NYE in Philadelphia, PA

NEW (2): Port A Bowl, DiMeglio Septic Inc.
REDISCOVERED (3): United Site Services, A Royal Flush, Robinson

Philly is one of my absolute favorite cities. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that more than any other city I've spent time in, it reminds me so much of Chicago: the food is outta sight, the people are affable but have an edge to 'em, and the town knows how to enjoy the enjoying. This was my fifth visit, and I seem to have a completely different and exciting experience each and every stay.

This uniqueness even includes my run-ins with the local porta potty players. Most of the brands I documented on my first few stopovers seem to have completely disappeared from the streets lately. This felt very strange. Sure local companies get bought out from time to time, but typically they merge into another powerhouse brand that's dominating the area, therefore you can routinely find old units still not rebranded in the trenches. This felt like something different. Well after hitting a few different neighborhoods, I couldn't help but notice that [United Site Services] were now everywhere. This certainly wasn't the case on previous trips. USS truly puts the united in United States, because I've found them in pretty much every state I've stepped foot in, so happening on them here wasn't too odd. What DID seem strange was how many strong they were. The first maybe fifteen or twenty units we walked passed were all USS. Even in a Franklintown parking lot where I know from a previous trip a local brand [Potty Queen] used to hold court, a USS had since taken the throne. This sparked my curiosity, so I poured through my phone looking for answers. On one of my previous Potty Queen shots, I noticed a website under the logo: www.pottyqueen.com. I enter it, pause, loading, redirect to unitedsiteservices.com. Shit. Another unique small company bites the dust. I guess I should feel lucky to have seen it when I did.

It'd been a couple days, and up into this point I honestly didn't think I was gonna come across any new brands, but fate was on my side. It was a particularly nice night out, so we decided to walk to dinner at the legendary Dante & Luigi's, and a block away from the restaurant we happened upon our first new find, [Port A Bowl]. It was behind a tall, unstable fence, and after circling the property looking for a point of entry, try as I might, I couldn't get through to take a proper picture. I once swore a blood oath to never post another shot through a fence, but since the official count was nearing 400 individual brands, I felt like an exception could be made. We took a different route on the way back, and found yet another new brand behind a fence, [DiMegllio Septic Inc.]. This one was too far behind the barrier to get a usable shot, so we came back the next day while the workers were there. It's always so funny trying to explain why I wanna stand and take a picture with their bathrooms. The foreman thought my porta potty "fetish" was amusing and offered up some locations of other nearby job sites.

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