my neighborhood

the community medical rehabilitation center, at the end of the block across the street from me. you would think it would be handy to have this right there, but i went in once to ask for a flu shot, and the only way they would give me one was if i paid $70 for an office visit. oh, well.

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looking north up carey street. i took the car out one day and measured the distances to different spots. someday, i'm going to make the 2.5 walk trip up to druid hill park.

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route 40, a block north of my house. it looks like a major road, but it only stretches for about a mile before it turns into city street again. the original plan was for this to connect to i95 and provide a quick way in and out of the city, but it never went through. dan told me that the people in the path of the construction didn't believe the hiway administration when they were told that the road would be on bridges (like that which leads into martin luther king boulevard) and they fought it until it was dropped. so now it just runs a mile until it stops with a bridge ending in midair. traffic is routed around the bridge and dumped back into the street.

what a waste of effort. dan suggested they should turn the overpasses into the hanging gardens of carey street.

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i saw that one of the gates was open, so i slipped in to get a shot without the bridge fence in the way.

i know of at least three episodes of homicide that had scenes shot here, btw. what better place to use if you want something that looks like an interstate and it doesn't much matter if you shut it down for filming? :)

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ye olde inner-city liquor store. there's one of these on just about every corner.

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the harlem park community association. it takes a lot of nerve to draw graffiti on the building of the people who are trying to help the neighborhood.

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"internet auction"? (*boggle.*)

yes, this could all be yours...

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a mural near harlem park school. would have looked better taken later in the day with some sun on it.

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a failed corner store, overrun with graffiti and with trees growing out of the display window.

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an odd extension to the back of an abandoned house. that's a sealed door at the bottom of the tower. but if you went in it, there wouldn't be room for anything but a ladder connecting it to the second floor. i wonder what purpose it served.

02/17/2001 update: someone wrote to say:

The picture walk-2000-07-18-011-thumbnail.jpg is, believe it or not, a double decker outhouse. This may sound strange but just yesterday I was at a Bibelot and happened upon a book 'the vanshing outhouse'. I browsed it real quick and saw several examples of double deckers for urban settings and large family (12+ kids) homes.

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looking north on carey at the intersection with lafayette. those two humps on the horizon are the towers of one of the apartments on druid hill park lake. the next intersection is carey and mosher, which is a half mile from my house. i turn around there if i'm doing a mile walk, push on to carey and school if i'm doing two miles.

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a burned-out building.

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garbage laying on the sidewalk. it's amazing how people just don't care. you must really have given up any hope for a pleasant life if you're willing to just throw junk down and sit in the middle of it day after day.

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all the alleys around me look like this. just unbelievable. there's a new coalition of community groups that's working with the new city administration on cleaning this up. i went to their first meeting, but haven't had time to be active with them. i hope they can make some progress; this isn't livable.

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lafeyette square is a beautiful spot on the hill. it's run-down now, but you can tell it was prime real estate at one time. this is the carriage house behind one of the big old (and empty) houses on the square. there must have been very wealthy people living here once.

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the five-car garage behind one of the houses. the (beautiful) house itself is empty, with lots of broken windows.

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lafeyette square. as always, my camera can't take a good photo of anything more than 3 inches away. trust me, it's nice.

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an abandoned house on the square. the sign on the corner says it was once the headquarters for a community association. wonder what happened.

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proof that some of the houses on the square are just stunning. people should be fighting with tooth and claw to get into these places. i hope the neighborhood can turn itself around; there's so much potential here. if the crime and drugs were cleaned up (can anyone say "legalization"?), people who work downtown and live in the suburbs would be just *dying* to get in here.

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one of the four (yes, 4) churches on the square.

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a house being rehabed. the harlem park community association has been doing a great job of restoring abandoned houses; everywhere you turn, there's another one being worked on.

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convenience store, laundromat, and flavored ice. what the hell else do you want?

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four boarded-up houses in the 300 block of carey. i wish the city would get serious about restoring and renting/selling these places instead of just knocking things down and building new houses. or if they're not going to do anything with them, i wish they'd knock them down and plant some more grass for the kids to play on.

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