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Community
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Friday, 24 July 2009 18:02 |
By Dylan Heath
The corner of Thorndale Avenue and Broadway Street was full of music and laughter on Monday afternoon, July 13. Edgewater children were skipping rope and jumping in a bounce castle while the adults played checkers and talked with neighbors. Edgewater was celebrating the community at its weekly summer block party, an event that began this year.
"[Neighborhood Nights On Thorndale] grows every week. People come off the train," Edgewater community organizer and Neighborhood Nights planner Dan Kleinman said. "[We are] usually kind of pleasantly surprised."
Justin Hicks, an Edgewater resident, stumbled upon the event. "We were just kind of walking by and we noticed a block party," Hicks said.
Hicks was glad to see something that brought the community together.
An anti-crime walk was planed along with the community get together, but it was canceled right before it was supposed to start.
Thorndale has a lot of loitering and crime said Jared Desecki, Community Outreach Coordinator for the office of State Representative Harry Osterman. There is more breaking and entering to the east of Broadway, and more graffiti to the west, Desecki said.
Desecki said the walk was supposed to be "the old approach ... saying we want our streets back." But it was canceled because people wanted to stay at the block party. Instead they handed out "Safe Neighborhood" signs to the area businesses.
"If anybody, the businesses are hurting the most," Kleinman said.
People hang out in front of the local storefronts and drive away customers, Kleinman said. At the very least Neighborhood Nights gives loiterers a new place to be for a few hours, he said.
For now, people are happy to hang out in the parking lot, listening to music and enjoying free hot dogs and popcorn. The diverse community members talked with local business owners and politicians while there children played hopscotch. |
