I used to live in the Wissahickon neighborhood of Philadelphia, right at the top of the 100 Steps.

The 100 Steps are actually 103 steps of granite that lead down to the Wissahickon Creek trail. I used to use them all the time when I would go to take a long walk.

When I first moved there in 2001, the steps were in poor shape and badly in need of restoration as you can see in this picture from 2002.

That same year my parents decided to take a walk down the steps.

Notice the wall on the left.

After the city paid to have the 100 Steps restored in 2004, that wall remained pretty much as it was, although slightly spiffed up. Here’s a more recent pic.

Apparently a few days ago someone had the bright idea to paint that wall a drab gray.

The local residents were not amused, as detailed in this report from Billy Penn.

Supposedly no one knows who painted the wall, according to the report in Billy Penn.

However, your humble blogger has access to sources that Billy Penn must have overlooked.

According to my exclusive sources, the culprit was CLIP!

CLIP, or the Community Life Improvement Program, was designed to make the city a better place to live by, among other things, removing graffiti from buildings.

So I asked my confidential source, was there graffiti on the wall?

The reply: “Yeah there was graffiti on it. It was enough to be annoying (really annoying actually) but definitely not enough to go scorched earth.”

My source saw evidence of CLIP on the day the outrage was committed and reported it to WICA, the Wissahickon Interested Citizens Association (not to be confused with Wicca), who bugged the hell out the councilman, who eventually prevailed upon CLIP to get that bloody paint off of there.

What it will look like when the paint is removed is anybody’s guess…