old bar @ ridge & manayunk - Page 2 - PhillyBlog

billy ross · #11 (**permalink**) 05-13-2008, 06:34 AM

Your complaint about transients is like trying to close the barn door after all of the animals are out of it; Manayunk is a case study in how not to let your neighborhood become one-dimensional. Good luck making it family-friendly (although a yuppie school will effect that) and causing people to want to put down roots. I know that we are discussing Wissahickon, but the rootless wanderers don't respect the difference.

gray67 · #12 (**permalink**) 05-13-2008, 10:26 AM

There are two ways to deal with the barn door after the animals have left. you can either leave the door as is and hope that maybe the animals will wander back in after running around for a while or you can close the door and go out and fetch the animals back one at a time.

too many people in the Manayunk/Wissahickon area are in favor of the first approach, blindly hoping that the animals will return by themselves back to the barn and not wander again out past the open doors.

the longer, harder approach is to shut the damn doors, and then go out and retrieve the strays. preventing yet another useless bar/pub in the neighborhood is one way to start shutting the doors. another would be to get more restrictive laws covering absentee landlords and transient renters with harsher penalties for noise, safety, and liveability violations. and yes, putting in a yuppie school will help attract the strays back to the barn in the longer term.

it seems to me that everyone in manayunk/roxborough/wissahickon talk about how much they want change but not enough people actually DO something about it. and the times when someone DOES try to do something, they get hit with the "that will never work in this area" line rather than a "how can I help" line.

billy ross · #13 (**permalink**) 05-13-2008, 01:04 PM

We can all agree that the neighborhood suffers from too much of a good thing - it is one of the few places in the state of Pennsylvania popular with young educated people. The weakness of Roxborough / Manayunk - and NOT East Falls - is that it does a poor job of making these kids feel that it is an appropriate neighborhood for them to put down roots. As you intimated, it is not too late to ameliorate this situation. An aspirational school(s), better quality housing, and, most importantly, marketing / perception control would all be parts of the solution. I have said for a long time that Roxborough being between Gladwyne and Chestnut Hill and being a part of BOTH valleys should be the best of the three towns, but it has been cursed with low-quality development for 70 years, unlike CH and Gladwyne.

OldMama · #14 (**permalink**) 05-13-2008, 01:34 PM

Manayunk happens to have an excellent public school already. Dobson can hold its own next to the Center City publics. The school already has a number of children with professional parents and there is a waiting list of people outside the area trying to get in.

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons young professionals leave Manayunk when they start a family is that they've bought into the kids=big house/big yard/one bathroom per family member mentality. I know people in four bedroom/1.5 or 2 bath rowhomes in Manayunk who don't feel that their house is "big enough" for a family. I laugh at that because I grew up the oldest of 6 in a 2.5 bedroom, 1 bath house in Germantown (the .5 bedroom fit a set of bunkbeds and nothing else). Generations of Manayunkers have raised kids in those houses but the current generation sees them as too small. Not to mention that intolerable lack of a "master suite"...

CityMan · #15 (**permalink**) 05-13-2008, 02:05 PM

That bar was cool when it was Edna's, but sucked after that.

Smicker · #16 (**permalink**) 05-14-2008, 06:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gray67

There are two ways to deal with the barn door after the animals have left. you can either leave the door as is and hope that maybe the animals will wander back in after running around for a while or you can close the door and go out and fetch the animals back one at a time.

too many people in the Manayunk/Wissahickon area are in favor of the first approach, blindly hoping that the animals will return by themselves back to the barn and not wander again out past the open doors.

the longer, harder approach is to shut the damn doors, and then go out and retrieve the strays. preventing yet another useless bar/pub in the neighborhood is one way to start shutting the doors. another would be to get more restrictive laws covering absentee landlords and transient renters with harsher penalties for noise, safety, and liveability violations. and yes, putting in a yuppie school will help attract the strays back to the barn in the longer term.

it seems to me that everyone in manayunk/roxborough/wissahickon talk about how much they want change but not enough people actually DO something about it. and the times when someone DOES try to do something, they get hit with the "that will never work in this area" line rather than a "how can I help" line.

