Counter-Currents
Fishtown, Philadelphia in 2019.
1,840 words
The corner of Kensington and Allegheny Avenues — known colloquially as “K&A” — is the Hollywood and Vine of poor-white Philadelphia. K&A is also a major subway stop on the Market-Frankford subway line that runs eastward from K&A all the way up into Northeast Philly, also known (for reasons that should be obvious) as “The Great White Northeast.” An elevated line throughout that part of town, the train runs westward and then tunnels underground into Center City — they don’t call it “Downtown” in Philly — and then back above ground out past mostly black West Philly.
For a long time, Kensington Avenue marked the unofficial dividing line between working-class white Philadelphia and non-white Philadelphia. To the east of Kensington Avenue, all the way to the Delaware River, lived the scrappiest and most hardcore poor whites I’ve ever seen in this country, and I’ve been to Appalachia and throughout the Deep South. To the west of Kensington Avenue lies an area known as the “Philadelphia Badlands,” which is primarily Puerto Rican. As someone who spent years driving a cab in Philly, I can vouch for its moniker. At least in the early ‘80s when I was tooling around the City of Brotherly Love’s potholes in these giant old Checker Cabs with 800K miles on them, it was the worst part of town. Further west of the Badlands is the giant sprawling black war zone that is North Philly. For decades, the Puerto Rican Badlands served as a buffer between all-black North Philly and the mostly Irish poor whites of what used to be known as the “River Wards.” But all of it — the River Wards, the Badlands, and North Philly — rivals just about any awful slum in the country for sheer dilapidated horror.
Running underneath the elevated subway, Kensington Avenue is also — or at least, it used to be — the shopping center of a neighborhood largely known as Kensington. I say “used to be” because most of the old shops appear to be shuttered these days, and I say “largely” because the City of Philadelphia hasn’t designated hard geographical boundaries for its neighborhoods, so you wind up with the part of the Badlands directly adjoining the elevated subway known as “West Kensington.” You also have the neighborhood called Fishtown — so named because it used to be home to a bustling fishing industry –, now considered a separate neighborhood from Kensington, even though Fishtown was originally known as “Old Kensington” even before Kensington was called “Kensington.”
Most Americans are likely aware of Kensington because it’s the hardscrabble neighborhood where Rocky Balboa lived in the Rocky movies. I quibble with the historical accuracy of placing Rocky in Kensington, because the dagos tend to live in South Philly, and where I come from, the Italians and the Irish don’t get along very well.
Of late, Kensington is known as the biggest open-air drug market on the East Coast, aka “The Walmart of Heroin.” There have been several documentaries made about its junkie tent camps. Over the past few months, viral videos have emerged of the nightmarish post-apocalyptic zombies shuffling slowly amid trash, hanging onto street signs, peering out of tents, shooting up, and nodding out along Kensington Avenue and the narrow streets nearby. Most of the videos center around K&A. Here’s one of Kensington at night over the past winter. Here are the “highlights” of daytime street life in Kensington from July and August of this year.
Although I am clearly white in the national and global sense, culturally I identify as Philadelphian more than anything else: crass, blunt, cantankerous, and obscene. As much as I’ve tried to exorcise it from my tongue, I still carry traces of that awful accent, especially when upset and not trying to mute it. In moments of duress, the Philly accent simply pops out of my mouth.
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I grew up about 16 miles from K&A and roughly five miles from the western border of Philadelphia in a working-class brick row home in the township of Clifton Heights, Pennsylvania. There were no blacks or Puerto Ricans in my neighborhood. The only two “races” were the Irish and Italians, and all of us seemed to be Catholic. Around age 21, when I moved into the city to attend journalism school at Temple University — right in the middle of the cannibal’s pot of the Mau-Maus who ruled North Philly — I drove a cab on weekends to feed myself and pay the rent. And when I first started driving around the haunted urban tundra of Kensington and Fishtown and their tightly-packed brick row homes that were built over a hundred years ago, I was seized with a grim fascination. There seemed to be so much history there that, over time, had become corroded and degraded. I took this picture of a blown-out church in Fishtown back then. You can see the elevated subway in the background. And here’s a rough-looking peroxide-blonde white girl standing with her dog on a frosty day in West Kensington.
