Tag: Frankford Is Waiting

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The Residents of the 1300 Block of Harrison Street Need Your Help Maria

burned-house-wreckageSo I was just surfing the net on Saturday and found my way over to Phillyblog.  And there I found a new post by the_town_drunk bringing up the issue of the fire that gutted 1338 Harrison St.  Now I’m jre on there and as you can see I pointed him back to our site where I took pictures of the disgusting mess in the front yard a couple weeks ago.

But you know what occurred to me this morning?  I didn’t do anything else about it.  I shook my head and thought how pathetic it was but went on with my day.  That’s what a lot of Frankford residents do.  Do you know why we get drug and halfway houses?  Because no one complains.  Bustleton gets 500 people to show up when they have a methadone clinic coming to Grant and the boulevard.  But I’ve been to meetings here where the city pols and social service people outnumber residents.  Let’s start to change that, shall we?  But let’s take baby steps.  I’m gonna start with this freaking mess on Harrison Street.  I’m gonna hold someone accountable for this.  I’ve sent this email to councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez(Maria.Q.Sanchez@phila.gov) this morning.  We’ll start with her and see where it leads.  I know she reads her email because she talked to my father after he sent her one about the halfway houses at Church and Griscom.  This is what I said:

Councilwoman Sanchez,

I’m a resident of Frankford and the webmaster for the Frankford Gazette news blog(http://gloomyhappy.wpengine.com).  I’m writing you in regard to 1338 Harrison St.  It looks to have suffered a fire some time ago but it’s wreckage has been sitting in front (what would loosely be referred to as a ) lawn for more than a month.  I drive by it every day.  I have taken pictures of it and posted it on our blog(http://gloomyhappy.wpengine.com/2009/03/31/frankford-has-burned/).  As you can see it is an eye sore, and represents a quality of life issue for its surrounding residents.  And we would like this junk removed.

I am emailing you because I think you may be able to spearhead this project.  If I have misunderstood your role in constituent services regarding matters like this, or if I need to contact someone else, please let me know.  But also let me know if you are going to take actions to resolve this quality of life issue for the residents of your district, as I have published this email to you on our site(http://gloomyhappy.wpengine.com/2010/04/14/the-residents-of-the-1300-block-of-harrison-street-need-your-help-maria/).  I’m considering this an experiment on the role of new media( i.e. local news blogs) and interactions between residents and their politicians.  I will track the progress (or lack there of) of this issue on the blog for the residents of Frankford to see.

Regards
Jim

She also got my cell phone number.  I also copied her chief of staff Quetcy Lozada(Quetcy.Lozada@phila.gov).  So now I’m sitting here waiting.  I’ll publish her response.  I think this will be easy to fix, and after it’s done, let’s all tackle something harder.

[the entire saga] http://gloomyhappy.wpengine.com/tag/1338-harrison/

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Deal Street

Betsy Ross Bride - road to nowhere

In the late fifties, the city was planning to build the Pulaski Expressway from the Betsy Ross Bridge to Roosevelt Boulevard.  Someone on Wikimapia actually mapped out it’s path.  Awesome idea, except if you lived on Deal Street.  That’s because the city was going to eminent domain your house so the highway could go there.  Neighborhood backlash(presumably from Frankfordites) stopped the project, but not until years of debate took place.  And in that kind of situation you really don’t want the fate of your house up in the air for a couple decades.  You can’t sell it because no one wants to buy a house that’s going to be seized.  And you can’t move because the city hasn’t given you any money for taking it yet.  So what do you do?  You let your house rot.  See those houses down the street next to that first car?  They’re wrapped in a metal chain mail that I’m guessing is keeping them from falling over and spilling in into the streets.  So what’s going to save Deal Street?  It’s the Frankford Greenway Project. Here’s the nitty gritty.

Deal Street

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Google Stuns Gazette, Serves Up Ads Unrelated to Drug Dependency

googlead

We embed ads on this site to offset the cost of running The Frankford Gazette.  So far that cost is coming to $4.99 a month from Godaddy to host us, and $24.99 a year for the business cards from VistaPrint.  In 18 months of running ads, we’ve made a whopping $27.11.  I’ve blamed Google for our lackluster ad sales because all they run are drug dependency related adverts.  So it was with great joy that I found Google had placed ads for driver’s ed and locker room storage on our pages instead of the usual treatment addiction.

Now for the unitiated, I do not get to pick the ads that get shown here, Google does.  It searches the site for relevant content in our site(stuff we post) and it looks into it’s databases to see what it knows about Frankford(lots of drug rehab goodness).  And so we end up getting ads about overcoming methadone addiction, drug rehabs, etc.  So hopefully as we find more and more things to post about Frankford not related to crime and drugs, Google will change what it thinks about Frankford and modify it’s advertising accordingly.  At the very least, keep an eye on our “Ads by Google”, sometimes they can be most amusing.

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Freelance Journalist and All Around Awesome Guy Found Living in Frankford

Christopher WinkChris Wink appears to be quite awesome.  Here he is being named one of the 100 top young journalists by UWire.  He’s written for the Philadelphia Weekly.  He has spoken at Temple’s 08 Commencement, and has been a guest on Fox 29 talking about politics and shit.

My father found him 3 days ago blogging about moving in, and I met his unphotoshopped self last night when he actually showed up at the halfway house Town Hall Meeting and talked about community involvement.

In all seriousness, I don’t usually call any non politician out by name, but on account of how he’s thrown himself up all over the internet, I just had to bring him up.  I had always considered Frankford a hidden gem, that only I knew about because I grew up here.  But apparently others are finding out too.  That someone as cool as this made a (probably) rational choice to come stay here a while gives me a lot of hope, because the reasons he chose Frankford were the same as mine, and now that makes two of us.  Now where’s my third?

[link] http://christopherwink.wordpress.com/

[link] http://twitter.com/christopherwink

[link] http://neastmag.wordpress.com/author/cgwink/

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Phillyskyline Honors Frankford with a Visit

phillyskylinewalkingtourI am a huge fan of phillyskyline.  Like huge, don’t get me started.  Brad Maule has done an incredible job telling the story of Philadelphia through his photo essays.  They recently did some excellent work while walking from the Church Street El stop down to the Matt Papajohn’s Globe Dye Works on Torresdale Ave.  You can see it here.  There’s also a companion piece by Nathaniel Popkin who accompanied Mr Maule on his journey.

If he ever came back, I’d love to see him head west and tackle the Frankford Creek and the mills around Adams Ave.  There’s a lot more to Frankford than a trip down Church St and some shots from the El stops,  but this was an excellent start.