Finally, Philly’s Bad Behavior Gets the Museum Treatment

The booing of Philadelphia fans will be featured at a new micromuseum in Philadelphia / Photograph via Getty Images

     Listen to the audio edition here:

Philadelphia is a beautiful place filled with world-class art, vibrant dining and nightlife, and as much U.S. history as you can possibly handle. We celebrate these things, as we should. But what we’re also known for is our orneriness, our crankiness, and our bad behavior. And now, a new museum is opening to showcase the side of the city that Visit Philly doesn’t put on billboards.

The Museum of the Philadelphian will open at 454 East Girard Avenue in Fishtown on September 25th. It’s the brainchild of self-described “cultural convener” Brian Adoff, who’s also behind such projects as Fishtown Choir and Join Philly. Basically, Adoff is a guy who makes cool things happen in Philadelphia.

“This is a serious institution about the conduct and the character of a Philadelphian, what makes a Philadelphian a Philadelphian,” says Adoff. “It’s about the personality and the attitude. But really, at its heart, it’s a love letter to the city and the people of the city. It’s taking the things like the booing, the throwing of objects and projectiles, the death of HitchBOT, and it gives it the institutional seriousness it deserves. So, it’s like real museum cases and real museum exhibits, but definitely a little absurd.”

One piece on display will be a drawing from an 1866 baseball game between the Philadelphia Athletics and the Brooklyn Atlantics at the Athletic Grounds at 15th Street and Columbia Avenue, later renamed Cecil B. Moore Avenue. “It’s an amazing illustration,” Adoff tells us. “It doesn’t look like there’s that many people there, but then your eyes zoom in on the lower part, and there’s a guy pickpocketing, a guy choking that guy out. There’s a drunk guy, there’s people fighting, there’s people gambling.” Adoff and his team have transformed that illustration into a lightbox that will hang on the wall and feature interactive components.

Brian Adoff, founder of the Museum of the Philadelphian / Photograph by Steve Weinik

Naturally, you can’t have a museum about bad behavior without addressing booing, and Adoff has found plenty on that subject. For instance, there was the time that Philadelphia Athletics baseball manager Connie Mack, whose name would later appear on the Phillies’ former stadium, had a fan arrested for tormenting one of his players from the stands. “This man’s rooting has damaged the morale of my team,” Mack told a judge. “He has been razzing us all year with a voice that carries like a three-mile loudspeaker. … He has done more to ruin the morale of the Athletics than any other factor, including the bats of Ruth and Gehrig.”

Adoff says that while most of the bad behavior attributed to Philadelphians has been thanks to men, he’s also found examples of women not at their best. For instance, he cites an afternoon performance of the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1926. On the program was the U.S. premiere of Amériques, by French-American avant-garde composer Edgard Varèse. The high-society women in the audience were beside themselves. They hissed and gesticulated relentlessly, as documented in the New York Times.

As for HitchBOT, the Canadian hitchhiking robot that wound up dismembered and decapitated in Philadelphia in 2015 after it traversed its home country without incident, its fate is also documented at the museum. But Adoff makes sure to point out that some Philadelphians offered to fix HitchBOT or fundraise towards its repair.

The museum will also showcase the bad behavior of Phillies fans after our 2008 World Series win — which led to film director Ted Passon’s car being flipped on Broad Street. But then, the exhibit notes, people donated $4,000 to Passon for his loss. “He bought a new car for $1,000 and gave $3,000 to a woman whose car got flipped that same night,” Adoff recalls. “So underneath all the conduct, there’s still the heart of that.”

While the museum presents the history in a serious way, there’s also an underlying sense of humor. “There is a snowball that you’ll see behind glass from 1968,” says Adoff, referring to the infamous “throwing snowballs at Santa” incident. “Believe it or not, still in pristine condition.” What about other things people like to throw at Philly sports games that will be on display? “You might see a battery,” he notes. “You might also see a hot dog.”

“I think it’s funny as hell,” says Adoff. “But the museum takes it very seriously. This isn’t funny at all to the museum. This is the museum doing its job.”

In addition to the exhibits, the museum will have a book called The Register of Philadelphians, which the curators started and which visitors are encouraged to add to. But what makes someone a true Philadelphian?

Adoff points to five qualities:

• “They don’t wait for permission.”
• “They decide for themselves what’s worth doing.”
• “They keep going whether encouraged or not.”
• “They don’t care what anyone thinks.”
• “They believe in their heart that the work is needed.”

“It could be someone who threw a battery at a rival,” Adoff suggests. “Or somebody who did something great.”

The Museum of the Philadelphian is a “micromuseum,” Adoff says — just 300 square feet in his Fishtown studio. It will be open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays with free admission.

As of now, the museum is scheduled to have a limited run, closing on November 1st. But Adoff says that he could see a world where it finds a home. One thing’s for sure: Philly will continue to deliver plenty of material.