A Plea For South Street

4th & South, the day after the mass shooting.

BY JOEY SWEENEY | I was a sullen tween and the fix was already in: There would be no sports for me, as a matter of philosophical, aesthetic and physical dispositions. My parents demanded I do something and so a deal was struck: I’d attend classes at Fleisher Art Memorial every Saturday. Fleisher was an amazing experience and I cherish it still, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that, at the beginning, I was just trying to hustle my parents because what was most important to me then was this: Fleisher was mere steps away from South Street. I spent every Saturday after class there, walking up and down, lingering for as long as I could.

South Street, in the 1980s and 1990s, represented something big to me: A place where I could go be me. Better still, a place where I could go connect with a whole world outside of whatever drama and random hate that would be popping off in my neighborhood at any given time. What the street — its people, its vibe, its venues, its book and record stores, its food — promised wasn’t just escape. It was escape plus. Escape plus permanent replacement of a dead-end worldview, through the simple experience of exposure to other stuff.

For the last 8 years, I’ve lived just off South, and though the street has seen better times, it still represents exactly that same thing, that escape-plus, to kids all over the city and beyond. I know because I see them literally every day. And it makes me smile. Even now. Even today. 

My family and I live just a shout from where shots broke out this weekend, and we heard them in such a way that there was no doubt whatsoever what they were. They weren’t fireworks. They weren’t motorbikes or cars popping off. They were the sound of America losing its goddamned mind. 

And the ones we heard weren’t even the first ones that night. Or even this week. They were part of an ongoing unraveling across the country that, to stay on point, kids and other humans come here every week precisely to escape. 

Saturday night’s tragedy is continuing, it is ongoing, and I have no patience whatsoever for the brigade of (usually white) folks who want to lay blame at the feet of Jim Kenney and Larry Krasner. As a lifelong Philadelphian, I don’t completely co-sign either of these guys ever, but this whole line has become a dog whistle that we as a city need to acknowledge: Police your Black folks better is what this talking point is usually trying to say. It’s disgusting. Stop it.

Why? Because South Street on any weekend night — and as it turned out, even moreso this past weekend before a single shot was fired — is crawling with cops. It didn’t/doesn’t/won’t matter. This massacre is part of a national wave, and you better believe it could have been and will continue to be anywhere, until or unless we actually, literally, as a country, do what Republicans say they fear most: Take away the guns. 

Here’s the thing, though: The Street remains where it is. And in many ways, what South Street will have to deal with is only beginning. In the coming days and weeks and years, South Street will be an object of scorn by those who don’t want to hear any of what I’m saying here today. There will be reputational damage to repair, which will turn into economic damage to repair (lots of which has already been done by absentee landlords, by the way), and worst of all, folks may well wind up scared to come here.

What I’m asking you today, dear reader, is really simple: Don’t be one of those folks. Go to South Street. Meet friends you already know there, and make new ones whether or not the old ones show up. Hang out. Get a Gremlin and some French fries. Treat the place like it’s your goddamned living room, because guess what: It is. 

This isn’t about supporting the small businesses that are all parts of the South Street community, though you absolutely should. (And not out of pity, either: Does your freshly gentrified neighborhood have at least half a dozen great/cheap bookstores? No? South Street does. I could go on.) 

This is about participating in one of the increasingly ever-few public squares in the city where people across every line you can think of — racial/gender/economic/local/tourist —still congregate when it’s time to have a good time. 

If you think you don’t like the vibe on South Street, you should probably spend more time on South Street. Move closer to your world, my friend. Take a little bit of time. Move closer to your world, my friend, and you’ll see.