Dérive in Philadelphia

While I was away in Philadelphia this weekend I figured what better place to conduct a dérive than a city you've only visited once as a child.

My journey began on South St. - what would be equivalent to the downtown area of Gainesville. A farmer's market was set up in the main square. I decided to keep walking and arbitrarily chose a direction. I was aware that it would be easy to start a "historic Philadelphia" tour of various landmarks and monuments so I tried to avoid following any tourist routes and signage.

I walked around what I would later find out to be an area called Society Hill (a ritzy part of town) and began to notice a variety of things that peaked my interest.

One of the first things I noticed was how clean the neighborhood was (especially when compared to the other parts of the city I had seen over the weekend). When I came upon my first bit of graffiti, and gold graffiti at that, I immediately took a picture of it.


This was stuck onto the side of a newspaper box.



Around the corner I noticed a horse drawn carriage but couldn't catch up to it to take a picture. I noticed the house next to me had this great window front to it.




From there I noticed a small cobblestone road with these neat metal poles that had horse heads on them. I figured they were probably for tying up horses to (or even locking your bike to).



From there I noticed a massive overgrowth of vines covering the window of a house. The sudden block of green between the red brick houses caught my eye and prompted me to go down St. Peter's Way.







I noticed there was an old fashioned light post with a neighborhood watch sign attached to it indicating that I was in Society Hill.



On the other side of St. Peter's Way was this neat metal sculpture.



Down the street from the sculpture I decided to change directions and while crossing the street, I tripped over this odd brick that was sticking out from the rest of the street.


Next to the protruding brick was a house with this mosaic doorstep.


Beyond that was an actual tree growing next to a sculpture of a tree.


There were a lot of house that had extravagant sculptures in front of them like the two pictured below.



After wandering through the neighborhood a little I came to an opening. I had reached Washington Square - a small memorial to the first president. In the square was a building with three different shutter colors that caught my eye.


In the park I found this very picturesque scene of an abandoned umbrella. Just beyond it was a busy city street called Sanson St. - or otherwise known as Jeweler's Street because of all the jewelry stores on it.


By this time I had decided that my dérive was over and that I wanted to head back home but on my way I couldn't help but snap this picture of a funny sign.