On a cold and overcast Thursday morning, a group of dedicated students file into a drafty gymnasium on the fourth floor of The Lighthouse, a community organization on Lehigh Avenue. On one side of the gym, basketballs lie scattered across the floor, and a few of the students pick them up and haphazardly toss them into the hanging basketball nets. Other students, meanwhile, head straight to the wooden desks aligned neatly in …

It’s a Wednesday and cold, too cold for October. The weather is gray. It matches the cement stairs on the corner of Third street and Lehigh Avenue. People line the stairwell leading to a sturdy door in the basement of an old warehouse. The door is marked with a small blue sign that reads, “Prevention Point Philadelphia.” Everyone is waiting patiently for the doors to open at noon.

Prevention Point hosts Philadelphia’s only legal syringe exchange program. The program began as an underground, grassroots organization based primarily …

Valedan sits on an empty bucket once filled with Spackle.  He picks a paint-splattered fold up table from the floor and sets it to his right.  A big screen TV is hung on the wall to his left and a massage chair acts as a living room couch. He rests his razors and drawing pencil between a few carefully placed glass trinkets on a mirror-plated table.  His customer sits on a foot rest from the bedroom upstairs. The room is bright, as far as …

“Cab….cab…. cab…”
Looking around, you may not see a yellow sedan or hear the familiar screech and stop and hasty honk of a commercial cab company. There may no rooftop light or fare meter, perhaps only a simple four-door unmarked sedan.
But you will hear is …

Tucked away on Fourth Street under a green awning, students line up to go to school. Faculty and security staff walk the line inspecting students. Each one must be wearing black socks, black shoes and a black belt holding in his or her green polo shirt with Fairhill Community High School etched across the breast. Up the stairs students file through a metal detector and then off to their classes. This accelerated high school is …

Fairhill residents don’t have to go far to get a taste of their native dishes.

Making and selling popular products that include longanisa (chicken and pork sausages), morsilla (blood sausage) and octopus salad, Diaz Meat Market has been a staple in the Fairhill section of North Philadelphia for 35 years.
Fairhill features a mix of authentic ethnic delights in local stores and markets, but a government initiative to develop supermarkets in underserved areas may have caused an undesired effect for some smaller food businesses.

Pablo Diaz immigrated to Manhattan from Puerto Rico in 1961 before moving to Philadelphia and opening the meat …

Marie Tedesco looks at the impact of abandoned houses in Fairhill. View the photographs and listen to the residents’ comments about the problem.