Waterlogged Olympians and Huey Lewis Shoes at 13th and Kimball

Spotted on the corner of 13th Street and Kimball in South Philadelphia – a hardback semi-autobiography of Michael Phelps and a two-tone shoe that was probably the height of fashion in the 1980s.

This whole area around the enormous vacant lot at Broad and Washington has become a dumping ground of sorts and an odd one at that. You would expect the usual construction or demolition detritus dumped in the dead of night by unscrupulous contractors, but this is more oddball stuff like the discarded book above and the item pictured below.

I found this beneath some snow on the corner of Broad and Washington. I’m wondering how it got there. Fall off of a moving car? I hope it wasn’t deliberate. Who would risk the potential of seven years bad luck compounded by a chance at eternal damnation or, at the very least, a long stretch in purgatory for smashing a mirror with this subject matter?

This area seems to be where all of the lost or discarded hair extensions wind up to coalesce with one another along with leaves and pieces of trash to create the urban phenomena known as tumbleweaves. The one pictured above had been there for a while, gathering up other flotsam and jetsam until it was the size of a small poodle. Scary.