While New York City was reveling in the humor of a 70-year-old misspelling yesterday, 99 miles to the south, Philadelphia’s SEPTA was having an identity crisis of its own.
As part of a promotion for the City of Brotherly Love’s upcoming Beer Week — why doesn’t New York have a beer week?? —the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority released a commemorative daily pass for public transit. The only problem was that the city skyline on the back of the card was New York City and not Philadelphia.
Philly’s news radio station 1060 AM KYW had a comment from a SEPTA official:
One problem: the skyline on the pass isn’t Philly — it’s New York, admits Septa spokeswoman Jerri Williams:
“It was designed in-house by one of our graphic artists. And I think people liked the look of the skyline but unfortunately didn’t take a really good look to see that it wasn’t Philadelphia. It’s a stock photo.”
Williams says that Septa is redesigning the pass, and new corrected ones are being printed at what she calls a “minimal” cost.
In a way, it’s comforting to know that the MTA isn’t the only making egregious errors on its signs and passes. It is cute how Philadelphia wants to be New York so badly that it is putting our skyline on the back of its MetroCard equivalent. Good try.
Meanwhile, in the never-ending world of subway typos, it seems that one can board the B at 125th St. and head to Brighten Beach. That’s just north of Darken Beach, right?
Photo by twitpic user JoseSPiano.
8 comments
*Every* week is beer week in New York 🙂
Mistakes like this are not uncommon. Recently, a sign was replaced on the corner of Houston and Mercer streets- the bad one read “Merser”.
From the Gothamist: http://gothamist.com/2008/04/1.....gn_typ.php
Or, just go to Flickr or Google Images, and search for “nyc street sign typo”. Considering the number of results, it really makes one wonder what the big deal is.
I hear that Broadway is misspelled on the G line.
Here is one more example directing you to the borough of “Queeens”
http://flickr.com/photos/squid_ink/3151623800/
Love the Philly card though. It’s interesting that “Beer Week” lasts ten days! But considering how “Happy Hour” often goes more than 60 minutes, I suppose time loses all meaning when drinking beer.
Uh-oh: watch the scums at the Post and at CW11 report that they found another typo and blame the MTA for raising fares!
Excellent reportage. I’m sure I’ve observed some SEPTA typos on signage in the past, but the only one that leaps to mind right now is less error than neighborhood association fiat: in the 2nd St. station on the Market-Frankford Line, there are black patches covering what used to be a final e for “Olde City”, rather than “Old City” (Philly’s Bridge-no-tunnel magnet), as it prefers to call itself now.
Oh, incidentally, it depends on whether or not you take the front of the card to be the side that has the magnetic strip or not, but most of us down here consider that to be the front of the Transpass, not the back.
Oh, PS, they updated the picture once to one more than five years old, without the Comcast Center, which is where Beer Week’s opening event kicks off. They’ve since updated it again. Cf, http://phillyskyline.com/ (no, there are no deeper links there; yes, that’s a drag, just search for “septa” to see all three posts).
I once saw a sign in a station, I think Park Place, for the 2 train to The Bronk. I think they didn’t catch that one until the next service change.
Philly is far from “wanting to be like New York.” We are a city of neighborhoods while yours is a city of transplants. Thanks anyway.
SEPTA, however, doesn’t hold a candle to MTA.