Drunken Punks Pummel Folcroft Man

[lemko]

From philly.com:

Boozing punks pummel Folcroft man

Man beaten by 5 kids drinking in woods

[Volanova]

I just read this. Here's to hoping that at least the 17 year olds are charged as adults and their parents are sued by the victim.

There's something very, very wrong when teenagers are resorting to violence that could easily have killed a man when they get caught doing something like this.

[loveisnoise]

This is a horrible story-but that first story seemed to be written by a juvenile writing for a british tabloid.

[ArcticSplash]

This may not be a newsflash but Folcroft is rapidly turning to sh*t. Look at the census numbers people are moving out of there in droves.

Glenolden is the next to fall.

[Volanova]

I have friends in Glenolden, and I hope it doesn't happen there, but I'm afraid it will.

What can we chalk this up to? Affulence either moving back towards the city or further out towards Media and the Main Line, or something spreading out from the bad parts of West and South Philadelphia? Or just a combination thereof?

[Volanova]

Yikes, speaking of the census numbers, you weren't kidding. According to Wikipedia and the Census, it went from 9,910 in 1960 to 6,606 in 2010. Between 1960 and 2000, it dropped by a thousand every decade, although it only lost around 300 between 2000 and 2010. However, it completely goes against the trend of the region, what with populations gaining between 2000 and 2010 almost everywhere else.

[cewillm]

This may not be a newsflash but Folcroft is rapidly turning to sh*t. Look at the census numbers people are moving out of there in droves.

Glenolden is the next to fall.

Folcroft has never been a great place.

I have friends in Glenolden, and I hope it doesn't happen there, but I'm afraid it will.

What can we chalk this up to? Affulence either moving back towards the city or further out towards Media and the Main Line, or something spreading out from the bad parts of West and South Philadelphia? Or just a combination thereof?

I'd say both. A lot of the youth from working-class homes who make any sort of salary are moving towards work (Media and beyond, the Main Line, maybe Montco) or back to the city proper (usually with roommates). Then a lot of the crap from Darby is pushing out while Philadelphians can no longer afford their houses.

I think that it is also hard to rejuvenate some of the on-the-fence areas, or even keep the strong ones alive, due to many issues. The traffic in inner Delco is brutal, most of the infrastructure/buildings, even on main roads like McDade are toast, and the Delco culture can be bizarre to outsiders. Even here in Folsom it's hard to rationalize spending 180k on a single-family that needs a lot of work, which is the majority of stock around here, when an extra 30-40k can get you something much nicer outside of the Baltimore Pike/Blue Route confines.

Personally I am hoping that Ridley Park doesn't go to pot. It's got nothing but crap flanking either side of it, but it seems like the relative wealth located within will keep it stable. I like to say that inner Delco is still stable south of Baltimore Pike and east of the Blue Route in parts of Glenolden, Ridley Park, some of Prospect Park, parts of Ridley (Folsom, Rutledge, not Eddystone or Woodlyn), and Wallingford/Swarthmore.

[randomuser]

I have friends in Glenolden, and I hope it doesn't happen there, but I'm afraid it will.

What can we chalk this up to? Affulence either moving back towards the city or further out towards Media and the Main Line, or something spreading out from the bad parts of West and South Philadelphia? Or just a combination thereof?

Affluence? Have you ever BEEN to that area? It's never been affluent. It's working class to middle class at most and it's been being taken over by Southwest Philly (not Darby) for awhile now, as have a lot of the places that either border Southwest or are close enough to it and don't have the affluence to keep all of it out.

It's in a sh*tty school district, and unlike a place like Lansdowne it doesn't offer anything except for typical working to middle class housing and basically the working to middle class version of suburbia.

Let me break down Delco to those of you who don't seem to know it too well.

Everything close to Philly that is below Township Line Ave/City Ave is basically an extension of the area it borders and has been for awhile now, and more importantly with the exceptions of Lansdowne (former wealthy summer retreat with big houses in places) and possibly parts of Yeadon and Upper Darby has never been suburban or had any affiliation with Philadelphia whatsoever except that people from Philly moved there. The area was built around industry, around mills, factories, etc. Places in Delco have their own suburbs: Upper Darby has Pilgrim Gardens. Clifton Heights has Westbrook Park, Primos, Secane, Aldan, etc. Darby and Colwyn, Collingdale and Sharon Hill have Glenolden and Darby twp, Chester has Ridley, Aston, Parkside, Trainer, Chester Twp, Swarthmore, Wallingford, Rutledge, the further out parts of Delaware County and you could make a case for Media being influenced by Chester a good while back, and so on (it used to have quite a bit of pull in Delco/northern Delaware). There's some other, more complicated relationships but these are the basics.

Then you've got everything north of Township Line/City Ave and everything north of Baltimore Ave once you get west of Primos/Secane/Glenolden (which are each suburbs of places near them as I pointed out before) and lastly everything north of Chester Twp/Brookhaven/Parkside once you get west of Ridley Twp. This area has the best schools and is either entirely suburban and bland or "Old Money" and is much more likely to associate itself with Philadelphia than the working class places with their own identities are. This is the area most are referring to when they say "Delco". Really the only exception to this is probably a place like Morton, which is a bit more hard-nosed than Springfield but still has more money and better schools than most working class places in Delco.

As I said, there are a few exceptions to this. The first one of course is Lansdowne, which was in parts a place where wealthy people spent the summers and which would probably never have had many problems if it weren't in the William Penn school district. Then there's Yeadon, which used to be a place where wealthy people lived in parts and middle class African Americans probably still call home. There's also Upper Darby, not Drexel Hill (which we all know was mostly wealthy minus the working class parts built near industry) but "Upper Darby proper", where they used its position at the end of the Market-Frankford line to build an entire downtown and surrounding communities near that downtown for people who were middle class and above, which is noticeable when looking at some of the houses nearest the downtown.

There's also more working class exceptions, like Marcus Hook on the west side of the county and Tinicum on the east side. Neither have really had the problems of their other working class counterparts nearest them for various reasons, despite bordering some rough areas.

The most unique exception is Ridley Park, which was built by the Reading Railroad to replicate what Penn Railroad had done with Bryn Mawr, their own community. Last but not least there's Chester, which like every former "big" city in the area that had a small physical area, was full of very wealthy people in parts and of course plenty of working class and even poor people.

After these, the only exceptions really are communities that attract immigrants and are starting to be stabilized by them like parts of Upper Darby and East Lansdowne and of course the poster-child for diversity, Millbourne.

Now you officially know about as much about the basics of Delco as people who grow up there. One thing people from the not-so-nice parts of Delco really don't appreciate is being referred to as suburbs of anybody's. If it weren't for the Philly teams or for having family in the city, most people there wouldn't associate themselves with Philadelphia at all because they have their own identity.