Counter-Currents
Phil Eiger Newmann, Rob Mob, 2020.
1,644 words
My mom once hit a black kid with her car in the area of West Philly where police shot and killed a knife-wielding, dreadlock-swinging, serial arrestee and prodigious impregnator of black baby mamas named Walter Wallace, Jr. last Monday afternoon.
Mind you, mom didn’t intentionally hit the black kid with her car, although I wouldn’t put it past her. My parents, especially my dad, were not fond of the blacks. (This was common with white parents back then.) But this little black kid came running out of an alley and bounced right off our fender. Mom was legally innocent, but that’s not how the black crowd that quickly formed around our vehicle seemed to view it. Mrs. Goad left me locked in the car as she went into one of those distinctive-looking West Philly row homes that go on for miles and miles in every direction with nary a white person to see as she dealt with insurance matters while a mob of blacks rocked the car back and forth.
Ironically, this was also the same part of Philly where my mother and her 10 siblings were raised by an Irish-Catholic single mom after the family patriarch decided to leave his dirty dozen and skip town with a younger lady during the Great Depression.
But by the time my mother’s fender had its unfortunate encounter with a young black child sometime in the early 1970s, all the Irish-Catholics seemed to have been driven out of West Philly, out to the Southwest fringes near the airport into the dismal toxic burbs of Delaware County and, ultimately, plunging downward into the state of Delaware itself, a place whose existence I have never been able to justify.
Mrs. Margaret Mary Goad settled the insurance matter with the black kid’s family and we got out of there unharmed. But it wasn’t the first time I’d been spooked by Philly’s spooks. A few years prior, when I was no older than six or seven, our family for some preposterous reason found ourselves driving through the endless ghetto wastelands of North Philly at night when a wild-eyed black male suddenly jumped out into the street toward my window in what was a successful attempt to not only scare this little white boy shitless, but to force me to wonder if he’d cast some sort of voodoo spell on me.
Back then, Philly was where we kept all the blacks. There were NONE in my hometown of Clifton Heights. My neighborhood seemed to consist exclusively of Irish and Italians, the latter of whom we deemed as half-black merely for being darker than us and arriving in the country later than we did.
Although it’s unforgivably ugly, the weather is unpleasant, the people are hideous and hostile, and everything there is crumbling to pieces as I write this, I will always love Philadelphia, America’s first great big city.
I recently described my ethnicity as “Philadelphian.” Maybe the term “American” had a cohesive meaning fifty years ago, but it obviously no longer does, but if there’s a culture that informs my crassness and anger and sense of humor, it would be that of the City of Brotherly Love, AKA Filthadelphia and Killadelphia. I’m prejudiced in favor of Philly not only because I’m from that area, but because if you’re from Philly, you’re prejudiced about everything. It is, by far, the most racially hostile place I’ve ever lived, and in these trying times, there’s something downright refreshing about that.
I’ve been to all fifty states and 29 of America’s 30 biggest cities. (Am I really missing anything with El Paso?) Off the top of my head, there are only three cities that I’d say are nothing like anywhere else in the USA. One is New Orleans, and I don’t expect many in the peanut gallery to argue with that. Another is San Francisco — only for the architecture and topography; the rest can burn for all I care. And the third is Philly, which has its own accent, its own cuisine (cheese steaks, hoagies, soft pretzels, Italian water ice, and scrapple), and a lingering image as the kind of place you’d be wise to avoid despite all of the history and cobblestone streets.
Philly is where sports fans throw snowballs at Santa Claus and cheer when an opposing player gets crippled. It’s where Frank Rizzo ran for mayor — and won — promising to “make Attila the Hun look like a faggot.” It’s an incurably angry place, yet that’s part of its charm. I’ve often suspected that the legendary chip on the town’s shoulder is due to the fact that it used to be the nation’s largest city and also its capital. Now it’s mostly a giant eyesore that people whizz by on I-95 South from New York to DC, the two towns that stepped on Philly’s neck to ascend to the top of the American shitpile.
When I was a kid, the city’s official population always seemed to hover around 2.1 million. Now it’s under 1.6 million.
I drove a cab in Philly for about three years during college to house and feed myself. I know every inch of that beautifully ghastly giant old town. So when I watch this week’s riot footage, I know those neighborhoods. I even know some of the buildings they’re torching. In some areas, there’s not even much left to torch. In parts of North Philly especially, there are entire ravaged blocks where only vestiges of one building stubbornly remain, jutting up like a rotten tooth among the ruins of Dresden.
