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franciscretarola · 5 years ago

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South Philly: A Love Story

(Photos by Francis Cretarola) The names of some (but not all) of the people in this otherwise truthful account have been changed to protect the guilty and the innocent, as well as my own ass.

As Cathy and I rounded the corner on Morris and turned onto our block of 13th (the “Miracle” stretch that, from the day after Thanksgiving through New Year’s, becomes a tourist destination that can be seen from space), I noticed the ambulance parked midway up the street. And my heart sank. They’d already loaded in whomever it was they came for, but I saw that it was stopped pretty much in front of Joey’s house. Joey is what I call an “original,” one of the people who were here when we first arrived more than twenty-three years ago, the mostly Italian-American neighbors who’d created this neighborhood and for generations defined it. Most of my block is still comprised of originals and their spawn, but it would be accurate to say that their impact on the character of the neighborhood is growing ever more muted.

I’d not seen Joey much recently. Just the odd sighting of him doing his constitutional walk around the block, moving a lot slower than he once did, and seeming a bit preoccupied. When we first arrived in the neighborhood Joey was already in his sixties, but a force of nature. Just over five feet tall, thin but solidly built, looking exactly like men of that age I’ve seen all over southern Italy, Joey’s physical stature belied the massive impact of his personality. He was generous, quick to offer a hand, free with his opinions. We never dove into politics, but we might not have been on the same page. At block parties he danced (to doo-wop, the “Grease” soundtrack, dance hits from the ‘70’s), in Cathy’s words, “as if no one was watching,” his arms punching the air in front of him, his legs pistons that fired in place. In these moments his face always revealed angelic contentment. Joey was a hell of a lot more comfortable in his own skin than I’ll ever be. His voice, again out of proportion to his diminutive size, boomed. From the inside of our house, I always knew when he was on the street.

His voice boomed in disconcerting ways when he harangued my brother and me for our ineptitude at bocce. Though completely inexperienced, we’d joined the street’s team playing in a league at the Guerin Rec Center (sponsored by a chiropractor, our team was called The Backbreakers). One of the teams we played was made up some of the guys from Danny and the Juniors. When they’d win, they’d sometimes break into a verse of “At the Hop.” It chapped our asses. It was meant to chap our asses. Breaking balls in South Philly is an honored and cherished tradition.

It was before one of these games that I learned something else about Joey. We were huddled outside, waiting for the doors to open and whining about the winter cold when he, out of nowhere and offhandedly, told us a story that stopped our bitching in its tracks:

“When I was in the army in Korea, it was so fucking cold our rifles froze. Couldn’t load ‘em. Couldn’t shoot ‘em. We had to piss on the works to get them working again.”

It shouldn’t have been a surprise that an old guy from South Philly had dealt with stuff that would’ve put me in a fetal position. These are tough people. And this was a good reminder.

Cathy and I arrived in this neighborhood in 1996. Coming here changed everything for us. Without exaggeration, I can say that had we never settled here I’d never have become proficient in Italian, we’d never have lived in Abruzzo, and certainly never opened Le Virtú (our neighborhood trattoria dedicated to the cuisine of Abruzzo). We owe South Philly everything. And we’ve seen and been a major part of the changes to the neighborhood and East Passyunk Avenue, changes that have been breathlessly celebrated and discussed in local media. The demise of old South Philly has been frequently, enthusiastically, and prematurely reported in stories that have ranged from sensitive, thoughtful treatments to obnoxious, oblivious hit pieces. It’d be disingenuous for us to say we’re not happy about some of the changes. But it’s equally true that we miss a lot of what’s been lost, have mixed feelings about what’s filled the void (including our own roles in that), and would miss what’s left were it to vanish. When old South Philly goes, the country will have lost one its last original and truly great places. Were it to go during our lifetimes, we’d probably pull up stakes. There’d be no “here�� here. We came to South Philly because of what it was, not what we thought it could become.