Although I didn’t attend, my friends went to a Dead Kennedys show at the Starlite Ballroom near the corner of Frankford and Lehigh under the elevated subway in Kensington. As they told the story, DC skinheads had come up for the show and started a brawl with the Philly punks. Outraged that these degenerate freaks had invaded their turf, the shirtless, mullet-headed, snaggle-toothed Kensington dudes showed up and beat the fuck out of everyone.
One brutally cold night in the early ‘80s, a college friend and I swallowed some mushrooms and walked throughout Kensington and Fishtown through the dirty slush, both of us feigning caustic Philly accents merely to show respect for the locals. I was editor of the college magazine, and that friend contributed an article about Kensington’s struggle to escape total economic annihilation. As bad as it was, we both had a fondness for Kensington’s uniquely tough whites.
I used to park my cab at K&A right across the street from the subway station waiting for the white people who didn’t own a car to complete their trip home into Kensington’s crumbling streets. It would be impossible for me to forget the time two women in their 20s or early 30s got in my cab’s back seat along with their two kids and started openly talking about how great the “crank” (Philly’s slang for crystal meth) that Billy and Joey and Tommy had cut out for them the night before was, and what a great time they all had. Even for me, to hear two women talk in front of their kids about snorting crank was shocking.
But now, Kensington is worse. Far worse. How did it get there?
Before the Evil White Man arrived, the area around Fishtown — originally known as “Old Kensington” — was inhabited by the Turtle Clan of the Lenape Indian tribe. In the early 1730s, Old Kensington — still distinct from the City of Philadelphia — was founded by a white slaveowner named Anthony Palmer, an English merchant who had come to America by way of Barbados. Nearly all of the early white settlers to this area were English.
By the early 1840s, Irish-Catholic immigrants had moved into the Kensington area and were met with sharp hostility by the native Scots-Irish Protestants. A minor dispute over whether Catholic schoolchildren should be allowed to read the Catholic version of the Bible in class blew up into what were known as the “Nativist Riots” in May and July of 1844. At least fifteen people were killed. Two Catholic churches were burned to the ground. In the New World, the Protestants and Catholics were merely reenacting an age-old war from their island homelands, back where there was no real meaning to the term “white” because everyone there was white. The genocidally anti-white Noel Ignatiev mentioned Kensington’s Nativist Riots in his book How the Irish Became White as “proof” that there’s no such thing as white people.
By the late 1800s, Kensington had become industrialized. In an 1891 pamphlet merely titled Kensington, a businessman described the neighborhood as
[a] city within a city, nestling upon the bosom of the placid Delaware, filled to the brim with enterprise, dotted with factories so numerous that the rising smoke obscures the sky, the hum of industry is heard in every corner of its broad expanse. A happy and contented people, enjoying plenty in a land of plenty. Populated by brave men, fair women and a hardy generation of young blood that will take the reins when the fathers have passed away. All hail, Kensington! A credit to the continent, a crowning glory to the city.
Although the area slowly declined from then into the 1940s, revving up the war machine for the Second World War gave Kensington a much-needed economic shot in the arm. The shipyards and factories worked overtime. But then came the 1950s and the slow rot of deindustrialization.
Peter Binzen’s 1968 book Whitetown, USA spends much of its middle section on Kensington’s condition in the late 1960s. He pegged Kensington’s white quotient in that year at 99.7%. “The lower-class whites especially,” he wrote, “are a closed people moving in tunnels.” He claimed that the Catholics ruled the city government at that point but would eventually be replaced by blacks: “In changing times, the Whitetowners oppose change. . . . Kensington’s intolerance is so savage because its people are so insecure.”
