This thread is eliciting a lot of strong feelings for me:
1) Tragic that any government on Earth can fail its citizens to this degree
2) I don't like how Kensington is talked about as a shitty neighborhood, worst place on Earth, someplace you should avoid at any cost. I recall an experience I had volunteering to help go into people's homes in Kensington and testing for lead paint / educating folks about dangers of lead exposure. I had to attend an all-day training with all the field workers being deployed for this, many of which were folks coming in from the suburbs. At one point someone in the audience asked about the safety of Kensington and you can feel pin drop in room as fear enveloped some folks when facilitators where being frank about the situation - to the point it felt like many would have backed out had they known about its reputation beforehand. Which sucks - that putting a label like this to a place that could use help and support will just drive folks away from doing so. Kind of like a death spiral in a way, people hear a place is bad and so those in position to help avoid the place so conditions worsen overtime so people feel even less inclined to help....I try to be mindful and not name the neighborhood or imply people themselves are the problem in these areas. I'd rather frame this as the tragic situations that they are.
3) This video feels like some type of poverty tourism with the way the camera goes out of the way to focus its attention drugged-up folks. I watch enough of these walking tour videos to know this doesn't happen. Again reminds me of when my college decided to make an assignment sending students to observe Frankford in some kinda poverty zoo-type of observation exercise. Made it all the weirder since I lived near Frankford.
4) I grew up near Frankford and in Olney. I've never seen anything this extreme, but the sights here aren't unfamiliar to me. I've started feeling introspective watching this video - I grew-up thinking everyone had the experience of having neighborhood like this around them or at least passing by them often. Took me until college and being introduced to true suburban folks to realize oh man that is not the case like at all. It totally helped me understand why people get nervous for safety in areas that I otherwise felt generally fine with. At same time, I wonder to what extend growing up where I did has impacted me and whether it's warped my sense of what is acceptable or not.
5) I'm wondering whether you have tried Mexican restaurants in South Philly at all? There is a shitload of Mexican restaurants in that area. I've never heard of this place before, but I'd be very interested in knowing what stands out with this place vs all others...because the pictures on the website don't seem all that special to me as a Mexican-American.
I didn't expect to have all these thoughts triggered when clicking this thread, but just wanted to post them something to help make sense of things.
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