Rowhome life is familiar to me. I was born and raised up the Schuylkill in Reading, PA, in a blue-collar, predominantly Polish and Slavic neighborhood on the city’s southeast side. My mom’s parents, who also lived in our neighborhood, were “shitkickers” from rural North Carolina who’d moved to Reading for jobs in the textile mills. My dad was Italian-American. When I was a boy his father, from Abruzzo, lived in the house with us. Six of us - including my brother and one of my sisters - lived in a rowhome that would fit inside the one Cathy and I now occupy alone on 13th Street. Reading’s Italian section was gone by the time I was born, but my dad’s friends from that old neighborhood, a tightly knit group of half a dozen guys - partners since grade school in activities both benevolent and (mildly) nefarious - were more a part of our lives than blood relatives. We referred to them as “uncles.” From my grandfather, I got stories about the old country and about being an Italian immigrant when nobody here wanted Italians (he arrived in 1909, one of over 183,000 paesani to make the voyage that year). He explained why he changed his name (from Alfonso Cretarola to Francis Cratil) to avoid prejudice, warned about the KKK who hated Catholics and immigrants like him, spoke reverently of FDR, and taught me and my father before me to root for the underdog. From my dad’s friends I learned a lot, too: how to argue passionately without forgetting you loved the person you were arguing with; how to instantly forgive and when to hold a grudge; how to relentlessly and inventively break balls (the pedestrian insult can boomerang, resulting in a loss of status); numerous mannerisms and off-color Italian expressions and hand gestures; that morality ran deeper than legality; and - above all else - how to show up when a friend was in need.

They had a pinochle game that rotated from house to house. Games would often go on into the early morning. These were raucous, intensely competitive affairs, and master classes in Italian-American culture: music (Sinatra, Prima, and Martin); language (I heard “minchia” so often that I took to using it in conversations with school friends, not knowing it meant “cock,” often playing the role “fuck” does in English); casual volatility, sudden explosions of anger and joy; and food (platters of sausages, meatballs, provolone, capocollo, sopressata). Once, during a game at our house, the doorbell rang, and I went to answer. (I was in about 6th grade). I opened the door to a cop. He asked if the local district justice, one of my dad’s friends, was in the house. I led him to the game in the dining room. He approached the table, hand on his holster, and yelled that the game was busted. For a beat or two, the men at the table looked up at him in silence. Then the judge exploded with a “Vaffa…” and the room erupted in laughter. The cop sat down, had a bite to eat, and left after a few minutes. He’d just wanted to break balls.

So I felt prepared for South Philly. But it still surprised and (usually) delighted me.

We moved into our house in November of 1996. Coming from the paesano-deprived wastelands of Washington, DC, where we’d been living and working, the neighborhood was a paradise. Everywhere I turned were ingredients and foods that could then only be found in specialty stores in the District. There were six bread bakeries within a five-minute walk of my house - good bread, too - and three pasticcerias. There were three butchers inside that radius, including Sam Meloni’s a half a block away on Tasker. We had the Avenue Cheese Shop, Cellini’s, and Phil Mancuso’s as provisioners and, for rarer stuff, DiBruno’s and Claudio’s not too far away on 9th. The hoagie options were overwhelming. Fresh fish was a block away at Ippolito’s. And I’m just talking about the east side of Broad. Ritner Street west of Broad was, and remains, an oasis for anyone seeking Italian flavors. Dad’s Stuffings, Potito’s, and Cacia’s bakery (the tomato pie, but not just) are regional treasures. Cannuli’s Sausages is a full-service butcher shop, where they make a liver sausage taught to them years ago by women from Abruzzo. North of Ritner, on the 1500 block of South 15th, there’s Calabria Imports: sopressata sott’olio, provolone and pecorino cheeses, condiments from Calabria. I gained ten pounds the first few months in the house. And I didn’t care.

But South Philly’s more than a colorful, urban food court. There were/are rhythms, ways of being, and a specific sense of community. Oft-disparaged, stereotyped, and dismissed, the originals in the neighborhood made - and still make - it singular. They’ve provided some of my favorite memories.

