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This, the first installment of this blog will be by far the longest of any I will post. For the faint of heart, I will post the goods first.
The boot scrape is one of my favorite things about Philadelphia and the charm of Old City. I have seen them and sought them out and have shown them to people times too numerous to count over the past 15 plus years. It amazes me that so many people have no idea what they are and are even a little surprised that they exist. This blog will be dedicated to documenting the boot scrapers of Philadelphia. I will post a picture and the address of each boot scrape I find, and maybe a short anecdote.
This ornate boot scrape is located at 3rd and pine. I happened upon it while searching for one to show an out of town friend who happily took a picture of it and posted it on Facebook for all to see. I then took a picture of her, thumbs up, foot in the scraper, all smiles, with her very first boot scrape. Have I another convert? I think so.
And now for a trip down memory lane...
Setting:
A little over fifteen years ago I made my first trip to South Street by myself. The South Street I remember in the early to mid 1990's was one full of head shops, skate shops, tattoo and piercing parlors, art supply stores, and a book store where you could find the less coy of pervert riffling through adult nudie magazines in the front window. This was before the internet was what it is now, before porn was a stroke of a touchpad away, and let me tell you, I envied the hell out of those brazen son's of bitches. But I digress. South Street used to have a few decent taco and burrito joints. My favorite was on 4th st, across from the now closed Hocus Pocus. Tower Records once boasted a line out front on Saturday mornings, full of anxious concert goers waiting to buy a ticket when they went on sale at 10.
This was before Starbucks. Before XandO (now Cosi). Before Auntie Annes and Pizza Hut. When there was only one gum tree. Hell, when there was a gum tree. There used to be a thrift store that sold you a bag for $5 - you walked out of the store with whatever you could fit in the bag. Back when Manic Panic hair dye was the shit. When everyone's wallet was attached to their belt by a chain. When you were a cool fucking kid if you had a pack of clove cigarettes (even though no one I knew could actually smoke a whole one). Back when J.C. Dobbs was J.C. Dobbs the first time, before it turned to The Pontiac Grille. I used to walk past that place and wonder what it'd be like to play there - I finally did when it was in its Pontiac Grille incarnation back in 02. It was pretty cool to be playing my music in the same space, against the same walls as so many great bands. But I digress again - it's not my fault; memory lane is full of many digressions.
I remember stores like Soho (still there), Rock n Roll, and Zipperhead. There was a pharmacy, a used book store, Condom Kingdom was a year or two from opening. The South street I remember was one where an adolescent kid with a hard on for rock and roll and the left of center could find an outlet, and more importantly, people much, much weirder than himself.
The story:
How I came upon a boot scrape...
I was 14 and Kurt had killed himself a few months before in the spring. I didn't really care at the time, but whatever was in the air hung around for a long time and for an angst-y boy it was inviting. South street seemed like a place where I could go and feel part of the "scene". I didn't think of it that way then, it was a place that some of the cooler kids had talked about. Where people had tattoos and piercings, and I could buy a Led Zeppelin or Doors T-shirt, or maybe a black light poster. It was a place I wanted to be. My sister was going to South st with me, or rather I with her as she was a year and a half older. We had never taken the bus downtown from Roxborough/Manayunk before. We dug out the many bus schedules one had who lived in our part of the neighborhood. None of the buses went directly to South st and our knowledge of what was safe and what was not was limited. For all we knew downtown was another country, a dangerous one at that, and we didn't want to stray far from (at all) from our destination. The 35 was useless. The 61 was no where near us. The 32 went through North Philly - no way we were getting on that thing, you know 'cause of all the murders on the bus. The 27 would have been a possibility if it wasn't a Sunday. In the end we decided on the 9. We could ride it all the way to the end of the line and not worry about where our stop was. It would let us out at 4th and Walnut and pick us back up there too. It was about 6 blocks to South st. It was within those 6 blocks I saw my first boot scrape.
Olde City Philadelphia is full of many boot scrapers. Back when the roads where not paved one would accumulate mud, dirt, and, well..., horse shit, on their boots. It would be impolite to not wipe one's boots off before entering a house. Outside the front of a house there would be a metal or iron scraper to rid your boots of debris. At the time I saw my first boot scrape I had no idea what it was, yet I was drawn to it. I never once thought it'd be something to wipe poop on. Some of them were very ornate. The best I could imagine was that you'd tie your horse to it, but no, it was too low for that. I had the intimation that it did have some type of equine function. O! If I knew how close I was to hitting upon the truth. I can't remember how soon thereafter I found out or from whom, but upon subsequent visits to South st and feeling more comfortable with the area I found many more boot scrapes and knew them for what they were.
