Back in May, I had the urge to read something totally interesting, but then I thought: Why not read something utterly boring instead? And that thought started my three-month obsession reading the Philadelphia Code, the 2,000-page document containing all of Philly’s laws.

       Listen to the audio edition here:

Being a tech-forward kinda guy, I used modern tools. I built an end-to-end data pipeline, enhanced with 600 million tokens worth of AI research and thinking, to read this giant document.

[This analysis is a summary of the original, full analysis published on Looking Closer.]

I was looking for weird laws, to try and make a boring obsession interesting. What I ran into, completely by accident, was a fascinating history of how Philly has evolved over the past century — and how, often, its laws haven’t.

Laws don’t just occur. They are born in moments of high political energy, often generated by a broader social movement or a viral media moment. But then that moment in history passes. Problems get solved, technology evolves, eras and people change.

But laws don’t just disappear. They stay on and accumulate until someone explicitly removes them. And that requires expending political capital.

So the 2,000 pages of the Philadelphia Code act as a kind of accidental fossil record: a place where you can still see what Philadelphians’ priorities were 10 years ago, 50 years ago, and, in some cases, more than a century ago.

It is impossible for an average citizen to understand what is legal vs not, for cops to enforce the laws, judges to judge, and even lawmakers to make new laws not in conflict with the old ones.

For example, there’s a law where you can be fined $5 for street performing … Think of the guy playing Eye of the Tiger on the Rocky Steps on his trumpet.

The law dates to the 1890s, when Philadelphia was a manufacturing city with crowded neighborhoods and a very real vagrancy issue — in the 1870s, one in 100 Philadelphians was “convicted” as a “vagrant.” Nearly 150 years ago, a $5 fine was roughly a day’s wages for a laborer (around $185 in today’s money), making it a serious expense.

The city has changed rather dramatically since then. Manufacturing Philadelphia is gone, and homelessness, although still a serious concern, is nonetheless a fraction of what it was more than a century ago.

But the $5 fine is still there, unchanged. It is such a small amount today that it won’t even buy you a Rita’s. It’s not going to dissuade anyone from street performing, even if the police still enforced this law, which they don’t. (They have more important things to do, understandably.)

The $5 fine isn’t just a weird leftover. It tells you something about the Philadelphia that created it. A Philadelphia that no longer is.

The same thing happens with the City’s anti-spitting law, the last of its kind amongst major U.S. cities.

Philadelphia passed a law to ban public spitting in 1903, a moment when science was starting to drive public health laws. Germ theory was new — disease was no longer a matter of curses from the spirits, but instead, something that could be scientifically studied and, importantly, prevented.

Tuberculosis (“TB”) was one of the leading causes of death in the 1800s, and spit was a leading way of transmitting it. And so, to reduce the spread of TB and other fluid-borne diseases, U.S. cities started passing anti-spitting laws, starting with New York in 1896. Philadelphia followed seven years later.

But 123 years later, through vaccines, better sanitation, and better nutrition, TB and many other diseases are all but gone. There are fewer than 700 TB deaths a year now in the entire United States, compared with 45,000 from influenza.

Over the past 50 years, most major U.S. cities have repealed their anti-spitting laws, starting with New York in 1971. Although gross, spitting in public is no longer outlawed in any major American city — with the exception of Philadelphia.

Did you know laundromats have curfews and are still required to have public phones?

While most other businesses set their own hours, laundromats cannot be open between 1am and 6am in Philadelphia. And they must have a public phone on site too.

The phone part, at least, I understand. In 1961 (or 2000, for that matter), a laundromat was a place where you sat with a bag of clothes and a pocket full of quarters for two hours. When you were done, you might need a phone to make a call to get a ride home. Not so much in the era of personal cell phones.

One day in June, I needed to get my 10,000 steps in and so did a bit of unofficial on-the ground-research on whether laundromats actually follow these laws. I walked with my one-year-old (in a stroller) to seven Philadelphia laundromats to verify whether anyone actually followed the public phone law.

None did — but one owner jokingly offered to let me use his iPhone to comply with the law.

Other quirky laws I ran into include the nation’s most comprehensive and specific horse welfare law (at 1,200 words), a 1960s law about “icebox” design that aimed to prevent children from getting trapped inside them while playing hide-and-seek (modern refrigerators have doors that opens from the inside), and powers given to government agencies that have been long-since disbanded (e.g., the once-powerful Fairmount Park Commission).

These are just some of dozens of strange laws on Philly’s books I found. Laws that still exist because no one has the political incentive or energy to repeal them.

For me, this was a fun journey down Philly’s memory lane, but there are practical implications to such an accumulation of old laws.

First off, no human being on the planet (nor an AI agent) can keep that level of complexity in their heads. That means it is impossible for an average citizen to understand what is legal vs not, for cops to enforce the laws, judges to judge, and even lawmakers to make new laws not in conflict with the old ones.

And, yes, while judges can disqualify these esoteric laws, doing so is an inefficient use of their time.

A law book that no human (or AI agent) can navigate is more than an amusing relic. It’s an administrative tax each resident pays daily.

Nick Jain is a Philly resident who has been CEO of both trucking and software companies. He now co-leads Eagle Rock AI. He holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and writes the blog Looking Closer. He previously lived in Strawberry Mansion and now lives in Fairmount.