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This Guy’s “Hating on Fishtown” Video is Pretty Good
Published:
This Adam Rotstein guy is pretty solid. He does a video series in which he hates on various American neighborhoods with a dry, influencer type of delivery that makes me laugh every time.
He did a Fishtown video:
This is pretty accurate, although I have to say he’s focused on the Frankford and Front Street corridors and doesn’t get up into the Fishtown interior. The Fishtown hinterlands, if you will. It’s been a few years since I lived on Fletcher Street, but the last time I came through, everything east of Palmer and up into that Loco Pez/Starboard area was mostly still intact. The Happy Tap remains in operation. The Primo Hoagies was hanging on. That side of the neighborhood still has some of the old school Irish Fishtown thing going for it.
But yeah, it is starting to feel a little bit like Brooklyn. It’s interesting because people were calling Fishtown “hipster” 15 or so years ago, and maybe that was the case for Frankford and Front Streets, sure, but it was still very blue collar Caucasian in a lot of parts. There certainly was nothing in that Fillmore/Barcade/Punchline section, up from the casino. And the development did gradually spread north and west and further into Kensington proper. But there was a time when people kept calling Fishtown “hipster” even though East Passyunk and South Philly and Brewerytown were probably more “hipster” by that point. Fishtown’s “hipster” sections were Frankford and west and ignored most of the streets up on East Girard.
And then the pandemic came through and killed off some spots. That was at the same time the protesters clashed with the baseball bat guys at the police precinct and we had three news helicopters flying overhead 24/7 while everything was on lockdown. Fun times!
EDIT – worth pointing out that a lot of the staples are still there: Frankford Hall, Fette Sau, Kung Fu Necktie, Johnny Brenda’s, etc. And Bottle Bar East used to make banging grilled cheese back in the day.
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com