On Friday afternoon I saw a young family holding hands and staring longingly through the fence at the empty swimming pool in Jordan Park. At the same time, I saw thugs racing their cars on the large parking lot at Jordan Park. The expensive outdoor prison yard exercise equipment stood there unused.
They're building full court basketball on the remaining grass at the previous kiddie friendly Stevens Park. The Rider-Pool Foundation is one of the backers of the project. The foundation supports the Wildlands Conservancy, which promotes the weed walls along the creeks. The foundation also supports Promise Neighborhood, which supposedly reduces gun violence. Meanwhile, as the Morning Call compiles and aggregates the press releases from the wealthy non-profits, tension is mounting between the lessor non-profits, which are competing to monitor the thug activity the ill advised full basketball court is sure to foster.
Being an advocate for the traditional park system has become a lonely job. Reporting on the park system realities is not only thankless, but resented. Seeing resources misspent on a naive, woke agenda is frustrating. Nevertheless, this blog will continue the mission.
shown above the deteriorating Jordan Park Pool
To your opening comment about Jordan Pool being empty, wasn’t there a middle-schooler pulled from the Jordan Creek just last week after trying to swim there? I believe the initial reports said he was in critical condition, but I haven’t seen an update or heard whether he was expected to survive.
ReplyDeleteThe woke agenda isn’t just naive, it can also be deadly.
But hey, the non-profits will continue to turn out supporters at council meetings to keep their city-funded gravy train going, while claiming their programs actually are improving things here.
In reality, the non-profits are robbing much-needed tax dollars from residents while they skim their salaries off the top of whatever funding they are given by our inept city leaders. As usual, residents only get the crumbs, and are left with the byproducts of such arrangements (like empty pools).
Pool Trust doesn’t use any tax dollars.
DeleteBut apparently the help fund other organizations that do.
DeleteTimes change and so do the kids of Allentown, now more aptly-named the "Inner City" of Allentown.
ReplyDeleteThe kids of the All-America City Allentown of years past went swimming at city pools, or played baseball, or played on equipment like swings, see-saws, sliding boards or even the now legally banned "Monkey Bars". The various schools even had hopscotch patterns painted on the asphalt where groups of kids would play with old shoe heels. When Stephens was torn down in the 1980s, it's existing playground was simply expanded from the schoolyard playground to the neighborhood playground that exists today.
However, in the current woke Allentown of 2025, those 20th century activities on playgrounds of the former residents are not hip or cool to the current kids. Today's inner city kids play differently as the culture of today's residents is very different from those of the past. Today, basketball dominates, and sneakers don't have heels that wear out. In between gang meetings and shootings, as various gangs have their territory to do their drug dealing in their various "hoods".
yes, of course all allentown city children are members of one gang or another. get a grip, boomer.
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