A weathered African American woman whose dental situation resembles the half-abandoned row house block behind us is regaling her companions with tales of a certain, apparently clownish, motherfucker that she knows.
I step just outside and slowly sip my beer out of its plastic bag on the pavement. It gives me a reason to loiter and observe. And to wonder whatever happened to paper bags. Perhaps they don't make those wherever we get stuff from these days.
Discount electronics, ball caps and sneakers, a few Black Muslim businesses, a check-cashing / payday-title lender and a pizza shop fill the other storefronts. At least there's legitimate economic activity (well, except for the loan shark) going on here, and there aren't any current vacancies. Aside from the abandoned five-story textile mill which looms over the El tracks, which said tracks loom over everything and all down here.
The SEPTA trains rumble above every few minutes. The pigeons show no sign of being fazed. They're fellow Kenzos for life, after all.
You can buy a VHS-cassette rewinding machine for $14.99 at one of the camera shops. Does it have a dust-resistant jacket? I think of Back to the Future II when I pass that window. But the Cubs won't beat Miami in the 2015 Series, unless one of them switches leagues soon.
Thomas W. Buck's 19th Century factory of dreams is now a field of weeds. It's five months since the 5-alarm fire which took the lives of Lieutenant Robert Neary and firefighter Daniel Sweeney. I wonder if this field is connected to Kevin Costner's somehow, perhaps even if only via the base ingredients of the sodas and other corn-based 'foods' which outnumber fresh fruits and vegetables at our delis and groceries around here by a factor of maybe 100-1.
Missing teeth and urban prairie catch the eye in this neighborhood. A few decades-abandoned mills and warehouses have recently been turned into low-income artist studios. Some lots, those which hosted buildings recently burned down, have been turned into urban gardens or 'farms' of various sizes. The El still rumbles overhead every few minutes, steel wheels screeching as it makes its turn from Front Street onto Kensington Avenue, or the other way, over two hundred times a day, as it has every day for 90 years now, since 1922.
I've finished my beer. I nod to an older Puerto Rican gentleman who smiles at me, at the same time his teenaged son or grandson narrows his eyes, squares his shoulders and juts his jaw out toward me from his seat on the stoop. Kids. They got no manners these days.
I turn the corner onto my block at the very instant a leathery, shirtless 50-something year old gentleman in gray jeans which I can tell used to be blue is giving dap to a 20-something mook with a neck tattoo and a half-cocked, flat-billed cap with a sticker on its brim. Another half a second later, he quickly opens his fist, looks into his palm, closes it again and busts off down the block on his bike. I puff up my 6'2", 210 pound frame, while making and maintaining eye contact with the 'salesman' who I tower over, just before he turns and walks the other way, to let him know "the streets is watchin'." As we say.
Fuck that shit on my block. Na'gonna happen again. I'm on extra alert now. We got rid of the last similar fella back in early July, and my neighbors and I intend to stay rid of this scum. If I do decide to go for that 2015 Philadelphia City Council race, things like this are what I'm going to build my campaign upon.
A high school girl sits on her stoop wearing a green Phillies shamrock tee, chatting into her phone. The pizza guy pulls up and temporarily closes our narrow street while he runs to the door of the house flagged with the green, white and orange carrying two boxed pies and a bulky paper bag. An elderly woman shuts her shades, and turns on the blue light outside. Three kids a few doors down at the deli watch our neighbor, known for occasionally posting black-markered verses of bible scripture in his window on large pieces of cardboard, encouraging his dog to do its business on the corner.
I glance at my tagged-up wall, thinking again that I soon have to buy some paint to cover that stupid shit (since the landlord sure won't), and step around a stray cat stationed in the middle of the pavement. It eyes me warily, as I cover my stoop's three steps in a single bound, and slip a key into the outside door's lower lock while considering dinner...
