How Many More

52nd and Market stands directly in the middle of Philadelphia's discussion about guns and violence. These signs are posted just north of 52nd and Market on the fence next to the Antioch Universal church. In the last year, according to the NBC10 "Safer City Map," 6 young men have been shot and killed. One community response is the 52nd St. Advanced Town Watch
and their new program, Town Watch Ranger.

Tropical Choice

The neighborhood is home to an established and growing community of Caribbean immigrants. Restaurants, small groceries, and bakeries supply not only native food and community gathering place, but a location to advertise Caribbean musical and culture events in the city. Often the sponsorship and advertisement of these events, particularly reggae events, overlaps with the Ethiopian community, who also maintains restaurants and a book store off on 52nd St.

bus routes

52nd and Market isn't just a subway stop. 52nd street is a major city thoroughfare, connection people to West Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, Northwest Philadelphia, and across the bridge into Center City.

31 route map

52 route map

64 route map

Making Do

Elmer Smith has it right. People in the neighborhood do "make do." We make do without a real grocery store, without a place to buy a newspaper, with the trash and old tires that get dumped in our abandoned lots and under the El tracks, left for weeks or months because they aren't on the city's official "pick-up" list. We make do with the broken glass, with the abandoned properties, with the El stop that shuts down every weekend. We keep making do. When Mr. Smith describes the 52nd and Market street of his youth, he's careful not to romanticize - every urban area has its problems. But he's right when he says that times have changed, and right when he says:

"SEPTA owes something extra to a neighborhood where local commerce has been devastated by a five-year shutdown for its Market-Frankford El reconstruction. SEPTA is spending a half-billion dollars along Market Street, virtually none of it going to local people.

Meanwhile, their streets grow darker and more dangerous as stores close, street lights get moved and auto traffic gets diverted."

For the full article, see the column in the Daily News.

What's It About

52nd and Market. What it is: an El stop, closed most weekends; a business corridor, hampered by SEPTA's delayed construction; the center of the former "Main Street" of West Philadelphia; the corner where politicians start off their campaigns to show they're "of the people"; the center of two police districts; my neighborhood.

What it's called: the most dangerous corner in Philadelphia; the "ghetto"; a wasteland; beyond gentrification.

This page is an attempt to separate what it is (to the people who live here) from what it's called (to the people who label it, write about it, avoid it). Ethnographic in premise, it's about collecting the stories, through image, text and testimony, that are the life of the assemblage, the paste of the collage, the truth of the place.

Face North

image courtesy: julywonder.wordpress.com