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I grew up in one of the worst cities in America. Literally the San Francisco of the east coast, back before San Francisco had a human fecal matter app. But it's still just as bad as it always was, even if San Francisco is now far worse than its ever been. When I was stuck in that absolute fucking shithole nightmare of a city, I dreamt of nothing more than escaping. I also lived with an abusive shitstain of a "mother" and inherited all of that family's shitty worthless fucking genetics... Except the tall height, apparently. I ended up the shortest male in the bloodline, even though there weren't too many males to begin with. No one had a father in my "family," and I really hate to use that word.

Anyway it took a LOT of hustling and saving up, but I was able to complete my college degree, and get a job overseas, where they pay for your room and board, and it requires very little experience to break in. Although my first job was bullshit and my recruiter was a huge fucking asshole, and I had to come up with fucking $3,000 being dirt-poor to afford the fucking plane ticket over there cause they lied about "paying for your one-way ticket" and instead, they "maybe might reimburse you, but you'll still have to pay out of pocket," I managed to get over here into Asia. And 2020 had a lot of crap to deal with, not just with the pandemic, but with the job I was dealing with and piece-of-shit Korean town I was stuck in, as well.

But, I'd say it was all worth it to escape that queer, rat-infested nightmare I spent the majority of my life stuck in. That city is literally the most negative place in America and almost no good people exist there. They're either scummy criminal thug assholes, or rich elitist Democrat woke assholes. It wasn't until I got out of there, did I realize not all people were utter pieces of shit. It's just Philly. However, the stupidity thing still rings true; most human beings are idiots, no matter what country in the world you live in.

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Anyway, I've been out of that shithole fucking nightmare of a city for four years now. I recently looked back at my old apartment on Spring Garden using Google Maps Street View, and see that the neighborhood has gone to hell in the most "appropriate for this city" way possible. Dirty and full of graffiti on one side, and a gentrified smug-liberal loft, across the street. My mailbox I built when living there in 2016 is still there, even now. My solar trash bins I got the city to put in, are still there, although all trashed by graffiti. Only now, there's a pretentious-ass gentrified apartment complex full of "lofts" next door, and up the street, they built a giant shithole shopping complex. With a "Giant" supermarket, Planet Fitness, Starbucks, and other pretentious gentrified shit. Most of the neighborhood is still full of homeless crackheads, but now it just "looks cleaner."

Again, it's the most "appropriate for this city" gentrification possible, and only San Francisco could be more stupid where they're paying men $600,000 a year to clean up the homeless' turds, instead of just hiring the homeless as trashmen or something and getting them into the cheapest rehab possible. My hometown is almost "San Fran" retarded, as well. Overpriced, pretentious 300 sq. ft. shoebox condos, while the streets are filled with crack needles and human fecal matter. But hey, "at least the city cleans our side of the street!"

When I moved out of there in 2019, en-route to Korea, it was already showing early signs of gentrification by putting in a fitness gym! For background reference, nobody in this fucking city goes to gyms but the rich. Poor people don't have the luxury to run in place for two hours a day just to "look good," and this rule pretty much applies across America, as well. Only narcissistic upper-middle-class assholes can afford to spend money on vanity, while the rest of us are too busy "staying fit" in that fucking Amazon warehouse all night and walking between bus stops and subway stations. So, yeah, a gym in the neighborhood meant gentrification 95% of the time. Almost as much as a Starbucks, Chipotle, vape shop, or tanning salon. Now, the neighborhood looks like a midtown liberal nightmare.

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The Brooklyn Effect of gentrification has likely driven out all of the poor people by now. You know, the ones that actually had housing. I kinda feel guilty for not being there for four years and "letting it happen." The neighborhood is dead and I wasn't there to "save it." However, as I said, I hate that fucking city and absolutely everything about it, most of all the horrible people there. I only feel somewhat guilty because I forget how everyone there kinda deserved it. That town was full of nothing but assholes and pieces of shit, from eye to eye. I am not kidding or exaggerating when I say almost no one there was a good or even somewhat-decent person. A few were "normal" because they moved there from elsewhere to go to university at some asshole college like U.Penn, or for an overpaid "influencer" job because of the scummy "EA-like" corporations in that city. But they are immigrants; no actual native resident there was anything but a piece of shit. And before you count me in there, I was technically born in Harlem.

So yeah, my old neighborhood is almost dead now, my two-unit small apartment rowhome on Green Street is now decaying and falling apart, and the only people living indoors there now are pretentious woke Zoomers from upper-middle-class households who probably go to college nearby or work at some shitty tech startup in the area.

I feel bad about it mainly due to nostalgia. I ALWAYS dreamt of one day becoming a multi-millionaire, coming back to the neighborhood, buying up the properties of the old abandoned buildings there, fixing them, and "giving back" to the neighborhood by making them low-cost apartments and grocery stores and whatnot. You know, fixing the neighborhood without gentrifying it. But that was just a pipe dream and I still am no multimillionaire, four years later, and those buildings probably won't still be there in another couple years.

Still though. That was my dream back in my 20s. When I was still stuck in that city barely employed and earning $11 an hour. There's no use in trying to look back into the past, even if you can literally do that on Google Maps Street View. The neighborhood is dead, due to decay and liberal gentrification, and they didn't even need to copy San Francisco this time to turn it into a liberal dystopian shithole.