January 2007 Archives

DID YOU NOTICE how much Prince Charles looks like Prince Edward, the last Prince of Wales to visit Philadelphia in 1860? There was a great picture of a handsome Prince Edward on the front page of The Inquirer on Saturday. The man who would become King Edward VII arrived in Philadelphia , a local paper reported," attired as a private gentleman without ribbon or order." It was during the weird frantic months before the Civil War.

What struck me as cool and proper was that on the evening he arrived in Philadelphiua, Prince Edawrd went bowling at the Union Club at 12th and Walnut St. What also struck me as cool was this photo of the bowling alley at 13th and Chestnut Sts. Still fits the city, doesn't it. And if Prince Charles and Camilla wanted to knock around some ten pins while in town, they could have walked here from their hotel.

IT WAS A DARK NIGHT in a city that knows how to keep its secrets, and our cover was being blown by Guy Noir and the Prince of Wales. "We're from Philadelphia if you haven't figured that out by now," said Garrison Keillor at the end of a two-hour love song to our city broadcast live on National Public Radio Saturday night from the Kimmel Center. Meanwhile at the Academy of Music one block north on Broad Street, the future king of England and his princess consort held court at the Academy Ball. The eyes of royal watchers around the world were on Philadelphia at the same time the ears of Prairie Home Companions were listening to Keillor tell the audience, "Some people get to dance with royalty and others of us pretend we don't care."

Moe and Kathy, our next door neighbors, went to the ball and before they left Kathy jokingly referred to Lady Camilla as "The Duchess of Adultery." By all accounts Their Royal Highnesses were a big hit with Philadelphians, which pleased me despite the fact that, being a Philadelphian, I wouldn't cross the street to shake Prince Charles' hand. Maybe it's the Irish in me (the Clark side of the family), or maybe it's where I grew up.

Whatever it is I recognized myself in Keillor's description of Philadelphia as a "city that knows its own mind. . . They like what they like. And what they don't like they complain about." Keillor seemed impressed, and slightly in awe, of Philadelphia's willingness to speak it own mind. "I come from a non-booing state," he said, minutes before he heard boos (good natured, of course) when he said, "Outsiders associate Philadelphia with political corruption, Legionaires Disease and bombing row houses."

But for the better part of two hours the Prairie Home Companion was the radio show that loves us back. Keillor always tips his hat to the host city each week, but for Philadelphia he genuflected. There wasn't a ten minute span that he didn't reference the city, its majesty, its mystery and its meaning to America and to itself. It was in Philadelphia, he said, that "in a moment of elegance and clarity" the men gathered here wrote the Declaration of Independence and Constitution. He praised the Mummers Parade. "This is not a sedate public event," he said. "These people are Italian."

He gloried in the architecture. He understood our taste in food. One skit featured something called a "Philadelphia Slider" a sausage filled with cheese that "goes down great with beer." In the same skit WHYY's Terry Gross proved her comedic skill by portraying a Philadelphia punk rocker with pink hair called Sandy Beach, "It's pronounced Beach, but it's spelled B-I-T-C-H." Terry said, sounding exactly like Terry Gross. Beach told private eye Guy Noir that she had moved on from the current music scene. "Irony is dead, Mr. Noir. Sincerity is the new irony." And then Keillor led the entire audience in singing, "Oh, beautiful for spacious skies. . ." and by the time they got to "America, America, God shed his grace on thee" there wasn't a dry eye on my face.

SOMETIMES THERE'S really nothing more to say.

HE'S GOT A NAME, YOU KNOW. The Drexel Dragon -- unlike the Temple Owl, the Penn Quaker, the St. Joe's Hawk, the Villanova Wildcat and the LaSalle Explorer mascots -- has a first name. I discovered this while taking photos of the bronze dragon sculpture on the Drexel campus at 33rd and Market Sts. There's a steam vent on the sidewalk in front of the statue and I was trying to get a shot that looked like he was breathing smoke, if not fire.

During the course of that I noticed a plaque identifying the Dragon as "Mario the Magnificent" (you were expecting, maybe, George?). The bronze dragon sculpture by Eric Berg was installed in 2002 was named in honor of beloved Drexel alum Mario V. Mascioli, who hadn't missed a Drexel men's basketball home game in 20 years before his death in January 2005. Mario the Man would have loved what this Drexel team is doing this season. Besides getting off to a 14-4 start , the Dragons smoked every Big Five opponant they played this season, sweeping their big-name Philadelphia big brothers for the first time in Drexel history. I guess that means that this year you could call Drexel's dragon mascot Super Mario.

