I live just off to the east of this area, so I see the expensive cars come over the bridge from Jersey, driving through to look for drugs.
And almost everyone I meet in Port Richmond (one of the nicer areas surrounding Kensington) has a husband, a wife, a parent, a sibling or a child who’s a junkie, someone they pray for and worry about.
I remember when my cousin and her husband lived in Kensington, back in the early 70s. It was still a nice neighborhood. You could go shopping on Kensington Avenue then and not have to worry about being robbed, or caught in a gun fight.
Now instead of factories, the neighborhood is home to open-air drug markets and a serial killer, who strangled several of the local prostitutes working to support their drug habits.
And the cars from Jersey head back over the bridge and home to their nice suburbs, either oblivious or indifferent to what they’ve contributed to this mess.
