Visits to Johnsons Park Neighborhood

Throughout the semester I had the chance to visit Johnsons Park Neighborhood on several different occasions. Each time I visited Johnsons Park Neighborhood I found, learned or met someone new that added something valuable to my overall experience I had down in the Johnsons Park Neighborhood that aloud me to add something to this blog.

The first time I had the chance to visit Johnsons Park Neighborhood was on March 15^th, 2009 around 4:00pm after our initial group meeting with Mr. George Lewis who would be coordinating our interviews with the life long residents of the neighborhood. I decided that day that I wanted to visit the neighborhood so I could get a start on my JPNA photo essay. At first I was going to visit the neighborhood by myself and I really didn’t plan to stay all that long, but my group mate Quyen decided she was going to come with me. We got to the neighborhood around 4:10pm and parked across the street from Johnsons Park it was a cool day dusk and not too many people were out, but there were a few. We started to walk around and take pictures of the neighborhood and got a few looks from people and were asked by one fellow if we were working on a school project. We walked around for a bit longer and took some more pictures when we came across a lady who asked if we were new to the neighborhood we told her that we were not but instead working on a school project. The lady seemed very friendly and interested to talk to us but I don’t think she lived in the neighborhood. In fact I think she may have been homeless or perhaps very poor since she asked us for money. Neither I nor Quyen had any money to give her but she seemed happy to talk to us none the less. We left soon after that since it was getting dark. At the time I personally didn’t feel comfortable taking pictures of the people we talked too since I don’t like to take pictures of people I don’t know.

The second time I visited Johnsons Park Neighborhood was several days later I again met up with Quyen and we headed to Johnsons Park in the afternoon that day was a bit nicer then the earlier time we visited the neighborhood. But again there were not many people about the neighborhood. We walked around again for about another hour and a half up and down the streets taking pictures. We stopped to take a picture of the fish market when a lady asked if we were taking pictures of her fish market. We explained that we were documenting the neighborhood for our project. We got to talking to her and she had plenty of stories to tell us. Her name was Willie Mays and talking with her, well, lets just say was one of the more memorable moments of this project.

The times I visited the neighborhood was a good experience in my opinion even though when I did go I did not see to many people out and about maybe that was because of the weather maybe not either way it was none the less exciting