SAUTRDAY, 24 JUNE, 2000, PHILADELPHIA

Urban Quirk Alert! The line between lovely, old-moneyed Philadelphia and the dread South Philly is the aptly-named South Street. If you live above south (“NoSo?”) you’re in the black, financially speaking. If you live south of South (“SoSo?”), you’re in the black, demographically speaking. And if you live somewhere very near South Street as I do, you say you live “Off South” (“O-So?”) because y’ain’t in the slums, but you sure as hell aren’t up on Pine either, which is the Manhattan equivalent of, say, Park Ave. Naturally, you want to be as north as possible without actually crossing South Street where rents are trebled and fussy neighbourhood codes are enforced and I’m sure there are weird community dues to pay and you have to change your name to “Chad Chase” or “Stacy Vanderbilt.” And naturally the farther south you get from South Street, the shoddier things get and you have to trade in your car for an elongated Lincoln on cinderblocks and change your name to “Jamaal ‘Slimjim’ Jefferson” or “Laquanda ‘Teen-Ho’ White”. I am 1.5 blocks SoSo on a tiny little street that’s difficult to drive a car down — which is absolutely ideal. I’m in no ghetto, yet reap financial breaks inherent in living south of South. I am livin’ on the edge, I tell ya. Urban layouts are such that one or two streets make a huge difference as far as the prop values and the trash : class ratio go. i.e., Bainbridge is one block south of South and has, to my knowledge, one trashy person living on it. My little street is just below Bainbridge and has maybe three or four trashies. Next block down is Fitz which has probably twenty-eight or so trashy people living on it. Below that is the little garden street of St. Albans (which, incidentally, is where the little boy from “Sixth Sense” lived in the movie) and at that point we move from constants to percentages. Maybe — what — 15% trash? On Catherine and, below that, Christian, the percentages jump astronomically — we’re up to 97% trash on Christian and 22nd, a mere four block walk off South Street. Oh, I suppose I should define my terms right about now as it’s not a racial thing, but a class (or lack of it) thing of which I speak. trashy: (trã’–shee), adj.: The unfortunate state of being low-incomed and poorly-educated and shoddily raised with little chance short of the great effort of bootstrapping to pull oneself out. (“Hey, wazzup with that trashy dude parking his Olds pimpmobile in the middle of the street, blocking traffic, running into that crackhouse and leaving his Public Enemy blaring down the block, yo?”) — or — (“See that trashy woman on the corner with leaves in her hair screaming at that lightpole wearing mis-matched flipflops and sporting a chronic case of plumber-butt? Yah, her.”) Anyway, anyway. The point of this diary entry, dear Kitty, is to draw attention to the quirky and very real lines drawn in an urban setting. I live on the north side of Pemberton. My little backyard is backed up against those of Bainbridge’s. I was sitting out there earlier this morning having iced tea and playing with the cats and quietly listening to Beethoven as the birds chirped gaily and I was watching the breeze play with the Mardi Gras beads in my tree and thinking, “Ahh, thank god I’m on this side of the street. What-a-lovely-little-day-I-am-having.” My little carpool friend Matt lives right across the street on the south side of Pemberton. His yard backs up against the exponentially trashier Fitzwater Street houses. Adjacent to his backyard is a little “garden” of weeds and broken appliances that houses two or three cruelly neglected dogs that howl and fight and bark about 23 hours a day, and who are most probably rabid. The other loud, trashy noises of Fitz bleed into his house through the back windows and make a charming afternoon of iced tea and relaxation quite impossible. He has often complained to me about the noise on our street. “Really?” I reply, “I don’t seem to have that problem. Hmm.” I live 20 yards from Matt, yet it makes all the difference. Weird, huh? Okay, you go back to whatever it was you were doing. Thank you.