Philly does April Fools’ Day: Gritty’s public radio doppelganger to LARP parks

Philly, we know you’re nobody’s fool. You are not soon parted with your money, Mr. T does not pity you, and you do not rush in. Unless there’s something free involved. Then it’s just common sense.

But just because we aren’t a city of fools, doesn’t mean we don’t know how to have fun on a day devoted to them. From a public radio station getting into the mascot game to a beloved donut shop turning to bagels, here’s a look at how Philly is celebrating April Fools’ Day.

If Gritty is the life of the party, then Whitty is the one who’s got you cornered in the kitchen talking about Syria.

Philly’s NPR affiliate, WHYY, introduced its new mascot, Whitty, on Monday. In classic public radio listener fashion, the furry blue creature with a striking resemblance to Gritty sports thick-rimmed glasses, a canvas tote bag, and Birkenstocks. Obviously, she’s still waiting for her Downton Abbey: The Complete Collection to come in, on VHS.

According to the backstory WHYY posted about Whitty on its website, she was “first spotted by a WHYY-FM technician, darting between radio transmission towers on the hill in Roxborough that she calls home.”

If that’s all it takes to be WHYY’s mascot, we know a few drunk guys from Manayunk who qualified years ago.

Donut get us started on this evil trickery from Dottie’s Donuts, which posted this notice to its Twitter account Monday.

It might be easy to glaze over this joke, but we think it’s an old-fashioned classic.

In 2011, the University City District introduced parklets, or itty-bitty parks in parking spaces, to the neighborhood.

That was not a joke.

But on Monday, the district did make a joke at its own expense by releasing its latest idea for what to do with parking spaces in University City. If you guessed parking, you’d be wrong.

The district proposed LARPlets, or pocket parks for live action role players (LARPs), “including druids, clerics, and wizards” to "embark on spirited adventures” before they head out “to slay dragons or recover the Ring of the Raven King,” according to the man behind the curtain of the district’s Twitter account.

No word yet on if any of the parks will have an Iron Throne. Or dragons. Or women.

Many people on social media — from Philly to the Shore — were, in no uncertain terms, telling Morey’s Piers to go take a long walk off a short version of itself Monday after the beloved Wildwood, N.J., destination announced it was closing its Curley’s Fries locations to make way for a health-food concession stand that would serve, among other items, “seaweed salad using locally sourced seaweed.”

It took some people a long time to ketchup to the joke.

Curley’s Fries is still listed as a vendor on Morey’s Piers website. On its own Facebook page, Curley’s Fries shared the joke, but still lists April 12 as its opening day.

And you know what day of the week April 12 is? A FRYday.

Several area police departments got in on the April Fools’ hijinx with some arresting jokes, including the Waterford Township Police Department in New Jersey. The department posted to Facebook from the “Rabbit Narcotics Training Facility” that they’d secured a drug-sniffing rabbit named Thumper “in preparation for the future possibility of Marijuana legalization in NJ.”

The joke, which other departments have used before, dates back to at least 2016. While it may seem like an obvious April Fools’ hoax to many, it was not so obvious to former Phoenixville mayoral candidate Dave Gautreau, who proposed drug-sniffing bunnies — for real — during a mayoral forum in 2017 after hearing about them from someone at a party.

He was not elected mayor.

Things were also getting warm and fuzzy over at the Tredyffrin Township Police Department, where they announced new uniforms on Monday — Snuggies for cops.

And over at the Lansdale Borough Police Department, officers are nursing broken hearts after they received a “Dear John” letter on Monday from donuts.

Not a specific donut, just donuts in general.

According to the letter, which was posted to the department’s Facebook page, donuts have left Lansdale police officers for firefighters. “I know they are firefighters because they constantly talk about being firefighters,” the donuts write.

On Monday, the City of Philadelphia’s official Twitter account announced that, given “our top audience interest is DOGS” it had decided to “become a dog and cat rating account.”

People immediately began tweeting back pet photos to be rated. Our favorite was this clay snail:

Given that the ultra-popular Twitter account, We Rate Dogs, has 26 times more followers than the City of Philadelphia (7.9 million vs. 303,000) we can’t blame the city for trying to drum up more attention through its April Fools joke. We are, however, concerned that the audience’s top interest is dogs and not, say, PHILADELPHIA.

Philadelphia coffee purveyor Saxbys announced a new trend in coffee Monday with its Hot Cold Brew.

Not just for any average Joe, the Hot Cold Brew was created when Saxbys “learned that the complex and balanced profile of our Cold Brew translates as well as a hot experience.”