"Shell Games"
Bright Eyes
from The People's Key
2011
I grew up in the Northeast on a street named Shelbourne St. Please note the spelling. Now look at this picture from 2007 taken from the wayback machine on Google Maps, on the corner of Shelbourne and Longshore:
Notice that the street name is spelled "Shelborne" on the sign. What in the world happened? How did the city misspell a street name on the goddamn sign? This is not something I ever thought about while growing up. I have a very distinct memory of my father explaining to me that there was a "U" in the name of our street, and that the street sign I walked past literally every day for ten years was wrong.
It was one of those things that I just accepted as fact, because I was too young to question why something was the way it was. I haven't thought about it for years, decades even, but it occurred to me just the other day how fucking weird this truly was. Did someone in the Philadelphia Streets Department really misspell a fucking street sign, which they then hung on a street pole for like thirty years and never thought to replace it?!
Okay, if you live in Philadelphia, maybe this shouldn't surprise you. It's a bizarre fucking city.
I am happy to report that, per Google Maps in 2019, the sign has finally been replaced. Thanks, Gritty.
I have nothing else to say. It's four in the morning on my birthday, and I'm writing about street signs. Give me a break.
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