I was about to mention those houses too! I am jealous, I would love to have one of those little front gardens (I live in the neighborhood)

For your historical questions, you may like to read the article from the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia:

https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/horses/

An interesting side note is the history of horse drinking troughs in the city, which were provided by charitable organizations (often along with drinking fountains for people) and many of which still exist: https://whyy.org/articles/curbside-refreshment-for-man-and-beast/

The Streets Department swears they are no longer throwing recycling en masse onto their garbage trucks.

Now, I don't trust them any more than you do. They said they stopped doing this already several years ago (right after the Inquirer ran an expose about it). Fine. And then the pandemic happened, and there have been so many ups and downs with short staffing and recycling only being picked up every other week, and then they get behind after big storms and the like, so they still did it now and then. Fine. They have supposedly staffed up now and are not as critically short-handed.

If you see them throwing recycling onto a trash truck today, in November 2022, that's something you should document and report (i.e., take a photo so there is a record of the time and date.) Otherwise, you're just recycling (ha) old news to help keep cynicism and apathy alive.

But you're also telling on yourself here:

>our paper bags filled with greasy pizza boxes, discarded mail, and single-use plastic bottles end up spilled all over the street whenever the wind blows

You're not supposed to put out your recycling in paper bags. If you're doing this, you're not holding up your end.

I absolutely think the city makes it ridiculously hard to get recycling bins, and I have to say I don't think I've ever seen one of the lidded bins they supposedly started giving out some time ago. The city is really not holding up their end by making inadequate provision of recycling bins.

But OTOH, most of us can afford to obtain some kind of plastic bin for our recycling. There's no excuse for using paper bags except laziness and/or willful ignorance.

Organic waste going into landfills is a huge problem because it has a climate impact.

If your banana peels decompose in a compost heap, they give off carbon dioxide, which balanced by the carbon dioxide absorbed by the plant to photosynthesize and make the banana in the first place.

If your banana peels decompose in the sealed environment of a landfill, they will decompose via a different microbial process, called anaerobic decomposition (meaning no oxygen). This is a slower process and it it chemically different - it produces methane, which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Landfills have to vent the methane that's produced by this decomposition or else they get a bit splody.

Bulk buying is the cheapest way to shop.

This is not useful advice in hindsight, but if you live right nearby, one thing to try is to walk right in, in person (during a non-busy time) and talk directly to the humans at the desk. Say you live nearby, you need to stay away from home a few night because of the exterminators or whatever the reason is, and you wonder if they accept bookings from local neighbors.

If they have a 100% inflexible policy about this, then they should be able to tell you up front - if they can put a note in your file with info about why you're booking or a manager can override something, then you'll know that on the spot.

No, it's a turntable. If you've ever seen the turntables they use in San Francisco to turn the cable cars, it's like that, only really, really, really big

Inquirer article said one of her top deputies but didn't give a name.