Posted 10:36 PM by Gene

I wish I had a DSLR (I will soon, but later rather than sooner, alas); on my way to work the city (I presume) is demolishing an old crumbling factory near the Somerset El stop. Factories willed the El; many stops were located in industrial hubs. If I'm correct furniture was made there. It's five stories high and was built in at least two parts: the wood-and-brick original, which I date from the 1870s or 1880s, near a former Philadelphia and Reading right-of-way (now a one-track Norfolk Southern stub), and a more "modern" steel-framed extension, probably from around the Great War. Graffiti defaces it and God knows what crimes and drug abuse occur there; it's long deserved to be demolished. But the demolition is nonetheless dismaying for here is another part of working Philadelphia demolished, a city that ceased to exist when its governors turned it over to criminals, thus freeing factories to close or leave the city. Now (as I've said too often before) we're EDS 'n' MEDS and social services (and highly profitable non-profits like THE ORCHESTRA), a fact that pleases many here. It strongly displeases me that we have so robbed ourselves of the will and the means to live.