Woo! A good start, tho not neccessarily where I'll be going with it.

Anything official? I'd imagine that they absorbed a TON of refugees after the NYC quake, for example, and probably decayed pretty badly in the process.

As true today as it is in 50-odd years....

In all seriousness, I'm impressed and depressed at how plausable this is, and how acurate it is.

Wow, SEPTA prices are in for a drop soon!

That's per block!

The Striper books do count as canon, some would say unfortunately.

True. Pretty much only Striper: Assassin then.

*raises hand* Here! Here! The books sucked.

To Philly: I heard it's the leading city in the USA in murders per year? Like 400 killed people per year or so?

Is it as depressing as Detroit which seems to be really run-down city today?

I was playing with that very notion earlier, in fact.

The main Cheeseteak houses are smoe of teh rare places that still serve real meat, tho this makes their foodstuffs a rather luxurious item.

The second-tier ones sell a "Cheesesteak" which is actually soy, but at a price the common working schlub can afford.

Also, Shadowruns against the prime shops are strictly forbidden.

Only made sense.

...definitely a means of gaining more Noteriety.

Been looking over more of teh Philly stuff that was pre-designed and I noticed something odd ... he had Camden Inc (Great concept) as being firmly in Yak hands, rather than the Mob. Seems a bit off, in my mind's eye, but, I'm guessing that he's a natice and had more insider knowledge than I had.

Still, I'm curious, as I would have flipped it, sticking the mob in Camden, but with a fairly loose hand on Philly ... since Camden was a "Made Town" for lack of a better term, they wanted the vice market to go there for, say, gambling intrests, thus kept Philly as a no-gambling zone. They keep control of the docks and industrial area, but don't have much to do with the slum areas. A low end family has control, here, and is chomping at the bit to do more, but those above aren't interested. A second family (Or more likely two or three smaller ones) is in the corporate sector and the middle class/upper middle class region, where they're nigh-legitimate ... Mob Incorporated, in essence. They make with insider stock trading, nepotism contracts, and other "Old Boy Network/Business as Usual" deals, butdon't have an intrest in street-level crime. They deal some in BTL, but realize that junkies are bad for business and, well, they want to make a profit.

This leaves a few options.

In Chinatown, you get the Triads, who pretty much have it locked down, and who are looking to expand a bit, here and there, but really have to absorb blocks culturally before moving in.

The Yaks are the Vicelords, filling the gap that the Mob has raised itself out of. They're heavy into the slums and low lifestyle areas, with drugs, BTLs, and prostitution. They tried to dig into gambling intrests a few years ago, but this brought The Wrath of Camden down upon them and the new Obyan wants none of that, thank you very much. They've largely rebuilt since then and are starting to rub elbows with the one low end family (The one chompnig at the bit mentioned earlier), but, it hasn't broke into a full war yet. Skirmishes, sure, but that's all. The Camden Boys don't seem to care overly much at this stage, but, the Obyan isn't willing top press the issue too hard... in fact, he's trying to reign his crew back, since they're getting cocky.

The Street Gangs are all over the place, with a handful being officially backed by the Big boys, the rest being loose associates ... Several gangs buy BTLs from the Yaks, for example, then sell them on the streets, scrapping with one another now and then for territory. The Yaks wouldn't step in to save either group, but they *do* have one "Pet Gang" for when they need foot soldiers. Ditto for the Mob, and the Triads. The rest of the gangs do their own thing.

But, that's just me brainstorming. I'm curious why he had it virtually reversed from that.

IIRC, in all major US cities you have a lot lower chance of getting mugged then in London. Even homicide tends to be confined to fairly well defined areas and subgroups inside them. (So gang members involved in drugs tend to be very disproportionately represented in homicide victims in violent cities). If you live near a bunch of gang members it does increase you chance of someone accidentally killing you while shooting at them (Gang members typically can't shoot worth a damn).

I worked in Chicago while it was the (numeric) murder capital. I traveled all over dealing with our customers. In most of the city I felt pretty safe. Downtown, the loop, Lincoln park, Halstead etc. I never got robbed, threatened or assaulted in the 5 years I worked there. I did fair amount of walking around at night in many of these area and felt fairly safe. I have no idea how it was wandering around drunk, as I didn't do stupid things like that (had a coworker who got rolled and dumped unconscious in a snow bank when he staggered home blind drunk from a company party once - would have frozen to death if the "the pigs" he hated hadn't called an ambulance when they spotted him.) But there were places that were not really safe.

I was a member of a National Guard unit at 52nd & Cottage Grove, which isn't a very unsafe area, but it's close to areas that were not safe. Down around the Projects on 51st and on State I certainly didn't feel safe. Other areas around there I tried to avoid going through after mid-morning. So I'd typically go out of my way to not drive through the ravaged neighborhoods on the way to the expressways in the evening. These are the places where the only businesses (among the burnt out buildings) are chicken & fast food, liquor stores, beauty shops, and drug stores, with the occasional convenience store.

Black guys I knew who lived there all had stories of being threatened by gang members. One had three guys from Gary chase him in their car, hop out and aim shotguns at him and his friend and ask for their leather jackets. Which they delivered. The lady who saw this from her house called 911, and no cops ever showed. But this is not the typical experience in most of Chicago.

Gary Indiana (a pretty small city) was the per capita murder capital, and it was certainly not a place that made me feel safe the few times I went through on city streets. Mostly all closed or burnt out storefronts, etc. I knew a guy who lived there who had his house burglarized three times in several years. After the first two times (when they broke in via the back door) he had his back door really hardened. The third time they used a chainsaw and cut open the back wall.