THE FIRST TIME I MET MICHAEL NUTTER we were hiding behind a car dodging police bullets in West Philadelphia. The fact that the cops weren't deliberately shooting at us had little to do with why we were hiding. The most convincing reason was the sound of whizzing bullets overhead and the pee-twee-oo of riccochets off lampposts and asphalt. We didn't realize it at the time, but we were caught up in the most lethal firefight in city history. The British army fired fewer shots when invading Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War than the 10,000 rounds Philadelphia police fired into a fortified rowhouse on Osage Avenue one day in May 27 years ago. By the end of the day 11 people were dead, five of them children, 62 homes were destroyed and 250 neighbors were left homeless. "Not at 62nd and Pine! This is unbelievable! This is civil war in a residential neighborhood," Nutter said as we crouched behind a parked car not far from where he grew up at 55th and Larchwood.

For those of us who witnessed it live, the MOVE Confrontation on May 13, 1985 was like being at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. We saw the unimaginable become smoking reality before our eyes. (That's the aftermath above.) And as we hid in fear from police bullets, Nutter was the first one I heard to express the larger emotion that I was feeling -- outrage. How could this be happening in my city?! On 5/13 I had no idea who Michael Nutter was, let alone that one day he'd be running for mayor. But I do know that day changed both of our lives forever. I continued doing what I was doing, writing a daily newspaper column, but something had changed. I was obsessed with the injustice I saw that day and in the days, months and years that followed. I raged and I bellowed in print. Some readers say I became a common scold. And maybe I was.

After 5/13 Nutter returned to his job as a City Council legislative assistant. Five years later he was elected Councilman for the Fourth District where he served for 15 years and where he earned a reputation as being the Napoleon Dynamite of Philadelphia politics, a hard-working, principled, unbending nerd with an oddly off-putting manner. He suffered fools poorly, including the mayor, Napoleon's Uncle Rico, another oddly off-putting personality. Watching John Street and Michael Nutter battle each other over legislation they both supported was blessed comic relief for City Hall observers, especially those who like to smoke in bars. But Nutter was usually on the enlightened side of the issues, as unpleasant as the right side of history can be to those on the losing side. Because of that there are some who accused Nutter of being a common scold. Maybe he was. And maybe he has his reasons.

IN MY FIRST LIVE VISIT with the announced candidates for mayor of Philadelphia Wednesday night at the University of the Sciences, my immediate impression of the would-be Democratic nominees was "Three Bald Black Men and a Rich White Guy." From left to right that's moderator, Marc Howard, of Channel 3, and candidates Michael Nutter, Dwight Evans, Dr, Foster (Green Party) and Tom Knox. Before the start of the candidate's forum, seasoned pols, Nutter and Evans, comfortably worked the West Philly crowd with grins and handshakes like, well, like they were running for mayor. Knox, the rich white guy, seemed uncomfortable pressing the flesh with strangers. Chaka Fattah (hereafter known as the Black Candidate With Hair) was a no show at the event in his own congressional district. Nutter and Evans were the most effective speakers, both armed with experience and savvy, but if I had to declare a winner of this early skirmish, I'd have to give the nod to Dwight Evans, who was the only one of the crew who reached a delivery that I'd call passionate about why he wants to be mayor.

THIS SHAWN HORNBECK KIDNAPPING "Happy Ending" story creeps me out and I'll tell you why: Look at the photo of Shawn at the age of 11 when he was kidnapped four years ago. Notice anything you don't usually see on a typical Philadelphia-area suburban pre-teen boy? Notice anything you don't see on a stereotypical bad-to-the-bone 11-year-old boy from the worst gangsta GHET-TOH in North, South, West Philadelphia and Camden?

Eleven-year-old boys don't wear earrings where we come from. They don't have tattoos, either. Or pierced lips. I don't know if Shawn has a tat or two now that he's 15 and four years closer to the age when most parents would tell their sons, "No! You'll have to wait until you're 18." But I do know that since being rescued from his years of captivity, this handsome, bright-eyed boy is not only smiling easily, he's sporting at least two new body piercings on his face.

