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At the height of the of the COVID pandemic in 2020, a Lithuanian artist had an idea about how to bridge the loneliness created by forced government lockdowns. Benediktas Gylys created an interactive livestream work of art, a futuristic, round-shaped object that looks as though it had fallen to earth from a flying disk.
Called the Portal, this extraordinary gizmo came in two parts: one huge glass lens for Dublin, Ireland, the other for New York City near the Flatiron building. People from both cities could then see one another as they waved and smiled or held up signs that read: “New York loves Dublin.”
At the livestream opening in 2024, Dublin’s lord mayor, Daithi de Roiste stated the Portal would make Dublin “more inclusive” because it would enable people “to meet and connect outside of their social circles and cultures.”
Reality hit when the Portal in both cities began attracting people who acted out in bizarre fashions. Suddenly young people in New York and Dublin were stepping on the Portal, flashing body parts and doing drugs in front of the lens. The wholesome mission of bringing people together had turned into a joke.
The New York Times reported that a U.S. Only Fans model had lifted her skirt in front of the lens and that people in Dublin were displaying swastikas and images of the burning World Trade Center on 9/11. The controversy caused the site to be shut down temporarily before its move to Philadelphia.
The arrival of the Portal in Philadelphia generated a lot of media fanfare. NBC 10 gloated, “That light-up ’Portal’ to another part of the world is now live in the center of Philadelphia, connecting the City of Brotherly Love with several other cities around the world.”
When a crack was discovered in the lens after the move there was speculation it may have been caused by vandalism. Philadelphia city officials breathed a sign of relief when it was determined the crack stemmed from an accident during the installation. The director for the City of Philadelphia’s 2026 exhibition even joked, “Like the Liberty Bell, there is a small crack.”
Philly thieves attacked the Portal and cut the copper cables connecting the metal to its power generator and then stuffed the stolen goods into a large recycling bin, which they then took to a local scrap dealer. In another incident, rocks were thrown at the lens and completely shattered it. City officials sprang into action and covered the Portal in a dour-looking covering reminiscent of an autopsy sheet.
The city said Gylys’ creation would remain in Philadelphia but it would be moved to a safer space, possibly indoors, where hooligans wouldn’t be able to destroy it.
Billy Penn. Com, an arm of WHYY-NPR, took the vandalism lightly with the headline: “Philly breaking the Portal is the least surprising story of 2025.” (Implication: Philadelphians destroy everything so why would anyone be surprised?) The Philadelphia Inquirer — aka The Philadelphia Democrat — muted its outrage with comparisons to a facelift: “The Philadelphia Portal is getting a facelift after vandalism left it out of commission since early February.”
Since 2020 Philadelphia has been “facelifting” the damage created by hooligan thugs, many of them with a leftist political agenda.
Consider the George Floyd rioters who in 2020 burned down a section of the city and destroyed several businesses near Rittenhouse Square. While the defenders of lawlessness didn’t go so far as to shrug it off as “a Philly thing,” that’s certainly what many did after the Eagles‘ Super Bowl victory riot when city streetlamps were torn down and cars were vandalized.
The phrase “It’s a Philly thing” reduces urban violence and misbehavior to a wink and a nod: it’s not that bad, boys, it’s just the charm of the rustic old town.
Hooliganism and “trashing it up” is something Philadelphians have come to expect. While “inappropriate behavior” may have caused a temporary shut down of the Portal when it was in New York, nobody vandalized the Portal when it was in that city; it was also not vandalized in Dublin, or in any of the other countries that also have Portals such as Poland and Lithuania.
The only vandalism that occurred was in Philadelphia, the city Donald Trump castigated when he said, “Bad things happen in Philadelphia.”
Which brings me to this: to what degree is the city of Philadelphia — as a Democrat-controlled Sanctuary leftist city — encouraging trashy tendencies and acting out in ways that resulted in the removal of the Portal? Can a connection be made?
I think so, mainly because destructive public behavior stems from a city’s culture. Let’s consider that culture.
A Preplay survey designated Philadelphia as the rudest city in America in 2024, explaining that rudeness results from a reluctance to incorporate outsiders and also stems from feelings of insularity or residents wanting “to keep to themselves.”
Insularity, when you think about it, is antithetical to the idea of a Portal. And since the Portal is a big shiny thing filled “with outsiders,” destroying it was a temptation too hard for some Philadelphians to resist.
The benighted high and low culture of Philadelphia — a city that, by the way, is unlikely ever to elect another Republican mayor again — all but encouraged the extensive — and expensive — damages during the 2020 George Floyd riots, a time when neighbors had to defend their neighborhoods from rioters with baseball bats because the police were told to handle rioters with velvet gloves.
The same “It’s a Philly thing” culture can also be seen in something as simple as the redesign of public spaces with plants and reflecting pools that look good in architectural renderings but when built are often left to rot-like the 8th and Market SEPTA Market Frankford station-under mounds of trash and debris. Trash and litter have been a problem in Philadelphia for decades: For years the bathrooms in City Hall were graffiti-filled and resembled subway latrines until a Democrat mayor, Ed Rendell, made it a priority to clean them up.
Violence and trashy behavior can take many forms.
Consider the strident form of leftist black activism in the city that has transformed old institutions like GirardCollege, founded by Stephen Girard in 1848. Girard, a friend of Thomas Jefferson’s, saved the federal government when he financed the War of 1812.
The College, once tainted by the stipulations in Stephen Girard’s will having to do with a ban on black students, has come a long way since that time. The ban against black students-a product of the times in which Girard lived-was overturned in 1968 but the memory of that legacy has resulted in an insidious purge of the multiple portraits of past Girard College presidents, all white men, which used to hang in a special room at the college. These portraits have been removed and hidden in storage, the official excuse being that the portraits need to be protected from people wanting to touch them.
I heard the story of the portraits from friends who asked one of the curators there why they were taken down and what the college plans to do with them. They got a vague answer about the possibility of distributing them to various public schools. These old oil portraits in gilt frames are part of the college’s history and to arbitrarily “archive” them in an attic is a nod to cancel culture.
After all, the only way to do get rid of those portraits of rich white men without creating any sort of controversy is to mask the reason for their removal, but given the BLM-attitude of many in the current administration of Girard College the real reason for their removal is plainly obvious.
Finally, there’s also a kind of cultural violence being committed by the Philadelphia public school system.
Apparently some liberal administrators are sending out memos to students and faculty that focus on immigration and so called safe spaces with specific language stating that no matter your immigration status, you are protected in the schools. This obviously points a finger at ICE and President Trump and helps to establish a city culture of resistance and rebellion.
Trashing federal authority, trashing ICE, trashing historical portraits and trashing the Portal… There’s a connection. It’s a Philly thing.