My first night out drinking in the neighborhood, I went to La Caffe (now defunct, even the building’s gone) at 12th and Tasker. It was a typical, no-frills corner joint. There were three guys at the bar, all of whom gave me the side-eye as I bellied up. This was long before dedicated hipster ironists started mining the neighborhood for material. My hair was halfway to my ass then, and Italian American wouldn’t be the first, second, or third ethnicity you’d guess when taking in my mug. I wore a vintage Phillies jacket to at least establish some bona fides. I ordered a double Stoli. The guy closest to me gave in and asked what my story was, and a pleasant conversation ensued. We’d reached the point - which used to be a thing - of doing shots of anisette (a practice that, while amicable, often turned a pleasant night’s buzz into a pitiless banshee of a hangover), when the door opened, and a hulking guy, already in his cups, came in clutching a big paper bag under his arm like a football. He was warmly greeted, so, I construed, a regular. He set the grease-soaked bag on the bar, pulled it open and announced: “I got pork sandwiches for everybody!”.A round of roast pork with sharp provolone and broccoli rabe, Philly’s true classic sandwich (the cheesesteak is a pretender to the throne). Welcome to the neighborhood.

The days leading up to Thanksgiving, decorations start to go up: lights; inflatable Santas, snowmen, and Grinches; lights; wreaths; candy canes; nativities; Christmas balls; more lights; plastic holly; tinsel; real and fake evergreen trim; ribbon; additional lights; a giant Snoopy; some elves; and then, finally, the serious lights. This was all pretty much spontaneous, nothing like the organized/enforced effort that now creates the so-called “Miracle on 13th Street.” On Christmas Eve, we were more or less forced at the ends of loaded cannoli into the homes of neighbors to drink wine, anisette, sambuca, rum, and whiskey, and to make our own “plates” from vast spreads of Italian comfort foods. The warmth and good feeling were contagious. And the desire – a need, actually - to share, the humbling generosity, was something I’d only experience again when we began traveling in Abruzzo. My neighborhood in Reading had been close, but nothing like this. The New Year rang in with neighbors returning from dinners and parties in time to bang pots and pans in the middle of the block. The next day, houses up and down 13th and on the cross streets were open, offering neighbors and sometimes complete strangers hot drinks, food, and a bathroom as the Mummers strutted up Broad. It’s never been the same since they changed the parade route.

Our first spring in the house, I was in the kitchen making dinner - roast pork, spaghetti and meatballs - and looking longingly out the window. It was the first real beautiful day of the season. Clear blue skies, about 70 degrees, no humidity. I stepped out into our yard to soak it in. We’ve got the typical tiny South Philly concrete pad; nice for a garden if you’re game, maybe a fig tree (a few of our neighbors still have them). We’d yet to buy yard furniture, and I was regretting it. Cathy stepped out, and I mentioned that, but for the lack of a table and chairs, we could eat outside. “Next time,” she said, and we went back in. Minutes later we heard banging at the metal backyard gate. We opened it to find the old woman who lived in the house behind ours standing in the narrow alleyway. Born in the “Abruzzi” and always dressed in black, she stood less than five feet tall. In heavily accented English, she said “I give you table and two chairs.” She’d been pruning her rose bushes and heard us talking. She led Cathy through her yard and into her kitchen where she had a plain, white plastic table with matching chairs. We were speechless. “I no use anymore. Take,” she said.

The neighborhood landscape was a lot different then. Its mien, too. Before there was the East Passyunk “Singing Fountain” at the 11th Street triangle, the spot was occupied by an old gas station turned hoagie shop, Cipolloni’s Home Plate. Joe Cipolloni was a neighborhood kid who’d been a catcher in the Phillies’ farm system. We hit Joe’s for a medley of hoagies one of the first nights we crashed in the house. Franca Di Renzo’s venerable Tre Scalini was then across from the triangle on 11th. The Di Renzo family’s been serving food on the Avenue almost three decades now. Their departure (announced as I was writing this), is a dagger to the heart. Frankie’s Seafood Italiano (which memorably used the “Mambo Italiano” melody in its radio advertisements) was catty-corner from Franca on Tasker. On East Passyunk there was also Ozzie’s Trattoria and Rosalena’s; Mr. Martino’s Trattoria, Mamma Maria’s, and Marra’s were where they still are today. Walking into a joint meant being warmly greeted with a “Hon,” “Cuz,” or some other friendly moniker. Service was always personable, attentive, and familiar, like you were an old friend. For the life of me, I don’t know what the objection - frequently voiced in amateur and professional reviews - is to this style. Why come to one of the country’s most unique places and ask them to conform to your expectations, change character? Or mock them for who they are? You’re a guest in their neighborhood. Let them be who they are. Roll with it. How self-important, fragile, or far up your own lower digestive tract must you be to be traumatized or offended by “Hon” or the like? What kind of bloodless, sterile, frigid, suppressed, affection-deprived “family” environments produce such specimens? ‘Merigan!