This tells me something. I'm not sure what, but it tells me that Shawn's kidnapper wasn't afraid to let Shawn do something his parents let him do, even if -- and you would imagine that in a conservative midwest community it would -- draw attention to a boy clearly not of legal age. I see a boy barely of high school age with three visible holes in his face, I think his parents are guests on the Jerry Springer Show. Or a runaway. If I'm a cop who sees this kid on the street, I crook my finger and say, "Cm'ere."

Four years this kid Shawn was stolen from his family. Four years he had opportunity, apparently, to call for help or find a cop while free to skateboard with his friends. If his captor had a young-boy piercing fetish, and forced Shawn to get his skin punctured, you'd think Shawn or his parents would have lost the lip ring before the "Shawn Found" press conference.

He didn't. They didn't. There it was.

And there it is. This story stinks. Call me old fashioned, but something's not right

GEORGE BUSH WAS A C STUDENT at Yale during the early years of the Vietnam War, so it's possible he never heard one of the oft-cited aphorisms adopted by the anti-war movement during those troubled times: Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Such grand words fit both the decade of the 60's and the nature of the conflict. Vietnam was an American tragedy, a war that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of young men and boys drafted right out of high school. What's happening in Iraq today more closely reflects the words of an unlikely pairing of philosophers, Karl Marx and Yogi Berra, one who wrote, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." the other who said, "It's deja vu all over again."

Tragedy or farce, America is doomed to repeat the sad slow bloody exit our our military from foreign soil where once again, despite ample advance warning, we ventured into the wrong war in the wrong country for the wrong reasons. We know we can't just leave Iraq, not merely because of the 3,000 American lives we've anted up already. We owe it to the two or three innocent Iraqis still living in a country filled with people who can't wait to kill each other in the name of Allah. We owe it to the millions of people around the world who still look up to us as America the Good, and not American the Bungling Superpower.

And we owe it, yes, to the murderous bastards just waiting to take over Baghdad the minute we leave. There is a difference between Iraq and Vietnam. When Saigon fell, the North Vietnamese army swept in from outside the city. When Baghdad falls, it will be at the hands of the enemy already living there.

The day after President Bush addressed the nation and called for a surge of 21,500 American troops to stabilize Baghdad, I saw a photo in the paper that, as Popeye would say, shivered me timbers. It showed President Gerald Ford seated behind his desk in the Oval Office in April 1975 discussing a plan with his two top aides to send 20,000 American troops to Saigon to secure the capital for evacuation as North Vietnamese troops approached.

Saigon fell before the 20,000 troops could be sent overseas, but what shook me, what I marveled at were the youthful faces on the two top aides sitting across from the president: Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. First as tragedy, second as farce.

On the eve of the Mardi Gras Bowl between the Eagles and the Saints, where the mummers of Philadelphia meet the krewes of New Orleans in a domed stadium near Bourbon Street, I've been thinking a lot about Donovan McNabb.

Number 5 has been a class act throughout his career in Philadelphia, but never has his graciousness been more evident than during the weeks since his season-ending injury against the Tennessee Titans. The way McNabb has force faded himself into the background during the Eagles off-the-canvass drive from third place to the NFC East Division championship is an classic example of team leadership. Instead of being a distraction, he has been a quiet motivator. He's been virtually invisible in the media, and yet a constant presence in the Eagles training facilities, where he works hard to a rehabilitate his knee and talk football with his teammates. He has removed himself from the stage so as not to waver the spotlight from his Cinderella replacement, Jeff Garcia, who has led the team to a 6-1 record since he took over as quarterback.

You just know that this Eagles playoff drive without him must be killing McNabb. But he has communicated no public angst, no righteous frustration, no anger at the gods of freak injuries. He has simply anted up and kicked in. He has supported his teammates the only way he can, by being himself.

I got a behind the scenes glimpse once of what a true leader of a professional sports playoff team does when he is injured and can't play in the championship game. This was in April 1990 when the Philadelphia Wings of National Indoor Lacrosse League travelled to Hartford, Conn., to play the Blazers for the league chamionship. John Tucker, the Wings all-time leading scorer, and the quiet leader of a team full of characters, had injured his knee in the previous playoff game. His playing status was to be determined on game day.

