Sitting with Whitetown USA author Peter Binzen and PlanPhilly Editor Matt Golas.

Prideful, working class white ethnic neighborhoods in cities have been ignored and poorly represented for at least a half century, goes a major theme of Peter Binzen’s 1968 Whitetown USA dissection. [Google Books here.]

Written by a former Philadelphia Bulletin newspaper reporter with whom I was thrilled to have lunch last month, the book attacks the principle that whites are a monolithic group of privilege. Binzen, a former education reported, focuses heavily on the school system in the book to tell a tale of why working class and even upwardly mobile middle class whites were opposed to affirmative action and other social welfare programs perceived to help blacks.

The first third of the book features the similarities of Whitetowns from cities across the country: white neighborhoods often with many recent immigrants that are working class, prideful of place, protective, provincial, conservative and often seen as bigoted. The rest dives deepest into Kensington, a decaying industrial corridor then and a decayed shell today, and its adjacent Fishtown, a smaller, more residential neighborhood where I now live.

As I often am eager to do, I wanted to share some of my favorite passages and thoughts from the soft cover copy I tore through:

• “Already in 1888, James Bryce, in The American Commonwealth, was saying that ‘the government of cities is the one conspicuous failure of the United States.” He notes that immigrants, particularly the Irish, are unfairly used to blame for corruption, crime and filth there. (p. 17)
• Immigrant Americans have always sought military life in disproportionate numbers. “Of the first one hundred thousand United States Army volunteers in 1917, no fewer than forty thousand were said to be Polish Americans.” The trend continued then during the Vietnam War. (p. 19)
• Fascinating immigration controls, predating a 1965 law signed by President Johnson on Oct. 3, 1965 that returned decisions to individual merit rather than nationality quota. (p. 22)
• An immigrant’s letter home with phrases like “Schools here are free for everyone.” (p. 24)
• Machine politics fit immigration by giving neighborhood leaders a connection to taking care of their own. “As City Hall reformers installed computers and began accounting for every paper clip, they lost touch with the ‘little people’ in Whitetown and Blacktown.”(p. 26)
• “[Working class urban whites] are the stepchildren of the industrial system. For Negroes, the true orphans of the system, they have scant sympathy left over.” (p. 35)
• “In changing times, the Whitetowners oppose change.” (p. 36)
• Pennsylvania constitutions in 1776 and 1790 called for locally-established schools for the poor but the mandate was ignored until the first such school opened in Philadelphia in 1818. Separate but (un)equal started early (p. 38)
• In 1844, religious riots killed a dozen men and resulted in 50 burned homes and churches in Kensington over a dispute over allowing the option to use a Catholic bible in public schools (rather than just a Protestant version) may have set the course for the Catholic School system.
• Into the late 19th century, school books had comically cartoonish capitalistic propaganda. (p. 42)
• Landmark James S. Coleman study in 1966 found little difference in between white and nonwhite schools. Class, less than race, was seen as a true gulf. (p. 54)
• “The whites are prouder and more quiescent, the blacks are more concentrated.” Though future decades would disrupt this trend, in 1968, Binzen was showing poor white neighborhoods were in worse shape than poor black neighborhoods. (p. 56)
• “They don’t expect help and they don’t get it.” (p. 62)
• A popularly cited 1966 op-ed giving reason for affirmative action push back among unions, whose members wanted their sons to follow them into their positions: “Don’t we all discriminate? Which of us when it comes to a choice will not choose a son over all others?” (p. 63)
• In 1968, Kensington was 99.7 percent white, though the specific boundaries were not shared. (p. 81)
• “Philadelphia lacks Boston’s brains, New York’s bounce, Chicago’s brass and San Francisco’s press agent….” Louis I. Khan has said Philly has ‘a character of personality, not impersonality.” (p. 84)
• “In 1960, Fishtowners successfully routed from houses or apartments two Negro families, two Puerto Rican families, one dark-skinned Portugeuse family and a Cherokee Indian from North Carolina. In the fall of 1966, they joined in five days of rioting against a Negro family that moved into a near-by Kensington section.” … “Kensington is more a state of mind than a geographic entity; its boundaries shift as housing patterns shift.” (p. 86)
• “There is probably no city in the known world,” wrote a visitor to Philadelphia in 1842, “where dislike amounting to hatred of the coloured population prevails more than in the city of brotherly love.” (p. 89)
• In 1891 a businessman wrote in a pamphlet called Kensington: “A city within a city, nestling upon the bosom of the placid Delaware, filled to the brim with enterprise, dotted with factories so numerous that the rising smoke obscures the sky, the hum of industry is heard in every corner of its broad expanse. A happy and contended people, enjoying plenty in a land of plenty. Populated by brave men, fair women and a hardy generation of young blood that will take the reins when the fathers have passed away. All hail, Kensington! A credit to the continent, a crowning glory to the city.” (p. 93)
• “Just when Kensington seemed to be going down for the count, World War II came along. Kensington revived. Its shipyard expanded enormously. Its factories were worked overtime. Its biggest and most famous firm, the Stetson Hat Company, employed almost five thousand men and women and maintained a hospital for them…. It seems clear now, though, that the seeds of Kensington’s destruction were sown in the war it supported so spiritedly. Military service widened the horizons of young Kensingtonians.” (p. 96)
• Whitetowns need help but they won’t accept it. (p. 103)
• “Indeed, funerals are important social events in Kensington and undertakers, along with taproom owners, are among its most affluent citizens. (p. 107)
• “Kensington’s intolerance is so savage because its people are so insecure.” (110)
• An educated Fishtown resident does nothing while his neighbors riot around a Negro family moving in. (112)
• Philadelphia School Board of Education had refused standardized testing until 1967. (146)
