City Safari: A Riverwards Chronicle

Wed, Aug 05, 2020

By Thom Nickels
Contributing Editor

"The city through its lack of services and inept leadership allowed this problem to get out of control.” -Hector Fuentes, owner of Four Sons Pizzeria in Kensingtonas reported in The Juniata News

In this virus plagued mask wearing time, the homeless continue to make their way through Philadelphia’s Riverwards neighborhoods, congregating at special locations like the Huntingdon Frankford Market El stations, the Somerset station and Kensington and Allegheny. Public panhandling with cardboard signs, including walking in traffic along many city streets has increased significantly in the past months.

This spike in homelessness and panhandling is ironic when you think of the general health precautions prevalent now in society. With every business requiring face masks, it’s not uncommon to see a homeless person sprawled out on the pavement a few feet from the front doors of these establishments. ‘Sprawled out’ as in lying on their backs, in some cases looking seriously ill or seriously drugged into a comatose state. Security guards prior to the coming of covid-19 were eager about keeping storefronts clear of loiterers but they now seem to have reached the point of sheer exhaustion. Are security guards tired of regulating so many legal channels simultaneously - policing the wearing of masks while policing the panhandling homeless?

Sheer exhaustion seems to be the state of many in the city now, as more and more of the homeless sit for hours atop trash and recycling containers outside my neighborhood WAWA and Rite Aid. Regular customers who would formerly register their objection to scenes such as this now just walk by with a shrug. Add to this the city’s trash collection crisis—the fact that the stench from uncollected trash covers entire blocks of some city neighborhoods—and you have another distressing development: the smells from uncollected trash are barely noticeable anymore.

This apathy, this exhaustion is in stark contrast to old images of business security guards who were once ready to pounce at the slightest behavioral deviation. These same guards are now more likely to stare indifferently into space as a drugged-out girl in dirty yogi pants stumbles into a WAWA sandwich counter, or wobbles aimlessly into other customers. Why pick on one poor girl when there are twenty more behind her and ten of her friends outside the store walking around aimlessly looking for money or drugs?

The "new” normal isn’t very normal, of course. That’s especially true when it comes to city restaurants.

I met a friend recently at the Riverwards’ Mercer Café. This friend wanted to take me to lunch because of an editing project I did for her. There was outside seating at the Mercer Café but because the sidewalk tables were in the sun (no umbrellas) during a heat wave, the prospect of getting a sun burn while dining seemed like a hellish thing. Our lunch date was slightly before August 1st,the day when Philadelphia restaurants and cafes were supposed to allow indoor dining. The mayor, of course, postponed the opening for indoor dining for another thirty days, offering to look at the situation at the end of August when I suspect he will postpone the opening yet again, and so on and so on.

We chatted with the owner of the Mercer Café and listened to her as she talked about the open restaurants and cafes just ten minutes away by car (outside the city limits) where indoor dining was allowed.

Meanwhile, a restaurant-bar near my home, Green Rock Tavern, has always been a popular burger and beer joint. When the city moved into its version of the green phase, Green Rock added outdoor seating so that now the sidewalk in front of the bar is packed with diners. The cliental has taken over the sidewalk making it impossible for neighbors to navigate past the bar. Worse, some bar patrons bring their dogs on leashes and allow their dogs to stretch out across the sidewalk as if the leash was a yellow Police ‘Do Not Cross’ tape.

Passersby have two choices: walk out into the street to avoid stepping over the dogs and the legs of bar patrons or to maintain their rights as ‘sidewalk pedestrians’ and walk straight through the tangle of humans and furry beasts. If you choose the latter, be prepared for a large dog to growl or jump up alongside you and be ready to see the annoyed looks of the diners who seem to think that you are infringing on their sidewalk rights.

Neighbors here have complained about Green Rock Tavern. The main complaints come from the owners of homes along Lehigh Avenue where Green Rock is located. One neighbor told me that drunken Green Rock weed and crack smoking revelers can sometimes be seen making love in their parked cars late at night as crack fumes "incense” the sidewalk.

