10 weird Philly area stories from 2023 that made people ask: ‘Am I really seeing this?’ – The Philadelphia Inquirer
It’s been another long, strange trip around the sun for the City of Brotherly Love.
As 2023 comes to a close, let’s take some time to reflect on the moments that made this another strange and unusual year in the Philadelphia region (as if there’s ever been a normal one).
Of course, there were the major news stories like the collapse of I-95 and the escape of prisoner Danilo Cavalcante, both of which had more twists and turns than Lincoln Drive, but do you remember the boob furniture that appeared along Washington Avenue or the heist of $200,000 in dimes?
If not, I’m here to jog your mammary with this on-the-money list of 10 of the weirdest stories in our area this year, which I’ve compiled with the help of readers.
A Mummer saving the life of an Eagles fan at the Linc on New Year’s Day sounds like what an AI bot might produce if you asked it to write the ultimate Philly story, but even AI couldn’t have predicted what happened in this true tale when the Eagles fan finally came to.
Vincent Basile of the Cara Liom Wench Brigade attended the Mummers Parade New Year’s morning, then went in his pink-and-blue satin costume to the Birds game that afternoon.
When Basile, an emergency medicine resident, saw a nearby Eagles fan had fallen and turned blue, he convinced the crowd that despite his costume, leopard headband, and rainbow face paint, he actually was a doctor. He jumped in to perform CPR along with Natalie Spencer, a nurse who was also at the game.
“The first thing that came out of that guy’s mouth as he was kind of waking up a little bit — and I don’t think he remembers — but he asked what score the game was,” Basile told The Inquirer.
A Delco delivery driver for Cocco’s Pizza went viral in April for his out-of-the-box thinking that led to the apprehension of a suspect being chased by police.
Tyler Morell was walking up to deliver a pizza in Middletown Township when he saw a car drive onto a nearby lawn, and the driver flee on foot, with police chasing behind.
Morell got a pizza the action by putting his leg out and tripping the suspect, sending him airborne. Police arrested the driver and Morell, who never dropped the pizza, was able to deliver the pie. The entire incident was captured on door cam footage.
“If they needed a hand I was there, or a foot, whatever,” Morell told one reporter.
New Jersey residents strained their brains in May to try and understand why someone dumped hundreds of pounds of pasta along a creek in Old Bridge Township.
The pasta-bilities appeared endless, orzo it seemed.
A local resident was noodling about in a wooded area when she discovered the mounds of noodles along a creek. Her photos of the pasta piles went viral, inspiring wordplay lovers to dish out puns like “We should send the perpetrators to the state penne tentiary.”
The pasta litterbug was identified but not charged with a crime, according to NJ.com. He’d allegedly cleaned all of those noodles out of his mom’s house following her death. Officials said they were likely dry when dumped, then moistened by rain.
Residents of one South Philly block were treated to an unusual display in May when 70 taxidermied animals, including a full-grown bear, were lifted via crane from the third floor of a rowhouse onto a flatbed truck.
It was the kind of stuffed that makes you say, is Philly fur real?
The animals — including deer, moose, caribou, elk, mountain lion, sheep, and goat — were owned by collector Tommy Koons, who was moving out and putting them in storage until he could find a bigger place to display them.
“It’s like an obsession, not a hobby,” Koons told The Inquirer. “If you knew how much money I put into it, your head would spin.”
In late May, a set of furniture covered in dozens of breast plushies of all shapes, sizes, and colors mysteriously appeared in the triangular cement lot where Capt. Jesse G’s Crab Shack once stood in the areola of Washington and Passyunk Avenues in South Philly.
The guerrilla art, which was dubbed Captain Jesse G’s Boob Garden, delighted and confused passersby, but perhaps the breast part was that the installation remained relatively untouched for nearly two months.
Rose Luardo, the South Philly performance and soft sculpture artist behind the piece, told me her work in this world is to configure really wacky things you didn’t know could exist.
“I really love that zany weird, waking LSD trip of it all, like ‘Am I really seeing this?’” she said.
On June 11, truck driver Nathan Moody died in a tragic crash when the tanker he was operating with 8,500 gallons of gas overturned and burst into flames under I-95 in Northeast Philadelphia.
From cell phone footage of people driving over the buckling roadway to aerial shots of the highway after it collapsed, from the very start, the entire incident was hard to fathom. And it only got more unbelievable from there.
In the immediate aftermath, TV interviews with Mayfair resident Peter McLaughlin, who said he was “passed out” during the explosion, went viral for the sheer Philly-ness of his hoagiemouth accent and attitude.
