Fortune Teller Crackdown Spells Doom For Us All

Acting on a tip from the police department last week, the city’s Department of Licensing & Inspections (aka the dreaded L&I) decided to take care of the one problem all city residents could agree needed fixing: Those stupid signs all over town that say “I BUY TRAINS” or “LOSE WEIGHT IN 30 DAYS” or “I BUY HOUSES.”

Ha ha, of course not! What L&I actually did was shut down the city’s fortune tellers. The state technically has a decades-old law preventing fortune tellers from, ah, predicting the future “for gain or lucre.” (Lucre? This law was clearly written in approximately 1789.)

It seems odd that the state has a ban on fortune telling when it also has a legalized lottery and casino gambling, but “making sense” is not something government does, ever. Cops haven’t arrested anyone and nobody’s been fined, but if these people attempt to return to their livelihoods, they will be. Deputy L&I commish Dominic Verdi tried to make it sound as if he was doing the city a great favor.

Most so-called psychics, he said, “are not little old ladies with kerchiefs on their heads” but clever con artists capable of stealing large sums - even life savings - from grieving or otherwise vulnerable people.

As opposed to casinos and the lottery, which…. well, whatever.

The Inquirer interviewed the owner of Psychic, the fortune teller on Walnut Street — naturally, near the head shop Wonderland — who said he had a license from the city and paid taxes. He also said he was raided by the Major Crimes Unit, because, you know, he’s really a danger to the community. (You would think the police would use the fortune tellers to predict where the next murder was going to be!)

“Shouldn’t they be cracking down on rapes and murders, not palm readers?” he asked. He also demanded to know whether tea-leaf readers in Chinatown were also being shut down. He doubted it.

“They’re discriminating against Gypsies,” he said, although he said he was born and raised in Philadelphia.

Finally, he noted that critics “considered that Jesus was a psychic, a fortune-teller, and they crucified him.” He saw a certain parallel. “Look what they want to do with the fortune-tellers,” the man said. “We might be coming to the end of the world.”

Gee, thanks a lot, L&I. Because of you, the fucking world is going to end. I hope you’re happy.

Who knew? An old law shuts psychics [Inquirer]