This has never been a bedroom community, an internal suburb, or a homogeneous province. It's not part of Starbucks Nation. There's no Blockbuster. McDonald's and KFC crouch just off the northeast border, but they don't dare enter. (A small, storefront Dunkin' Donuts on our southern edge is the lone invader.) Instead we have four local coffee shops and four local grocery/delis. There's Honey's Sit-n-Eat, where you can get a side of bacon with your potato latke and matzoh ball soup, and a half-dozen other chowdowns and drinkups whose owners live here. Forget The Gap—get your jeans at Denim Society, and indulge your indulgences at the local hottie corset shop, Delicious Boutique. Northern Liberties has become prettier and more marketable, and it's definitely become more yuppified—says I as I look into my Pottery Barn mirror and behold my own yuppie countenance. But it remains defiant, mixed up, resolutely unmanageable, as it has been for the past 325 years. It’s not smooth,

it’s SNAFU: Situation Normal: All F---ed Up.


SNAFU with a Smirk.
That's Northern Liberties for you.