In the 1980s, when I picked up those crank-snorting moms and their kids at K&A, Kensington’s criminal underworld was ruled by Irish mobsters known as the “K&A Gang,” who controlled the city’s meth trade and were said to have ties with the Irish Republican Army. But over the years, as the city’s demographics changed, the K&A Gang gradually lost clout to encroaching Puerto Rican and black vendors of heroin and cocaine.
Whereas Kensington was 99.7% white in 1968, as of the 2010 Census, Hispanics slightly edged out whites in number. The area is also 15% black, which was unthinkable even as late as the 1980s.
In 2011, a serial killer who became known as “The Kensington Strangler” for choking three women to death turned out to be a Hispanic named Antonio Rodriguez.
Kensington is clearly at death’s door.
The adjoining neighborhood of Fishtown, which was always more residential than the largely industrial Kensington, still shows signs of life. Kensington’s neighbor to the southwest made national news in 2020 when bat-wielding white dudes took to the streets to stop the BLM riots from entering their hood. A clip of some Fishtown boys challenging Antifa members to fistfights and telling them to “take that fucking faggot energy and go somewhere else” warms my heart. It’s the same accent and the same attitude as the shirtless Kensingtonians who routed the punks and skinheads from their neighborhood in the early 1980s.
In his 2012 book Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010, Charles Murray gave a nod to Fishtown as a symbol of white working-class dissipation.
Kensington’s little brother Fishtown still has some people who are ready to fight, whereas all the fight appears to have been beaten out of Kensington.
It’s a place with a lot of history but no future.
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35 comments
As one of the few fellow writers from Philly I loved this article. Jim Goad always tells it like it is. I moved out of the city at the very end of 2019 and spent the Plague Year in Orlando before moving on to Texas. This article was a great example of why we need folks like Jim to talk about real White history. He’s someone who experienced it himself, down on the ground with the rest of us.
Keep up the good work, Goad! Believe it or not your articles keep some of us going when we’re feeling down. Youse r awesome.
On the September 9th Dave Rubin Show, Tucker Carlson said that “White working class Americans” are “by far (his vocal emphasis) the most shafted people in America.”
Very non-elite Whites are the canaries in our racial coal mine.
Would make a great upfront theme for Carlson if he could/would do it.
That was an interesting interview. Tucker is correct, the MSM, their talking heads and the financial and political backers are truly contemptible individuals. I like Carlson and think he does an important job with his platform. I just hope one day he creates a huge dumpster fire by naming those behind the curtain.
The people who organised and conducted the pogroms and fires of the Nativist Riots were not English Protestants, they were Scots Irish or Orange people from Ulster.
The city I grew up loving.
Great article. I hope Jim will produce a similar one for every dirty town and rest stop he’s come upon
If I remember correctly, I read that Jim Goad had spent some time in Los Angeles, and I would sure appreciate his insights into the ‘diversity’ of this place. Somehow, I have ended up late in life in a heavily Asian suburb. So, I thought I was in the safest part of L.A. possible. Then, I tried to start my car, parked in front, and it sounded as if the motor was exploding, so I called AAA. ‘Catalytic Converter’ had been stolen, the tow-truck driver told me. Now, my whole car had been stolen three different times in Whittier, which abounds in Hispanic gangs, but I was sure I was safe here. So, how’s this for a diverse neighborhood — you just can’t escape it in Los Angeles, and I fear this is the future of the entire U.S. and alas! Europe as well. Any other such dramas from within our White Nationalist community, which is accused of being the problem to look out for in America today?
In a perfect world there would be a documentary series of Jim visiting these places around America and chatting with locals. Can you imagine how great.
He seems too solitary for that kind of thing, but agree that would be a great show.
But let’s defund the police.
Not atypically, Philly’s governed by people who’ve never set foot outside of Center City.
Predominately rural Oregon and Washington State are governed by the effete Pearl Jam-listening pious prisspots of Portland and Seattle.