• For nearly 30 years until 1963, the school board was effectively run by its business manager, who had a tenth grade education.
• Philadelphia public school standards were high into the 1930s. Students were held back if they failed until they reached 14, when they could be kicked out. In the 1930s, reforms raised the compulsory school age to 17, with some exceptions, and as the great Migration of Southern blacks hit Philadelphia, the system was inundated with kids behind in schooling. (166)
• Central High School moved in 1939 from a ‘mid-city neighborhood’ turning black to move to a white neighborhood near LaSalle College (which is now a black area), and in the 1950s, Northeast High also moved to a white neighborhood, pressured by alumni. (168)
• Paul Goodman has said: “any literate and well-intentioned grownup knows enough to teach a small child a lot.” Goodman and others were advocating for smaller, neighborhood schools focused on subjects — which sounds like the charter school movement of today. (183)
• “There were 28,044 vacant buildings and 15,604 vacant lots in the city as of July 31, 1969. The number of vacant buildings had more than doubled in three years.” (185)
• “Say what you will about the public schools, they have staying power. Year after year, they do their business, whatever it may be, for good or evil. The system was built to last.” (187)
• The word ‘changing’ in Kensington meant getting blacker in 1968. Now, it means getting ‘whiter.’ (190)
• A ‘Richard D. Hanusey’ was the city’s best school administrator, Binzen writes (192)
• Troubled kids aren’t reached until they are too far gone. (207)
• “E.E. Cummings said that before you can do without punctuation, you must learn to use it perfectly. The same goes for discipline.” (214)
• By 1970, getting a big city school teacher appointment was no reason to celebrate. In 1940, it was. (217)
• “They give back what they get. There are teachers who teach thirty years and retire. And there are teachers who teach one year thirty times and retire.” (220)
• Poorer black and white parents are more similar in their wants for their children’s education: conservative and discipline. (225)
• Binzen describes a school administrator who goes into a community meeting completely unaware of the distrust the neighborhood has for any authority so is unprepared to defend a position. (232)
• “It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that the entire structure of Catholic education in Philadelphia — the nation’s fourth largest diocese and the one most fervently committed to the proposition that every Catholic child should attend a Catholic school — rests on such shaky underpinnings.” Bingo, technically illegal, is a large fundraising tool. (239) Though, bingo seems to play much less of a role in Catholic education today.
• A large portion of Catholic church funding in Philadelphia came from Bingo: “It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that the entire structure of the Catholic education in Philadelphia — the nation’s fourth largest diocese and the one most fervently committed to the proposition that every Catholic child should attend a Catholic school — rests on such shaky underpinnings. “(239)
• Why Whitetowners like Catholic education: “Unexciting, un-stimulating, anti-intellectual”(240)
• A prescient phrase: In 1968 “Catholics now hold firm control over most branches of the city government, and they will probably retain it until Negroes take over.” (244) Stereotyped as ‘social outcasts.’ (243)
• “As late Jesuit editor Paul L. Blakely said: ‘The first duty of every Catholic father to the public school is to keep his children out of it.” (245)
• Of the American Catholic Church, Denis Brogan said: “in no western society is the intellectual prestige of Catholicism lower than in the country where, in such respects as wealth, numbers and strength of organization, it is so powerful.” (246)
• “Philadelphia parochial schools pride themselves on their handwriting instruction. Their pupils learn to write very neatly, their letters well rounded and carefully formed. It is said that you can distinguish a parochial-school child from a public-school pupil by comparing their writing.” (254)
• Binzen transcribed recordings of a debate on integration at a Polish Catholic school, featuring starkly honest assessments on civil rights, largely focusing on blacks. (261)
• In 1965, the Archdiocese was boasting of an expanding enrollment and support. Two years later, it sought government aid for the first time. (269)
• In 1968, Pennsylvania became the first state to authorize state aid to non-public schools. (270)
• In the mid 1960s, as change was coming with a new school board and superintendent, an already disaffected principal had called the school district like an ‘arthritic turtle.’ Binzen calls Mark Shedd one of the most promising superintendents. (273)
• More on how a controversial school district business manager had run the school district. (275)
• After Sputnik, legislation in 1958 for the first time offered federal funding to support basic education. (277)
• New superintendent Mark Shedd chased federal funding and outperformed all other school districts. (283)
• The difference between reform in City Hall and the school district: “The contrast is that City Hall had a political mandate. This gave momentum for reform. The schools don’t have it.” (287)
• Nov. 17, 1967: a bloody battle between police and then commissioner Frank Rizzo and black students (288)
• The late 1960s changes in the School District were called the “most dramatic revolution in a city school system in the postwar period.” (294)
• There was a movement by black students to rename Ben Franklin High School after Malcolm X, the movement was rebuffed by a school board trying to gain support in white communities. (297)
• Of education reformers whose children don’t go to public schools: “In a great many instances those people and groups most vocally supporting change are safely outside the battle and would be unaffected by it.” (298)
• “In housing and jobs, as well as in education, black gains are made in competition not with WASP liberals [who cheer the change] but with lower-class and lower-middle-class Irish, Italians, Poles and Jews.” (298)
• White-collar workers waste more time in their cubicles than blue collar workers in their stations, a study shows. (299)
• “The lower class whites especially are a closed people moving in tunnels.” (304)
• Education will either make or break cities. (305)

