Manayunk was my home for over five years.  I purchased a row home in Manayunk to use as an investment property and have lived here while saving money for a second home.  I wasn’t sure how much I’d enjoy living in Manayunk because I’ve always been more attracted to the compactness and excitement of the Center City neighborhoods—the restaurant, bar, and culture scene.  Living in Manayunk has turned out to be great.  I’m an indecisive person and when I decide it’s often a balance between many options.  Manayunk is the ultimate balance neighborhood.  It’s part city, part suburb.  It provides quick access to the positives of Center City, it provides a quick commute to my employer.  I’m twenty minutes from Center City, from King of Prussia, from the Main Line, from Plymouth Meeting, from Chestnut Hill.  There’re back ways that avoid traffic.  There’re expressways when there’s no traffic.  If I don’t feel like leaving Manayunk’s Main Street has plenty of dining and drinking options.  Manayunk is the perfect balance neighborhood.

A Manayunk sandwich tour to make the first months of COVID interesting: Manayunk Sandwich Tour
The Manayunk Bike Race was one of Philadelphia's top events until a lack of funding ended the event in 2017 (figures the first year I moved to Manayunk). Cyclists are part of the neighborhoods culture and the daily commute. On the weekends huge packs of cyclists wind there way down to Main Street, stop for a coffee, then continue their ride.
Manayunk has a handful of distinguishing features. Lots of Philadelphia's neighborhoods bleed together. Row home block after row home block will tend to do that. Remove the restaurants, the coffeeshops, etc. and you can be forgiven for not knowing what neighborhood you are in. But Manayunk's features are distinct. Blindfold me. Spin me around. Drive me in a car for an hour. Drop me off in Manayunk and I'll immediately know where I am. Chief among these disinguishing features is the Manayunk Bridge, an arched bridge spanning the Schuylkill. The train tracks that previously crossed the bridge has been converted to a pedestrian walking trail and provide great views of Manayunk.
Manayunk's other distinct distinguishing feature? It's hills. Brutal to deal with in the snow. But fun to explore and climb the stairs.
The home town block. Loved living here.
It's not just major landmarks and physical features that make Manayunk distinct. It's the homes that have been built up over time. I'm not sure how construction permits work in Philadelphia but a walk around Manayunk makes you wonder if anyone has ever obtain a permit for their construction. Homes are built over time. Single families are turned into duplexes and back into single family. Long-term residents put additions on. Then there's my favortie house, apartment, or whatever you want to call that building on the bottom right. I've walked past this building on Shurs Lane and I walked by it on Manayunk Avenue and I realized...wait a second...this is the same building. It's a building on top of a building on top of a building with two entrances, on two different streets, and this is the wild part...the building is in two separate zips, not because it's a big sprawling buildng but because the top of the building is Roxborough and the bottom is in Manayunk. Crazy Manayunk buildings.
In August 2021, Hurricane Ida came through and wrecked parts of Philadelphia and the surrounding area. Low lying areas in Manayunk were not spared. Fortunately most of the residential areas are in higher ground but the local businesses were devasted. The first photo below shows high water levels after the rain stopped and the second photo shows after the water subsided a few days later.