There have been numerous complaints about nuisance problems from Main Street. Then Chemistry and Grape Street Pub closed. Things quieted down. It seems the new Grape Street Complex opened last weekend and complaints are up again.

I like the idea of the Grape Street Complex but how can we protect the community?

What are some of the complaints?

Yelling and hollering at 2:30 AM
Breaking flower pots
Urinating on steps, sidewalks, homes, and cars
Vomiting on above
Trash
Broken bottles
etc.

I lived right down on main street for amost 4 years and I never thought it was that bad...sure it sucks to watch some drunk guy take a pee in the alley way, and it needs to be stopped, I saw a police officer arrest a guy a few months back for this.

But it comes with the territory, I hated it when some schmoe would ride his harley down cresson just to hear it reverberate all over the place and watch people cover their ears, but what was I going to do about it? By the time the noise came it was too late.

The yelling is totally correct, it gets loud after the bars, this is why I shut my windows REAL tight on nights I didn't go out. The noise level at 2:30 is pretty bad.

Vomiting...this does NOT happen that often, I have never seen someone's puke on my street or anywhere near main street in 4 years, I haven't seen much property destruction either, but I've always thought it was whack when people destroy property because they are drunk.

Urinating...that happens a lot, but what is wporse are the people that walk their dogs and let them take craps without picking it up (happens a lot on cresson), we should get those people before the urinators, urine dries crap stays there and is disgusting, attracts flies, gets steped in, etc.

Broken bottles are pretty bad too.

Is the trash that bad? What I don't like is when the wind kicks up and strews trash all over the street, and renters being renters, most of them don't pick it up.

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I wanted to clear my first post so as not to put all the blame on the Grape Street Complex. They may just push the problems over the top - or maybe they won't. Maybe there were other things going on last weekend that caused the problems. I don't want to blame anyone and I don't want to shut any business down. I just want the late night visitors to be quiet and respect the community.

Why did you move?

When you say "But it comes with the territory," does that mean you think we should just let it go and if the residents don't like it they should move?

I hear that alot - "why don't they just move?"

There are residents that have lived their whole lives in their homes and many that go back several generations. Their homes are paid for, they have history here, and they like where they live - except for the late night nuisance problems.

The police should be warning, ticketing, or arresting people that break the laws. Late night rabble-rousers should not be allowed to degrade our community.

That type of behavior might be fine on Delaware Avenue but Manayunk is a tight residential neighborhood. There have been a lot of improvements over the last 20 years. We don't want to let a bunch of rowdy kids ruin it.

No I am not of the "then move" elk, but nothing good comes without consequences.

I moved because :
#1 the housing down there for what i was looking for was really inflated
#2 I got older, getting liquored up with 10 of my friends & having parties didn't lose all of its appeal, I just didn't want it in my face all the time
#3 Main street got old...I wanted to live close to it, but needing to be right in the thick of things lost its appeal.

Those were most of my reasons, if the housing was cheaper I probably would have stayed.

I agree with you about police activity being necessary.

We do live in a city though and having more noise is unfortunately what comes along with it to some extent. Then some folks are just CRABBY...I had a party of about 15 people in my back yard recently, music, beer, horseshoes the whole 9 yards, one of the guys 3 houses down didn't like the music we were playing...he didn't say anything to me, but it was a Sunday at 4:00. Lawnmowers are louder than my music at that time of day.

There is this tension in manayunk between the young yuppie types (I guess yuppie is young with a professional job and relatively social life) and the older folks. What I found funny is that we were all young once and raised a little heck, not all of us but a decent amount.

I wish there wasn't so much tension, I LOVED most of the long time residents on my street, (one was litterally a shady bum) and we raised a lot of heck on our street in the early days, but we balanced that out by helping the old lady up the hill with her groceries or helping the old guy with his garbage cans, more yuppie types should be a bit more helpful, but on my block we all got along relatively well because there was a level of respect and mutual understanding.

We weren't looked at as "those kids" and they weren't looked at as "old pains in the butt who call the cops" we were neighbors, and we were all better off for it. The cops never came on our block once for noise and we WERE LOUD once every few months.

I loved my experience down there because I never ran into the I hate you yuppie types that some of my other friends did.

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A lot of the "I hate yuppies" thing is wildly overblown and comes from a minority of residents who themselves could be stereotyped quite nicely.

When we were having work done on our building, a woman wandered by and loudly commented in front of my secretary that "yuppies must be moving in and they'll ruin the neighborhood." Right. Because it's so much worse to have "yuppies" in the neighborhood operating a business than a keeping a vacant storefront. And, this is the same woman that allows her pit bull and her children to run loose on Ridge Avenue...

It's been my experience that the "real" old timers in the area actually like to see newcomers, assuming that the newcomers are polite, well-behaved and respectful. But that's all any of us ever want, right? Nobody likes an idiot.

Lawmummy hits it on the nose - nobody likes an idiot, regardless of whether it is the new person on the block or an long-time resident.

We need to respect both. My problem with many who are part of the waves of gentrification is that there is too little respect for those who have weathered the bad times in a neighborhood and face problems with the new (higher rents or taxes, for instance; loud noise from revelers, etc.). Many of the new residents will pass through - living there until they find a mate, have children (at which time they will move to somewhere in the "pastoral" sectors of Philadelphia or to the suburbs).

In Old City (back in the good old days) our rule of thumb was that we were for developments that made things better - as long as they didn't make things worse for those who had been here before. It's not always an easy balance to strike but it's a pretty good ideal.

Lastly, I get tired of the folks who say that because we want to live in a city, we have to put up with certain kinds of boorish behavior (ah, that's part of living in the city). Wrong. We should demand that bad behavior stop - whether it is coming from revelers outside of the neighborhood, newbies from inside, or old timers who are simply being a pain in the neck. I don't think most of us want to live in the suburbs and we're willing to put up with lots of stuff because we simply like cities. But, quality of life issues are important and shouldn't simply be dismissed with an admonition that someone should move out if they don't like things.

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I lived on Main Street for 6 yrs., and I can attest to the fact that there are problems there. I'm so glad to be away from there. I would never want to live there again.

First, there are giant trucks that go down the street all hours of the night and make so much noise and pollution. If my windows were open, I couldn't hear the person sitting next to me talking. Also, in from the window came all kinds of dirt. Much worse than anywhere else I have ever lived.

But the biggest problem was vandalism. I got a brand new car at one point, and after it was parked there over one weekend, someone had kicked in the passenger side door. Not to try to steal it, just to destroy it.

And then there was the time that my downstairs neighbor planted a beautiful flowerbed full of spring blossoms. He was out there all day long putting the soil in, and then planting rows and rows of beautiful flowers. By the time we all awoke the next morning, the flowers were all pulled out and thrown into the street. It was disheartening.

We did have to put up with all kind of rowdy behavior just after 2 a.m. every night, especially weekends. But the flower incident is what really convinced me that I was living in the wrong place.

I'm happily relocated to East Falls now, and would never consider living in an area so close to so many bars again.