Transactions at restaurants and stores in South Philly weren’t solely financial in nature. They involved human exchanges, real conversation beyond any purchase, interactions that formed some of the neighborhood’s connective tissue. I know that some of the new arrivals in the neighborhood regarded this as a time suck: “Why am I waiting behind this ambulatory fossil while she recounts, for the fifth time, her late husband’s illness, her son’s family’s impending and unapproved move to Jersey, and her plans for the Padre Pio festival? I just want to buy my damned provolone and go!” While an understandable complaint, it was also oblivious. These conversations created and maintained community. Walking into Sam Meloni’s butcher shop was, for me, as much for social reasons as it was to buy meat. The family shop had been at the corner of Iseminger and Tasker since 1938. Sam - in his late sixties and more alive than I’d ever been in my twenties - held court behind the counter, Jeff cap rakishly turned backwards, his expressive faccia usually wearing a wry smile. Entering the store meant immersion in the perpetual, playful, multi-subject argument between Sam and his nephew Bobby - a big, imposing, but sweet dude - and their straight-man assistant, both damn good butchers themselves. You were brought into the fray, asked to weigh in and choose sides, and then identified as an ally or unreasonable bastard. I would go in for some chicken cutlets and walk out nearly an hour later with the chicken, veal scallopini, chicken meatballs, and, most importantly, renewed faith in humanity. Sam’s family was from the town of Campli in Abruzzo’s Teramo province. My family’s also from Teramo. So, we talked a lot about the old country. Once, during my first bought with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, I walked over to Sam’s for some cutlets and Italian water, the Lurisia stuff Cathy loved. He was alone in the shop that day. He knew what was going on – I’d had my involuntary “chemo haircut” (much of it had fallen out) and my skin had turned an alluring shade of gray. He rang me up then asked how I was getting home. I lived less than a block away.

“I’m walking, Sam.”

“No. No you ain’t,” he snapped.

He washed his hands, brushed himself off, grabbed my stuff, and locked up the shop. And he drove me home.

We were in Italy when Sam passed. It was an aggressive cancer. Friends of ours, who’d recently moved to the ‘hood and fallen in love with him and his place, went to the memorial. They said that there were photos of Sam from all through his life. A lot of shots from parties. One taken “down the shore” showed him carousing with his friends on the beach, their towels surrounded by “dead soldiers,” empty bottles of booze. Sam had fun. Our friends also mentioned the score of unescorted older women at the memorial. Sam had been a committed bachelor until the end. His nephew Bobby died, also of cancer, only a few months later. The shop closed.

Immersed in this Italian-American bubble, I felt waves of nostalgia, yearnings for the sense of belonging my dad and his friends clearly had in their boyhood enclave (as much as I loved it, I would never be from South Philly, and we’d been transplants to the Polish/Slavic quarter in Reading), and a desire to connect with my roots. Everywhere around me I’d see older, Italian-born guys – hair (or what was left of it) closely cropped; face shaved but casting a shadow by mid-afternoon; height a little over five feet; build thin to stocky, but solid; pants belted and hiked to the midsection; shirt tucked and buttoned to the neck; handkerchief in the back pocket; shoes plain, of leather; sartorial mien somber – who reminded me of my grandfather. These guys and their wives are usually quiet, reserved. They keep to themselves, cook and eat at home. Which is maybe why the newcomers moving in and journalists perfunctorily writing about South Philly often don’t seem to notice them. A lot of them used to congregate at the now-defunct Caffe Italia west of Broad on Snyder. But they’re still around, hiding in plain sight. Many of them, I’d discover, were from villages near where Alfonso had been born. Listening to them speak a language familiar but, really, impenetrable to me became intolerable. I wanted to understand where all this stuff around me had come from, the place that’d shaped Alfonso and, to a lesser extent, my father and myself. So, with Cathy’s permission (she’s a mensch), I quit my job writing and copyediting for a publisher out of Maryland and made the first of my extended trips to Italy to study the language, first in Florence, but later and more intensely in Rome. My studies provided me the key to exploring and understanding Abruzzo - a wild, beautiful, mostly untraveled region, and the point of origin for many of South Philly’s denizens - and penetrating, just a little (the community can be justifiably suspicious and guarded), the native Italian component of my adopted neighborhood.

