Thought I'd meet a few friends over at Parrish/Judson and walk down to the prison to celebrate the holiday.

At 28th and Parrish I passed a pair of African-American teens. About a block further, maybe 27th and Parrish, I became aware of footsteps behind me.

I ignored my gut instinct and kept walking. Once the footsteps sounded like running, I turned around. One of the two ran up to me with a handgun. The other searched my pockets.

After they ran, I met up with a couple who called the police for me. I gave the info and they said they'd send a car as soon as possible. But ****, I've got to get home and start cancelling accounts. I'm not going to stand on the corner and wait for the police.

Final tab for my evening in Fairmount:

Motorola RZR
Wallet with driver's license, check card, SS card and $3.

The hardest part so far has been comprehending the question, "What have I learned here?"

Oh, and this happened at about 8:20pm.

:-( Glad you are OK.

sorry to hear that happened. i was just curious, were the two kids both wearing hooded sweatshirts? i was out around that time between taney and 26th on parrish and saw two teens walking east down the block and then turning north down bailey street. they weren't running or anything though. they were just calmly walking and both staring at me.

awe man - thats horrible. thats the kind of thing that will eventually drive me out of the city. thank god you werent shot.

the brothas gots ta get it together.

Glad you are OK. Losing a phone and wallet are just things that can be easily repaced (if that's any consolation). Some jerkwad kid with a pistol and it could have been a lot worse as I'm sure you realize.

Don't know what can be learned. A few friends used to live up around that area and they were always mentioning a lot of kids just hanging around causing trouble in various ways.

What I learned from this -- well not long ago I would not have given a couple of punk kids a second thought. Now too many of them all seem to have illegal guns. Bottom line, stay away from kids in "transitional zones." If kids around, keep hand in coat pocket on pistol. Kids approach, safety off; kids pull . . . .

I would have thunk Girard and points north more of an environ where I would CCW if I was walking down the street, but not Poplar/Perrish. Then again, the sidewalks don't have a lot of activity over there, especially at night.

Oh well, guess I was wrong. [Meh, it's only one more block away from Girard, tho]

Fairmount abuts a part of North Philly that has its fair share of shootings. There will be a spillover of people from that neighborhood coming around Girard College and cutting through Fairmount. Naturally there will be kids on the sidewalks carrying weapons.

In the wintertime people, hoodies and heavy coats make excellent wear for carrying a firearm. Luckly a lot of people keep their lazy butts at home and don't go on shooting sprees when it is cold (unlike in the summer), but muggings happen all year round, any time of day or night, in any kind of weather. Its hard to tell who is packing and who isn't in the fall/winter.

It's easy to tell in the summer (look at the calves/buttcrack area, or anybody wearing winter/fall type clothing when it is hot out).

__________________
WHYY pays their CEO $750,000 a year. So WHYY should I renew my membership? Seems they have no problems finding money and spending it unwisely.


And this is why you should donate to PACCA, not PETA:

In September, PETA made headlines in Vermont and across the nation for asking Ben & Jerry's ice cream to use human breast milk in their ice cream, instead of cow milk

Sorry to hear this. Nothing worse happened, so you (and we) can at least be thankful for that.

Was this incident the reason for the helicopter last night? (Though I think I heard the helicopter later, around 9:30.)

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"Everything that guy just said is bull$h!t! Thank you."

-- Vincent LaGuardia Gambini

Also very sorry to hear about this. You said you couln't wait for the police, did you meet with them later to give a full report and description of the perps? I strongly urge you to do so if you have not already

One lesson learned:

Don't carry your social security card. That number is probably more important than anything else we have.

To guard against identity theft at this point, a few of the credit rating agencies offer a service where you can be notified every time somebody checks your credit (i.e. credit cards, etc). That can give you a heads up before fraud presents a problem. I think you might also be able to put some sort of hold on those inquiries so that nothing gets approved, but I'm not exactly sure.