🌊 Roca Interviews Zombie City

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Kensington is Philadelphia’s “open-air drug market,” the city’s “worst neighborhood,” its “zombie street.”

Situated in northeastern Philly, the neighborhood straddles Kensington Avenue. It’s the center of the “tranq” epidemic – named for a tranquilizer that is mixed with fentanyl and causes a user’s skin to rot. In Kensington, fentanyl and tranq are openly consumed and traded on the street. We visited here for a story back in April and found it to be the most disturbing place we had encountered in the US, if not the world.

But Kensington wasn’t always this way. In fact, not long ago, it was a place that drew immigrants from around the world. So what went wrong?

As you head north from Fishtown – the “Brooklyn of Philly” – toward Kensington, gourmet ice cream shops and beer halls give way to corner stores and vacant buildings. Nearing Kensington Avenue, the density of people passed out on the street increases: From a steady trickle, there is soon a flood. In some places, you can see more than a dozen people sprawled out on the sidewalks, unable to tell whether they are dead or alive. Many people are swaying in the streets because tranq makes it difficult to stand. Many people look like zombies, hence Kensington’s “Zombie City” nickname.

Kensington wasn’t always like this, as evidenced by the beautiful old stone building of the now-defunct Kensington Trust Company. It was once a neighborhood of manufacturing workers, many of whom were Irish immigrants. Industry left in the 1960s, though, followed by riots in 1968 that precipitated “white flight.” The neglected area became primarily black and Hispanic.

Kensington became a hub of drug dealing that attracted drug users from across the region. Many took to living on the street or in Kensington’s decrepit buildings. The city has been either unwilling or unable to clean up the area. It’s established a safe-injection site and occasionally comes through to power-wash the trash-filled streets.

Kensington’s main street runs below an elevated train line and is packed with drug users and drug dealers. We headed to some back streets and got talking to the locals. Their perspectives were not what we expected.