When the kitschy to-die-for 3-story Claes Oldenburg clothespin was installed near Philly’s City Hall in the 70’s, then-mayor (and often demonized) Frank Rizzo said, “What’s a pipe fitter from K&A supposed to make of that?”
Let them eat esoteric art.
In the hyperlinks to the two photos, it appears to link the church photo twice instead of leading to the described girl in the second hyperlink.
“Downtown” in Philly means South Philly. Where they “skeev” things and enjoy “gravy” on their spaghetti.
So Mr. Goad was driving a cab around Philly around the same time Mumia Abu-Jamal was. Interesting.
It’s what led me to believe he’s guilty. It’s almost impossible that while driving a cab around in such a huge town that he accidentally wound up on the same block to see his own brother being hassled by a cop in the middle of the night. https://www.takimag.com/article/why_mumia_is_guilty/
If that happy-go-lucky screechy little mini-Marley from Rage Against The Machine supports you, it’s not exactly a feather in your cap.
If you prefer to be represented at trial by the lovely Move’s John Africa (not his real name) you probably don’t want to turn around and contest the fairness of your trial.
Remember, France loves Jerry Lewis, too.
The Fraternal Order of Police shared your view that this was an ambush and wanted William Cook indicted but the prosecutor demurred, feeling he couldn’t prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.
So a black man (Cook) apparently got away with killing a white cop. So much for America’s “racist” justice system.
When I was a kid I didn’t understand why Sylvester Stallone portrayed Philadelphia as being so atrociously ghetto in the Rocky movies, particularly the first one. I thought that grisly depiction was pure Hollywood but in reality it was reality. That’s how Philadelphia looks and how Philadelphia is. Likewise, anyone who says apocalyptic zombie movies like Night/Dawn/and Day of the Dead are unrealistic needs to watch the homeless addicts shuffling around Kensington like infected ghouls.
What are we going to do folks?
I am an old man, same age as Jim, and I ain’t doing as much as him, but what he is doing is not stopping or even slowing down this BS.
Don’t get me wrong, I take great comfort in his swell articles. Just the fact that another human does a clear-eyed appraisal of our situation and comes to the same conclusion I did 40 years ago is validating.
In our hearts we know what has to happen, we know what we have to do. We don’t want to discuss it online, cause you know they are watching. But we know.
When something can’t go on – it won’t
I am all ears if anyone has other ideas, but coordinated baseball bat “patrols” on a National scale sound like the only answer.
At the end of the day we vastly outnumber them – think about that for second.
They can’t kill us all
Like I said – I am old. No kids, a very nominal wife. My main saving grace is that I live far beneath my means and I don’t owe a penny to anyone – I don’t have a hell of a lot to lose, but none of us can do it alone – we gotta have some kind of coordinated structure.
And that sounds great and we could prolly do it, my fear and my hope is that it would be absorbed by some kind of “MAGA” corporation and channeled to make money – which ain’t all bad.
A previous commenter stated that they Tucker – I do too – could be something there.
Tucker is our same age, but he has a lot to lose. Talk about a velvet vice – this is how they get you.
‘Fishtown boys challenging Antifa members to fistfights and telling them to “take that fucking faggot energy and go somewhere else” warms my heart’
I wonder if these words warm the heart of the proprietor of this joint.
What do you mean?
These working class folks never saw themselves as white but rather as Italians, Irish, catholic, protestant etc .
Incredibly vicious world wars including the horrific carpet bombing of our women and children, Eisenhowers death camps, the rape of Berlin are proof of the lack of any racial solidarity among whites globally.. we are also still intoxicated with Christianity which is race blind, pacifist and egalitarian. Until there is unity of purpose and a sense of common racial identity and interest, whites will continue to lose power collectively. This change in mindset must occur first to save our people. Sadly, leftists reject race solidarity because they see whites as oppressors, and conservative whites are race blind given their Christianity. Marxism and Paul will be our demise unless we wake up.
“These working class folks never saw themselves as white but rather as Italians, Irish, catholic, protestant etc.”