“Philly doesn’t have the best luck right now. We lost the World Series, we lost the Super Bowl, and now we lost 95, so, looks like we’re just taking Ls,” he told CBS3.
Officials initially estimated it would take months to fix the highway. On June 15, a livestream of the repairs was put online to give commuters “a sense of timing as we move forward,” Gov. Josh Shapiro said.
That livestream became the sleeper hit of the season, as people watched in bars, at home, and even on the Phanavision during a Phillies game at Citizens Bank Park. Viewership of the livestream soared when Shapiro announced I-95 would reopen in weeks with a temporary fix thanks to what he called “the ingenuity of Delco” and “the grit of Philly.”
On June 23, the roadway was officially reopened by the mascots of Philly’s five pro sports teams — Gritty, the Phanatic, Swoop, Franklin the Dog, and Phang — who rode across the repaired highway in a fire truck to mark the occasion in the most Philly way possible.
The Flyers, Phillies, Eagles, 76ers, and Union also donated a collective $50,000 to build a trust fund for Moody’s daughter.
The same week I-95 collapsed another story managed to tick off the entire city more than losing a highway.
On June 12, The Inquirer reported on a March trip two Rhode Island state officials made to tour the Bok building. The team behind Bok, Scout Ltd., was being considered to develop a vacant state building in Providence.
David Patten, then the director of Rhode Island’s property management division, allegedly made outlandish demands during the trip, including having “the best croissant in Philadelphia ready for me upon arrival,” made racist and sexist comments to those he encountered, requested a private lunch at Irwin’s, and asked for free items from Bok tenants.
James Thorsen, then the director of administration for Rhode Island, allegedly witnessed the incidents but did nothing to stop them, though he claimed he later reported them.
It’s almost like these two had never heard of Philly or Philadelphians. If there’s one thing we don’t suffer lightly here, it’s entitled fools. The Scout Ltd. team wrote an email to a lobbyist about the officials’ bizarre behavior that ended up on the governor’s desk and resulted in two separate investigations, which remain ongoing.
Another story that shows the darker side of weird: On Aug. 31, Chester County Prison inmate Danilo Cavalcante, who was serving a life sentence for the brutal murder of his ex-girlfriend in front of her children, managed to escape the facility by crab walking up a narrow wall in the exercise yard and climbing onto the roof, just as another inmate had done in May.
For two weeks, he led authorities on a manhunt through Chester County. Cavalcante even hid out at Longwood Gardens, the fancy former du Pont estate and tourist destination, which was forced to close when he was spotted on trail cameras there.
During his time on the run, Cavalcante was able to steal a van and a loaded rifle, he attempted to make contact with former coworkers, broke into an occupied West Chester home, and survived on watermelons and creek water.
On Sept. 13, he was finally captured in a wooded area of South Coventry Township by state police, Border Patrol agents, and Yoda, a 4-year-old Belgian Malinois.
Cavalcante was wearing an Eagles hoodie when he was taken into custody.
When legendary Philadelphia DJ Jerry Blavat died in January, he not only left a hole on the airwaves, he also left a whole lot of stuff in his Society Hill home, including a seven-foot-tall succulent that bore a striking resemblance to a cactus.
George Mathes, owner of Thunderbird Salvage in Kensington, was at Blavat’s place in September to help move out a table when he saw what he believed was a cactus (but was actually a prickly African milk tree) and asked if he could have it.
Blavat’s daughter gave it to Mathes for free, and he listed the plant for $500 on Instagram, writing it was for “anyone who loves Cacti and appreciates the wonderful human being that Jerry Blavat was.”
The plant sold in less than a day for $350, proving there’s a succa out there for everything.
In April, a group of men with no cents broke into a tractor trailer that was parked at the Walmart at Franklin Mills Mall and stole more than $200,000 worth of dimes that were being transported to Miami from the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia.
In September, a thief who took a portable shop vac from the bed of a pickup truck undoubtedly felt the sting of their crime later when they realized the vacuum was filled with four hundred large hornets that had been sucked up by the Philadelphia Bee Co.
And in October, a group of shellfish bandits stole $73,000 worth of crab legs from the back of a tractor trailer in North Philly, while it was parked with the driver asleep inside.
Federal authorities charged four men in late October with the dime heist and said the same crew was behind other tractor trailer robberies.
There’s been no buzz on an arrest in the hornet-filled vacuum case.