Just before the pre-game meal, Wings coach Dave Evans announced that Tucker would not dress for the chamionship game, much to the three-time All American's disappontment, not to mention his teammates. Instead of sulking or raging at fate, Tucker did was leaders do. He picked up a water pitcher and acted as a busboy during the Wings pre-game meal. He played it for laughs, limping from table to table, and his teammates responded by busting his chops. "Oh, Boy, over here!" they'd shout, holding up empty glasses for him to fill, as he rushed from one end of the room to the other. The ribbing was non-stop, and so was the smile on his face.

In the locker room after the championship game ,which the Wings won, Tucker acted as the towel boy with the same humor and self deprication he'd shown as busboy at the team meal. "Thanks towel boy," his teammates said, as they draped him with wet used towels after the victory showers. It was an almost defiant act of humility and there was not a false moment about any of it from Tucker or his teammates. It was one of the most heartfelt and ego-free acts I've ever seen in sports. And it wouldn't surprise me one bit if Donovan McNabb has done or will do something just as cool that we may never hear about.

HERE AT DAILY DeLEON we've decided to begin a feature called The Daily DeLeon Then, featuring columns, pieces, paragraphs, jokes, observations I wrote on specific days of specific years dating way, way back to. . . well let's start with this one 26 years ago this Friday, during the seventh of my 20 years writing a column called The Scene for the Philadelphia Inquirer. This one involves a coincidence. Two well-known Philadelphians were mentioned in the column of that day, although they weren't as well known then as they are today.

On the left in the photo above is Mumia Abu-Jamal, currently on death row in Pennsylvania for the murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. One the right is Michael Chitwood, currently the police chief of Upper Darby Township in Delaware County. Let's step inside the Wayback Machine. Set the controls for Jan. 12, 1981. Here's what Clark wrote then:

People: The arming of Michael Chitwood

Homicide detective Michael Chitwood, the highly decorated and outspoken Philadelphia police officer, was just a little too outspoken in recent interviews to suit his superiors. Chitwood, 36, a 16-year veteran, told reporters on more than one occasion that he refused to carry a gun. This stems from an incident when Chitwood said he almost shot a baby who was being used as a shield by a drug dealer who wounded Chitwood's partner in a shootout.

After the incident, Chitwood vowed that he would never carry a weapon again.

Police officials frowned on Chitwood's unilateral disarmament and told him to start packing a piece again while on duty. " Nobody put any pressure on me," Chitwood said. " They just reminded me that it's regulations to carry a
gun. It's still up to my descretion when I use it."

Grass: Marijuana Users Assn. to go up in smoke

The Marijuana Users Association of America has announced that it can't keep its act together.

Oh, wow.

The board of directors of the Philadelphia-based group, whose goal was the legalization of marijuana, voted last month in favor of dissolving the organization at the Jan. 30 meeting of the board. " We're broke," explained executive director Ernesto Luton, who founded the organization after being turned down in his bid to become a Philadelphia police officer when he admitted to smoking pot. The organization went into debt after a costly legal
fight to advertise on SEPTA vehicles.

" I think the reason the organization is failing is because the people in this city who smoke herb are not supporting it," says Mumia Abu Jamal, a newsman with WUHY-FM and a member of the Marijuana Users Association of America advisory board. " I'd hate to see the organization die because I like to see people stand up for what they believe."

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You couldn't make up stuff like that. Within the same year, Chitwood's most famous arrest, Ira Einhorn, would disappear days before the beginning of his trial for the murder of Holly Maddux, whose mummified remains Chitwood found in a trunk in Einhorn's apartment. Within the same year Daniel Faulkner would be dead from a gunshot fired point blank into his head after being ahot once in the back, and Mumia Abu Jamal would be arrested at the scene, gutshot by Faulkner's bullet in his last arrest as a Philadelphia police officer.

On a two-car-wide rowhouse block in South Philadelphia so small it doesn't even appear on a good street map -- 2000 S. Philip Street between McKean St. and Snyder Ave., right where Two Street magically transforms into Three Street -- I saw a grown man cry Saturday morning. His name is Johnny and he's got cancer. But that's not why he was wiping away tears from his red, white and blue greasepaint-stained cheeks as he stood with his family on the top steps of their house in the middle of the block. My guess is the tears came with the hugs. But then it could have been the trombones. Or maybe the tubas. Or maybe it was the hundreds of guys in dresses and umbrellas dancing in front of his house.

