After DNC, it's back to parking as usual in South Philly

Anticipating protests along the city's main drag, officials gave ample warning that the longstanding practice of parking cars in the paved median of busy South Broad Street wouldn't be tolerated during the convention.

[...] South Philadelphians have their overflow spaces back, to the consternation of a group pushing for a permanent ban, arguing it puts both drivers and pedestrians at risk as doors swing open into moving traffic and parked motorists jaywalk to reach the sidewalk.

"The median parking is dangerous and ugly, and yet no one has been willing to touch it for fear of political blowback," says the petition by 5th Square, which describes itself as a nonpartisan political action committee that promotes the betterment of city infrastructure.

A 1961 Associated Press article noted: "An angry, jeering crowd of 2,000 persons hurled rocks and eggs and shouted profanity at Mayor Richardson Dilworth Monday night as he tried to defend his controversial $40 a year parking fee plan."

Jennifer Childs, the producing artistic director for the South Philly-based 1812 Productions comedy theater company, has mined the area's parking ethos with her character Patsy, a South Philly woman of indeterminate middle age with a strong accent and a penchant for pink Philadelphia Eagles (or "Iggles," in Philadelphia parlance) sweatsuits.

In one of a video series called "The View From my Stoop," Patsy tells of a neighbor who believes the Philadelphia Parking Authority must be "just an urban legend ."