Condo Destroying Earth One Trip At A Time

There’s a story in today’s Inquirer about the residents at the new condos at Liberty Two. The cheapest place in the skyscraper is $1 million, but you do get perhaps the best view of the city. There are only about 20 residents in the building, but they already have four concierges doting on them 24/7, a complimentary driver and Mercedes from 7 a.m. - 11 p.m. and probably anything else you could imagine.

Then there’s the story of Michael Beautyman, who used the driver to help him find a couch.

A health-care attorney, world-class athlete and divorced father of two from Flourtown, Beautyman is still decorating. Last week, he asked the Residences’ driver to take him around the city in search of a sofa. No hunting through Macy’s for a floor model. No flipping through Pottery Barn catalogs, or testing the springs on a garage-sale special. The driver took him from store to store. [...]

So, did he find the couch? “No. I found three possibilities. More important, I found an interior decorator at Mitchell Gold who’s helping me.”

Liberty Two: 16th and Chestnut streets. Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams: 13th and Chestnut streets. I would always suggest driving when attempting to hire an interior designer from down the block. Fortunately for Beautyman, even if all the ice caps melt he’ll be about 700 stories up, sitting on his comfy oatmeal-colored couch in peace.

Tip-Top Service [Inquirer]

PennDOT Installing L

NBC 10 says it has exposed the “mystery” of the color-coded detour signs all around Pennsylvania. Okay, so I’d never seen these signs before the NBC 10 report, but I don’t have a car anymore. Apparently, though, there are orange, blue and green signs with arrows that say “detour” on them. They also helpfully note the colors with words for the colorblind!

Anyway, the signs are part of a post-9/11 emergency plan, apparently. This color-coded system shares a lot in common with the color coded terror alert system also put in place after 9/11: Nobody has any idea what the colors mean and nobody really pays any attention to it, anyway. But, oh man, if the Willow Grove Mall is attacked, we need an exit strategy!

The color-coded detour signs are going up all across the state in the coming months. (Currently, they lead to nowhere.) They’re meant to be able to direct drivers back to the Interstate in case of a forced exit due to an accident or something. NBC 10’s Lynn Berry: “If there’s an incident, message boards and media reports will be made telling motorists which color detour to take.”

So if you’re in your car and forced to exit I-95, just check in to Philadelphia Will Do and I’ll you which detour to take (the blue one). I think it’s settled: This is the most successful plan of all time.

Update: I apparently quit writing this headline right in the middle of it. But I kinda like it now, so you can just pretend I died halfway through.

Late Night Drive-Thru

Let’s just stay in the Northeast for now with another edition of Things That Happened Near My Parents’ House, a feature I just made up. Right down the street from the airport (and just a little further from where I grew up), a driver made a wrong turn at Red Lion and the Boulevard and smashed right into a Wendy’s.

NBC 10 says the driver “somehow smashed his is car right through an outer wall of the fast-food restaurant.” Wendy’s was closed, and nobody was hurt. See, this is what I had to deal with growing up: Constant worry that some idiot was going to ram into me with their car, even when I’m indoors. I could be in the middle of Best Buy (also in that shopping center) and I’m still worried somebody’s going to drive right into me.

Texting Teens Ravaging Interstates

Like, ohmigod! So, yesterday, the Inquirer, like, totally ran a story about how me and my friends text while driving. How ridic, right?

The only thing is, it was all about how we shouldn’t be texting each other while we’re driving, and, like, how dangerous it is? Only me and Courtney never got in any accidents! Why are they allowed to print stuff like that?

They even talked to some dude at a college? Like, a professor or something? And they said he was a “texting expert”! Only, he was kind of on our side! He said, like, it’s unfair to take away our texting while we’re driving because we do it so much! He went something like, “Asking students to be without one of their primary forms of communication while en route in cars is asking too much of them.”

But, then, like, the writer? Went something like, “Maybe, but shouldn’t someone at least be telling them that it’s not the safest way to conduct a life?” Like, ohmigod, let me live my life, you know what I’m sayin’? Like, I can text while driving, I know all the words I need to hit in T9!

And then, they talked to some other guy, right? And he said that it was kids on the Main Line who did it the most! Why do they always have to blame the Main Line kids? I mean, it’s not like the blow they do in Bloomsdale is any different than the blow we do here! Like, ohmigod! Oh, by the way, can you hook me up, I’m all out? Oh, great!

Yea, whatever! Because I mean, like, totally, full out! And I’m, like, totally getting tired of writing this way, but I don’t want to give up the (awful) joke now! There are still more quotes to, like, make fun of! And, like, the writer, like, talked to this girl, who said she texts and hasn’t gotten in any accidents!

And she said: “We’re just a fast-paced generation. I can eat a McDonald’s meal in 30 seconds. I text while I drive to make plans with friends, or to tell my friends about someone I met the night before, or to occupy my mind if nothing good is on the radio. I can’t help but respond right away if I get a text. I don’t like waiting. The world today is going fast.”

Like, right? I mean, just yesterday I was in an eating contest and I ate a whole McDonald’s meal in 25 seconds! Ohmigod! Oh, hold on, I have another call.—click—Yeah, of course I want to go see Fall Out Boy, Brandon! I gotta go, alright!—click—But then some “expert” said that if we even talk on the phone while driving we could crash! But what if there’s somebody in the seat next to us? I’m, like, not going to, like, not talk! He even said we could get charged with a “serious offense” if we cause a crash!

Oh, you gotta go? Alright. Like, I’ll text you about it later!

Behind the wheel, teens typing away [Inquirer]
[Image by sean dreilinger, licensed via Creative Commons]