News

The Worst of Philadelphia: We Have a Winner

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Apr 18th, 2018 · 1:40 PM EDT

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What would you rather throw away – your time or your money?

Neither, ideally, but we had to pick one for the sake of the exercise.

After three grueling weeks, we arrived at the national championship of our “Worst of Philadelphia” bracket, a battle for the ages between the insidious and diabolical city wage tax and the abhorrent and detestable Schuylkill Expressway. God help anybody who has to deal with both of those things in the same pay period.

But first, let’s have a look at the how the final four played out, a pair of matchups involving an upstart three seed, sports radio callers, and the entity that knocked off the Philadelphia Parking Authority, which was Comcast.

Our cable and internet overlords pushed the city wage tax to the limit, but ultimately fell under a barrage of late three pointers and suffocating perimeter defense:

Alright it's time to kick off the Final Four voting in the "Worst of Philadelphia" bracket. This is a real heavyweight contest, a battle between two things that you feel powerless to combat. It's #2 Comcast vs. #1 city wage tax:

— Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) April 10, 2018

On the other side, it wasn’t even close.

It was like Loyola Chicago finally running into a decent team, as the Expressway took out Ingy and Levi and Joe Schmoe from South Philly by a 69 to 31% spread:

And on the other side of the bracket, I predict a runaway victory for the #1 seed, the Schuylkill Expressway, vs. the #3 seed, sports radio callers (Ingy, Levi, Bernie from Broomall, etc):

— Kevin Kinkead (@Kevin_Kinkead) April 10, 2018

Turns out people really hate sitting on 76, because the Sure-kill Expressway went on to win the whole damn thing:

There ya have it. The people have spoken. The Schuylkill is the worst thing in Philadelphia, worse than the wage tax, worse than SEPTA, worse than the parking authority, and worse than the Aramingo Avenue Wawa, which just reopened a week ago. I don’t know why it was closed, something about lead contamination in the soil I think.

I have a feeling that the Soda Tax would have made it to the final four in this bracket, but as I mentioned at the start of the competition, I did not include items that made it into Brian Haddad’s “Piece of Garbage Madness.” Out of respect to Sludge, I came up with 16 different competitors, though they were all pretty crappy.

Here’s how the final bracket looks:

Thanks for participating. Maybe next year we expand this bad boy to 64, or 68 with a couple of play-in games. I think I can find 68 shitty things in Philly.

Of course, if the city was really that bad, we wouldn’t be living here, would we? There are worse things out there. You could be a Dallas Cowboys fan.