Editor's Note: About a year ago, Nick Russo sent me a note. San Francisco was falling apart, he said, but the attention it received was disproportionate. Because of the city’s uniquely high concentration of influential social media personalities, there was a national consensus it was uniquely broken. But it was not. It is still not, which is something I both agree with and often write about — every city in this country is dying. What I did not realize, however, was how bad it was in places like Philadelphia.

Trash, violence, six-story flaming tire piles in junkyards dotting the city. Nick, a Philly-based reporter, guests today for Pirate Wires with an incredible account of incompetence from what may be one of the worst disasters of local politics in America.

-Solana