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.