen suspects likely to be brought in for questioning, it will take time to interview them all and sift through the evidence. It may be days, even a week, before arrests can be made.

As it is, it looks good for the victims (at least in terms of justice) and bad for those who chose to lawyer up late last night. Unfortunately, hate crime legislation that includes LGBT victims was struck down in 2002 and failed again in 2009. As it stands, the maximum sentence for aggravated assault that causes, or attempts to cause, serious bodily injury is twenty years and $25,000.

Without clear footage of the attack, it may seem it would be hard to prove which suspects were directly responsible for the injuries. However, given the large group of suspects, there is no question that two or more will sing like canaries and sell out their friends. And given the outrage spanning the nation last night, no District Attorney can afford to tread lightly. 

In the mean time, let's all sit back and think about the victims and their families. And on a slightly lesser note, what it's like to be part of a socially networked group of superheroes bent on spending their evenings hunting down the villains trying to ruin our Great City.

Molly's Daily Kiss

Ample Parking, Day or Night

When I first moved to Washington, D.C. almost twenty years ago, my large studio cost a modest $450 a month, development was stale, and the internet was for nerds. Today my first apartment - untouched and still teeming with more roaches than Joe's Apartment - asks a whopping $1200 a month. And that's considered affordable.

Twenty years old and raised on a farm, I was just tiptoeing my way into urban life. Put your license and cash in your sock at night, but leave a few bucks in your wallet in case you get mugged. Don't make eye contact with the beggars. And don't go in Meridian Hill Park after sundown unless you're buying drugs or a blow job. 

The neighborhood once home to abandoned embassies, one of them torched, is now full of microbrews, new families, and strollers extending all the way to Maryland.

But one thing hasn't changed, a frustrating urban ill I learned to deal with very early on: You will never find a parking space at your door. 

In Washington and many other cities, parking hassles are acceptedly traded for the luxury of living downtown. If you have to own a car for work, circling your block, even the surrounding blocks for twenty minutes is just something you have to do. 

But in Philadelphia, a city three times the size of Washington, D.C., having a car isn't largely perceived to be a privilege or unfortunate necessity, many view door front parking as a right. That attitude is expected in some emerging neighborhoods where long time Philadelphia residents spent the better part of the 20th Century living amongst abandonment when parking was a breeze. 

As the city's built environment grows, so does its population. Neighborhoods in North and South Philadelphia once vacant enough to accommodate a car for every member of the family parked along their block are quickly discovering what cities a fraction of the size have known for decades. 

Gone are the days of saving your spot with a piece of rusted lawn furniture. South Philadelphia residents may soon even find themselves faced with the fact that median parking is illegal, a law currently overlooked that will inevitably be enforced, further exasperating the parking within nearby neighborhoods.

Dead for no good reason

But where the parking gripes are even more quizzical is in the city's core. Not only do an over abundance of surface lots and parking garages adequately accommodate those living and working in Center City, the individuals who live and work here knowingly chose apartments and accepted jobs in one of the nation's densest downtowns within one of its biggest cities.

Ironically the same voices in Center City that champion better pedestrianization, urbanism, and bike lanes are the same ones who pipe up when a developer proposes a new apartment or office building, citing traffic and parking as a concern. 

Old City, a neighborhood once densely packed with warehouses and factories is now a high priced neighborhood full of charming alleyways broken up by small surface lots to accommodate both unnecessary cars brought in from New Jersey for nightlife as well as the community's reluctance to allow larger development that might bring with it a parking garage. 

But an even greater hypocrisy occurs across town near Rittenhouse Square where the Center City Residents' Association blocked the development of a sky scraping apartment tower at 19th and Chestnut. Despite a half dozen nearby high-rises, the CCRA claimed that spot zoning should not allow a building so tall, yammering from buildings that spot zoning allowed.

The larger complaint apparent in community meetings, on message boards, and the online comment Rabbit Hole regarded parking and traffic. With streets in the vicinity overwhelmingly metered, the parking grief is a nonstarter. Wealthy tenants who would inexplicably want to park on the street would need to hunt for spaces well below Rittenhouse Square. But more realistically, most who even owned a car would likely rent a space in one of the dozens of lots and garages in the area, many just a block away.

Despite being an American powerhouse that continues to grow taller and spread wider, Philadelphia's old habits dictate development in our densest pockets. The ongoing spot zoning argument doesn't validate the concerns of resident activists, rather it exposes an outdated zoning map, one that allows the tallest building between New York in Chicago on Arch Street, but nixes a high-rise apartment building a few blocks south.

Our current zoning in Center City refuses to accept the fact that the city between Vine and South is fusing into a cohesively proper downtown. There are places where height is relevant, notably in the Independence Historic District. But spot zoning in and around Rittenhouse has already set a precedent, and any debate about shadows and wind tunnels should be moot. And parking should never be considered in any debate regarding development downtown. 

The only regions within our city where development seems free to do its job is where the Atlanta-ization of our city is possible, where vast disjoined apartment complexes can provide ample parking near the Philadelphia Museum of Art and University City. Meanwhile hypocrisy and entitlement are stymying development in the one region within the city where common sense says it should touch the sky.

The day will come when logic, reason, and the quest to truly become an advanced and competitive city will supersede the lost cause of revisiting a Philadelphia that died in the 1950s, a lost cause that quells its agitation simply through the posterity of quiet streets and quaint architecture. We're a big city primed to be the next New York. Let's start acting like it.