8 January 09: Frankford Alive, the photo essay



Every time I see the Globe Dye Works sign, I get the song "The Globe" by Big Audio Dynamite stuck in my head. It is without question the most popular/catchy Clash-affiliated post-Clash song, and it samples one of that band's most popular/catchy songs to boot. In the video, Mick Jones' late 80s/early 90s band performs on a rooftop with a round neon sign, not unlike the one on top of the Globe Dye Works building. That sign is being restored, and you can see its progress in this photo essay from a morning in Frankford. Soon enough, you'll see it glowing red again over Amtrak, Septa and I-95.

I've always been curious about Frankford. As Nathaniel Popkin mentioned in his essay yesterday, it's one of the oldest parts of the city, but it didn't have the early breadth and buildup that other First Suburbs like Southwark and the Northern Liberties did. Its heyday, I think it's fair to say, was in the late 1800s/early 1900s. The El was built to it.

From the El and from the ground, it can indeed feel like that heyday was a century ago. You always hear how Frankford's not the same, that it's dangerous; seeing it on the news for the wrong reasons certainly doesn't help.

But it's still there, still breathing. People still live and work there; the El still goes to it.

Nathaniel's passing mention of the two warrant officers pounding on a door with barking dogs in the back yard was not fiction. That's one of the first things we encountered after meeting under the Church Street station. Still, it didn't hang anything weird and uneasy over our walking tour, which was better spent taking note of colonialesque homes and the sturdy old bones of the workshop of the world, still on display if you choose to search it out. Matt Pappajohn and his friends have, and what they have made for themselves in Frankford is incredible. I'm sure there are others like them; I'm further sure that there are longtime residents of the neighborhood who do still take pride in Frankford, who prefer to associate it with the avenue once traveled by William Penn and George Washington, with the El that rides above it, with the one time NFL champion Yellow Jackets (the almost, but not quite, ancestor to the Eagles), with the day to day life that quietly goes on there than with the pushers, prostitutes and death that scream for attention, and sadly, get it.

A lot of people might not realize it, but Frankford is breathing, and the 185 trains that pass both directions every day under Market Street in Center City all end up at or start out in Frankford, every single one of them.

This particular set of photos was from a morning walk; I know it doesn't represent the entire neighborhood of Frankford, which can loosely be defined as the Frankford/Torresdale/Kensington crossroads to the Frankford Transportation Center, and Roosevelt Boulevard to the Amtrak railroad line. These photos were taken east of Frankford Ave and the El to Torresdale Ave/Worth Street, between Church Street and the El Terminal. There are dedicated stops at the Riehl Mill complex with Matt Pappajohn and his woodworking company, and at Globe Dye Works, where he and his partners are developing a fantastic work/live space.

GO TO PHOTOS.

–B Love




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