An Ode To Wastelands No More

It must have been 2004, but maybe it was 2003.

This detail is important since the difference between West Philadelphia 2003 and West Philadelphia 2004 was already noticeable. The once-lawless wastelands were showing opening signs of their death throes by 04. An anarchist community urban garden here, an artisanal donut shop there. But in 03 there was nothing. Not past 35th Street. So it must have been 2003. At the time there was an area called “The 12 Blocks.” It wasn’t too far from where we rented a massive, crumbling, mouse-infested Victorian for 900 dollars. The place had 5 bedrooms. We had a fucking art gallery on the first floor that fit probably a hundred people. It’s insane to even think about now. But there were drawbacks. One of them was that we were near The 12 Blocks. The Philly PD didn’t even patrol The 12 Blocks. If they did, they would be fired upon. And we’re not talking pot shots from building rooftops or teens behind parked cars with their first .22s. We’re talking organized assaults. I recall a two-page spread in the Inquirer, one that we had taped on the wall in the art gallery, where an errant patrol car was boxed in by two vehicles in an alley and Swiss-cheesed by multiple assault rifles Russian mafia style. After that the Philly Blues left The 12 Blocks well enough alone. It was an interzone, a void, left intentionally off maps in a time before GPS. And we took youthful, ignorant pride in living so close to that void.

But as I said, there were drawbacks. Voids tend to expand and swallow. Like the time we attended a house party at 52nd and Baltimore, closer to The 12 Blocks than where we lived, thrown by some UArts students who had a lucrative sideline stealing audio equipment from the school and selling it to local rappers. Streaming was just beginning. YouTube was in its infancy. Possibilities for independent music were glisteningly new and open. One of those rappers was at that party. His name was AR-Ab. Years later Drake would mention him in a song. Years after that he would be sent to federal prison for life-plus-20-years. AR-Ab was in a good mood that night, in his element, smoking those Newports dipped in PCP they used to sell outside the corner stores for 5 dollars in the summer, dancing with the white girls to his own music.

The white girls in question were an interesting mix at that party. Most were slumming UArts students from the Mainline with intentionally paint-splattered jeans, candy necklaces, rolling up on bikes left unlocked and piled on the trash-strewn concrete outside the rowhome. UArts doesn’t even exist anymore. Those girls are now middle-aged, fed back into the Mainline. I am chronicling a pocket of time that might as well have never even existed, that even people who fell into it have most likely forgotten about. But it means something to me. Because that night there was another element of white girl at the house party. Real West Philly white girls. Ones who grew up there. With tough, flashing eyes and non-ironic mid-2000s hip-hop wear. Camouflage pants hung low at the waist, white belts, exposed midsections, bandannas and hoop earrings. J-Lo if she really was from the block. These white girls were real. God only knows how they ended up at a UArts party. But this is what it was like to live past 35th street before 2005. Students, rogues, anarchists, rappers, dealers, electro bands. If you weren’t firing guns at police cars, you just sort of found each other.

Most of that finding was accomplished at The Hurricane Saloon, located on one of those blocks you only find in Philly or Baltimore or Camden or Chester, so narrow that cars can barely fit through and yet somehow clogged with parked vehicles, lime green overhangs above the doorways, always the children in the wifebeaters wheeling around on the bikes at all hours of the day or night, always the 18 people crammed onto a porch built for two. Somehow The Hurricane Saloon was semi-officially or maybe officially sponsored by Hurricane Malt Liquor. They served it on tap. You could also order a “$20 Hurricane” or a “$40 Hurricane” and it would be served to you by the gangsta’ gay bartender with the silver teeth with a little baggie of powder taped to the bottom. You could find anything you wanted at The Hurricane Saloon. Mostly we found each other.

It was a time when I used to be able to randomly pick up girls. A brief window that lasted maybe three years. At laundromats. At house parties. At The Hurricane and on the streets and at the various odd jobs where I toiled. 2003-2006. In loving memory. That night I hooked a West Philly native white girl. All it took was a glance, those dark, hard eyes that had seen some shit for sure, but a tinge of playfulness too, not yet fully aware of the walls of the trap the world had set for her. I wish I could recall her name. Perhaps she never told me. A harsh accent, almost alien, almost not even English. She was dressed like a girl from a Ja Rule video but wasn’t wearing makeup, which I found endearing. Maybe she knew she didn’t have to. Maybe she knew she was naturally pretty in a way her foundation-caked friends just weren’t. Maybe it was a flex. We smoked a blunt that was 90% tobacco on a balcony overlooking a vacant lot that would play a role in this story just a few minutes later. She told me she had a pet bat as a child, a bat that had gotten into her house through a hole in the siding, a construction project her Dad had never completed, a hole that was still there to that day. She had noticed the bat when showering, waterlogged on the tub floor, and had wrapped it in a towel and hidden it in the closet in her room. She tried to feed the bat…pieces of Fruit Roll Ups and single Skittles…and it would try to bite her. She had the bat for almost a week. Eventually it freed itself from the towel and was banging around in the closet. She didn’t try to feed it anymore and didn’t open the door. She was now scared of the thing. She could hear it at night, its clicking radar in the dark. One day her Dad was yelling about her messy room. He went to fling open the doors and she didn’t say anything, didn’t warn him. His scream was like a howl from another world.

