10 weird stories from 2022 that made people ask: ‘Is Philadelphia real?’

Whether it was people gathering on an abandoned South Philly pier to watch a man eat a rotisserie chicken or an emotional-support alligator strolling through LOVE Park, several events last year prompted people to ask: “Is Philadelphia a real place?”

We at The Inquirer can confirm that yes, Philadelphia does exist. It exists as certainly as the rules of logic and physics exist, rules that Philly laughs right in the face of.

Alas! How dreary would the world be if there were no Philadelphia. There would be no greased-pole climbers, no free avocado markets, no Eagles tailgate chugging proposals to make tolerable this existence.

Thank Gritty Philly is real — and really weird! A thousand years from now — nay, ten times ten thousand years from now — may this city continue to confuse the hearts and minds of everyone.

From the bizarre to the delightful, here are 10 of the weirdest Philly stories from 2022:

In January, COVID-19 testing tents by Lab Elite popped up around the streets of Center City. Workers said they were affiliated with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and collected about 4,000 samples.

So when the city announced on Jan. 3 that the sites weren’t funded by FEMA and warned residents to avoid these “unaffiliated COVID-19 testing pop-up tents,” folks had some questions.

Was there a conspiracy to collect Philadelphians’ DNA to clone us? Were these tents run by Cowboys fans seeking our home addresses? And where were all those snot-covered swabs going?

The owner of Lab Elite, Nikola Nozinic, told The Inquirer the tests were legit and blamed the local company he contracted with for falsely affiliating the sites with FEMA.

“These guys were kind of running a wild s—show, so they were ordered to shut them down,” Nozinic said at the time.

One Northeast Catholic school found itself in a thorny situation last spring when parents discovered fake roses sold at the school’s Mother’s Day sale came stuffed with lacy red thongs.

Philadelphia Archdiocesan officials told Philly Voice the floral panty faux pas at St. Anselm Parish School was an unfortunate mistake.

Luckily, most people were able to crack a joke about it.

In a social media video shared by The John DeBella Show, a woman with a thick Philly accent urges her partner to open one of the flowers.

“They just sent out an email ... hehehe!” the woman laughs, before saying, “Thank you, St. Anselm’s!”

Thousands fled the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in terror during the city’s Independence Day celebration when police evacuated the site after two officers were grazed by bullets.

But where those bullets came from — and who fired them — remains a bizarre mystery, one that seems to have quietly faded away, unlike Mayor Jim Kenney’s comments in the wake of the incident.

Authorities determined the officers, who suffered minor injuries, were hit by bullets fired from the same gun outside the event site, but beyond that, little else is known. The investigation remains ongoing.

Speaking to the media after the shooting, Kenney said there’s not a day or event where he doesn’t worry.

“So I’ll be happy when I’m not here — when I’m not mayor, and I can enjoy some stuff,” he said.

That comment did not sit too well with Philadelphians, including members of City Council, five of whom were more than happy to resign later in the year to run for Kenney’s job.

Cops weren’t kidding around when they took two goats on the lam into custody in Kensington in May and put them into the back of a squad car, according to a video from CBS3. It’s unclear whose goats police got, or whether their Miranda Rights were uddered before being taken in.

Over in Fishtown, Joe Mezzico of Gents Barbers Lounge filmed an unidentified man walking a raccoon on a leash in July and posted it to his Instagram page in a video captioned: “Only in Philly.”

In the video, Mezzico asks the racoon walker how he leashed the animal.

“He don’t really like it so much,” the man replies, in one of the greatest understatements of the century.

But another raccoon found itself quite at home in Fishtown. In September, squid biologist Sarah McAnulty’s video of a raccoon tucking itself into a hammock on her third-floor balcony went viral, garnering the nocturnal ne’er-do-well more than 795,000 views on Twitter.

But no animal made a bigger splash in Philly in 2022 than Wally, the emotional-support alligator. Wally’s casual leashed stroll through the fountains of LOVE Park and hugs with passersby in August proved him to be a true lounge lizard.

Politics can seem like a three-ring circus, but it was protesters who brought the circus to politicians in September at the first hearing by state Republican legislators to impeach District Attorney Larry Krasner.

Outside the hearing at the Navy Yard, protesters — who denounced the impeachment as an undemocratic attempt to ignore Philadelphians’ votes — hired performers for what was dubbed the “Disenfranchisement Circus.”

There were giant elephant costumes, stilt-walkers, jugglers, acrobats, Philly Elmo, and a three-piece band.

It was true Cirque du PA.

