Search Results for: Today I Saw Deeney

BY JEFF DEENEY The Inquirer’s first attempt at serious homelessness coverage in a long time, imaginatively titled “Homelessness in Philadelphia,” saw the first of its three parts run in the Sunday paper. You might remember back in November that I took a swipe at Inky writers Jennifer Lin and Joseph Slobodzian for peddling the same weak sauce the Inky usually peddles when it comes to homelessness and linked to a hard hitting series by the Boston Globe that did it right and won accolades. Imagine this: four months later Lin and Slobodzian return with a series just like the Globe’s that […]

BY JEFF DEENEY TODAY I SAW the whitewashed statue of a saluting soldier on the corner of 61st and Grays Avenue (no, not Gray’s Ferry) in the Southwest. The statue is surrounded by protective, thigh-high black iron gating and red, white and blue-painted poles. The soldier is dressed in a World War II uniform and wearing a side cap; the statue itself is on a crumbling slab of concrete next to a tiny brown brick VFW Hall. There are a handful of obvious crack houses on tiny Glenmore Street, which runs parallel to Grays Avenue. You can tell they’re hit […]

BY JEFF DEENEY Newly anointed police chief Ramsey released his crime fighting strategy yesterday, a very readable and accessible 22 page document that provides a first look into the mind of the man who will be leading the charge against violent crime as the Nutter administration ramps up. The Nutter administration continues to look promising to me; he’s moved fast to get promised policy documents into the public’s hands and there is a sense I think most of us share that some shit is finally starting to get done around here. Last week some major, desperately needed changes were announced […]

BY JEFF DEENEY Today I saw a confused young man having a meltdown behind the counter of the McDonald’s on 52nd and Chestnut Street. His uniform was oversized and he had a dark, long-sleeved shirt on under his uniform that looked unwashed. His grease-stained visor’s brim was pulled down low to obscure his eyes. He rang my order up wrong, so I repeated it slowly, thinking maybe he misheard me. It was crowded and loud, and I figured my order was drowned out by the noise. I tilted my head a bit to see if he was listening, but he […]

BY JEFF DEENEY TODAY I SAW a woman wearing an ankle-length denim coat over her pajamas. She had on a backward baseball cap and bedroom slippers. She was holding two quarters between her thumb and forefinger, waving them at the middle-aged Chinese couple sitting on stools at the take out joint counter on Lindbergh Boulevard across from the Bartram Village projects in the Southwest. The couple was protected by two offset Plexiglas panes that overlapped, creating a bulletproof shield that stretched the entire length of the counter. There was an open lane between the two panes where food and money […]

[Illustration by Alex Fine] BY JEFF DEENEY Today I Saw… is a series of nonfiction shorts based on my experiences as a caseworker serving formerly homeless families now living in North and West Philadelphia. I decided not long after starting the job that I was seeing so many fascinating and disturbing things in the city’s poorest neighborhoods that I needed to start cataloging them. I hope this bi-weekly column serves as a record of a side of the city that many Philadelphians don’t come in contact with on a daily basis. I want to capture moments not frequently covered by […]

BY JEFF DEENEY TODAY I SAW a crowd of boys and girls playing with their Christmas toys in front of a dingy brown brick three-story low rise at the Bartram Village projects in the southwest. A couple of the little boys got remote control monster trucks and were making them zip along the concrete path that winds between the clusters of apartment buildings. One boy in a brown parka with a fur lined hood made his truck duck under the low railing made from black-painted metal pipes that follows the entire length of the path. The truck wildly bounded along […]

BY JEFF DEENEY TODAY I SAW an ambulance slowly snaking east through heavy traffic on Allegheny Avenue. It came to a stall halfway through the intersection with Kensington Avenue, where traffic stood clogged, cars line up from nose to tail. The ambulance driver loudly laid on the horn and cleared a narrow path to sneak through. Once out from under the El the ambulance swung around, making a u-turn and pulling up right to where I was standing on the northeast corner. When the EMTs got out they looked around, trying to spot the person who made the 911 call. […]

  BY JEFF DEENEY TODAY I SAW two 16-ft. moving trucks parked back-to-back in front of Mantua Hall, their loading ramps extended so they almost touched each other. Every day is moving day now. The building is slated to be emptied by the end of the year, and while most families have already left there are still some stragglers waiting for the Philadelphia Housing Authority to approve their new scatter-site placements. PHA is paying for the families to relocate, so the moving trucks come in pairs and when one leaves another arrives. The process is orderly, and as efficient as […]

BY JEFF DEENEY TODAY I SAW a powder blue-and-white pickup truck pull up to the curb across from where I stood, mid-block on a side street near 29th and Dauphin in Strawberry Mansion. The truck’s cab was piled with scrap metal and appliance parts, precariously held in place by a single length of corded yellow rope. I had been standing around, waiting for someone and making small talk with a neighbor for a minute before the truck stopped and parked. The house over my left shoulder was boarded up and abandoned. The house directly behind me had a storm door […]

  BY JEFF DEENEY TODAY I SAW a long line of people waiting to turn their cell phones in at the Criminal Justice Center. That’s the first stop on the way to criminal court; everyone stands in a line that snakes through the lobby for five minutes before handing over their phones to a white guy in jeans and a sweatshirt who stands in front of a big box with hundreds of sliding compartments. He’s usually listening to classic rock radio but today he was singing the Eagles fight song while furiously snatching phones and handing out numbered plastic chips […]

  BY JEFF DEENEY TODAY I SAW a young white couple with two small kids, arguing underneath the 60 bus shelter at Frankford and Allegheny. Dad wore a white hooded sweat jacket, patterned with red-outlined skulls. The skulls were arranged arbitrarily, like they were piled on top of each other. He wore construction boots air brushed with graffiti tags along the uppers. His girl wore a Rocawear winter jacket that had a tight, knitted waist and fur around the hood. She had on skin-tight jeans that her redheaded children, one boy and one girl, clung to. Her complexion was pasty […]

  BY JEFF DEENEY TODAY I SAW a one-eyed cat with no tail, blocking the entrance to a unit in Bartram Village, a low-rise housing project in the Southwest. When he saw me coming he looked back at me defiantly until I started up the steps; he was slow to jump into the garbage-strewn grass, walking off with a limp. As the cat walked away, I could see that the tail wasn’t missing so much as it was torn off. A shred of it remained, stuck up in the air at an odd angle. Bartram Village is a sprawling complex […]