I swear our GPS is trying to kill us

One of our local radio stations was having a free concert. Free stuff is free, so me, my sister, and her roommate decided to drive out to Philly to see it. Unfortunately, we had never been to this venue before. We decided to follow our GPS.

Yeah. Bad idea

For some reason, our GPS decided to take us through North Philly, which has a reputation as a… less economically affluent area. Now, as much as I make fun of Philadelphia, it’s not that bad of a city. Central City is nice. There’s some very safe and pleasant areas. If you don’t go looking for trouble you will, for the most part, avoid it.

North Philly is a little different, however. The borders of North Philly are fuzzy, but they contain a series of neighborhoods that has sunken deeper into poverty over the years. As a suburbanite, I can’t say much firsthand– but I’ve heard that the neighborhoods are highly segregated by race, that drug trade is common, and North Philly is home to a bit of gang activity. In other words, it’s not the place you want to be in.

But the crooning voice of our GPS (set to Australian-English: Male) decided that, hey, the fastest way to get to the concert was through North Philly. Who were we to argue?

Our GPS, in addition to falling in and out of functionality, also gave us a nice meandering tour of North Philly. We got to see all sorts of new things!

It seemed as though we would never get out of there. On and on and on we drove, nervously following the directions of our GPS whenever it decided to actually work. And the scenery rolled by… (here, courtesy of Google Maps)

My sister’s roommate and I eventually cracked under the mental strain, and totally lost it:

We ended up arriving to the concert an hour and a half late. At this point, there was no parking left at the venue, so we decided to leave our car by this fine alleyway:

…complete with lovely brick garden.

It was all worth it in the end, though. I got to see Tyler Glenn’s hair.

Neon Trees rocking some neon hair.