On Oct. 5, WHYY arts and culture reporter Peter Crimmins posted a picture of a car inside a construction site in Fishtown with its nose on the ground, its tail in the air, and no indication of how it got there.

“A lot of other people were taking pics, too, because it was such a weird scene, prompting the question: How does a car wind up nose-down in a concrete pit 15 feet from the busiest road in Fishtown?” Crimmins said.

According to Billy Penn and surveillance video, the car was hit on its rear side by another car, causing it to spin out of control, run over the construction site’s temporary barriers, and land in the pit.

The driver of the vehicle, dubbed the “Fishtown Car™” and the “Fishtown Monument” on social media, managed to escape the accident with minor injuries and, even more miraculous, without a ticket from the PPA.

At first, the offer seemed too good — and too weird — to be true. The local nonprofit Sharing Excess announced it would give away 300,000 avocados at FDR Park over three days in October. No limit, and no questions asked.

They couldn’t have imagined what it would produce.

Thousands descended on the park, clearing out the three-day supply in less than three hours. Workers in avocado costumes directed traffic and drove forklifts as people from across the city filled their arms with the fancy fruits.

Like the cost of an avocado on a sandwich, the entire scene was extra. And, extra Philly.

Of course there was the team and Philly Rob, who defied all odds, took the Phillies to the World Series for the first time in 11 years, and got your grandpa singing “Dancing on My Own.”

But there was also the return of the illusive Philly species known as the greased-pole climber, who hadn’t been spotted in the wild since 2018. When the Phillies won the NLCS on Oct. 23, Sean “Shrimp” Hagan was among the fans whose elation propelled them straight up a pole on Broad Street.

Hagan stayed atop his pole for hours, catching and shotgunning beers from the crowd. With him too drunk to get down on his own, police had to call the Fire Department to bring in a ladder.

He was arrested the next day and charged with riot, public drunkenness, and related offenses, but his lawyer, Chuck Peruto, got all charges dropped in December.

“Chuck really came to my rescue and knocked this case out the ball park,” Hagan said. “Straight up home run!”

A missed connection during the same NLCS celebration on Broad Street that began when a man offered a woman a beer, and she offered to hoist him on her shoulders so he could find his friends, captured hearts across the city.

In an epic post on Facebook, one of the man’s friends tried to help him find the “hot, thirsty, kind, and sturdy” woman whose name he didn’t get that night.

The internet did its thing and the two were reconnected and given a pair of tickets to catch Game 4 of the World Series together.

Then there was the CBS8 reporter from San Diego who got a taste of Philly while reporting from Citizens Bank.

“We’re in enemy territory,” the reporter says in his dispatch. “I have been having people come yell at me, scream at me, yell profanities. It’s funny, though. They’ll yell profanities at you and then they’ll say ‘Welcome to Philly’ and they’re the nicest people in the world.”

As the reporter closes by saying it’s been “pure insanity,” a Phillies fan walks behind him and makes an obscene gesture.

The day after the Phillies lost the World Series and the Union lost the MLS Cup, hundreds of people gathered on an abandoned pier in South Philly to watch Alexander Tominsky eat his 40th rotisserie chicken in 40 days.

Tominsky told Billy Penn he wasn’t sure why his poultry pursuit started, but said he posted fliers inviting people to watch the clucking climax because “it only felt right to share it.”

Chris Barber, 34, a former Philly resident now in Trenton, returned for the event on Nov. 6.

“It was positively primal, and communal, and so quintessentially Philly,” Barber said. “We gathered in wonder and maybe a little contempt — who is this guy and why do we care — but by the end we knew, or at least I did, that more than anything the Chicken Man had provided us with an affirmation of life and uncomplicated joy.”

The Eagles are so good this year it hurts, mainly because Philadelphians have been holding their breath since September and we’re about to pass out.

But some fans have reveled in the team’s incredible season, like one unidentified man who ran onto Lincoln Financial Field with the team in October during a game against the Cowboys. Waving a towel and giving high-fives to players, he seemed at the top of his game, until he was taken down by security.

In November, Birds fans Leanne Smith and Alex Miller of Harrisburg were tailgating at the Linc, shotgunning drinks together, when Miller got down on one knee after finishing his can of liquid courage and proposed to Smith.

In a video that has more than 1.3 million views, Smith can be seen dropping her Twisted Tea in shock and saying yes.

“I wasn’t suspicious about a proposal at all, especially not the way it happened post chug,” Smith said. “But we wouldn’t change a thing.”

While nobody knows what 2023 has in store, if Philadelphians and the Eagles keep it up, this new year may be even weirder than the last.

We can only hope.