Since the shooting and the subsequent riots occurred mere days before the election, the press has kept mostly mum about it all. What I’m able to piece together suggests that Walter Wallace, Jr. was a model for several Philadelphia photographers and according to many reports is the father of seven children — not bad work considering he’s 27. In 2013 he pled guilty to assault after punching a cop in the face. In 2017 he pled guilty to robbery, assault, and possessing an instrument of crime after he kicked down a woman’s door and held a gun to her head. At the time of his death, he was awaiting trial for allegedly threatening to enter a woman’s house and shoot her.
Wallace was described by a local news station as an “aspiring rapper” — of COURSE he was — and that his lyrics covered such socially conscious topics as shooting people and police. The day before his death, police responded to two different 911 calls regarding his “mental issues.” On the day they shot him, they were responding to another call his mother had placed. And yet after they shot him — as a direct result of him refusing to drop a knife and charging at them, funny how that works — she ran toward police and attacked them.
And then, naturally, the riots started.
Around 1989, I witnessed Hollywood cops shoot a white woman dead on N. Whitley Ave. after she stood on top of a car and started waving a knife around. No one rioted. White people never riot when a black person murders a white person — not even in Philly.
Much was made of Wallace’s “mental-health issues,” and overnight he transformed from a knife-wielding career criminal to a patron saint for the black disabled. Punks, pundits, and pussies the world over are demanding that police receive empathy training. “Cops should know how to defuse a tense situation,” demand the people who respond to tense situations by throwing violent temper tantrums for months.
Did Charles Manson’s lawyer ever try to argue that his client “suffered from mental-health issues”?
One of the lucky ten or so ATMs to be blown up during the riots so far was only about two blocks from a shoebox-sized apartment I rented during my last year in college.
I was made mildly queasy to hear that much of the looting occurred in the Port Richmond area near the Delaware River. Along with Kensington and Fishtown, that used to be one of the tough-as-nails working-class white neighborhoods just east of Center City. The 1970 book Whitetown USA noted correctly that Kensington Avenue, a dingy shopping area beneath the elevated train, was the unofficial racial dividing line between working-class white Philly and the endless brick tar-baby jungles of North Philly. Much of the first Rocky movie was filmed in Kensington. Blacks knew not to cross the line into Kensington, Fishtown, and Port Richmond, and the gritty, crank-snorting whites in those neighborhoods didn’t dare set foot in North Philly after dark.
And now officials are telling residents of Kensington and Port Richmond to stay inside and hide due to all the blacks who are rioting just outside their doors. The white veil has been pierced. Kensington and Port Richmond have been conquered.
My Aunt Marion was the funniest woman I ever met, but unlike my mom and her 10 siblings, she stuck around in Southwest Philly long after blacks began creeping in en masse. She died alone in her late 80s in a neighborhood where young black kids threw rocks at her. I got physically sick early this past summer when I saw footage of blacks looting the Sun-Ray Drugs right near Aunt Marion’s old house.
Even my all-white hometown of Clifton Heights is now 21.4% black.
Seeing all this happen cuts a part out of me.
What ruined this archetypal American town, the first true big American city? It was the brothers who killed the City of Brotherly Love.
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25 comments
“…plunging downward into the state of Delaware itself, a place whose existence I have never been able to justify.”
I’ve seriously wondered that myself. It’s like the vestigial appendix of the nation.
“It’s unforgivably ugly, the weather is unpleasant, the people are hideous and hostile, and everything there is crumbling to pieces.”
Philadelphia is the meanest and most wretched city that I’ve ever been to. Everything west of there should form it’s own state to be rid of it.
“…hoagies…”
I hope to never see that word in print again. Ever.
Hitch Philadelphia to New Jersey, and name the new conglomerate Wakanda. Wall it all off, and make it the official north American black homeland.
What’s a matter you don’t like hoagies? Hoagies are delicious!
“Philadelphia is the meanest and most wretched city that I’ve ever been to.”
I take it you’ve never crossed the river and visited Camden then.
Camden is like Newark: fully minoritized for decades and just depressing. Philly still has that odd mix of loyal locals who aren’t afraid to speak or fist up.
Just wait until next Tue night. These “Peaceful Protests” almost certainly will erupt in 100s of cities across the US – regardless of who wins. My guess is that Trump will have “won” the first count that night, followed the next few days by the arrival of pallets of ballots in swing state cities like Philly, Miami, Detroit, and Cleveland – cities where GOP “election officials” dare not tread. It will be a stolen election… and a shit show to say the least. Maybe then the white folk will start rioting. But I doubt it.
I don’t want White people to riot, I want us to get angry enough to start organizing.
I was in Philadelphia once for a tournament, and I got the sense of the most depressing industrial decay. It seemed so bleak. I’m sure it has it’s bright side, but based on this perhaps not. I bet Cleveland is similar. Although I’ve never been there, I just get the impression of an icy post industrial waste.
