Park Junction, Philadelphia, PA, 2010.

[mattblaze@federate.social]

Park Junction, Philadelphia, PA, 2010.

All the pixels, but none of the trains, at https://www.flickr.com/photos/mattblaze/4472088022

#photography

[mattblaze@federate.social]

This was made with a DSLR and a swinging lens to provide selective focus on the milepost at left. This moved the plane of focus to be non-parallel with the sensor, yielding only a sliver in focus.

Image was was captured at "Park Junction" in Philadelphia, where the former Reading Railroad once met the former Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. What caught my eye was the old school graffiti moniker on the base of the milepost, in a style traditionally used by yard workers and hobos to tag freight cars.

[mattblaze@federate.social]

NB: Hobo moniker tags are a rathole you can spend a lot of time going down. I recommend the somewhat obscure documentary "Who Is Bozo Texino", which I recently noticed is currently up on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSqMAADNKA8

[cvvhrn@sfba.social]

@mattblaze The whole hobo pictograph codes a another rabbit hole to go down as well

https://www.openculture.com/2018/08/hobo-code-introduction-hieroglyphic-language-early-1900s-train-hoppers.html

[ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org]

@cvvhrn @mattblaze So what does that particular hobo code mean?

[mattblaze@federate.social]

@ai6yr @cvvhrn The picture shows a hobo moniker (an icon of the tagger), not a code symbol (which would show information about the area, such as "be especially careful of RR police here").

[ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org]

@mattblaze @cvvhrn Aha!