So what do you suggest you put there? Another nail salon, hair cuttery, pizza shop? Or just leave it empty and dilapidated?

pug · #17 (**permalink**) 05-14-2008, 07:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gray67

The bar used to be Cheese's and then Fat Edna's. Both bars were notorious for catering to loud rowdy patrons who commonly brawled and dealt drugs. It was not a nice friendly "pub".

As for the "niceness" of a new bar or pub, probably half the houses on Vassar are rentals. More and more of Dawson is turning into rentals. Each rental brings with it between two and four cars parking in an already congested area. The guy who's building Terrace Court wants to add even MORE cars in condo units that are basically designed to be bought as rentals. If you put a nice "pub" in the area and plan on drawing from outside the immediate 4 block neighborhood, people will drive to the place and take up spots, denying residents parking near their homes.

Why do you want another pub/bar? There are (within a 6 block radius) at least four to six different bars. Main Street is a short walk away and there are loads of bars. At what point do you people want to just turn the area into one big frat house? If you don't want families living in the area and you don't want property values to go up and you don't mind the area turning into an even bigger dump cause of all the tranient residents who don't care about anything except where's the nearest beer, then just put a sign up at the entrance to Main Street saying so.

No, it was Getty's, Fat Edna's, then Cheese's for a brief moment.

gray67 · #18 (**permalink**) 05-14-2008, 09:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OldMama

Manayunk happens to have an excellent public school already. Dobson can hold its own next to the Center City publics. The school already has a number of children with professional parents and there is a waiting list of people outside the area trying to get in.

Perhaps one of the biggest reasons young professionals leave Manayunk when they start a family is that they've bought into the kids=big house/big yard/one bathroom per family member mentality. I know people in four bedroom/1.5 or 2 bath rowhomes in Manayunk who don't feel that their house is "big enough" for a family. I laugh at that because I grew up the oldest of 6 in a 2.5 bedroom, 1 bath house in Germantown (the .5 bedroom fit a set of bunkbeds and nothing else). Generations of Manayunkers have raised kids in those houses but the current generation sees them as too small. Not to mention that intolerable lack of a "master suite"...

A good elementary school is nice, but then you have to deal with the overall issues of Philly schools as you go up the education change. And competing with CC schools is not necessarily enough - they need to hold their own against the suburban schools because that's where the competition is. Young professionals can't necessarily afford a place in CC but they CAN probably afford something in KOP or Media or Lower Merion where the school districts are better than Philly. Could they buy there? maybe, maybe not, but even renters get to send their kids to the local schools.

As for the size issue, I agree that people nowadays totally expect too much in terms of house. It will be interesting to see if the price of gas keeps at this level or goes even higher whether folks will begin coming back into the cities to reduce the amount of driving they have to do.

gray67 · #19 (**permalink**) 05-14-2008, 09:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smicker

So what do you suggest you put there? Another nail salon, hair cuttery, pizza shop? Or just leave it empty and dilapidated?

The RDC is supposed to be managing growth of businesses along the Ridge, of which this place certainly qualifies. And salons or pet grooming or a coffee shop or used bookstore or even a small convenience store would be infinitely better than a new bar or pub because their patrons don't tend to be drunk obnoxious idiots stumbling home at 2am shouting at the top of their lungs.

The typical 'Yunker thinking seems to be "oh look - a space. let's put something that can sell beer. now I only have to walk 5 feet to drink my ass off instead of 25. awesome!".

billy ross · #20 (**permalink**) 05-14-2008, 09:54 PM

I used to be a loyal patron of Fat Edna's, and still have the t-shirt proclaiming my ability to eat the Edna burger. I would love to see a bar go back there, but I like bars. I would be willing to consider other options for the location, but am I the only one who thinks Gray 67 sounds like a teetotaler temperance booster? Are you a Baptist?