This is what more than one-third of Philadelphians have to live with,'' she said on one recent tour, driving past dilapidated houses, crumbling factories and abandoned churches in the city's Kensington section.
Welfare Is No.
So they paint murals,'' she said as children gathered around, some bright-eyed and smiling, others with hard expressions, but all eager for a closer look at the visitors. Two girls, barely 18, posed nearby in a paint-chipped doorway, their faces sporting the heavy makeup and indolence of prostitution. Honkala explained later that the same bright-eyed children can just as easily gather at one of the neighborhood's many overgrown vacant lots to watch prostitutes ply their trade and drug addicts shoot up, or to puzzle over a dead body. Philadelphia is home to large pockets of poverty and blight. Honkala, a former teen-age prostitute and a single mother who danced topless to support herself and her son, has become a local celebrity since moving from Minnesota in 1987.