Conrad Benner began Streets Dept., a successful street art blog about Philadelphia, in early 2011.
FP: Why did you start blogging?
CB: I was a freelance writer for quite a long time. I was always very fascinated with Philadelphia. What was happening in Philadelphia. Just to sort of talk about what I was interested in from street art to nightlife. After doing that for a few years, I realized it wasn’t necessarily doing anything for me. It wasn’t doing anything for me besides being a paycheck. It didn’t feel very rewarding. I didn’t feel like I was building anything. So I sat down one day and decided to start my own blog. But I thought that isn’t enough. Everyone has a blog. It needs to have some sort of focus. I decided it would be hyper local. I live in this city and I feel like I have a good grasp on it. But I decided it still needed to be more specific. Most of the photos I take are on street art and graffiti. Most of the articles I am selling freelance are about that. So that was how it started. I just fucking did it. I had no idea what I was doing. I still don’t know. And you just do it. You take one step at a time.
FP: When did you begin blogging?
CB: This brainstorming started in late 2010. At that time, I had been working three years on a blog called Philthy blog and doing some freelance stuff. Streets Dept. started January 11th, 2011. So a little over four years ago.
FP: How did you become interested in street art?
CB: I grew up in Fishtown. I have lived in this city my whole life. I am 29 now. I have walked the same streets a million times. You go to and from school the same way every day. You go to and from work the same way every day. Something that really excites me is when something new happens. Maybe there is a new mural or a new tag or a new sticker. It always just caught my eye. As a kid, I would buy books about graffiti. When the internet came out in early high school, I started reading all sorts of street art blogs.
I think street art is a little more inclusive than gallery or museum art. It’s so easy to interact with it. It’s all around you. You don’t have to know anything about art to be accepted into viewing the art or appreciative of it. It’s on your commute. Often times its bright bold colors and lines and really graphic. So I was just drawn to it. I thought we had to be celebrating these artists more than we were.
But in Philadelphia, you can have a voice. You can push change.
FP: What is your favorite thing about Philadelphia right now?
CB: The excitement right now. It’s a really exciting place to live. Everyone I know who lives in New York City is talking about Philly and considering moving here. That’s a first time at least in my lifetime that this has been the case. Growing up, I always thought maybe one day I would move to New York. I think there has been a paradigm shift and now people there are realizing the potential and opportunities here. As opposed to places like NYC where there are all these obstacles in your way which are insurmountable in certain ways. Things are incredibly overpriced there. It is such an established city.
Philly is in a place right now where it’s being reborn. The people living here are shaping the way of its future. So in a lot of ways a place like New York is already shaped. There is a billionaire’s row. It is harder to have a voice. But in Philadelphia, you can have a voice. You can push change.
The SEPTA petition I started last year is a good example of that. I just started the petition online and in the course of a year subways are running at night now. That is because a lot of people signed the petition and the city recognized that it is something people wanted. There is so much that people want right now. The city is changing. That would not have happened in the 90s when there wasn’t this energy or this resurgence. But the city is seeing the potential and opportunities of these new people coming in and the services we need to reinstate.
What’s your favorite thing about Philly in one word? Potential
FP: There is an entrepreneurial spirit of the person who begins their own blog. How has you being a blogger made you an entrepreneur?
CB: I just read this awesome article on why millennials are obsessed with entrepreneurship. We saw our parents’ generation work really hard for big corporations their entire lives and then get fucked over when the economy collapsed in 2008. People like my Dad lost his pension. My mom lost her job. So our generation saw that and said fuck that. Why would I work 50 years for a company that could potentially rip the rug from under my feet? I think our generation felt screwed by big corporations and I don’t think we feel their interests are in us. I think we are very driven to work for ourselves because we can only really rely on ourselves at this point.
I think the age we live with social media has made it so much easier to start things like this. I started a store on my blog recently this past month. As long as you put the effort in the tools are there and the tools are relatively cheap. The tools are there. All you have to do is pick them up and use them for yourself.
Benner has approximately 104,000 followers on social media.
FP: How often do you blog?
CB: That has changed over the years. My original idea was the more the better. So when I first started I thought it was all about quantity over quality. But now it is more about quality. So now I post one to three times a week. Sometimes it’s more. But we are in a weird shift where do people really read blogs? I get way more engagement on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram than I do on my blog. So I try to create more content for those platforms. I try to make the blog a special place where the content is longer form and gives people a reason to go there.
