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After You Call: A Deep Dive on Philly 311 · Part 4 of 9
23,229 of 75,929 open Philadelphia 311 tickets haven't been updated in 365+ days. 88.1% untouched in 30+ days. The system stopped.
Philadelphia sanitation workers earn the 4th-lowest wages among America's 20 biggest cities — below the MIT living wage for a single adult.
I take the 6am train out of Philadelphia a few times a month. Here's what I've noticed about the station and the ritual of leaving.
After You Call: A Deep Dive on Philly 311 · Part 3 of 9
Lower-income Philadelphia neighborhoods wait 19 days longer for 311. Three-quarters of the gap is the work itself — abandoned cars, blight.
After You Call: A Deep Dive on Philly 311 · Part 2 of 9
Most of 311's income gap in wait times is about which complaints poorer zips file. The service part sits in one place: L&I maintenance complaints.
Philadelphia banned indoor smoking in 2007. The law covers casinos too — and the casinos permit it anyway. What the ban leaks is the twenty feet around every door.
Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology · Part 9 of 9
This is Part 9 of Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology. Philadelphia Code § 15-101 calls the Fairmount Park Commission "former." Then § 15-202, about 225 lines later, says the Commission is "hereby empowered." Voters abolished the Commission in 2008. The Code never quite agreed with itself.
After You Call: A Deep Dive on Philly 311 · Part 1 of 9
Of 1.3M Philadelphia 311 records since 2024, 57% are phone calls, not service tickets. The contact center logs one every 38 seconds.
Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology · Part 8 of 9
Philadelphia's $15 County Demolition Fund fee is part of every deed and mortgage filed in Philadelphia. About $1.2 million a year. Nobody negotiates over it, and nothing has changed since 2022.
311 is Philadelphia's equalizer — one number, same service for everyone. So why do the poorest zip codes wait 5% to 285% longer?
Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology · Part 7 of 9
Philadelphia Code § 9-203 bans street vendors from operating midnight to 7am. Chicago, SF, and Boston have no citywide curfew. Philly is the only one.
Why every Philadelphia department should have an FP&A analyst. The arithmetic argument — and why the math almost pays for itself.
In which someone with more institutional experience corrects my framing, and I learn the difference between being right about the destination and wrong about the route.
Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology · Part 6 of 9
Philadelphia Code § 10-108 was the most detailed municipal horse welfare law in the country. The industry ended in 2023. Council banned it June 2026.
Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology · Part 5 of 9
A Philadelphia ordinance requiring laundromats to maintain a public payphone has been in the Code since 1961. 65 years later, not one of the seven laundromats I visited has one.
Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology · Part 4 of 9
Philadelphia Code § 10-801 bans leaving an abandoned icebox outside. Seventy-three years after the 1953 ordinance, the word 'icebox' survives in the title.
Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology · Part 3 of 9
Philadelphia Code § 9-609 (1961) bans laundromats from 1am to 6am, taking 24-hour laundry away from the third-shift workers who need it most.
Philadelphia Code: Accidental Anthropology · Part 2 of 9
Philadelphia Code § 10-601 still bans spitting on city streets. New York repealed its anti-spitting law in 1971. Philadelphia never did.
Philadelphia eviction court lets tenants buy ~10 extra weeks by skipping hearings and claiming never served. No penalty for the false claim.