Kensington Beach videos, RNC performance aim to raise awareness of neighborhood issues

Michael Coyle, a part-time Kensington resident, has for years posted photos and videos of drug addicts on the streets of the borough, showing scenes of despair from the largest open-air drug market on the east coast.

Coyle’s various Instagram accounts, all variations of the username “Kensington Beach,” carried him onto the stage at the Republican National Convention on Tuesday night. There, the registered Republican — who says he has never voted — pledged his support for former President Donald Trump. Calling Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood “one of the worst neighborhoods in America,” Coyle cited his hometown as proof that the nation needs Trump’s leadership back in the White House.

In his posts on Kensington Beach, Coyle uncensors the faces of drug users and shows people injecting drugs and fighting in the street. Many lie on the sidewalk, in what he says is a reminiscent of beachgoers at the Jersey Shore, which inspired the name of his social media accounts. Sometimes he posts graphic photos of wounds caused by the animal tranquilizer xylazine, known as “tranq,” on the street, where it has contaminated nearly all illegal opioids sold in Philadelphia.

The largest page, “Kensington Beach,” has more than 36,000 followers, but previous versions — the account has been repeatedly removed from Instagram — have had as many as 120,000 followers.

Coyle says his goal is simply to raise awareness of one of the worst drug crises in the country and its impact on neighbours living in Kensington. He himself once struggled with addiction to codeine and the sedative promethazine. A drink-driving conviction in 2014 was a “wake-up call,” he said. “It helps because I understand on some level. I’ve never done heroin, I’ve never done hard drugs, but at the same time I can relate to it.”

But other members of the community say Coyle’s posts do nothing more than encourage internet users to gawk at people at the worst moments of their lives, often without their consent.

Directly across the street from the warehouse Coyle’s family owned for decades is the New Kensington Community Development Corporation, a local nonprofit focused on community development. Bill McKinney, its executive director, calls Coyle’s page — and dozens of similar accounts on Instagram and YouTube — a sign of the exploitation the neighborhood has long struggled with.

“Instagram, YouTube, The Inquirer — the truth is that stories about Kensington sell,” McKinney said. who regularly receives requests from social media accounts as far away as Australia, offering him $20 to walk down Kensington Avenue and film for an hour. “People want to see it. They’re all getting paid for the spot.”

Coyle claims he doesn’t make any money from his Instagram accounts and has at most made a few hundred dollars through a donation link that he no longer advertises.

On stage Tuesday night, he said he also ran a nonprofit organization. The organization was called Kensington Beach, Coyle told The Inquirer after his speech, and its mission was to “strengthen families” and educate local children about careers in the trades.

The Inquirer found no nonprofit organization by that name registered with the Internal Revenue Service; Coyle said the organization does not generate any revenue and that he plans to register it as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with the IRS soon.

‘It’s abnormal’

Coyle says he grew up in Southwest Philadelphia and lived in Kensington for about six years. (He now splits his time between Kensington and a construction job in Texas.) A few years ago, he felt compelled to document the conditions he saw while walking his dog around the neighborhood.

Coyle said he had noticed more drug users on the streets since media coverage of the Kensington Railroad Gorge, where drug users congregated. Among them was Mehmet Oz, a former television personality and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, who visited the gorge as part of his television show in 2017.

The city later cleared the area. Many of Kensington’s neighbors began to notice more people openly injection onto Kensington Avenue and apartment blocks.

“We were dealing with feces, dead bodies, needles,” he said. “I was walking my dog ​​around the neighborhood every day, and it was getting worse. I thought, The world needs to see this. This is not normal.”

Coyle never voted, he says, but was drawn to Republican politics after meeting a prominent conservative activist visiting Kensington. An RNC official called him later to ask about speaking at the convention. Coyle said he had to be interviewed as part of the vetting process before he was added to Tuesday’s speaker list.

“Philadelphia, this city that has been run by Democrats for so long,” he said. “Nothing has changed — it’s gotten worse over the years. In my opinion, it can’t get any worse. Trump is not your typical politician.

“I just hope that what I’ve done will bring more opportunities to the people in the area.”

Kensington Home Film Industry

Coyle’s accounts are among dozens that have given the Kensington scene global recognition.

The 24-hour YouTube livestream from the corner of Kensington and Allegheny Avenues, where many addicts congregate, generated advertising revenue from thousands of viewers, as well as a rich live chat where people could pay up to $500 to have their comments highlighted, 404, a tech culture site, reported last year.

“One sec [commenters] “Sometimes they talk about larger social issues that created the problems they are observing, most of the time they make fun of the situation, and the real people on camera comment on it as if it were a reality show,” 404 reports.

Coyle’s work misrepresented a arduous moment years ago for the family of Rosalind Pichardo, who runs Sunshine House, a drug-addiction treatment center on Kensington Avenue. Coyle posted a photo of her cousin, then in energetic addiction, lying in the street, she said.

The caption read, “Rest in Peace.” The family panicked.

“He looked like he was dead. It was about 10 p.m. and I was running to Temple [University Hospital] and I go to the morgue and they don’t know what I’m talking about,” Pichardo said.

The next day she met her cousin – alive – on Kensington Avenue.

Pichardo is not against sharing content about the situation in Kensington; she and her cousin had a habit of filming themselves on park benches talking about the addiction crisis in their area. But she wants such material to be produced responsibly.

“We see the same things,” she said. “We see dead people lying in the streets. But to exploit them, with music in the background and flashing lights, like it’s a horror movie — that’s not right.

“Doesn’t want [a family] see his son lying on Kensington Avenue in a state in which he did not consent to being filmed.”

Coyle says he’s reaching out to addicts behind the scenes of his social media posts. He says he carries naloxone, a drug that reverses opioid overdoses, with him everywhere, and has treated “probably hundreds” of overdoses himself. He also says he’s paid thousands to send people to rehab or on flights home, and has reunited families with loved ones on the streets of Kensington.

Coyle, however, said he would rather not publicize this involvement, even if it could offset some criticism, because he does not want to attract that much attention.

“I’m on the street, I’m not the type to stand behind a podium,” he said. “Even what I just did was something completely modern to me. I’ve never spoken in front of a crowd. I’m not looking to brag about what I’m doing well. I’m just doing God’s work.”

Inquirer news researcher Ryan W. Briggs contributed to this article.