That’s a rank fiction peddled by the likes of E. Michael Jones, who is also from Philly. It’s a matter of proximity. If there were only whites around, they saw themselves as Italians, etc. If there were nonwhites around, they saw themselves as white. In my experience, it’s “these working-class folks” who are MOST likely to consider themselves white, because they’re the group most likely to suffer the ill effects of outsourcing and immigration. They’re the ones forced to live in poorer, more “diverse” neighborhoods. I’m assuming you don’t consider yourself one of “these working-class folks”?
Have you ever thought about writing a Dune or a LOTR? I reckon you could manage a good world building novel. You gave the right ability to challange and interogate voices. Unlike Kit Hitchens (who while smart was incapable of writing fiction) you could be among the greats. CS Lewis cones to mind, no joke. You can do a skewer and a deeper novel treatment.
A few years ago, I started writing some short stories. And I mean really short stories—about 1,000 to 1,200 words each. So far I’ve written about 20 of them. They all have basically the same theme—someone’s mental state begins manifesting itself physically. I have about 10 more ideas I need to pound into stories, and then I’ll release a book of them. Here are some examples:
https://thoughtcatalog.com/jim-goad/2017/01/the-boy-who-was-born-with-his-head-up-his-ass/
https://thoughtcatalog.com/jim-goad/2019/12/the-family-who-sold-their-limbs-for-quick-cash/
https://thoughtcatalog.com/jim-goad/2017/09/the-woman-who-invented-an-std-for-men-who-didnt-make-her-cum/
https://thoughtcatalog.com/jim-goad/2017/03/the-woman-who-gave-birth-every-time-she-went-to-the-bathroom/
Thx.
Reminds me a little of Neil Gaiman’s short stories and Roald Dahl without dialogue. Certainly expandable. Dr Pfizer, ah that was quite funny. Perhaps someone his drugs have hurt is tricking him later on in some way? Switch Bitch by Dahl is quite instructive given the Diseased Mexican Minx story. Could she infect a guy who does satisfy her and then fails to give the antidote and thus ruins her own eventual happiness?
here’s a link. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switch_Bitch
Sadly, I find that to be true as well. Even within a white group or locality, whites will immediately devour one another with the least little license from the usual suspects. Group solidarity is the key to power far beyond even intelligence or other factors.
I don’t think Philly is as bad as is being portrayed. Yes, we are under attack in many ways but let’s be honest here. I grew up in suburban Philly in the 70’s and 80’s. I’m of Polish ancestry. When in [public] high school I used to put up wooden signs advertizing “Wanted to Buy: Old Coins” & listing my parents’ phone# on telephone poles around town. When someone would call I’d gather up all the money I could find and set off on my bicycle, as I was too young to drive a car, to where they lived to make offers on their old coins.
I did this for ~3 years until I went off to college and never had any problems. I never had any problems. Once I bought a really beautiful uncirculated 1880’s 10 gold piece (which I still have) from a coin shop on Walnut Street.
Also when I later worked in Philly I used to commute on my bicycle in & out of the city daily. I’d ride in on Chestnut St and out on Walnut. Some days I’d take the El (subway) and liked to ride in the front car with the front window open.
More recently this past Easter week (2021) I wanted my little son to do something other than play computer games. I took him to see some historic sights which he was studying in school. We went to Philly to see Independence Hall & the Liberty Bell as well as Valley Forge & other places. All of Massachusettes was closed for Covid which was our 1st choice. We also walked to restaurants & museums & stuff in Center City Philly, sometimes at night and it was quite pleasant & interesting.
Unfortunately, the USS Olympia (built 1892, armoured cruiser) was closed tho it was supposed to be open. That’s one of the world’s two {I believe} pre-dreadnought, or even dreadnought period, iron warships. It’s a must-see for anyone interested in naval history.
Now I know why the CDC put out guidelines for what to do in case of a zombie apocalypse!! Wasn’t a joke, they were dead serious.
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