Badlands
This morning's run grew out of a conversation that me and Erin had on yesterday's run, in our perpetual search of greener running pastures. We decided that we, with KJ, would drive over to Lloyd Hall and then run up into North Philly to explore.
I came up with a route that heads up through Philadelphia through what has been known as the "Badlands" since a spate of bad publicity in the mid 1990's. The origin of this moniker is unclear - its alternately attributed to Ted Koppel, the TV show Cold Case, and to law enforcement, but its clear that in being so named it looked to evoke images of the wild west, much in the manner that "Fort Apache" was used to refer to a Bronx neighborhood back in the 1980s. The lawlessness and heroin infestation was duly noted in former Inquirer columnist Steve Lopez's novel Third and Indiana (the unofficial ground zero intersection of the Badlands) and is also mentioned on this Department of Justice website.
I had never been there, although the jury I sat on a few months back heard a case involving a drug dealing operation on Indiana, and so painstaking was the DA's rendition of the corner in pictures that I felt like I knew it. So I figured a jog down Indiana was in order as a culmination of a gawking tour through North Philly. Erin and KJ were down for this, and we exerted some gentle peer pressure to get John W. to come with us as well.
The morning was already hot and humid as we wound our way up Girard, Master, 10th, and Germantown Aves. to get to Indiana St. First impression was how invisible the area is, tucked away from G'town Ave. behind a large old cemetary and separated from Kensington and other points east and north by railroad tracks. We ran Indiana for about 9 blocks to Mascher, giving us a full cross section (including the intersection I instantly recognized from the trial) of the Badlands.
My impression of it was of a poor Hispanic neighborhood, vaguely similar to colonna neighborhoods I'd run through when I lived in Brownsville (TX) - quiet, green, and with folks hanging out who could have been working. I think it was the roosters crowing that brought on the Brownville flashback. I realize that, while I am sounding big and bad describing how we ran through the Badlands, admittedly it was at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, not exactly prime business hours. I don't doubt that sordid things go on there, but as a runner you usually get left alone in neighborhoods like these (people don't quite know what to make of you), giving the feeling like you're running through a parallel universe.
Then it was off to K&A, the intersection of Kensington and Allegheny which is a well-known dividing point of neighborhoods in North Philly, and for a few miles we ran under the relative coolness of the Frankford line El tracks. Then it was Dauphin St. back over to Fairmount Park, where I cut across Edgely Field and over Strawberry Mountain Bridge to take a well-worn Fairmount Park loop home. All in all it was a long 15.5 miles, run in 2:11:23.
Back to the Badlands. Its amazing how little information there is on this on the web. There are no clear boundaries to this area (although everyone agrees Indiana is the center of it) and the proper name for this neighborhood is Hartranft. Neighborhood activists decry the overblown nature of the heroin connection, while news stories still feature this connection as the front and center feature.
All in all I can't help thinking that the Badlands are a "neighborhood" borne of the War on Drugs and just like there are areas that people try to give positive associations to (see yesterday's entry on the "Devil's Pocket" neighborhood fading from collective memory) there are also of necessity neighborhoods where you, speaking as a street-wise city dweller, warn your out-of-town friends not to go near and that you regale your running friends with stories about how you've braved these areas on your longer runs. Most folks don't know much more about them than what they've learned from Ted Koppel or Steve Lopez (alot of times second or thirdhand) and the locals who might know better keep their silence.
I think if they had a guy dealing sugar there I would have copped. After the run I took Tony to baseball practice and after practice we headed, to Tony's delight, right to our dealers - Ben & Jerry. Here we had large ice creams and a Dr. Pepper to wash it down. It was not a pretty sight, as by the time we got there I had a serious Jones.
I came up with a route that heads up through Philadelphia through what has been known as the "Badlands" since a spate of bad publicity in the mid 1990's. The origin of this moniker is unclear - its alternately attributed to Ted Koppel, the TV show Cold Case, and to law enforcement, but its clear that in being so named it looked to evoke images of the wild west, much in the manner that "Fort Apache" was used to refer to a Bronx neighborhood back in the 1980s. The lawlessness and heroin infestation was duly noted in former Inquirer columnist Steve Lopez's novel Third and Indiana (the unofficial ground zero intersection of the Badlands) and is also mentioned on this Department of Justice website.
I had never been there, although the jury I sat on a few months back heard a case involving a drug dealing operation on Indiana, and so painstaking was the DA's rendition of the corner in pictures that I felt like I knew it. So I figured a jog down Indiana was in order as a culmination of a gawking tour through North Philly. Erin and KJ were down for this, and we exerted some gentle peer pressure to get John W. to come with us as well.
The morning was already hot and humid as we wound our way up Girard, Master, 10th, and Germantown Aves. to get to Indiana St. First impression was how invisible the area is, tucked away from G'town Ave. behind a large old cemetary and separated from Kensington and other points east and north by railroad tracks. We ran Indiana for about 9 blocks to Mascher, giving us a full cross section (including the intersection I instantly recognized from the trial) of the Badlands.
My impression of it was of a poor Hispanic neighborhood, vaguely similar to colonna neighborhoods I'd run through when I lived in Brownsville (TX) - quiet, green, and with folks hanging out who could have been working. I think it was the roosters crowing that brought on the Brownville flashback. I realize that, while I am sounding big and bad describing how we ran through the Badlands, admittedly it was at 8:30 on a Saturday morning, not exactly prime business hours. I don't doubt that sordid things go on there, but as a runner you usually get left alone in neighborhoods like these (people don't quite know what to make of you), giving the feeling like you're running through a parallel universe.
Then it was off to K&A, the intersection of Kensington and Allegheny which is a well-known dividing point of neighborhoods in North Philly, and for a few miles we ran under the relative coolness of the Frankford line El tracks. Then it was Dauphin St. back over to Fairmount Park, where I cut across Edgely Field and over Strawberry Mountain Bridge to take a well-worn Fairmount Park loop home. All in all it was a long 15.5 miles, run in 2:11:23.
Back to the Badlands. Its amazing how little information there is on this on the web. There are no clear boundaries to this area (although everyone agrees Indiana is the center of it) and the proper name for this neighborhood is Hartranft. Neighborhood activists decry the overblown nature of the heroin connection, while news stories still feature this connection as the front and center feature.
All in all I can't help thinking that the Badlands are a "neighborhood" borne of the War on Drugs and just like there are areas that people try to give positive associations to (see yesterday's entry on the "Devil's Pocket" neighborhood fading from collective memory) there are also of necessity neighborhoods where you, speaking as a street-wise city dweller, warn your out-of-town friends not to go near and that you regale your running friends with stories about how you've braved these areas on your longer runs. Most folks don't know much more about them than what they've learned from Ted Koppel or Steve Lopez (alot of times second or thirdhand) and the locals who might know better keep their silence.
I think if they had a guy dealing sugar there I would have copped. After the run I took Tony to baseball practice and after practice we headed, to Tony's delight, right to our dealers - Ben & Jerry. Here we had large ice creams and a Dr. Pepper to wash it down. It was not a pretty sight, as by the time we got there I had a serious Jones.
posted by seebo | 12:36 PM
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