Opinion: An open letter to Fashion District and other Center City businesses

Dear Center City, 

Your security guards keep stopping me and my friends. We know your policy says we can’t come in unless we’re over 18. And even then, there can’t be more than four of us. But we’re 19 now. And it’s just the two of us. We’re just trying to hang out before going back to college. We can’t hang out in our West Philly neighborhood. We know homicides are down but we don’t want to be the next girl on a t-shirt because we were walking down the streets of our own neighborhood at the wrong time. 

Our parents told us that if we made the right choices, we could make it out. That we could go to college somewhere where we didn’t have to wonder if those popping sounds were gunfire or firecrackers. They told us that if we behaved well, we would get respect from adults. That if we treated people right, they would treat us right. We followed their advice. We played the respectability game and won. We go to school at Yale and Emory, but your security guards still stop us and ask for our IDs. On paper, we’re allowed to be here, but I remember a time when we weren’t. 

I was 16 the first time I was turned away from one of your stores. My friends and I wanted to get burgers from Five Guys over on Chestnut after school. It was spring, pandemic lockdowns were over, and we were finally allowed to be outside. But before we could order, the manager took one look at our uniforms and said we had to leave. When we asked why, she got upset. She said no kids were allowed. We didn’t cause a disruption. We didn’t destroy anything. We just went home, hungry and confused. 

I was still 16 the second time I was turned away from your stores. It was my first week interning for a city councilmember. I was so excited to pay for lunch with money I’d earned and eat in my fancy new work clothes. But when I went to Liberty Place, a security guard asked to see my ID. When I showed him my school ID, he told me to leave. I tried to explain I didn’t mean any harm, that I worked at City Hall, that I was a good kid. He told me kids under 18 weren’t allowed by themselves after 1p.m. He told me to leave. 

At the time, I didn’t know why I wasn’t allowed in your stores anymore. I didn’t know that in April 2023, a large group of teenagers joined a national trend called “Teen Takeovers” and flooded your streets. I didn’t know that people were upset, even though nothing was damaged. All I knew was I had to make sure I took my lunch at noon if I wanted Auntie Anne’s at Liberty Place. All I knew was I was doing all the right things and you, my city, still didn’t respect me enough to let me spend the money I earned at my summer internship at your stores. 

I was blessed enough to have a mom with a car and some free time. She would take my friends and I to Cherry Hill Mall and wait in the car so we could have some semblance of autonomy. But we should have been able to exercise real autonomy by taking the L to the Fashion District just 8 stops from my house. Not everyone has someone who can afford to drive them across the bridge. 

Your decision to exclude me from your stores hurt. It made me doubt my mom when she told me if I dress well and act right I’d be treated with respect. Because I did. And you didn’t. It made me wonder what the point in doing all the right things was in the first place? When you treat all teenagers like deviant criminals before we even get a chance to prove ourselves, you alter how we see the world. You are telling us that what we do does not matter. You are telling us that our age alone is enough for you to treat us poorly. 

Now, my friends and I relish the opportunity to walk through your stores. We waltz through the floors of the Fashion District giggling like the school girls we are. We keep the volume to a minimum. We never travel in groups larger than four. And when your security guards stop us, we boldly show our IDs because we are allowed to be here now. Even though we should have never been denied access in the first place. 

Cayla Waddington of West Philadelphia is studying sociology at Yale University. PJC reached out to Fashion District multiple times asking if they wanted to comment, but they did not respond.