The Ghost of Broad Street

“How do you think I get business? I go to a Rite Aid and say, ‘Let me put up a sign and I’ll take care of your parking lot, keep it clean, keep it legit.’ Just yesterday, a woman parks at KFC and goes in and eats her chicken and then decides to go shopping down the street. No good, lady. We tow her. She says she was in the KFC. Sure. We have patrols who count the parking lot cars and then go in and count the customers. We go to the manager. If there are 10 cars and only seven customers, we tow three. Oh, you were in the bathroom, lady? Bullshit!”

How many cars do you tow a day?

“Towing again? Just say seven to 10 cars a day. That sounds good.”

How many signs do you have around town?

“Signs again? Just say 5,000 to 7,000 signs in Philadelphia. That sounds good.”

Why did the officer cross Champlost Street? To get to the Dunkin’ Donuts, wisely placed directly across the intersection. On the other two corners are a Wendy’s and a Blockbuster Video. Blockbuster smells minty/lemony/aerosol-y/toxic.

“What movie rents the most at this location?” I ask.

“I dunno. Whachew wan’ here, man?” snarls the counter dude.

I want Blockbuster to vanish and movie houses to return. Okay, dude? I used to walk to the Logan, the Rockland and the Broad. Now there are no movie theaters on Broad Street. None. Near this spot was the Lane, a modest little theater where I saw black-and-white films with subtitles and angry English soccer players and horny long-distance runners and doomed interracial couples, grainy movies that illuminated the dark absurdities of the hopelessly human condition. I miss those movies. You got anything like that on DVD? I didn’t think so.

I am not going into Einstein Medical Center for many reasons, chief among them that my father was pronounced dead in that very place after a heart attack after work one night at the post office after four years in the war after malaria in Africa after buying a new home on North 10th Street. He left my mother with two sons, ages three years and six weeks respectively. My mother put down my baby brother and picked up a bottle of scotch for a couple of years. Then she went to work at Perfect Photo for 27 years at 4747 North Broad. Things didn’t work out the way she had planned.

It is a mild day, and the streets around the hospital at Old York Road are the most populated I’ve seen, with people wearing green scrubs, blue scrubs, colorful dashikis, black chadors, brown burkas, Iverson jerseys, Eagles caps, black boots, short skirts, butterfly tattoos, rainbow hair, and it used to be so easy to tell the ho’s from the honor-roll girls. No mo’.

The uppercase message at the entrance is: WEAPONS ARE PROHIBITED … FOR ADMISSION, APPLY AT THE FRONT DESK. A uniformed guard wants to know if you have any questions.

“Is this Girls High or Gitmo?” you ask.