Search Results for: valley of the shadow deeney

[Photos by JUSTIN ROMAN] BY JEFF DEENEY Near the corner off 11th and Tioga is a memorial set up around the base of stop sign for Tim Haines, aka Boosa, a 24 year old who was gunned down here one early Saturday morning late last month during a violent weekend that left five dead citywide. This is a neighborhood I know fairly well; as a social worker I had a client who lived nearby and longtime readers might remember that around this time last year I got caught in the middle of a daytime shoot out around the corner on […]

[Photos by JUSTIN ROMAN] BY JEFF DEENEY Possibly the largest and most elaborate memorial we’ve seen so far is the mountainous pile of stuffed animals, votive candles and other assorted personal objects stacked up on the corner of American Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue. There’s a reason for its enormity: On Jan. 13, three young Latin kids from nearby neighborhoods were killed here in an auto accident that rocked the community and spurred an outpouring of sympathy for the victims’ families. The accident was a hit-and-run — the other vehicle’s driver, Hanifasim Saed Presley, fled the scene on foot […]

[Photos by JUSTIN ROMAN] BY JEFF DEENEY We discovered the pile of teddy bears gathered around the base of a stop light at 54th and Kingsessing while on our way to the scene of another recent homicide in Southwest Philly. This wasn’t the first time we stumbled upon a street memorial by accident while en route to another site; it isn’t surprising in this extremely violent part of town, and especially not along Kingsessing Avenue, which has had a double-digit number of shootings and homicides along its length over the last two years. A clue as to who is memorialized […]

[Photos by JUSTIN ROMAN] TEXT BY JEFF DEENEY The twisting network of back streets between the 5000 blocks of Westminster and Haverford Avenues in West Philly includes Hoopes, Ogden, Parrish, Funston, Reno and Farston; here you’ll find some of the city’s bleakest sights. Abandoned houses that are practically falling down and have been converted to drug establishments line each of these streets. At the heart of the neighborhood is dreary, mostly concrete park with decaying and graffiti-covered basketball courts called, “The Pit.” This is not a place to come joy riding: Last year there were three homicides, eight shootings and […]

[Photos by JUSTIN ROMAN] BY JEFF DEENEY On Lippincott Street, just east of Kensington Avenue, the entire west-facing wall of one row home is dedicated to Andrew Strimel, a 19-year-old murdered almost a year ago today during what was an outrageous weekend of violence that left 10 dead citywide. His street name, “Ice,” rises balloon-like, as if the fat, graffiti-style writing is filled with helium, afloat above a tiny grass lot between houses. The same name is written everywhere on the surrounding blocks, as if his friends got carried away by their grief, tagging “RIP Andrew” on house facades and […]

[Photo by JUSTIN ROMAN] The Valley of the Shadow is an ongoing series documenting how those in Philadelphia’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods publicly mourn and commemorate their dead. Jeff Deeney knows these neighborhoods well from his days as a social worker. The hope is to shine a light on the city’s untouchables, brighten the darkest corners and gather-and-share ultra-vivid and all-too-real stories of loss, grief and remembrance. BY JEFF DEENEY One of the hard things about being a social worker in Philadelphia is seeing your client’s block turn up in newspaper crime reports. Sometimes details about shootings and homicides […]

[Photos by JUSTIN ROMAN] EDITOR’S NOTE: The Valley of the Shadow is an ongoing series documenting how those in Philadelphia’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods publicly mourn and commemorate their dead. Jeff Deeney knows these neighborhoods well from his days as a social worker. The hope is to shine a light on the city’s untouchables, brighten the darkest corners and gather-and-share ultra-vivid and all-too-real stories of loss, grief and remembrance. * BY JEFF DEENEY The air around the Norris Apartments — the high-rise housing project on the eastern fringe of Temple University’s campus — is thick with blunt smoke on […]

[photos by JUSTIN ROMAN] EDITOR’S NOTE: The Valley of the Shadow is an ongoing series documenting how those in Philadelphia’s poorest and most violent neighborhoods publicly mourn and commemorate their dead. Jeff Deeney knows these neighborhoods well from his days as a social worker. The object is to cast Philadelphia’s disadvantaged in a new light, brighten the darkest corners and gather-and-share compelling personal stories of loss, grief and remembrance. BY JEFF DEENEY On the corner of 52nd and Larchwood, across from West Philadelphia’s vibrant and thriving Malcolm X Park, on the south facing wall of the Food Plus corner store, […]

[Photos by JONATHAN VALANIA] BY JEFF DEENEY It’s been a while since I took a look at what’s going on with the many graffiti walls around town, so here’s a quick update. The most recent addition to the graffiti wall scene in North Philly is on the lower edge of the Badlands at 4th and Susquehanna; the center piece of this small collection of modest mural pieces is a portrait of Mumia Abu-Jamal just psychedelic enough to be confused for George Clinton from a distance. As recent as last summer these walls were bare so it’s nice to see some […]