"Mr. Garvey estimated that the space, whose ceiling sloped down with the 300-level seats above it, was about 60 feet long and 30 feet wide. He created a hallway of cardboard boxes to disguise the apartment from the door. 'I open the door and it looks like a storeroom,' said Mr. Bradley, the former Eagle. 'But if you walk down between the boxes, it opened up into one of the neatest apartments I think I’d ever seen.' There was AstroTurf carpet, a bed, some seating, a coffee table and lamps. Devices included a toaster oven, coffee maker, space heaters and a stereo.... Mr. Garvey called it 'cozy,' with 'everything a guy would want.' Bathrooms were across the hall, employee showers downstairs.... In his book, Mr. Garvey describes 'an off-the-wall South Philly version of "The Phantom of the Opera,"' including encounters with the Eagles coach Dick Vermeil, the Sixers legend Julius Erving and the Phillies pitcher Tug McGraw.... 'It was euphoric.... It was like a form of meditation for me. It just — it helped me a lot.' He hid in plain sight: Everyone knew him, he said, and his job gave him a reason to be around at any hour, every day of the week. 'It was right in front of their eyes, they just couldn’t believe it... I wouldn’t believe it myself. The disbelief is the key to how I got away with it.'"
Here's Garvey's memoir, "The Secret Apartment: Vet Stadium, a surreal memoir."
ADDED: Here's The Philadelphia Inquirer article on the subject. It has some additional details:
At night when he was by himself, Garvey would sometimes roller skate around the concourse. “To roller skate around what would be the equivalent of a 10-story building and to look out and see the city was like meditation after a while,” he said.
Once, Garvey went to sleep during a Phillies doubleheader in 1980. A rain delay caused the last game to stretch well into the early-morning hours. When Garvey awoke in the middle of the night, he went out to watch it in flip flops and a bathrobe with a warm cup of coffee.
“There were less than 200 people scattered around,” he said. “They didn’t want to know why I was there in a bathrobe and flip flops, they just wanted to know where I got a hot cup of coffee because the concession stands closed hours ago.”
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36 comments:
finally! a feel good story!
Ever hear of a vomitory? Veterans Stadium had them. First time I heard the term was when the Pittsburgh Pirates played the Phillies in their new stadium.
I give this story 10/10 on the comfy scale.
This is as bad as the Jan. 6th takeover of the Capitol.
Personally, I don't believe the story, but if true, that's a horrendously lonely life. Can't ever bring a woman home. Can't ever share anything with friends about where you live. Just skulking around like a rat.
Thanks for this sweet story, Ann. There must be a million spaces like the one it describes, waiting to be colonized but for problems with insurance and the health & safety bureaucracy in a country so sclerotic it can no longer get out of its own way...
You don’t want to know what he did at night dressed in the Phanatic costume.
Why is the NYT lionizing Freddie the Freeloader? Typical woke libtards who hate me, Donald Trump and real Americans who pay for our homes. He should be in jail.
Philly's a great (and brutal) sports town, so people might actually buy his book. That might not be the case in many other cities. Maybe they will even put him in the Mummers parade, if the Mummers haven't already been cancelled.
"Vomitorium" just meant exit, though it came to take on a different meaning in people's minds. The SNL skit was classic (but also nauseating).
Critical Theorist: how can we form this story into a racist narrative?
Read this in the Inquirer last week. Very enjoyable. The guy is self publishing his book so the NYT picking up the story is only good news for him.
How much did Ann bid on a Chelsea Hotel door?
It really was a veteran’s stadium for a while.
Put Dirty Harry on the case?
"I have rights. I want a lawyer!"
He had it better than Bad Ronald.
That Astroturf he had really tied the room together.
Big house or tiny apartment?
As a child of multi-generational residents of flyover country, I usually take stories like this as urban legends. A city so vast, the places to live in secret for free are everywhere. Like the Stevedore that showed up twice a day on the docks in chauffeured limo, once to clock in, and again to clock out, but never did worked. Or the teacher that never had a classroom.
When I think of 70s Saturday Night Live, complete with wise-ass Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, and Mister Mike-style humor, the term, "Trough and Brew", springs to mind.