Urban neighborhoods change.

We’ve known that for, what, like 150 years or something? In the past quarter-century or so, as educated (mostly, but not entirely white) professionals moved back to neighborhoods that had populations that didn’t always resemble them — in race or class or culture or all and more — there were natural clashes.

Mostly, I feel like those clashes have mostly been put in three categories, one initiated by new residents, one from more native residents and one that both share:

[Of course, we're painting with broad strokes here, as people move around for any number reasons and attitude and experiences and motives vary by neighborhood and city and region and more. This is nothing more than perspective from what I've experienced and read and heard, from both new residents and old in neighborhoods that are changing]

• Exclusion — Sometimes new residents try to recreate a neighborhood in their own image, without an understanding or an appreciation of the past. (I live in Fishtown, a neighborhood in Philadelphia that didn’t really suffer the kind of white flight, crime and urban decay of many other neighborhoods in the city, so you can be damn sure there is frustration from longtime residents who feel they’re being told their relatively successful community needs to be re-made. There’s a fine line between, say, including the community in creating the Sustainable 19125 initiative and, perhaps, plopping a restaurant down too boldly).
• Xenophobia – Often from more native residents, it’s that inclination opposed to the outside and any change that relates to it. If you have a recognizable clutch of neighbors and places and rules, as they change, we can all feel threatened.
• Ignorance — I think this tends to be the default category and both new and old residents fall into this trap. This is  where many of us categorize a lot of the senseless violence, petty mistreatment and other behavior. This is a motivation of senselessness, of not understanding the broader ramifications of what we do, of not communicating or understanding each other. That during a snowstorm, you only park your car in the spot you dug out and that’s important to one neighbor or that, yes, recycling is really important to the other.

[I'll also note that 'new' residents and 'native' residents are self-created distinctions. Some who have lived in changing neighborhoods for decades will be seen as part of the new class, and some who were born there but moved away will still be considered natives.]

I hear from a lot of friends who are new residents to neighborhoods in Philadelphia and other cities talk about how they are in communities where their more native counterparts hate them. That gets chocked up into the ‘ignorance’ category, or maybe sometimes the xenophobia, or perhaps both.

I think for a lot of people, there’s greater nuance there.

It may be an obvious point here, but I was sent an email from a friend after rooting around the archives of Temple University’s capstone journalism course, and she said something I thought was provocative.

