Over the years I have used Chester Riley as a meme on numerous posts, most of which complain about the declining quality of life issues in Allentown. Chester was the star of a 1950's sitcom called The Life of Riley. Every episode, after his workday at a factory, he would have to solve a family dilemma within the allotted 30 minutes of his TV show.
So much has changed in Allentown as I watched that program every week as a little boy. Fathers coming home from the factory with their curved black lid lunchboxes are a thing of the past. Now a days, Allentown factories are mostly a thing of the past. Worse yet, father's coming home is also for too many a thing of the past.
Last evening, while driving on busy Tilghman Street, two cars following each other skidded through a red light, and then swerved across the two lanes to turn off at the next corner.
Several years ago Morning Call columnist Bill White described me and this blog as dour and misguided. Of course at that time he and his employer were still praising Pawlowski and Allentown. I'll take dour over indicted, and I'll take the old Allentown over the revolting development it has turned into.
I'll take the old Allentown too!
ReplyDeleteI heard about a new promotional campaign Allentown is revealing soon...
ReplyDeleteI saw a well done new video about development Allentown. It didn't mention that all the new construction is owned by one man, but publicly financed with our taxes. It showed a collage of activity. In reality the town remains astonishingly dead. Bethlehem and Eason, with only a fraction of the development is much more vital...because their growth was organic, to met a demand.
DeleteAbsolutely true. And did you notice while the video promoted Allentown's "diversity," most people depicted had little pigment to their skin. It didn't have to be this way. Many cities have enjoyed renaissances due to mixed-income, mixed-race housing, often non-profit. I am ashamed of what Allentown has become. I'll take the pre-NIZ Allentown any day. Downtown was always bustling then and it was a real neighborhood. Allentown has become an apartheid city. It also still has no dedicated homeless shelter or new affordable housing, and no plans for either, despite the billions of dollars spent and $57 million dollars in CARES funds recently allotted to it. HUD dollars and city dollars are going to build the new Da Vinci Center.
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