# Strawberry Mansion: A Glimpse of 27th and Arizona https://vimeo.com/18391454\] --- The 2700 block of Arizona Street is just another block in Strawberry Mansion. No stores, no thugs, no drugs…and hardly any houses. Twenty years ago it was nothing like this. Even 10 years ago, it was nothing like this. Yes, but of course there was other drama. The connection streets of 27th and York were a big drug corner some time ago. Fathered by the “Moet Boys,” a group of street hustlers that made a lot of drug money and supplied their team with unlimited amounts of Moet Champagne. Larry Davis, a former drug user and main client for the Moet Boys, has been in the neighborhood for 41 years and has the seen the downs, ups and “down-agains” of the neighborhood as he calls it. And even after decades of drug abuse, his memory still cannot forget the “better” times of Arizona Street. [![](https://phillyn-media.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/26023822/sp1002Larry1-150x150.jpg)](https://philadelphianeighborhoods.com/2010/03/05/strawberry-mansion-a-glimpse-of-27th-and-arizona/sp1002larry-2/)Larry Davis talks about the neighborhood. “Yea, they sold drugs. They did their thing on the streets. But they took care of the hood,” says Davis. “There were no abandoned houses on the block. There were houses full of families. And that’s what makes a neighborhood, not this. That’s why Arizona Street now is just a street in a section of the city and not a community anymore.” The same that happened to all of the early day drug families, The Moet Boys’ era ended, among other things. “People are selfish now and are all about themselves. It’s a change in the times,” added Davis. “These young boys are disrespectful, they do their own things and don’t care who they hurt in the process as long as they get their money. It wasn’t just about the money back in the day.” Davis and other people of the neighborhood are hurt and saddened by the condition of the street that they have grown up on. They realize that some things have gotten better. One, because there is no more drug trafficking while they are raising there kids. But, also how things have taken a different turn for the worse.  They see that the government has stopped some problems, while creating others. Nowadays, if you were to purchase a house on Arizona, it could be ranged anywhere from $75,000 to $110,000. Ten years ago the range was between $5,000 and $10,000. The property value has gone up because the open sale of drugs has stopped, but what good progress has the neighborhood really made? “I think that they try to raise the property value up just like all these other areas in Philly, so that they can try to get us in, to move the college and corporate people in,” said Howard Wilson, a Arizona Street resident and working father. “That’s what they did down on Girard, what they now call Brewerytown. They offered us more money so that they could takeover the neighborhood and revitalize it. I’m cool where I’m at, though.” [![](https://phillyn-media.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/26023820/sp1002howardandson1-150x150.jpg)](https://philadelphianeighborhoods.com/2010/03/05/strawberry-mansion-a-glimpse-of-27th-and-arizona/sp1002howardandson-2/)Howard Wilson and his son in their home. This process of gentrification is happening rapidly in urban Philadelphia and residents notice. When people first saw black families moving out of the urban ghettos into creating new ones in the Northeast section of the city, people thought it was by coincidence and it probably caught a few people off guard. That seems to be the norm for bettering the city these days. Strawberry Mansion has yet to get with this, but people feel as though it is soon coming, as they have seen in neighboring section of the city, Brewerytown. “Once, or if they ever fix those abandoned houses on Arizona Street, they are going to be built real nice and fit for college students or white people that work downtown or something,” explained Kenneth Talley. “They don’t make nice stuff like that for us. The nice things we had like the Laundromat and corner store, they ran out of business and put nothing in its place.” Talley, a former member of the Village of Arts and Humanities that hosted plays and musical shows at the corner of the block, cannot share those same experiences with his child, Kenneth Talley, Jr. and wishes that he could. But he understands that it is a different neighborhood. “We used to have shows and performances once a month. I performed in them, my brother performed in them, and all my family would come out and watch,” Talley added. “But because of how whoever left it, I can’t enjoy the same experiences with little Kenneth. That’s crazy man.” --- \[soundslide url="https://smcsites.com/soundslides/uploads/sp1002strawberrymansiononeblockslideshow/" height=550 width=600\] ---