After a twenty-minute ride on the SEPTA subway, Anna and Chris emerged at Allegheny Station, a world away from the waterfront beauty of Penn’s Landing. He said the neighborhood’s nickname was the Las Vegas of Drugs, but she was aghast. His warning hadn’t prepared her for the squalor. My description in the novel of the East Allegheny and Kensington Avenues intersection is not exaggerated. This is one very scary neighborhood. While taking this photo, paramedics behind me were loading an unconscious man into an ambulance. He had suffered an apparent drug overdose.