It wasn’t too long after our return from an extended stay, with our two Jack Russells, in Abruzzo that we met, befriended, and – in a move that determined our future road and made Le Virtú possible but which for a short while caused us crippling anxiety and provided a window to hell – started working with a chef from Napoli operating on the west side of Broad. This guy – let’s call him Gennaro – prepared the real-deal cucina napolitana. No compromises, nothing elaborate, just the genuine article. Working with him was our intro to the biz. Luciana, our opening chef at Le Virtú, was a frequent dining guest and then, after Gennaro ominously disappeared one weekend, his sometime substitute in the kitchen. Gennaro, who we discovered too late had a history with illicit substances and a taste for expensive wine that someone else had paid for (chefs, the little dears! It’s always the Aglianico, Amarone or Barolo, and never the Nero di Troia), gradually went off the rails, slipping into legitimate mental illness. When out of paranoia he asked a busboy to frisk a customer because the guy was speaking in Neapolitan dialect (your guess is as good as ours), we cut bait. My last sight of Gennaro was on my stoop around midnight, asking for the phone number of a former server, a young girl he’d become convinced was the Madonna (not the singer, but Christ’s mom, of immaculate conception fame). When I denied his request, he produced a knife, and I a baseball bat (what else is a vestibule for?). I was chasing him up the street, bat in hand, when I locked eyes with an incredulous cop in his cruiser (not the first time this had happened, by the way). I flagged down the cop and he took Gennaro away. The whole thing was our first restaurant “cash-ectomy,” but my brother and Cathy had developed a taste for the biz. So, we were in, just not with Gennaro.

But before it all turned to merda, Gennaro provided – and subsequently burned – bridges into South Philly’s discrete, native-born community. We frequented expatriate clubs, visited in homes, met, dined with, and came to know many of our Italian neighbors. Language was crucial to that. And it proved crucial to repairing the damage Gennaro’s erratic behavior was continuing to cause in the neighborhood after our breakup. As part of the reconciliation with the neighbors, we were invited for dinner at the home of a family from Basilicata, the soulful, beautiful, but economically and historically screwed region at the instep of The Boot (between Puglia to the east and Calabria and Campania to the west). The head of the household – let’s call him Domenico - had been a semi-regular at Gennaro’s place and had watched his gradual decline. It was Domenico who’d come to us with stories of Gennaro’s increasing madness and how it impacted the street as, in our absence, it all went off the rails. We did all we could to clean up the messes, settling Gennaro’s accounts with purveyors, apologizing to neighbors. In the meanwhile, Gennaro escaped, first to Jersey and the employ of a well-known, native-born restaurateur, and then permanently back to Napoli. Once returned home, his old habits and illnesses caught up with him. He didn’t make it. Domenico’s mother - short, whippet-thin, in her seventies, and a non-English speaker – cooked for us and his family. It ranks among the best and most authentic Italian dining experiences I’ve ever had in the US. The décor of the rowhome was completely old-world, the lighting soft, the house immaculate in the way only immigrant homes are, a purposeful demonstration of work ethic and pride. Nothing she made was remotely elaborate, just all beautifully done. Beyond the perfection of the homemade pasta, the simplicity and delicacy of the grilled and fried antipasti, the generous portions of wine and digestivi, I most remember the image of this woman, visible from our table, relentlessly at work for hours at the kitchen stove, a culinary machine. She produced course after course, never sat down with us, never stopped moving. It had to be nearly midnight when she reluctantly emerged from the kitchen to accept our thanks and unconditional surrender.

