Philly’s 311 Service Inundated By Ice Complaints

Photos of ice on Philadelphia streets and sidewalks submitted by residents to 311 (photos via Philly 311)

Check phillymag.com each morning Monday through Thursday for the latest edition of Philly Today. And if you have a news tip for our hardworking Philly Mag reporters, please direct it here. You can also use that form to send us reader mail. We love reader mail!

The Storm Long Gone, Philadelphia’s 311 Service Is Inundated by Ice Complaints

The sun shone brightly on Wednesday morning. But with temperatures not expected to rise above the mid-20s throughout the day, that shining sun wasn’t doing much of anything to melt the sheets of rock-hard ice coating many streets and sidewalks in Philadelphia.

Residents have been flooding the city’s 311 system to complain about icy streets and parking lots and to report neighbors who haven’t cleared their sidewalks by the legally required deadline. (That deadline is six hours after the end of a storm.) Those ice reports are coming from the furthest depths of South Philly all the way up to the extremities of the Far Northeast.

“Entire school yard is a sheet of ice,” one resident reported of the Rhawnhurst School, according to 311 records. “Was not shoveled, salted nothing. Kids and parents cannot safely walk into school without the risk of slipping and falling.”

A similar situation was reported outside a school in Mayfair. “Kids are walking to school right now to Mayfair Elementary,” wrote the complainant on Wednesday morning. “They have to walk in the middle of the street because the sidewalk is all ice.”

In Roxborough, one resident complained that a smaller street “is like an ice rink,” adding that “all of the streets around us are like this.”

A 311 representative told Philly Mag the city didn’t deploy trucks to deal with secondary streets — a.k.a. not the Market and Broad streets of the world — until Wednesday.

As for uncleared sidewalks, those can result in fines of up to $300 for each violation. So break out that shovel. Or, rather, ice pick.

Buzz Bissinger to Pen John Fetterman Book?

There’s lots of chatter out there that John Fetterman is working on a memoir and that Buzz Bissinger is writing it with him. Bissinger, who won a Pulitzer at the Inquirer, went on to make a small fortune with Friday Night Lights. More recently, he helped Caitlyn Jenner write her memoir. For more on Bissinger, check out my interview with him. He talks about his Gucci leather addiction, his penchant for wearing women’s clothes, and why he refuses to teach Friday Night Lights in his writing class at Penn. It’s a fun one!

By the Numbers

9: Cases of measles now confirmed in the Philadelphia area with a new case reported on Tuesday night. So … COVID, RSV, the flu, and, yes, measles. It’s like a petri dish out there.

24: Years in business for Rittenhouse restaurant Twenty Manning, which will soon give way to a new hotspot.

2: Days it took Jason Kelce to visit his favorite McDonald’s in Delco after Monday night’s upsetting loss.

And from the Thrilla-in-Phila Sports Desk …

It was Joel Embiid and the Sixers vs. Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets in our house last night, finally, after the Nuggets sat on their plane for eight hours in Denver on Monday night because the engine froze. Nick Nurse started Embiid, Tyrese Maxey, Nic Batum, Tobias Harris and Kelly Oubre Jr., and they kept it within a few points all through the first quarter, which ended with the Nuggets up 38-36. Embiid led all scorers with 14. It was more of the same in the second, except that Jo-Jo and Jokic both sat for the first five minutes. After they returned, it became a Battle of the Bigs, as the two went after each other under both baskets. Maxey had his usual second-quarter heat-up, and it was still neck-and-neck at the half.

https://twitter.com/Oaktree_sports/status/1747434572852183500

The Sixers managed to gain a little breathing space in the third, going up by eight halfway through, but by the close of the quarter, Denver retook the lead, 104-99. Gad, the TNT announcers were annoying. Example: Stan Van Gundy actually said the Sixers “ran Ben Simmons out of town.” The Big Two were back on the bench to start the fourth, but a Marcus Morris Sr. three brought us back within one at 7:28, and the Bigs promptly returned. Oh, Jo!

Jokic don’t never jump but decided to get 4 feet off the ground for Embiid Euro pic.twitter.com/PzJVY42twT

— PlaybyPlayNews (@PLAYBYPLAYNEWS) January 17, 2024

A couple minutes later, Embiid hit a three, and the Sixers were up by eight on a 16-2 run. It seemed like nobody could score down the stretch, yet the Sixers hung on for a 127-121 win despite a totally bogus foul call on Jo-Jo with just seconds to go and some shaky foul shooting by Maxey. We know who our MVP is.

Joel Embiid tonight

41 points
10 assists
7 rebounds
13/22 FG
3/6 3 PT

We are watching one of the best seasons of all time pic.twitter.com/2UkrEg4DJE

— Help X (@HelpxSearch) January 17, 2024

They play again against the Magic in Orlando on Friday at 7.

Any College Hoops News?

Just one game was on the slate: the Temple Owls at the SMU Mustangs. It was a close matchup, with SMU ahead 30-28 at the half. But those horsies had a hot start to the second half, and though Temple worked hard and caught up, it wasn’t enough in the end, as a final SMU flurry gave the Mustangs a 77-64 win. No City Six games tonight.

All Philly Today sports coverage is provided by Sandy Hingston.