Or the teacher that never had a classroom.
I don't know about never....
But NYC schools are famous for having a room set up for teachers being paid by the district because the district can't fire them, but won't put them in a classroom for whatever reason. The teachers show up every morning, spend the work day sitting in the room doing nothing, and then leave at the end of the school day.
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Having just read The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue I am charmed, but sad.
I'm beginning to think there's someone secretly living everywhere.
Guy was a Green Beret in Vietnam so I tend to believe it and he the story quotes some notable Philly icons as witnesses too. Because I went to many Phillies and a few Eagles games at the Vet I will buy the book.
And does this get a "sports" tag from Althouse? She almost never posts about sports.
When I was a student at the U of Washington in the ‘90’s, we had two similar incidents.
One guy lived in the Suzzalo Library, the largest library on campus. That one was particularly interesting to me, because I had a student job there for 3 years, and spent some time exploring the nooks, crannies and bowels of that library as I performed my job function of retrieving items for patrons. A lot of people were afraid to go down into the basement, so I saw more than most.
He had a little corner somewhere furnished with mattress, chairs, a bottle to piss in, and whatever books he happened to be reading. That last always intrigued me - I pictured a lone figure wandering around in the night amongst the greatest collection of books that I have personally seen with my own eyes.
The staff did a systematic sweet before closing every night, to flush out sleeping students or furtive vagrants. The guy must have timed it to be in his litter palace by then, as he lived there for several years as I recall.
Second guy lived under the 520 bridge across Lake Washington. That one I found considerably less appealing, as he had to climb down a ladder to his concrete home in a pylon, essentially risking his life to go home every night. If he were to fall or otherwise injure himself, it would have been very bad for him. Not to mention the winds in the lake must have been unpleasant at night, and the cold would have been impossible to escape, it seems to me. Not exactly Wisconsin there, to be sure, but not Florida either.
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Well that's a memory jogger. I was at that doubleheader in 1980. Versus the Expos. Teams weren't scheduled to meet again so they had to get the game in. Second game finished at 5:10 am. My friend Jack had been drinking most of the afternoon and was sh!t faced by the time we got to the Vet. Was sober by the final out.
Memories of being young and carefree. Hell yeah.
I love stories like this.
Doesn't change the fact that Philadelphia is a shithole city.
I remember going to ballgames in the '80s and there would be only a few hundred people in the stands.
It was great.
I don’t know how to edit comments-
It’s Suzzallo, not Suzzalo
And they did a systematic “sweep”, not “sweet”
It was supposed to be “little palace”, but “litter place” is more poetic.
I read the account in the Philly paper- I believe the story- it contains details that would likely lead to it being debunked by somebody.
Ah, the Vet. Back in a bygone era, my parents would give me 3 or 4 bucks and me and a few pals would take the subway down, if I remember rightly, the yellow seats for kids was around 50 cents or so, and usually we'd work our way down by the 4th or 5th inning to the good seats. The ushers usually didn't hassle kids, and we were young teens (again a bygone era - what parent would allow this today). Plus you could smoke in the stadium, an added bonus. I also froze my ass off during one Eagles game. My neighbor had season tickets for the Eagles, my dad had access to his companies Flyers season tickets, so we traded off and on. It was kind of hilarious, as my neighbor's son was deaf, and always was able to smuggle in a bottle of something to pass back and forth, and couldn't hear those in nearby seats asking for a shot, many got indignant at his ignoring them. So as with I think most Philly fans, love / hate relationship with the Vet and the old Spectrum as well. Saw the Philly / Soviet game there with the Ed Van Imp crosscheck.
Howard said...
a bunch of stupidity.
It must really suck to be you, Howard. I guess I pity you, although it's hard to do so
The sports fan’s version of From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.
@Tom T,
Wow, I couldn't disagree more! For some of us, that secret home would be heaven.
Well, why not? It's called Veterans Stadium!
Fun story, but it strikes me as a lonely life. Each to his own.
I had a Bulgarian friend in London who lived in a storage room under a big apartment building in south London. He was a security guard there managed to go undetected for about a year.
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