where we live now

Philadelphia is a dump. For everyone who likes the ‘artsiness’ and the ‘uniqueness’ of the city, I’d just like to say that it’s hard for me to appreciate the finer aesthetics when I feel like I’m going to get mugged walking to and from campus every day. Last month, there have been gangs of eight to ten year olds racing around on their little bikes both on campus and around my apartment. Things aren’t looking up when you consider that people have been mugged on campus before. A few years ago, someone was mugged on Sunday at 5PM, before dark.

Despite the new housing projects that are popping up in Philadelphia, the streets teem with homeless people, beggars, winos, and dirt. I try to avoid the subway at all costs not only because it smells like piss on a good day, but because I’m usually the only non-African American there. When I first moved to Philadelphia, I rode the subway until I became bothered by the real or imagined looks others were giving me (probably imaginary). Now I just dish out the ten dollars for a cab ride, which is preferable to the possibility of getting stabbed or shot.

Over Christmas, someone was killed at the subway stop just twenty feet away from my department. Of course, the campus is much better than it was six years ago. Now there are restaurants, a supermarket, and a security guard on every corner for twenty blocks. I suppose that the chances are low that I’ll get mugged if I don’t walk home after 10PM or intoxicated. Sundays are the worst because everyone comes out and wanders the streets on that most holy day. I guess they work or do whatever it is they do for the rest of the week.

Nor is the danger solely from the bums wandering the cracked and dirt filled streets. Penn is aptly nicknamed the Australia of the Ivies. Last year, I was sitting in four classes with an Econ student who was a convicted child molester. In fact, he lived rent free in Buck’s County Prison every night. Having never sat next to him or spoken to him, I was still freaked upon finding out in May. I’ve had many disagreements with my colleagues, who believe in ‘forgive and forget’. I suppose I’m just a bit less forgiving, not that it matters since he doesn’t prefer girls anyway.

Of course, this doesn’t include the marketing professor who went to Thailand and came back with a massive load of child porn tapes, many of which he taped. Nor to say anything about the econ professor who is accused of beating his wife to death, and so badly that she was unrecognizable. Then there are minor cases of some Penn student putting fifteen rounds through his ex-girlfriend’s door at Drexel or something of that sort. At other schools, the largest scandal is plagiarizing. Here, we have events that are grotesquely Hollywood-esque in their scope and execution.

I’ve become a proponent of the nurture side of the nature vs. nurture argument. It seems wrong that there is indeed so much wrong in a city that was once the pinnacle of sophistication and knowledge.