She sent me the below quote from this story about a gentrifying block in the long blighted Kensington neighborhood, not far from my own:

“A lot of people don’t like these yuppies coming in,” she says. “This is because they come in and are getting houses, grants for lots, building cafes.  It seems to a lot us that they have a way around to getting stuff and no one knows why or how they are getting these things we aren’t.”

I found my friend’s reaction to that quote insightful:

I think I’ve pinpointed something that may seem obvious, but I’ve been overlooking. For the natives in the neighborhood, they’re not necessarily against gentrification and change. It just goes back to the same old perception of things being easier for certain people — in this, and most, cases — educated white people.

Neighbors don’t hate what gentrifiers are doing, they hate that the gentrifiers can do it, and don’t understand why they can’t do these things themselves. Mostly because, as illustrated in the quote about needing more national chains in Kensington, native residents don’t understand the problem so they can’t make the correct steps to fix it. They assume that the new businesses and residents coming in are somehow working their way around a system because gentrifiers are perceived as having certain privileges.

In most cases, few people actually hate that you fixed up your rowhome or opened that store on the avenue. Those who take issue may just be frustrated that you were able to do it when they couldn’t.

That’s something we can all understand. I believe I work really hard, and I enjoy using some of the compensation of that work to make improvements on my home, something that ultimately benefits all of those who live near me.

But, while most of my neighbors appreciate it wildly, not all do. Even if I work hard, I inevitable, of course, have been gifted amazing privilege and remarkable good fortune.

So — certainly unfairly but perhaps a bit more understandable than unchecked hate or the ignorance and xenophobia that time should help quell — a neighbor who doesn’t seem to appreciate what I quietly do to my home (say, replace a ragged front door that has street value to everyone on the block) may well be motivated by a sense of confusion.

Why do I, a young, privileged resident new to the neighborhood get to improve my home in a way that a particular neighbor can’t (either because of money or energy or other obstacles)?

The answer, I think, lies somewhere in the fact that, say, all neighborhoods change, and, though the speed with which it happens vary, they do so in three different ways (again, very broadly speaking):

• More newer, mostly wealthier (than current) residents are moving in (Graduate Hospital, East Passyunk)
• More newer, mostly poorer (than current) residents are moving in (pockets of lower Northeast Philly)
• A net loss of population (Whatever the class, resident loss is not being replaced, which, I’d say, is worse than either fortune above)

So which way is your neighborhood trending? Maybe that’d help shape your opinion.

Ultimately, cities work and are beautiful because of their density (and, often, authenticity through their generational roots).

They force us to interact. To have human experiences with each other, to trust and grow and learn and develop communities — a concept that is thousands of years in the making.

Ultimately, a little understanding and a lot of communication goes a long way.

The back of SugarHouse Casino on Delaware Avenue in Philadelphia on Sunday, Oct. 10, 2010. Its restaurant and walkway offers pleasant views of the Delaware River and Ben Franklin Bridge.

Last month, my neighborhood helped to make Philadelphia the largest city in the country with a legally-sanctioned casino.

SugarHouse Casino opened in mid-September, as scheduled.

The six-year battle to bring casinos to Philadelphia is not one I want to remark much on. If you want to hear argue for or against the existence of casinos in urban communities, you’ve come to the wrong place. Isaiah Thompson at Citypaper is downright obsessed with reporting on why casinos are in the net bad for communities.

That’s not what I’m writing here for.

By the time I bought my home in Fishtown, the neighborhood that the casino arguably resides within, SugarHouse was already coming. That argument was over with.

What was still up for debate were two issues that I did care about, if a casino was going to come to my neighborhood.

• I wanted the casino to embrace, enhance and help develop its portion of the Delaware River waterfront, so we could start embracing this beautiful asset of ours and do so through the sensible, efficient use of commercial development.
• I wanted table games to supplement slots machines so, in my experience, if there was going to be gambling, it might go beyond the droning, heartless slots. (Basically, I have friends who would play blackjack for a night socially; they wouldn’t dump coins in a machine).

This weekend, I enjoyed the beautiful weather by taking a leisurely stroll through the casino’s compact 45,000 square-foot innards and the compound that surrounds it. In an hour’s time, my initial reaction was that, if a casino were to come to Philadelphia and considering much of the debate and compromise that has come with it, what SugarHouse is to date isn’t so terrible.

I can’t pound home enough that I’m not arguing here for the development of casinos along the waterfront.

