Walking past 1130 S. Dorrance St., you'd think that the residents are stealing cable. Assuming you're able to avert your gaze from the rat's nest of wires hanging from the utility pole out front, you can see there's a long wire draped across the front of the building on Ellsworth Street, going from the cornice on the 3rd floor to some location on the first floor. We've never stolen cable, but we'd think it would look like this:

1130 S. Dorrance St.

Top of the building

Since the owners of this blog happen to manage this property, we know that the tenants here aren't, in fact, stealing cable. The tenants recently moved into the unit and called Comcast to set up their cable, and this is what happened. The cable terminates at one of those newfangled gray boxes that were giving Fishtown residents fits earlier this summer. A reminder, the stated reason for these gray boxes are to "clean up" cables on the outside of homes. Not so much here.

Dangling wires

Wonderful gray Comcast box

Maybe this was the work of an incredibly careless independent contractor, and perhaps Comcast has every intention to come back to this property soon to make it less appealing to Tarzan. But for the moment, the cables are a mess and the building looks much worse as a result. A reminder, you'll eventually get a notice from Comcast informing you that they'll be doing wire work and providing a number to call if you'd like to opt out. Call that number right away, because these gray boxes are bad enough, and there's a greater than zero chance that you'll end up with a dangling wire across the front of your house. You've been warned.