Philadelphia Magazine publishes relevant issue, takes heat

This month's Philadelphia Magazine is a must buy for a few reasons: a small bit with MyDD's Chris Bowers, a fawning profile of Philebrity's Joey Sweeney, and especially a piece that is more along the lines of what you'd expect from the Daily News - Gregory Gilderman's telling of the night he spent on patrol with Philadelphia Police Office Dennis Stephens, thru North Philly.

That last article brought concern from a number of hotel chains.

Philadelphia Magazine's Larry Platt responds.

I share a little bit of a Fishtown past with Joey Sweeney. I didn't know him, and I only lived there for a few years, but during that time, I was seriously beaten on a few occasions and had to put up with harassment for looking different, for listening to non-fashionable music (metal), for being an outsider. I wasn't alone, there were a few of us in this boat, but that didn't make it that much easier when every corner you'd turn you'd be called out for being a "long haired, satan worshipping faggot". The lesson I took from that neighborhood was I didn't want to be closed minded like those that attacked us. To ever judge on appearance. Here's a little of what Joey had to say about his life in Fishtown:

As the other kids were pumping "guido music" from their teal Chevy IROCs — songs like "Let the Music Play" and "Diamond Girl" — Sweeney, nerdy and unathletic, obsessed over Brit post-punk bands like the Smiths and Echo & the Bunnymen. He was taunted and chased home from school. In conversations about his old neighborhood, Sweeney often is breathtakingly disparaging. "Nobody in Fishtown understands birth control," he tells me, "so it’s like fucking Lord of the Flies. It’s just like kids running around, fucking harassing people, just like animals."

He says black families trying to move into the neighborhood were intimidated, threatened and scared off. "Friday nights the older kids would go down to Front Street and literally have knife fights with the Puerto Ricans," he says. "Everybody was trying to protect, like, the whiteness of the neighborhood for a long time. But the reality was that there was nothing to protect. It was shit."

My face was permanently altered due to those scuffs. Two broken noses. Possibly a third that I didn't take care of. And no one, and I mean no one, attempted to fight one-on-one. It was always a some gang knocking you down, kicking and hitting, till you submitted in a fetal position. I think I took more punishment then some since I would swing back.

Joey's harrasers were a little bit different then mine - ours thought the New Kids on the Block were what to listen to. It was hell.