A global Portal to Philly hijinks is about to open

Philly is getting a Portal, and people are already salivating over the hijinks and destruction they expect will ensue.

A Portal is an 11.5-foot-tall, 3.5-ton donut-like sculpture with a camera and an 8-foot live-stream video screen in its center. One installed in New York’s Flatiron Plaza made waves back in May when it was shut down for a few days due to inappropriate behavior.

The New York Portal was connected to one in Dublin, Ireland, letting people in each city watch each other waving and dancing in real time. 

After an OnlyFans model flashed the New York portal and Dubliners displayed images of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the project sponsors instituted selective video-blurring and other security measures and limited the portal to daytime hours.

The New York Portal shut down in early September and, on Friday, suddenly reappeared in LOVE Park, near the Welcome Center building. We’re hearing it’ll be turned on Tuesday, and connected to another city that hasn’t yet been announced.

“Ok, they weren’t supposed to actually do this, putting the Portal in Philadelphia is breathtakingly irresponsible,” Philly resident Chris Olley wrote on X.

“This is going to last 48 hours, tops,” another X user responded.

United and one in insanity?

Lithuanian artist and entrepreneur Benediktas Gylys came up with the idea of the Portals and partly funds them. In addition to New York and Dublin, they’ve so far been installed in Lithuania, Poland, and Brazil, according to the project website, Portals.org.

“Portals are an invitation to meet fellow humans above borders and prejudices and to experience our home – planet Earth – as it really is: united and one,” the site says.

Passers-by at the new Philly location have responded with curiosity and occasional trepidation. A visitor from Minnesota described it to 6ABC as “thought-provoking” and recalling a hockey puck. An observer from Northeast Philly said it reminded her of the horror flick “The Ring,” in which the ghost of a girl crawls out of a screen and kills the viewer.

Although the Portal hasn’t yet “opened,” so to speak, it has already inspired some of the intended cavorting, like breakdancing in LOVE Park, and a general sense of anticipation.

“It’s gonna be insanity,” predicted YouTuber The Philly Captain, as he inspected the installation Sunday evening. “I don’t give a s–t about being seen on the Portal. I want to see the maniacs around the Portal.” 

The ghost of Hitchbot looms

For more than a few people, seeing an expensive piece of technology sitting in a public place, apparently untended, immediately brought to mind the cautionary tale of Hitchbot.

Hitchbot was an inanimate, robot-like art piece, created by Canadian developers to serve as a social experiment in trust. It was benevolently passed from one person to another around the continent, until it arrived in Philly and was smashed to pieces.

“This is our second chance after the hitchbot beheading ????,” SLiM_DUSKY wrote on X, in reference to the Portal.

“Our second chance to do the same thing,” Olley responded.

Others were similarly skeptical about the Portal’s longevity. 

“One Eagles loss and this thing is getting shut down,” one online commenter opined.

“An Eagles win will do the same,” another said.

Others had fun imagining what Portal viewers in Brazil or Lithuania or wherever will see when they get connected to Philly, like women in hijabs dancing frenetically, the Phanatic rotating its belly, or a bare-chested Jason Kelce bellowing. 

One person took an up-close photo showing that the thick glass over the Portal screen already has a crack, although the city reportedly said that happened during installation, not because of any rowdiness. 

We particularly enjoyed a depiction created by YouTuber cazzhmir TV and reposted by WHYY’s Kae Lani Palmisano. 

A video montage of quintessential Philly moments plays on the Portal, set to the old Action News theme song: a raccoon on a PHL airport baggage claim, Jim Kenney saying he looked forward to not being mayor, the removal of the Rizzo statue, various sports-fandom-related mishaps, and so on.

“Philly is such beautiful chaos,” user tokomoon responded on Instagram. “I miss it always.”

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