Who Are The People In Your Neighborhood?

So yesterday I plugged in our wireless. More wireless=more blogging. Before I had to crouch over the computer while it was plugged in with the ethernet cable, now the computer is getting closer and closer to sitting on its resting place atop my recording workstation. So, easier workstation use= more workstation use? Hope so!

Today we happen upon an interesting sight here in Philly. Our neighborhood has taken great strides toward cleaning up itself. This is the infamous block where Mumia Abu-Jamal's life changed forever in 1981 (flashback: Free Mumia swept the hip hop world in 1995, a cab driver accused of murdering a cop, and is an interesting discourse in urban blight: cabbie vs. prostitute/police informant vs. the justice system). I'm not going to even postulate on that. It's severely convoluted, and reeks of corruption in several levels.

So our neighborhood, the gayborhood as it is called, is having what is called "Out Festival." There are games, music, vendors and people everywhere. Below our window I am listening to the megaphone-amplified prostylized hate stylings of a religious group here to protest. If it is God's command to save one another, I can think of fewer more effective methods than screaming how much someone thinks someone will to go to hell. The din of plastic whistles is everywhere, it seems someone has supplied the festival goers with the hate crime equivalent of a rape whistle.

It's sad that "live and let live" does not exist. If gays were not in my neighborhood, I doubt I would be able to live here. Where other parts of the city have fallen into abject decay, our neighborhood keeps a delicate balance. We have boutiques, antique shops, gelato and coffee, independent restaurants, and nightclubs, but we also have a some drugs, some prostitution, some filth. Amid the filth, there is positivity. Amid the positivity, there is negativity. It is confounding to see what some people turn the love of their god into. How much love is in their hate? How much hate is there in their love?