[dovate.com] » neighborhoods
I grew up in a strange little corner of Philadelphia called Mt. Airy. If you’ve never been there, Mt. Airy is like a college town without a college… or students. Imagine West Philly if all the Penn kids died, all the poor people were middle class, all the gentrifiers were 30 years older and all the punks were trees. That’s Mt. Airy.
I love the place, but it also gets on my fucking nerves. Mt. Airy is full of people who wear socks with their sandals. Everyone power walks and eats lots of sprouts. Weaver’s Way co-op, (the beating, bloody heart of the neighborhood) is half Whole Foods and half dive-bar behind a strip club at last call. Levels of self satisfaction are nearly intolerable. There are a lot of Jewish people, but half of them are Buddhists. It’s full of lesbian couples with Chinese babies, men with gray pony tails, reiki practitioners and people wearing fanny packs.
It’s also one of the few, fairly well integrated, middle class neighborhoods in the city. While it’s not as well mixed as a place like Kensington, it’s also not desperately poor or terrifyingly violent. These qualities help it stand apart from other Philadelphia neighborhoods and make me use words like ’successful’ when I’m describing it.
But getting back to annoyances, residents tend hold the place up like some kind of Barack Obama Utopia. For example, look at this offensively self congratulatory, and annoyingly pompous passage from Wikipedia:
The area is recognized by many civil rights groups as one of the first successfully integrated neighborhoods in America. [5][6] Mount Airy continues to be the most well-blended neighborhood in Philadelphia, and was recently cited in Oprah Winfrey’s O magazine for its racial diversity and neighborhood appeal. The community has also been recognized by US News & World Report for racial harmony and balance.
…Also a Hare Krishna community is located on West Allens Lane. Mount Airy has long been the neighborhood of choice for the city’s elite African Americans…
Who the hell writes this shit? But anyway, the racial “harmony and balance” front, Mt. Airy does actually do a lot better than most places. It’s also got tons of kids and green space and is an all around great place to live if you have a kid or plan on making one.
But what’s the point of this post? I think there was one when I started, but I can’t seem to remember it. Why the hell does it have to have a point anyway? That’s all for now.