In fact, I listened with great interest last month to former Mayor John Street address the showcase of an event series from Young Involved Philadelphia, in which he was speaking about groups coming together to overtake authority.

“The governor was for gaming, the mayor was for gaming, the General Assembly was for gaming,” Street said of his supportive stance in 2005. “But, in the end, the anti-gaming advocates kicked our collective behinds… They stopped something that none of us thought they could ever stop. We have a little facility down there, but we don’t have anything near what all us big hot shots wanted.”

Watch Street’s speech below, starting with his casino comment.

He was talking about the collective will limiting what SugarHouse became.

I wasn’t involved in any of those demonstrations, though I did a little reporting on the statewide issue of casinos.

Instead, I walked down Girard Avenue to Frankford Avenue across Delaware Avenue to SugarHouse to see how I felt about the casino, always with the understanding that there wasn’t anything to do about there being a gambling house there to start.

SO WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?

Yes, there is a lot of surface parking, which dominates and circles SugarHouse from the approach. Inquirer architecture critic Inga Saffron, of whom I am a great admirer, railed on its suburban-like distance from the sidewalk, threatening any chance of walkability on Delaware Avenue. (I could get behind conversations about the casino’s sustainable features, as I haven’t read any mention of innovative uses for its large roof, like solar paneling, nor anything about its expansive acreage to work with run off)

I’m no urban planning student, and certainly not a teacher like Saffron, but in her criticism, I haven’t much seen any real solution for SugarHouse to draw its expected 30,000 daily visitors, many of whom will surely be driving — not exclusively walking from neighborhoods like Fishtown and Northern Liberties.

SugarHouse has sealed expansion plans, tripling its capacity and including a concert venue, banquet hall, more gaming space and a 74-foot parking garage to hold 3,000 cars, but, as Saffron points out, the casino will still not be on the sidewalk in true urban form.

But the math doesn’t work out for me.

The casino was drastically shrunk, as Street noted, in the planning stage due to outrage over its original 21-acre “megaplan.” Many of us, Saffron and myself included, wanted the casino on the waterfront, to create interaction with it — rather than relegating the Delaware to the background noise that much of the warehouse and industrial space there currently does. But, Saffron also wants it on the sidewalk.

…I don’t think the distances work out, though, again, I’m not an architect.

What I can say is, as Saffron says, it’s a rather endearing design — the entire exterior of the building is pleasant, urban and friendly. Its pedestrian walkway along the waterfront is very near to perfect and, after its expansion, will get within 150 feet of nearby Penn Treaty Park and even closer to the adjacent high-rise condominium properties, meaning that with a little work, the Delaware River waterfront could have a discernible, walkable strip nearing Center City.

And that being a 20 minute walk from my home is something I can get behind.

Watch a video from Philadelphia Neighborhoods on the casino’s opening.

Mayor Nutter Press Aide Katherine Martin addresses the April Fishtown Neighbors Association meeting.

A few times a month, I go out to civic and town watch meetings in a variety of neighborhoods. Yes, I actually find most of them to be fun — local politics on the smallest of scale.

Since moving to Fishtown, I’ve begun going to monthly Fishtown Action and Fishtown Neighbors Meetings and filing reports for the Fishtown Spirit. It’s all within a few blocks of my house and endearing to be sure. Each month, I’ll probably share those two and any other pieces I might have had in the Spirit.

As I wrote after my first piece for my small, local community news weekly, it’s my way of getting to know new people and the issues facing them in a new neighborhood.

I have one on two controversial proposals in today’s issue:

City officials defended two controversial proposals to close a $150 million shortfall in the city’s 2011 budget at last week’s Fishtown Neighbors Association meeting.

During the 90 minute session that saw raised voices and broad criticism of city spending, Deputy Streets Commissioner Carlton Williams addressed a proposed $300 trash collection fee and Mayoral Press Aide Katharine Martin talked about the two-cent-per-ounce sweetened beverage excise tax. Both proposals need City Council approval and remain executive branch proposals that are vying against ongoing deliberations, including suggestions to raise property taxes and tax smokeless tobacco products.

Read the rest here, or below find other pieces I’ve done in the past few months below.

FACT introduces new SugarHouse General Manager

APR 14 — Wendy Hamilton says she has two main priorities weighing on her mind.

The new general manager of the SugarHouse Casino on Delaware Avenue, which is currently under construction, needs to get the embattled slots parlor opened by mid-September and she wants to give Fishtown residents and others who live near the casino the first crack at the 700 jobs that will be created.