Los Angeles is somewhat the same, but it’s so spread out that you actually can drive through the ‘messy parts’ on the freeway and not see them, though I understand that foreign tourists actually come to SEE Compton, Watts, and South Central L.A., because it’s the home of ‘Rap’. They’re sadly surprised, however, because the Hispanics have silently moved into those places now, and I guess the rappers have moved to Malibu and Beverly Hills. Nevertheless, I had one outspoken feisty Black lady I worked with at the County tell me NOT to ever take the light-rail train to Long Beach, through Compton, it was too dangerous for even her, and that was saying a lot!
All neighborhoods change over time. I actually lived from age 9 to 12 in South L.A. as a child, riding my bike freely in an all-white neighborhood, and walking a half-mile to school every day. It’s all Black now (and probably being targeted for encroachment by the Hispanics), but the street I lived on near Crenshaw and Slauson is still well-kept. So, there are Blacks, and there are Blacks. But overall, L.A. is nearly unlivable and will be made more so, I am sure, by our capitulation to the BLM demands. We had rioting, burning and looting — but this time, in White enclaves, such as Melrose Blvd., Santa Monica Promenade, and in Long Beach as well. Nothing got touched in Beverly Hills, because I bet they had a large private security barricade as well as police. I’ve been pushed east to the outskirts of L.A., in a suburban neighborhood which I said I would never accept — but here we are. Mexican immigration has pushed out most Whites from single family homes in the center to the edges of L.A., and is continuing. But even the suburbs are half-Hispanic now. On it goes.
I envision enclaves and/or gated communities of like-minded people, and our own security guards, as being the only way to keep White civilization alive in North America and Europe in the future. And I can only hope our libraries, museums and concert halls can continue to exist safely as well.
The Dindus have been migrating to the Palmdale/Lancaster, San Bernardino Valley, and Riverside. I used to take the Blue Line rail from Downtown to Long Beach and back very frequently. It was nowhere near as dangerous as riding the bus in the hood. It might be different now.
“jutting up like a rotten tooth among the ruins of Dresden.”
You sir, Mr Goad, are a word artist, and Counter Currents is lucky to have you on board.
Well put. Takimag lost a legend. Years ago I lived at the residential motel next to Motel 6 on Whitley. Hellhole.
Those row old houses look like they could be restored to period gems that would the envy of many an apartment-bound salaryman or bungaloid suburbanite … how is it that they are crumbling and neglected?
Here in Britain even the dullest ‘effnic’ person can appreciate the value of getting on the property ladder by doing old houses up — what is the matter with the denizens of Philedelphia and Baltimore?
I can only assume that The People Who Built America leave them decrepit to shame the white supremacists who have brought the US to its knees under Donald Trump …
Don’t knock El Paso. Despite being like 95% hispanic it’s one of the safest cities in the country. The city is mostly clean and orderly and the people are laid back and courteous. In a way El Paso is an example of what you nationalist types claim you want: a wholesome place with homogenous culture and values, a true community. However yes in terms of attractions and stuff to do there’s not much.
You are delusional. My husband, as an army brat, spent his formative years in El Paso – when there were still a few White neighborhoods. I’ve visited a few times, and it is in no way clean or safe or orderly. There is nothing left of America in El Paso – the entire city is a skin suit.
El Paso is one of the safest cities in the country because its black population is one of the lowest in the country, 5% or less. And the black population itself – mostly military or military affiliated – is not “ghetto,” but relatively high-end, for blacks, with relatively low crime rates, for blacks.
When I was stationed at Fort Bliss and in grad school at UT El Paso from 1984 to 1989, El Paso was a delightful place. Whites (or “Anglos,” we used to say) were over 1/3rd of the population (it’s about 15%, now); there were many predominantly white neighborhoods, & social events run by & attended mostly by whites. The city had a decent symphony, many concerts, and its own comedy band, Springfire, made up of El Paso born & bred Anglos who had a unique take & were quite entertaining. For hikers and skiers, southern New Mexico, Guadalupe Mtns. National Park, & the Big Bend were close. While at Bliss, I even found the building on base in which Werner von Braun & his newly arrived “Paperclips” did their initial work, restoring captured V2s to operational condition after World War II.
It was not paradise, even then, however. Being on the border, drugs were easily obtainable, Mexicans were taking over city and county government, bringing Mexican levels of corruption. White children were increasingly outnumbered in the public schools by Mexicans who asserted themselves with knives & fists. (Affluent whites & rich Mexicans sent their children to private schools like Radford or Loretto.) The non-Ft. Bliss white community was sometimes characterized by a 24/7 party atmosphere often found in beach towns.
That said, I loved it; I miss it, & someday I may go back. (The cost of living, including housing, is low compared to Dallas & most other big cities.)
