Don't Sleep on the Subway, Darlin', The Night is Long

Just like Petula Clark said in "Don't Sleep on the Subway", don't sleep on the subway. And that was sage advice because if I had been asleep on the subway, I would have missed this piece of weave on the sidewalk in front of the Fern Rock Transportation Center in Philadelphia, PA. Located at 900 Nedro Avenue & 10th Street, there is no ticket counter, no bike racks, and of the 639 parking spaces, generally 0 are available by early afternoon. It is dirty, cramped,and surrounded by a residential area and a police station. Between looking at my watch while waiting for friends to pick me up and reading The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larson, I looked down at my feet, demurely crossed at the ankle and clad in my spiffy new Sperry top-siders, and noticed this piece of weave:

Fern Rock is a neighborhood in the upper upper parts of North Philadelphia. Around Fern Rock on all sides are Olney to the east, Ogontz to the west, Logan to south, and East Oak Lane to the north. It is bound on all sides by other equally small and not well known little neighborhoods. In all honesty, the purpose of this post is to feed both my ego and love for the mundane, as well as bring some much needed publicity to these areas. But I digress, Fern Rock demands my utmost attention. The area is a mix of 1920's style row homes, a few high rise apartment buildings, some older twins and single homes, along with various commercial strips along Broad Street, Olney Avenue in and around Broad Street, and Old York Road. The area is predominantly African American, at probably about 95% of the population, with the remaining 5% made up of residents who have been categorized as white, hispanic, asian, and the ever- baffling "other". The average income is about $35,488; the average number of single-parent (specifically single-mother) is about 23.2% of all households-- which is slightly higher than the average for Philadelphia overall at 14.9% of all households.
At this point you may still be thinking, "Fern Rock. Feernnn Rooockk? Do I know this place? Why should I care about Fern Rock?" Well, for starters, you skeptical readers out there, Fern Rock is home to The Pennsylvania College of Optometry. Try getting glasses or that eye exam you remember about every six or seven years without optometrists. If that nugget of knowledge still isn't helping you place how you may know the area, perhaps you may remember the highly publicized and much-discussed double homicide that took place in September of 2006. You can read more about it here if you are interest. I do recommend looking into the full details of the event, but I am not quite bold enough at this time to throw information at people who are not ready to hear it. I hope that intentional ambiguity caught your attention.

Not every city is perfect-- in fact, many cities are damn near awful from the outside. But even Atom and His Package reminds listeners in the song "Philadelphia" that, you know, in Philadelphia you have to "get to know us" before you judge-- this line comes after: "this is the city of brotherly love and crime/ and we only bombed our own city once, one time". Well, I guess you can't win 'em all.

Until next time, faithful readers.


Thank you to Sam and Rachel for making me wait at the Fern Rock stop for a bit, giving me enough time to find this.

Thank you to Petula Clark for "Don't Sleep on the Subway"(1967)
Thank you to Atom and His Package for "Philadelphia" (2002)



References
http://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/Fern-Rock-Philadelphia-PA.html