IRL: Tour of The Miracle on South 13th Street, the Philly Block Turned Winter Wonderland | Speedify LIVE

On the 157th episode of Speedify LIVE we head out to the streets of Philadelphia for an IRL field trip with special guest Scott Ackerman to revisit the Miracle on South 13th Street, a block that gets covered in magnificent Christmas decor every year!

We chat about our IRL setup, what lights are used to make it all festive, as well as the history of the entire event, all the while we check out all the Holiday Displays!

Here are our 5 takeaways from our walk through the Miracle on South 13th Street:

1. Our setup is the usual, well-working IRL stream setup: iPhone 12 Pro combining its own cellular with the Wi-Fi Hotspot of another phone in Speedify, running Larix Broadcaster to send the RTMP stream to Restream Studio and then to all the platforms. Using Rode Go Wireless 2 for mics and DJI Osmo 3 Gimbal for stability
2. This Christmas Miracle of a street is open and lit up every day from about 4:30 PM Eastern to 10 PM, with Friday to Sunday being pretty crowded. There are even two different trolley lines that host Christmas lights tours, passing by every 10-15 minutes on weekends! 
3. Scott tells us that the Street is using some special lights this year: Twinkly lights. They’re RGB LED lights that are individually addressable, and come with an app that lets you string them up however you want, and using the phone, build a map of all the lights to control their light-up-pattern. 
4. The Miracle on South 13th Street has been around for about 30 years now! Nobody knows exactly when and how it turned into such a big event, but it snowballed into this cross-street organized event that brings the community together. 
5. According to Scott, the Holiday Display is a kind of informal arrangement they all have to keep up the tradition. He says that while the lighting ceremony has turned into a block party, even before that they would set up tents and have a potluck, but eventually it turned into something much bigger where they include the entire community.