The recent shooting death of a man outside the PYT burger joint and bar in the Piazza at Schmidts in Northern Liberties got me thinking about how glad I am that I live in an obscure neighborhood between Fishtown and Port Richmond.
The area I call home is nice without being too nice. By too nice I mean there are no outdoor cafes, yoga class storefronts, gourmet beer tasting salons or doggie-sitting day care centers. While I sometimes wish that my neighborhood had more of the “business” benefits of living in Northern Liberties—The Hinge restaurant at 2652 East Somerset Street is one notable exception, as is Villagio Pizza and Café at 2533 East Clearfield Street, probably the best BYOB in Port Richmond—I also realize that you cannot have a host of delectable upscale businesses without paying a price.
That price seems to be, sadly and regrettably, more crime.
Intense gentrification that attracts an influx of specialized and expensive businesses has its good points: You get a beautiful looking neighborhood; you generally get people who care about litter and the environment and who keep their properties clean. This is what I wanted for my neighborhood when I first moved here almost ten years ago. While I have seen amazing changes around my home turf—the bulldozing of the remnants of an old paint factory and the construction of a WAWA and a restaurant that I almost never patronize—I have to say that the peculiar location of my street—it is at an odd angle to I-95—provides a kind of isolation, a “secret cul de sac” feel that shields it from the maddening crowd.
A would-be criminal would have to be crazy to want to come into my neighborhood expecting to get something for nothing. The most that a vagabond criminal would hope to gain would be a cheap five and dime shoplifting spree at a Mom and Pop corner store.
If someone were to plan a home invasion here (there were five home invasions in one week in the Holmesburg section of the city recently), the culprits would be lucky to get past neighborhood dogs, not to mention the ever- watchful eye of the people who like to hang on corners and stoops. These are often guys that outsiders might classify as toughs because in many cases they have a slightly hooligan edge, but it is these same toughs who provide an invaluable service by always being there like unofficial street sentries.
The problem with Northern Liberties is this: When a neighborhood gets too upscale, the street sentry types (or toughs) disappear and you are left with empty stoops and street corners, all of which looks nice on the outside, but which does nothing for the pop-up radar that these indigenous corner hangers provide—unless, of course, the corner hangers are criminals themselves, but that’s another story.
Generally, people from other parts of the city don’t come to my neighborhood—I call it The Rustic Triangle— to party, unless a friend fills them in on the special delights of neighborhood bars like Green Rock or (the more down home) Ruthie’s at Lehigh and Edgemont, with its free home cooked grub and working pool table. People from other parts of the city rarely have the verve to explore entertainment destinations outside the “What’s Hot” loop. As they say, it “takes an eye” to see interesting places, even if the location flunks the Cool Test.
Northern Liberties, which has been praised as a jewel of urban renewal, is much like a delicious oasis surrounded by less beautiful aspects of the city.
Attracting endless streams of outsiders is the logical outgrowth of the PR glitz surrounding NL. After all, there’s no way that an attractive neighborhood like NL could devise a filtering system to keep undesirables out short of opting to become a gated community. But in a city as economically depressed as our own, the reality is that oftentimes many outsiders whom the people in NL tried to escape are going to be the very ones pounding at the door and wanting to visit.
I know it’s true for me as well as for a lot of people that the attractiveness of NL can often lull one into believing that because the area is nice, bad things can’t happen here. This is obviously cultivates a false sense of security, especially when NL is surrounded by neighborhoods untouched by the Burt Blattstein wand.
The myth that trouble, violence and even murder only happens in the bad neighborhoods is one that still dies hard.
Of course, a call for increased police presence in a place like NL is a valid one, but do we really want police at every street corner so that our evening out becomes like a waltz through a barbed wire camp?
