Ah, irony

[ckd]

So hr_macgirl and I went to Philadelphia over the weekend, and while there, visited a number of sites.

Which of the following had the least intrusive security?

• National Constitution Center
• Independence Hall
• Liberty Bell Pavilion
• Eastern State Penitentiary

Yup, you got it: Eastern State Penitentiary. No bag search, no magnetometer, nothing at all. (It stopped being an actual working prison 35 years ago.) Heck, they even had a display of various improvised weapons (in a locked case, true)!

NCC? A cursory open-the-bag-and-look-in search.

Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell Pavilion? "Empty your pockets. Take off your watch and belt. Put everything through the X-ray machine as you walk through the magnetometer." If they just add shoe checks and liquid bans, they can be a strict superset of the checks at PHL. (At Independence Hall, someone asked the "security" folks why watches had to be removed. The answer? "I don't know, that's just what they told us to do." Hooray for critical thinking.)

Comments

[ckd]

The screening points were being run by contract folks and not Park Service personnel, as far as I could tell. The NPS staff we dealt with were wonderful.

The last time I'd seen the Bell, it was still in Independence Hall.