Read the rest here.

Girard Avenue to See Summer Facelift

MAR 31 — This summer looks to be very kind to Girard Avenue through Fishtown.

Updates on two major projects aimed at improving the beauty and functionality of the corridor were discussed at a recent Fishtown Neighbors Association meeting. Both are due to make major strides as the weather warms up.

Read the rest here.

Meet the Neighbors: FNA introduces new board and RecycleBank program

FEB 24 — Dragging those familiar blue recycling tubs to your curb each week can start to earn savings at area retailers for residents who join a new city program.

Read the rest here.

Like the severity with which parking is taken in many urban neighborhoods in even transited cities, Philadelphia certainly included. My own new neighborhood of Fishtown has all the makings of a fight to be had: long-time residents, a conflicting gentrifying population, limited parking, middle class to working class and, recently, a historic snowfall.

Where even the mayor seems to support saving street parking if you’ve cleaned out a spot and the requisite question comes of what that all means, I’m slowly developing my own opinion.

I’ve been in neighborhoods where people reserve parking year round — around a quickly expanding Temple University community with serious town-gown issues — and so these topics seem to vary. But mostly, I figure you ought to have a majority of these requisites to toss a chair of bucket to block off street parking.

1. Snow storm or some other limited or relatively rare happenstance that dramatically limits parking
2. You dug out the spot
3. It’s in front of your house
4. It’s on your block
5. You’re elderly or infirm
6. You have children younger than five
7. You’re grocery shopping, moving or something else involved lugging or carrying from your car to your house
8. It’s for fewer than 12 hours
9. Only one per household

A portrait of romance as captured by Keith Angelitis.

My first clip for the Fishtown Spirit ran in last Thursday’s issue, and my second ran yesterday.

Keith Angelitis just started a fire in the front room of his Frankford Avenue studio. He has a jacket on and a ball cap pulled over his ruffled brown hair. Big front windows welcome the sunlight that pours in and fills his 15-foot ceilings.

He is relaxing in a wooden chair, a prominent member of an otherwise sparsely furnished room, warmed by an old wood-burning stove. In the corner is an over-sized closet that Angelitis built during the beginning of his continuous renovation of 2452 Frankford Ave. Read more here.

Below the scoop on why I got involved with the Spirit.

Some people join a bridge club. When I move into a neighborhood, I find out how people get their news and information and try to get involved.

I bought a house in the Philadelphia riverward neighborhood of Fishtown last month, so of course I’ll use the Fishtown Spirit — one of two local weeklies — for some extra cash and, more important, the chance to meet people in my new neighborhood.  Since spring 2004, the Spirit is the only newsweekly based in the neighborhood — its major competitor the Star was purchased by the Inquirer‘s parent company and its headquarters were moved to suburban Trevose, Pa.

After moving in, I reached out to Maryanne Milligan, the Spirit’s editor whom I had interviewed for a story I did for the Inquirer, she connected me with the first story — which ran below the fold on the front page of last week’s issue.

Perhaps more to come.

A crazy thing happened on Dec. 2. I closed on my first home, quite an end to a decade of transition from childhood to adulthood. Something worthy enough to update a bit on.

I’m in the heart of the Fishtown neighborhood of the riverward section of Philadelphia, once a place exclusively for working-class (white) families that has the hipster and artistic communities now that often lead to gentrifying. It’s two El stops, a 15-minute bicycle ride or a 40-minute walk from Old City, full of Dietz and Watson delis, modest rowhomes and pickup trucks with ladders. Now I’m there, too.

While I’m up to my ears in housing repairs, I am ecstatic with the house, the block ,the neighborhood and my neighbors. I’ve lived in three different neighborhoods over five years in Philadelphia but never has one truly been so walkable.

I mentioned after Christmas that I left Frankford, where I had lived for more than a year after returning to Philadelphia from a post-graduate internship covering state government in Harrisburg following my time at Temple University.

With help, I squeezed by with my self-employment to qualify for a $100,000 mortgage and bought a well-worn home on a fantastic block. I’ve been focusing on updating, painting and mending the three-bedrooms, one of which I’m making my home office. I’ll be looking to rent the last room out to help with my mortgage payments — interested? contact me here — though I have some work to do before I put the offer out fully.

Of the 20 items I listed when I first announced in July that I was looking for a home, I can safely say this house has 14. Not too bad, I think.