These are the moments most people never see during the Mummers Parade, not on TV, not in real life, unless they live on Johnny's block, or unless they are mummers. It's called a seranade and it's something that mummers do to pay tribute to one of their own. And on this too-warm-to-be-true 70-degree January morning under a slanting winter sun that made your eyes squint, the scene reminded me of a of a song I used to hear as a kid: "When you see blue skies and stars above and smiles on every street, no need to check the roadmap, Philadelphia's at your feet." The fact that maybe 90 percent of the several hundred strutting mummers had no idea who Johnny was or why they were dancing in front of his house, didn't interfere with this Frank Capra Philadelphia moment. It was, as they say, what it was. And it was beeyoudeeful.

I have been marching, on and off, with the James "Froggy" Carr New Years Bridgade, the comic club that brought wench-power back to Second Street, for more than 20 years. And during those two decades I have learned that on parade day there is no one in charge, least ways, not that you can tell. Unlike the stiff structure of the string bands and fancy brigades, organized wench brigades are as unorganized as they appear to be on the street. We arrive by the dozens in the morning outside the Frogs clubhouse at 2nd and Wilder Sts. and begin marching down Two Street gathering wenches along the way like a snowball rolling downhill. By the time we hit City Hall, this year, there were an estimated 800 of us, some arriving like Rosie Ruiz at the New York Marathon finish line, via subway or, god help us, limosine.

The meandering miles-long serenade strut through South Philly begins after an unseen someone gives the order and the band strikes up the Frogs' unofficial marching song -- a Baby Boomer anthem befitting a club founded 36-years ago by buddies now in their mid-to-late 50s -- the Mickey Mouse Club theme song. "Who's the leader of the band that's made for you and me? . . ." With the Frogs you can never tell. I think it has something to do with what the founding club members learned the value of during the Nixon Administration -- "plausible deniability". Who wants to claim to "lead" 800 wenches? Maybe that's why the official club chant is "Who dat? Who dat? Who dat Froggy Carr?"

I'M SORRY, is this a perfect Mummers Parade picture from Two Shtreet, or what?

IF PRESIDENT BUSH happened to be driving past Juniper and Cypress Sts. in Center City Philadelphia this week he might have noticed pink blossoms sprouting on the trees on the 1200 block of Cypress. "Now, lookee there. Trees in Philadelphia bloom in January!," he might have said, before an aide interupted him with, "Sir, our Administration's policy is not to notice such abnormal, anecdotal phenomenon."

"Well, shoot son, can't you see with your own eyes? Those are cherry or pear or some kind of blossoms. We shouldn't be seeing them in a northern state for another. . ."

"Sir, if you'll just read this draft of the official White House policy on acknowledging global warming, you'll see that such remarks by 'the decider' impact negatively on position of claiming that green house gasses are not causing climate change."

"Darn it, son, I know what I see with my own eyes Why don't people belive me when I say. . .!"

(Presidential aide on a cell phone) "Mr. Vice President we have a Code Blue: The fox is out of the box. Repeat, the fox is out of the box."

ONE THING I CAN TELL YOU about Eddie Kirlin. He's always in the middle of all this shit. Mummers, movies, politics, casinos, Frogs, dirty tricks "Sagretti style", patriotism, South Philadelphia, not being another bum from the neighborhood. Ed Kirlin is the real deal who seeks to be dealer. Because that's where the cards are.

Ed Kirlin has written a book called "The Littlest Mummer" wonderfully illustrated by Tara Vargas. It's for sale somewhere. I told him I'd give him a plug or he'd kill me.

SO WHERE WERE YOU on New Year's Day? If you were like the Clark(e) brothers, you were at Dirty Frank's bar at 13th and Pine awaiting an outbreak of Mummers. The Clarke to the left is Bob (formerly Bobby) Clarke, NHL Hall of Famer for the Philadelphia Flyers. The Clark to the riight is some guy in an ill-fitting Caucasian wig.

God, I love this job.

The parade has been postponed until Saturday. But who don't know dat?