“I wanted him to have a heart attack,” she said.

She wanted to smoke another blunt, even though we had just coughed our way through a whole bad one, and said she had another at her house. She wondered if I wanted to accompany her there. 2003, man. I thought it would last forever.

It never crossed my mind how close we were to The 12 Blocks. At least not until we got ten feet outside the rowhome and were approached by a slender figure in a black hoodie with the drawstrings drawn tight around his face. I remember noticing he was wearing what appeared to be girls’ jeans, the kind with mirrored tassels girls were wearing at the time. I also noticed the shiny, black handgun that was already out as he came closer, the boldest visual statement I’ve ever seen, glinting in the light from a streetlight, a monolith in hand.

“Come up off them wallets.”

I always used to make fun of people who had “panic attacks.” “You were nervous about something, fool, there’s no such thing as a ‘panic attack.’” Just an uptick in blood pressure, flooding to the heart, a tingle of metallic-tasting saliva in the back of the throat. It’s called being scared. It happens. Because there are frightening things that happen nearly every day. But I never made fun of them again after that night.

My wallet was out of my pocket with zero hesitation, my hand moving on sheer instinct, because I couldn’t really breathe. All it would take was two quick little taps on that trigger and me and the West Philly White Girl I had just met would cease to exist. All that slumming bravado…the neighborhood crime articles we would tape to the walls of our house, the proud way we would tell people how dangerous a hood we lived in…that was all going to seem pretty ridiculous after I was dead at 20. A cautionary urban legend. A joke, even. I recall the Mugger Child nodded approvingly as I tossed it at his feet. But then he trained his attention on my companion.

My West Philly White Girl made a noise as if I had just pulled off at the wrong freeway exit. “Don’t…..” She stamped her foot in frustration. She was smirking at me.

“Don’t give that bitch your fucking wallet.”

That’s when I thought it would happen. Have you ever been held at gunpoint? If so you surely recall the tingly, anticipatory feeling. Something is about to harm you very badly, and it can come at any second. Surely this West Philly White Girl, this ratchet wastelands apparition, calling this Mugger Child a bitch was going to pierce the veil of this once-diplomatic armed robbery. And then she took it further.

“Oh, you want my shit too? You really want it, you little bitch?”

She held her small purse out to him…I recall there was a cheap-yellow-gold-colored chain running the length of it…pulling it back, teasing him with it.

“Well if ya’ want it ya’ gonna have to climb for it.”

Mugger Child and I looked on in horrified amazement as she took a step back and, throwing like a girl but getting the job done, hurled the purse over the chainlink fence and into the weeds of the vacant lot next to the UArts rowhome. She turned to both of us, standing us both down now.

“There you go, little boy. You gonna’ climb for it?” She broke into a baby voice. “Is wittle hood rat bitch gwonna cwimb for dwa pursy?”

Which one was Mugger Kid going to shoot first? Probably her. Which would be worse for me, actually. With her it would be a crime of passion. Sudden. He’s pissed. He pulls the trigger. But then he turns on me. He’s calmer now, but still mad. First the kneecaps, then when I’m on the ground he stands over me, pumps one in both shoulders, lets me writhe a bit before….

“Fuck you you trash ass ho I fuck you later.”

That’s exactly what Mugger Kid said. I remember it clearly. He said it as if he knew her, casually, with zero feeling, zero passion. Matter of fact. He just scooped up my wallet and walked off slow. This is going to sound made up, but I swear he scratched the side of his head with the butt of the gun before tucking it back in his hoodie. He walked with his back to us, rifling through my wallet, tossing the cards he wasn’t interested in….my ID, my keycard for work…pointedly over his shoulder. An anti-climatic and yet highly dramatic exit on Mugger Kid’s part. I was relieved to be free of the tingly dread feeling of imminent death and dismemberment, but I could sense the strong negatives coming off my White West Philly Girl and, in a way, missed his presence. Because now she was focused on me. And that wasn’t a good thing. Not anymore.

“I can’t believe you gave that little hood rat your wallet, dawg.”

The remaining details are so embarrassing I will spare myself, and you, and keep them brief. Yes, she made me climb the fence. Yes, I spent minutes rooting around in the weeds in those rat-and-syringe-and-trash-and-crackpipe-strewn vacant lot weeds. Yes, I held it up in mock-victory when I found it. No, she didn’t find that funny. Yes, she had me toss it back to her over the fence. Yes, she left before I could climb back over. Yes, I slunk back to the party alone. Yes, I insisted on us calling for a cab home. No, I didn’t tell my friends why. And no, I never told anyone about what happened.

Until now.

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