When you ride down Broad Street through North Philly you can’t miss the famous boner landmark, with graffiti painted vertically on a dilapidated building at the Erie Avenue intersection. One side says “Boner 4Ever” and the other side says “Forever Boner.” It’s like the bat signal combined with the Eye of Sauron in how it sticks out at that particular junction, rising high into the sky.

Unfortunately, it looks like boner is not forever, because the building is being redeveloped into a hotel:

 

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This is one of those things you never thought would happen. It seemed like boner would last forever. It’s just as Philly as the Liberty Bell and arguing about which cheesesteak place you like the most. But things change, and we must never forget the history of this building. The boner building. Colloquially, we could proceed to refer to it as the “boner hotel,” which actually sounds like a bad 1980s porno film.

I learned this from Michael Tanenbaum at Philly Voice:

The “Boner 4ever” and “Forever Boner” tags are the bold work of two different graffiti artists, “Boner” and “Forever,” who collaborated to give the Beury Building a place in Philadelphia’s urban lore well beyond its years of occupancy.

Layla Jones also wrote about this back in 2020 for Billy Penn:


A less-visible detail on the famed building supports the idea. There’s a cute little bubble “B” with a swirly eye on the back side of the building pointing east. That “B” is Boner’s signature tag and it’s everywhere around Philly.

Meanwhile, Forever is a Philly graffiti artist from the Frankford area who’s been tagging for a while. He used to write “kid” and sometimes still does. Forever’s tag is often spelled “4ever” or “4eva.”

Couple of thoughts here. One, we could track down Boner and Forever and have them ring the bell at the Sixers game. Best duo since Kobe and Shaq. Or, we could get the Sixers to do a special limited-edition Forever Boner NFT and send the proceeds to charity. If the Eagles wanted to get in on it, we could do a short run of Boner 4ever Kelly Green jerseys, and send the money to the autism foundation. There are plenty of ideas to brainstorm. Let’s think of a way to honor the legacy of Forever Boner.

Long live Forever Boner.