So yeah, Jim Goad, El Paso is worth a look.
Mr. Goad, your melancholy memories of your home town make for vivid reading. None of us can go home again, and if the bruvvas have their way, there will no home left for any of us on this earth.
Then you must know Dap Sugar Willie from North Philly!
Seven kids…The government needs to start paying African American women the same amount of welfare for one child as for ten. It should also award childless ones with an IQ below 85 with double the welfare money they would have gotten if they had borne their first child at age 18.
Fishtown and Kensington have rapidly gentrified, displacing nearly all of the “Kenzos” who lived there with SoiBoi Newmales, with just a few holdouts from the old stock still in place. The only blacks you’ll see there are the safe, white-presenting sort that John Derbyshire mentions in his version of “The Talk”.
I had hope for this city, with so many whites moving back in recently. But now I’m not so sure. I always thought that France did it right – keeping the undesirable populations in banlieueus along the periphery while claiming the best real estate in the center of the city. Suburbs never made sense to me, but now I may have to reconsider my choices.
Bill Burr once related that during a half-time show during an Eagles game there was a demonstration of some expert Frisbee dogs. At one point the dog missed his catch, and the stadium erupted in insane levels of booing and profanity.
Philly was also the location of one of comedy’s most famous encounters between performer and audience when Bill Burr took the stage and simply took twenty minutes to insult the hostile crowd in the most profane way possible. He actually won the crowd over: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jMhoGUiIkk
And let us not forget that Philly is the hometown of William Claude Dukenfield. A great man. An angry man.
Although I am from the South and all my family going back to the 1790s is from the south, I have Philly connections. My grandmother’s younger sister married a man from Philly in 1937. He was in Atlanta to sell printer ink to the local newspaper. They met at a live big-band music show. I loved that guy. He was an extremely intelligent, pathologically-angry red head. He dearly loved to drink way too many “high balls.”
He was a prosperous man, and owned several houses in and around Philadelphia. I remember being delighted to hear his very thick accent pronounce the word “nigger.”
I was used to hearing southerners pronounce the word, ie: “that god dayum fuckin’ niggah.”
But my uncle would say things like (imagine the hardest ‘r’s possible and every ‘g’ pronounced), “those fucking, motherfucking, fucking nigger bastards sons of bitches.”
In 1987 the Philadelphia Museum of Art had an exhibit celebrating the 100th birthday of that arch conman Marcel Duchamp. The Philly museum had most of his “works” because he was able to con a local rich family into buying everything and then subsidizing him as a sort of well-paid artistic servant. In any event he was a big deal in the world of anti-art. I had to see this show.
So I took the train from Atlanta to Philly and stayed with my widowed uncle (late 70s) and his “girlfriend.” They were living in a four-story house that had been built by his grandfather in the 1870s. (to her credit my girlfriend refused to go with me. She decided it was better to work some serious overtime.)
My uncle wanted to see what all the fuss was about at the museum so we went one early morning and made a day of it. We had a blast. My uncle brought along a large bottle of vodka hidden in his coat. We started pulling on that during the drive downtown at 7 a.m. For him it was essentially a blast from the past. He hadn’t been to the museum since he was a kid in the early 1920s. He cracked me up all day. I remember when we were having a sit down in the medieval armor room he said, “how many fucking niggers do you think it takes to dust this shit?”
After we oozed our way through the Duchamp exhibit, we were sitting down getting even drunker, and he said, “Tell me something. Do you have any friends who share your interest in this fucking communist bullshit?” He wasn’t being funny. It was an honest question. He was a little worried about my sanity. White people are going to have to channel men like my uncle.
Finally, I have to tell you that when he picked me up at the train station in his 1977 Chevrolet Monte Carlo, we embarked on the most frightening drive of my life. I know what the Marines on Guadalcanal felt like. But my uncle drove with one hand totally relaxed.
At one point in this Death Ride we merged onto a freeway at top speed. Traffic was super dense but was averaging around 80-miles-per-hour.
My uncle cackled with angry joy and said, “Here we go onto the Sure-to-Kill-You freeway. Only faggots and queers and niggers get killed on here so don’t you fucking worry.”
Keep it up Goad.
This video should be (((banned))) unconditionally! A Negress says she was not persecuted and discriminated against in Nazi Germany. On the contrary: the only danger to her life came from Anglo-American firebombs. She also claims that the entire family of her Jewish school friend had returned from the concentration camp safe and sound. This subjective description of historical realities could serve white supremacists as an argumentation aid. https://youtu.be/Bwz7kQtPPW0
That’s a fascinating piece of oral history. Thanks for the link.
I used to live in Port Richmond. It is or was a beautiful mess of abandoned industry. I miss it in some ways but I’m damn glad I got out.
A heartbreaking story.
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