Below see a brief driving tour of Fishtown someone else put together

The remains of the second largest snow storm in recorded Philadelphia history on the 600-block of Gaul Street in the Fishtown neighborhood on Sunday, Dec.

Nothing newspapers love more than a big storm. I jumped into the fray with a few items for Metro on the second largest snowfall in recorded Philadelphia history in today’s paper.

The second worst snowstorm in Philadelphia’s recorded history welcomed John Hutchison to Fishtown over the weekend.

Read the rest of the main story here.

With intrepid photographer Rikard Larma, I trekked through the snowy streets of riverward neighborhood Fishtown and then up to some big box stores in Port Richmond.

A few extras below.

I spoke to 12 people. Eight made it into my submissions to the paper. Below some quotes and information that didn’t.

• Don Thompson, 27, who has lived in Fishtown for only a year, said the lack of plowing frustrates him, but ‘you have to expect it with the city budget constraints.
• Ryan Kennedy, 34, a single dad who bought his home on the 2000-block of Sepviva Street in 2000, said when snow comes, it always melts before the city gets to plow it. When I caught him he was pulling his son Ryan Jr. in a sled to run to the laundromat. He was concerned about having to call out of work because the storm had his car so stuck.
• Adam Cramer, 41, an on and off resident of Fishtown for 25 years and owner of neighborhood art gallery Cycle Structures, was playing with his son Max at Conrad Square. Cramer wasn’t intimdated by the snow at all. If anything, he said, it helped. “The storm made me shop locally for Christmas.”
• I met Tresmin Wyche, 21, of Hunting Park outside a Port Richmond Toys R Us. His shopping had been delayed by the storm, but he was ready to shop for his little brother.

I spoke to the city’s Streets Department head Carlena Tolson, who has been with the department for 15 years and in her position for six. Here are some items that didn’t make it into the story:

• “This is the second largest snow storm to ever the city of Philadelphia, so it requries a complex strategy. The storm lasted longer than 24 hours bringing almost an inch of snow an hour. That has required repeated treatment and re-treatment of the city’s major roadways. All of our resources are fighting this storm, but, even though it’s done, there is more work to do.”
• We have to place all of our resources into a hierarchy. That starts with keeping clear the major roads so emergency vehicles can use them. Everyone needs to be patient because we don’t know how long it will be until we can clear all the roads, given the amount of snow the storm dropped on us. Despite an initial forecast of four inches, we wound up with 23. That’s complex and challenging. We’ve had resources working for 48 hours now [as of Sunday late afternoon]. The amazing thing is that only now, just 12 hours since the snow stopped falling.
• Things are going extremely well. With a snow storm of this magnitde comapred to what was expected could have crippled the city, when, in fact, people are able to travel, able to walk, able to shop. They have to do so carefully, but given the circumstances, the way the east coast has been hit, this is nothing short of amazing.

Lots of people got out and shot video.

Including participants in the annual Running of the Santas in the Northern Liberties neighborhood.

Philadelphia Weekly online editor Joel Mathis:

And this crew from Warnock Street, a small street that runs north to south throughout much of the city.

One week from yesterday three strangers riding beside me on the 3 bus will be dead.

But I can’t know it. It hasn’t happened, and I’ve never spoken to them before and won’t in the future. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even like know they were there, except for the boy, and that was only because his iPod was playing so loud I heard the bass of his trashy hip hop.

In just six days he will die on the same day as two others he doesn’t know.

I just want to get home without listening to what’s left of the music in some teenage boy’s ears.

I work at my uncle’s deli near Wissinoming Park. Normally my boyfriend picks me up after his afternoon class at Holy Family and has dinner with my dad and me in Port Richmond, but he has some group project. So I’m on the 3 with Jimmy Quinn.

Jimmy is wearing a big white tee-shirt, the kind that boys in my neighborhood stopped wearing like forever ago. He has black velor sweat pants and new Adidas basketball sneakers, white and black with red outline. A white wire hangs out of his pocket and is pulled up is side, split below his neck into buds tucked into either of floppy ears. He has big teeth with a space in the middle. I only know that because for a minute before we stopped near Oxford to unload some really sweaty Indian guy, Jimmy got really into some part of his song and started rapping. Totally quiet, but I saw that gap and those big teeth.

If I knew him, I might have known he was 19 and going to his grandma’s house to pick up his little brother who loves Jimmy like about as much as anyone ever has. Jimmy likes basketball but is bad and computers but only has an original PlayStation. That’s the old one, but I only know that because of my little cousin, who lives with my dad and me because his mom does drugs and is like a huge waste. Jimmy is from Fishtown and went to North Catholic. Now he delivers pizzas and smokes like tons of weed.

