By camping out for an iPhone, Mayor Street put Philadelphia on the world's radar screen last week - even as he was pilloried in his own town.
At one point in Street's 15-hour wait for an Apple phone, a passer-by asked how the mayor could lust after a gadget while the bodies of the city's murder victims piled up. Democratic nominee Michael Nutter even joined in, unwisely, saying, "There are a few things that are critically important to being mayor of the city of Philadelphia vs. getting a phone."
In print and online, though, readers as far away as Australia were told of Street's iPhone quest - mostly without the dose of Negadelphia attytood. In a blog posting, AppleInsider.com applauded, "Kudos to Mr. Street."
How was it that the farther you got from Philadelphia, the better Street's early-adopter status looked? One theory: For some folks, the often-prickly mayor can do no right. Doesn't matter that Street has put in many a long, long day at City Hall.
But other Philadelphians could have been won over had Street done a better job of framing the whole affair, and making it fit into a positive narrative about his city.
In that sense, this incident encapsulated a key failing of the Street team: assuming public relations is just fluff. No, it's how a mayor tells his city's story and gets people to buy into its future.
In this case, Street's love of gadgets is not just a personal quirk. It has led him to spearhead the nation's most ambitious municipal Internet initiative. He plans to cover the city's 135 square miles with a low-cost wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi) signal. Not only that, the Wireless Philadelphia project is mounting a stellar effort to bridge the digital divide by getting computers and training to low-income residents.
Who better than Street to grab an iPhone and demonstrate how he can surf the Web from any street corner? He missed a chance to more clearly link his iPhone purchase to the Wi-Fi initiative, blunting criticism.
For his part, Nutter may come to regret piling on, once he experiences firsthand how readily Philadelphians indulge in armchair criticism of a mayor's every move.
This, as Michael Jack Schmidt once put it, is the city where you experience the thrill of victory - and then the agony of reading about it the next day.