Ad Disclosure
I Gotta Know Who’s in the Clearly Undercover “NorthEast Philly Locksmith” Van Posted on Reddit
By Matt Schultz
Published:
In today’s day and age, when we’re all being surveilled by our phones at all times so that mega-corporations can harvest our data (our thoughts, feelings, cadence, fears, desires – the very essences that make us human) and turn it into fat-ass checks, it’s refreshing to know that some folks out there are still doing surveillance the old fashioned way – by staking out in an incredibly suspicious-looking van, like this work truck posted to r/philly:
Police surveillance van? This van has been parked here for 2+ days now. Same generic signage on every side. The phone number and website don’t exist. Hmm.
by u/slizzler in philly
If you’re of a certain age, you can’t look at this beauty and not feel nostalgic for the days of yore, when charming mom-and-pop operations like this were the only way to spy on someone. This elegant relic of the past has everything you could want in a cartoonishly bad undercover work truck:
-It’s a white box van.
-The name of the company – NorthEast Philly Locksmith – couldn’t be more vague and not-real-sounding.
-No one in Philly has ever spelled “NorthEast” like that, with no space and the capital ‘E.’
-The info area of the van is so small. Why would a business’s name on a truck be this small? No one could see it. Wouldn’t you want people to see it?
-There is no logo.
-There is no color.
-The name of the font looks like it’d be ‘Undercover Fine.’
-The phone number is jammed together in one long-ass run-on number, like the passwords that come with the Wi-Fi before you change it to something normal.
-The window tint is a darker black than is found in nature.
And the more you dig, the better it gets. When you go to northeastphillylocksmith.com, this is all you see on the homepage:
This rules. I love this Flowers By Irene-ass van:
Do I wish I knew who was in there? Of course. I can’t stop thinking about it. Is it county police? State police? FBI? CIA? Is there about to be a Sopranos-style mafia bust? Are there agents in windbreakers drinking coffee from little styrofoam cups while staring at walls of monitors? Or is it something smaller-scale? A process server like in Pineapple Express? Insurance fraud investigators? Deep-cover journalists? Paparazzi? Russians? Chinese spies? Or is there a world where this could actually just be a locksmith with very bad taste in van design? Are we positive it’s not a locksmith? How can we know for sure? Someone tell me…
But at the same time, I’m kind of glad to not know. The mystery is comforting, familiar, nostalgic. We know our phones are listening to us. We know it’s sinister stuff. On the flip side, it’s kind of nice having no idea what’s going on in this van. Maybe someone’s listening. Maybe not. Maybe it’s all fine.
Matt Schultz is a comedy and sports writer from Philadelphia. He’s written extensively for ClickHole, The Onion, and Conan O’Brien’s Team Coco. His work has been featured in Vulture, Deadspin, The A.V. Club, Paste Magazine, and other publications. Much of his sports journalism can be found on college basketball websites that don’t exist anymore (PhilaHoops Heads rise up…)