St. Patrick's Day 2007
I have this weekly photo gig in Manayunk that's pretty simple: I come in, photograph the drunk ladies and gentleman having a good time for two hours, then I go home.
I usually head back to Philly around 1am, when 76 is deserted aside from a few inebriated speedsters.
On Saint Patrick's Day I went to the bar to photograph a sea of green, wobbly people. Despite my Irish heritage, I have never been interested in the holiday. Is that a holiday?
So 1am comes at last. The expressway is busier than usual due to the "holiday" and as I'm rounding the corner by the hot air balloon at the zoo I am about to crash in to two cars engulfed in flames in the middle of the three lane highway. Swerving wildly and somehow miraculously avoiding the other cars on the road, I just slip by the wreck, the flames so hot I can feel them on my face as I drive past.
Other cars begin to swerve and honk madly. That's Philly for ya: "You're burning to death? So what asshole, get outta my way!"
I'm a few yards away, slightly shaking, when I see a third car. It's fender is crumpled but there are no flames. So, what do I do? I pull over and grab my camera.
76 is in complete pandemonium. Between three lanes of traffic there are three cars scattered around, two of which are on fire. What's worse is the probability that every driver on the road at that time was to some degree drunk is very high.
After a few seconds' hesitation, I swing my car door open and step out onto the shoulder of the Schuylkill Expressway, AKA the Sure-Kill Expressway. Visions of me getting thrown many many yards by speeding cars fill my head - but I got lucky. By this time the 5-0 got savvy and blocked the road. 76 was as safe as a fenced-in playground...just with burning cars.
I start running; past the imminent fist fight (all passengers were safely out of the vehicles), past the last car that wasn't burning, to the inferno. The smell was foreboding: gasoline, burning rubber, melting metal and the sizzles and pops didn't help either. Yet I wasn't scared - I was excited. Trust me, anything seems stimulating after two hours in that bar.
I didn't have much equipment with me so I had to work with what I had - an 18-55mm 1:3.5-5.6 - not exactly ideal.
After shooting for a few minutes I go and talk to the people involved. The people at fault were a bunch of young, drunk white dudes still sporting their shamrock beads. Their speech was slurred and their eyes were hazy, but they were sobering up quickly. The people not on fire were angry and one of the kids inside the car sustained minor injuries (shoulder or neck).
I went over to one of the shamrock dudes and asked if everyone was O.K. Then I looked at his car, by now almost totally melted to the frame, and said: Well, your car's on fire but it could always be worse. He didn't like that too much but I got a kick out of it. It's true, you know! He could still be in it, burning to death. With this reasoning, the shamrock dude agreed.
By now the horns started to melt and the noise was incredibly eerie. A long, droning, unmelodious, unharmonious pitch blared into the sky.
I was standing by the police, who never questioned me, when the first car let out a series of loud sparks and pops. Everyone, even the cops, ducked and ran. We were only feet from the car and I thought for sure the car was about to explode and maybe we would die. False alarm.
I left after the fire fighters came and extinguished the blaze. As I drove off on a completely deserted, post-apocalyptic 76, I got to thinking:
If I were ten seconds faster, I could have been in that crash. Or, if I were ten seconds slower, I would still be stuck with everyone else on 76 behind the police barricades. Who knows how long traffic was stopped that night, but I just drove on, alive and burn-free.
