The Ghost of Broad Street

Twenty-five years after leaving town, our writer, who grew up in Logan, came back to walk all 13 miles of our grandest boulevard. The landmarks he remembered are largely gone, but it’s still a street overflowing with stories, dreams and danger

At the corner, an adolescent waits for a bus with his mother. He wears a gray work jacket that says STATE PROPERTY 18153, as if already in jail or preparing his mama for that sad fate. What a fashion statement! Is it a parody and a protest, the way anti-war hippies wore military gear, or an acceptance of prison as a rite of passage for young black males? One out of four African-American men will spend time in prison. This is the ultimate Fuck Ya’ll Jacket: I am going to D-Block and you can’t stop me. Not you nor my teachers nor grammatical jiveass Bill Cosby. I’m going down. Dig it?

“Come on, James,” says his mother, “the bus is here.”

“Yes, Mama,” says the kid, and they board the C bus, heading south.

Arriving at the Temple University Main Campus, I wonder, “Where is the Temple University Main Campus?” Where are the flowers? The homecoming queens? Where are the students engaged in Socratic discussions or group sex? You can’t believe that 24,279 students are learning somewhere behind these facades, this hodgepodge of buildings, architectures old and new juxtaposed with the very old and very new, held together by nothing except Broad Street.
Temple University is like a great big lovable state-sponsored hooker: cheap, easy to get into, and offering any avenue of study you desire. All you have to do is give up football and eat meals from a truck.

At Girard Avenue, the physical world falls away when I stand on the spot where little Brucie boarded the 15 trolley on weekend evenings, took the short ride west to Corinthian Avenue, and then walked to the stone gatehouse of Girard College, where Brucie checked in with the guard and wended his way back to the dormitory at Banker Hall or Merchant Hall or Mariner Hall, so yclept to memorialize the three professions of the school’s founder, Stephen Girard, once the richest man in America, director of the Second Bank of the United States and financier of the War of 1812. Brucie entered Girard College, for orphan boys or those with a dead father, when he was seven. He lived there until he graduated at 16. Then he went to college. He had more sex in his first year at Girard than he did at Temple University.

I have not been back to any reunions, and I don’t answer alumni requests. I miss the boys I grew up with, and think of them often. I just don’t go back. Today will be no different. I put my head down and walk on.

Broad and Girard has a McDonald’s Drive Thru connected to an Amoco station. Write your own gas jokes.

This is no laughing matter. Obesity among kids ages six to 11 has tripled in the last 30 years. Obesity among adults has also gone haywire. If things continue like this, every third grown-up will explode in the year 2047.

The next block, from Poplar to Parrish, is totally gone. Don’t ask where. Just gone. Flattened like Fallujah. Only there were no insurgents or freedom fighters here. Only Philadelphians.

You know you are getting near Center City when you see a jogger. At Mt. Vernon Street, you see a jogger. The jogger has a dalmatian. See Spot jog. Spot doesn’t dig jogging. Spot thinks jogging is monotonous and prevents him from chasing rats and real estate speculators. EB Realty is converting this city block into modern apartments. One of EB’s strategies is to include ample parking, even when near Center City; Philadelphians love their cars. Another EB Realty trademark is signature names that are simultaneously hip and historic: Marine Club, Cigar Factory Condos, Divine Lorraine.

What will 640 North Broad be called?