that’s the kind of thread i wanted here… it went okay :)

I'm surprised it took three hours for anyone to tag me!

Here's the contest I ran a few years back.

paging our resident vexillologist /u/simon_the_cannibal who has had serious thoughts about this for years

Again, if you hate it that much and think it would be easy to replace, start a movement.

Edit: Your downvote kinda tells me you're not that interested.

The flag is good, actually.

What the they don't mention in the article, is the flag with the seal is the official flag. Generally, it is only flown from city government buildings. The informal city flag, which is just the fields of blue and yellow, is what is more commonly flown across the city by non-city or quasi-city buildings like the Art Museum.

I'm not expecting it to be some windfall for the city or some huge change in culture. I just think the current flag is ugly and recognizable and would be extremely easy to find something better to replace it.

Well they ARE terrible for people from Philly. 25% of the people live on under $30,000 a year. Many middle class renters had to move last year because landlords in Center City were raising rents a few hundred dollars and they were being outbidded by people from more expensive cities. This is not a wealthy city, although there are people who can afford $1700 and more, it is HIGH for many people in Philadelphia. The city cannot even fill its jobs because they don't pay enough.

The free section of craigslist is my first place to look. Seems like there's some for free ready for pick up in Mt Airy: https://philadelphia.craigslist.org/zip/d/philadelphia-free-cut-split-firewood/7596612287.html

There's no good way to get anywhere from Warminster, but you sure as hell don't want to live there. The commute will suck for sure.

Somehow I think you vastly overestimate how many people would wear flag merch vs. sports merch. But if you feel so strongly about it, why not spearhead a movement?

Also, I don't know what cities you visit, but I've been to Chicago at least 50 times and can count the number of people I saw wearing city flag merch on one hand. Can say the same for several other major cities.

I got a half cord delivered by a dude on Facebook for 180 I’ve had enough for fires the entire winter and gave some to my neighbors

I swear the way some people put it, I would have been lucky to be able to sleep on someone's door step for $1700 lol. Those numbers dont seem terrible at all.

Thanks for the info!

Branding, merchandising, pride in the city. People could be wearing hats and clothing and flying flags that represent the city itself rather than a sports team.

In many cities, people wear the flag of their city with pride. We don't do that here. Instead, we wear the symbols like the Liberty Bell which would be more suited for a flag than what we already have.

"We have more serious things to worry about" is a joke. This is a flag design. It doesn't require the entire city government to stop what they're doing for weeks to create a new one. It doesn't even require much money to design and roll out a new one. Just license the design to apparel companies.

Oh so it was cause of the pandemic that makes sense. Hope they bring it back I get on at 69th and off at gulph mills/dekalb hahaha the limited service would save me soooo much time

How did it work if you know? AFAIK there’s no second track on the route, so idk how limited or express trains would pass the train making all stops

How would changing the flag have any positive impact on the city other than a few more people might recognize it? We have far more serious things to worry about.

Since the pandemic, I’ve for reasons unclear found all restaurant-opening announcements trivial. So much frippery.

Or it's just that simple, eye catching designs are better than complicated seals which cities and states decided to put on their flags 100 years ago.

We can keep the colors and the symbols and remove the complicated bits which make it look like every other city and state seal.

Philly’s flag is yellow and blue because of our original Swedish founding (the Swedish Museum in FDR Park is a great laidback day activity btw). Both PA and Philly’s coat of arms depict ships and a plough. I’d say Philly’s flag has more in common with PA’s than other cities do with their state flags.

If I didn’t know that was Chicago’s flag, I would literally never be able to guess it was theirs, as it’s incredibly generic; I think a lot of cities could use the same exact flag and say that each star represents a historical event in their own city.

Denver’s could belong to literally any mountainous city, but because it uses the same color palette as Colorado’s flag, you are able to reasonably guess it’s Denver.

California’s flag literally says California on it. If you see a version that doesn’t say California or you just see the bear, you know it’s California because you’ve seen the real flag, so you’re able to identify its separate elements. It’s also a state flag, which is a little different.

The only reason you know what they are is because you learned it previously, same with just about every piece of knowledge on this earth.

I expect to drink wine.

Beware any drinking establishments that require an orientation.

Literally zero people care about a dumb city flag

> I'm trying to avoid using a significant chunk of my PTO.

If you have PTO, you should have sick days, no? With more than 3 of those in a row employers normally need a doctor's note, but if they are mandating 5 days leave themselves in case of COVID - you shouldn't be stuck with having to use your vacation time and such, it all oughta be under a different policy.

Check with your manager/HR.

Just change it to the seldom used and much simpler City Ensign:

https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/us-pa-ph.html#ens

If Pennsylvania were to adopt the Keystone Flag (https://keystoneflag.org), Philadelphia could adopt the same keystone pattern with our colors and symbol.

Not something I would make any effort towards. I do look forward to seeing whatever designs people come up with. Maybe something will be so fantastic that it sticks.

Why? I doubt most residents could pick it out of a lineup with the PA flag and surrounding states' flags. It doesn't have anything iconic about the city represented. It's unrecognizable to most people who live here and probably almost everybody not living in Philly.

The article thumbnail could have had the wrong flag in it, and I probably wouldn't have even noticed.

Conversely, I can instantly recognize the flags of Chicago, Denver, and California.