My neighborhood, as you can see, is an interesting mix of old school Philly, gentrified Fishtown-style (pretentious) glitz, and a dash of oh-no-not-another-nail-salon predictability.

And then there’s Stock’s Bakery.

Stock’s Bakery is on the street where I live. It’s a quality German bakery famous for its pound cake. People flock here from the suburbs, from New Jersey, Delaware and elsewhere to store up on cakes, pies and cookies. Intense sweet bakery smells from Stock’s sometimes inundates my entire street so that it smells like a storybook lane in Hansel and Gretel. Whenever a holiday approaches, the lines outside Stock’s assume legendary proportions. Regular Stock’s customers tend to be big people: big thighs and hips. I have seen new employees there, male and female both, begin their tenure as thin, lean people but then over time morph into body bakery super sizes. Even the skinny guys who work in the back of the store soon mushroom into pound cake dough boys with 38 inch waists.

The quality of Stock’s measures up to the quality of a slice of pizza I had in pizza shop not far from the Frankford Market Huntingdon station.

I visited this pizza shop near the Huntingdon station during the height of the virus. It was a clean, large store that allowed only one person inside at a time to order take out. This particular shop offered large slices and the price was right so I decided to give it a try, very much aware that people who don’t know how to make pizza always make it with too much cheese. The cheese on these slices was nearly half an inch thick. If there was tomato sauce it was buried somewhere underneath all the layers of cheese. All you tasted was cheese. I might as well have been eating a block of Velveeta on doughy Dollar Store white Wonder bread. Most of the people buying slices and whole pies were people from the street or slick looking hustlers driving up in cars with black tinted windows. I ate the slice because I was hungry, but vowed I would never return to the place, having dubbed it "Addict’s pizza, or food for people with no taste. What can you expect from a pizza place so close to the Huntingdon El station?

A few months later I found myself in the same neighborhood, and experiencing another desire for pizza, I decided to give this place another slice. My experience this time was radically different. The woman-girl at the counter, I noticed, seemed to be of Irish descent, so as I ordered my slice, I felt quite comfortable chatting with her and telling her how I wished that this corner shop sold thin slice pizza with not too much cheese. At this her eyes perked up and she said, "Oh….I know just what you’re talking about,” never thinking that she’d actually concoct the kind of slice I had in mind. But that’s what she did. The woman behind the counter had worked a miracle.

That’s not the way things usually are near Kensington Avenue. The area is quite depressing and the food choices awful.

The Kensington area has taken a downturn since covid-19. There seem to be more strung out people on the streets, more panhandlers and more people stretched out on the sidewalk in various stages of disarray. Drug-induced mental illness seems to be at an all time high.

The area is so bad that The Juniata Newsreported on July 31, that Four Sons Pizzeria in Kensington is moving from its present location at 3145 Kensington Avenue to a new location at 186 W. Lehigh Avenue.

Four Sons Pizzeria is not the pizza parlor where I had that specially made gourmet slice, but Hector Fuentes, owner of Four Sons Pizzeria in Kensington, announced that he is moving his business from its location at 3145 Kensington Avenue.

The Juniata Newsreported Fuentes’ Facebook post about the dangerous environment on Kensington Avenue as the reason for making the move.
"So, after 50 years of serving the community in Kensington, 4 Son’s Pizzeria is moving. We could no longer stay in a place where the drug dealers, drug addicts and prostitutes outnumber hard working citizens. The city through its lack of services and inept leadership allowed this problem to get out of control. Business is great but allowing my family and coworkers as well as our loyal clientele to continue being in this dangerous environment is not only unjust but immoral on my part. To all our clients we will now be at 186 W. Lehigh Avenue starting August 1. We will still be offering the same great pizza and steaks that you have come to love and will continue delivering …”
"Fuentes,” the article continues, "Acknowledged problems with staffing employees because of the dangerous environment on Kensington Avenue.”

Fuentes apologized to customers for the delays in delivering food and blamed that on the unwillingness of people wanting to work for him because of all the drug infestation and crime in the area.