Six days from now he’ll die.

Jimmy is in a two-seater on the right side near the middle of the bus – I always sit in the back of the bus after this one time when this stupid kid put gum in my hair from behind me – and has his left foot on the back of the bar on the side of the seat in front of him.

In that seat is like the oldest lady I ever seen.

Frances has turquoise shirt with lots of little dots and has short white hair, lots of but not real long. She has a real long face with crazy little wrinkles that all intersect and make her face seem like stone, like she got a wrinkle for every hard day she ever lived. If her eyes – which I saw when she turned around to see if Jimmy really did mean to have his music so loud we could all hear it – were any indication, she had like a million hard days.

Frances was born in 1932 and grew up on Chatham Street in Port Richmond. She would steal penny gum drops from her parent’s candy store. Her father and mother worked alongside one another for 35 years, selling cigarettes to men in the morning, cabbage to women in the day, and candy to children in the afternoon.

At 18, Frances married a boy named Walter who was born in 1909 and grew up on Chatham Street in Port Richmond. He would steal bottle caps from his parent’s tavern on Aramingo. By the 1950s, the pair had a nice rowhome in Wissinoming. She had already missed her stop, but I didn’t know that and, as we came to Torresdale, she was forgetting herself.

Six days from now she’ll die.

Across the aisle on the left side, facing the side of the bus where Jimmy and Frances are sitting forward is Pete Alullo.

He has short hair and looks pretty normal for an afternoon on the 3. He reminds me of my dad. Pete has a little stubble and is wearing a dark blue polo shirt tucked in blue jeans and white sneakers.

Before he was looking at me, but I didn’t see it. If I had I might have thought he was a creep looking at me, but he was actually thinking about how much I look like his daughter Amanda. That’s why he is riding the bus. Pete’s brother is borrowing his truck, and Amanda, with his wife, is using his car for her driver’s license test. They live in Frankford but he’s going to a friend’s garage to see about buying Amanda her own car. The garage is near Castor Ave., which we’re coming to next. Pete retired last year from the Philadelphia police and now works for a security company transferring money from banks. He drives an armored truck and stuff. Amanda is super close to him and is really happy he isn’t working as a Philly cop anymore.

Six days from now he’ll die.

Jimmy is getting off a few blocks from Castor. The first and last time I’ll ever see him. All I can think is how much I hate him because he made me listen to his irritating music for like an hour on this stupid bus.

One week from yesterday just after 3 a.m., Jimmy is going to flip his grandmother’s 1989 Buick LeSabre into the river off Delaware Avenue.

He’ll be driving like 75 and will be totally wacked after having way too much Naty Ice at his friend’s older brother’s house party on American Street by Spring Garden.

It even will get mentioned in the newspaper because two guys will be smoking outside a bar across from where Jimmy crashes over the curb. They will run like hell to the river and like jump in. The will pull Jimmy out of the car and actually get him on the ground but endings are only as good as the action in movies.

Frances just stood up and sat down. Like she was resetting the whole bus ride and could fix that she didn’t know where she was.

Every morning for about 100 years, Frances woke up 6 a.m. One week from yesterday she won’t. She has lung cancer – which explains all the coughing, which almost makes me as mad as the music – but that won’t be what kills her. Her mind had been slipping a lot. Forgetting stuff, stuff she’d never forget. But she’d always remember those gum drops. She loved gum drops. It’s good to remember when you can only seem to forget. But I guess you can’t die of forgetting or remembering.

Her heart will just stop beating. I don’t know why. I’m not no doctor. I just think there should be a lot more attention paid to the idea that somewhere at 5:30 a.m. on some random morning next week a woman’s heart who had been beating just fine since before World War II will suddenly just stop.

I see Pete shaking hands and laughing with some mechanic guy as this bus sits at a red light at Castor. He’s smiling.

One week from yesterday at 2:19 p.m., according to security cameras, some black guy will come running up and shoot Pete’s partner like 1,000 times. Pete will get off a shot before getting the same end. The black guy will take about $1,100 and leave two men in their 50s who retired from cop jobs for safety and comfort. Two men in their 50s with daughters and wives.

I’ll never see Pete again, if I ever saw him. I’ll never know Frances or meet Jimmy. They’ll never know each other either, but six days from now.