I'm New Here Too

I moved to Northern Liberties from South Jersey in January 2026. I picked the apartment because of where it sat: right on the edge, walking distance to Northern Liberties, Fishtown and Olde Kensington alike. For a while I told people I lived on the Fishtown border.

Turns out the neighborhood next door is Olde Kensington. New here, remember.

That mix-up is practically a neighborhood tradition. The blocks between Girard and Berks, Front and 6th get called Olde Kensington, South Kensington, Lower Kensington, and sometimes just Fishtown or Northern Liberties, depending on who’s talking. Even the City’s own map stops a few blocks short of Berks. Search for something “in Olde Kensington” and a lot of what comes back isn’t.

So I made it a guide of its own. Olde Kensington is right next door to me, and it deserves better than being a footnote to its neighbors.

The questions came fast, the same ones everyone has. Where do I buy groceries? Which day is trash? (Twice a week here, it turns out.) Do I need a permit to park? Is there street sweeping? (Yes, April through October.) Who do I call when something breaks? Where’s the nearest vet, the nearest dentist, the nearest decent haircut?

None of it is hard. All of it is new, and all of it hits at once.

There’s another reason this neighborhood got under my skin. I’m an artist. I make work under the name DrainedEye. And I landed right next to American Street, where on the second Thursday of every month the galleries and studios open their doors: Crane Arts, The Clay Studio, the studios behind the glass garage doors at Ray Philly, NextFab, Moderne. At Open Studio Tours this October I met Michael Frechette, who built his own studio on American Street and named it the Nanny Goat Building, after the 1800s market around the corner. That’s the kind of thing you only learn by walking in.

So that’s what this guide is: the practical stuff, plus the places worth walking into. Every business here is in Olde Kensington or right on its edge. Where there’s nothing inside the neighborhood, I send you to the closest place just across Girard and say so. Home services like plumbers and movers come from wherever the good ones are, as long as they serve this neighborhood.

Some listings are here because I think they’re genuinely useful. Others pay to be in front of new neighbors, and those are always marked Paid Partnership. That includes mine: yes, DrainedEye is listed under Artists, and it’s marked like every other sponsor.

I’m still learning this neighborhood too. That’s the point.

If there’s something every new Olde Kensington resident should know, a place I should walk into, or something I got wrong, tell me. We’ll figure out the neighborhood together.

— Jason