Neighborhood retail is a good thing, and while I think Philly is a quite a bit better than DC generally, I have noticed that neighborhood opposition tends to make it hard for certain types of establishments to open. Commenters over there express understandable concerns about drunks loudly leaving bars at 2 in the morning, but the point of having neighborhood bars is that they're.. just one bar instead of a large group of them. And being neighborhood-serving bars they don't attract the same kind of crowd.
I wouldn't want to live just off the eastern end of South Street, because it's an area where suburbanites drive in to have a good time, seeing it as an adult theme park instead of a residential neighborhood, there are quite a few bars, and there are a lot of drunks being assholes after closing time. But there are neighborhood bars which seem to coexist with their surroundings without too much trouble.