By the time we opened Le Virtú in October of 2007, the demographic changes already at work when we arrived had greatly accelerated. Fresh diasporas from Mexico, Vietnam, Cambodia, and elsewhere filled the gaps (and storefronts) left by Italian Americans. The sons and grandchildren of Italian immigrants often didn’t want to carry on family businesses or wanted to pursue a suburban style of life (that I’ll never understand, and the idea of which gives me the fantods). These new arrivals brought with them the energy and entrepreneurial impulse that generally attends immigrant waves. Family-oriented, hardworking, and driven to succeed, they’ve greatly benefited the neighborhood. From my vantage, they remind me of my grandfather and his peers. Others arriving were generally more affluent, white, and college educated. It was in the late 90’s that we began to see folks, obviously from outside the neighborhood, walking around and looking at houses. Browsers. Handwritten notes asking if we’d consider selling our home were shoved through our mail slot. It was hard to know how to feel about it. Priced out of more expensive areas or newly arrived in the city, these folks were attracted by the neighborhood’s amenities, housing stock, proximity to the subway, and convenience to Center City. Prices on our own block increased eight- to tenfold between 1996 and today, providing a windfall for some neighbors with an itch to leave but also pretty much making it certain that their children couldn’t buy in the vicinity if they wanted to stay.

By the mid- to late-aughts, swarms of hipsters, ironic deep divers, beer geeks, gourmands, and self-appointed food critics were descending on the neighborhood as the infrastructure to satisfy them all had developed. Bars began offering vast selections of national and local craft and Belgian beers. Even corner bars started carrying a few crafts and a couple of Chimays. The harbinger for all of this, however, was Ristorante Paradiso, the dream of Lynn Rinaldi, a proud product of the neighborhood. Paradiso departed from the familiar Italian-American narrative and bravely introduced Italian regional themes to East Passyunk. Heartened by Lynn’s success, we opened Le Virtú, digging deep into la cucina Abruzzese and proffering dishes that would have been familiar to the grandparents and great grandparents of our neighbors. And, of course, a diverse host of restaurants and other eateries – most of them astonishingly good – followed. It’s now possible to figuratively eat your way across much of the globe and never leave East Passyunk.

We’d imagined Le Virtú as a love letter to Abruzzo, where we’d lived after my first occurrence of Hodgkin’s and where we returned to annually and, perhaps naively, a gift of gratitude to the neighborhood. Our first menus, created by Luciana from Abruzzo, were straight out of tradition, without any “cheffy” interpretation. And still we’d have guests, some of them locals and neighbors, who were baffled by our fare. One guy, seated at the bar and looking over our offerings, his face a map of confusion, remarked: “Not for nothing, but is there anything Italian on this menu?” So, a little (hopefully unpedantic) explanation often proved necessary. Using ingredients from specific local farms, importing rare ingredients from Abruzzo (buying our saffron involved going to the village of Civitaretenga in Abruzzo and knocking on a farmer’s door; we filled suitcases with rare cheeses from organic farms in the region), and trying to proffer quality wines and digestives made our prices above what had been the neighborhood norm. Without doubt, we alienated some locals. And the people most familiar with our dishes, the native-born Italians living in the neighborhood, never went out to eat Italian. The idea of going out and paying for what you could make at home was, to them, obscene. Only ‘merigan did that. But we gradually found our clientele, or they found us. And watching, as has happened many times. family shedding nostalgic tears over a simple bowl of scrippelle ‘mbusse - pecorino-filled crepes in chicken broth – and remembering the grandmothers from Abruzzo, now most likely departed, who used to make it for special occasions…you can’t put a price on that.

The Italian South Philly that persists is deceptively large, especially if you’re just judging by a count of storefronts and businesses. Philly’s population of Italian Americans is still the second largest in the US, after New York’s, and a lot of that’s attributable to South Philly. Most blocks in the old enclave are still partly or majority Italian-American, even if some - not most, but a sizable number - of the newcomers tend to pretend the originals don’t exist. Or maybe just wish that they didn’t. This disrespect is often palpable and felt among the long-time residents. They talk about it. Early on during East Passyunk’s so-called “renaissance,” a new store owner catering to more recent neighborhood arrivals and visitors to the Avenue remarked to a journalist that his block had three Italian eateries but that there was no way that could last. He sounded hopeful. I can’t count the episodes in which, drinking or dining at a local joint or just walking along the street, I’ve heard visitors or newcomers condescendingly discussing the long-time residents, the Italian Americans, like Margaret Mead describing the subjects of some anthropological expedition. They say these things blithely, indifferent to or unaware of the fact that the locals hear them. A professor at a city university once asked me where I lived. When I responded, she grimaced then asked: “How do you like living down there with them?” Again, I don’t look Italian American. I informed her of my background and ended the conversation.

I won’t whitewash any of my neighborhood’s shortcomings. Except maybe to say that they seem to be painfully evident everywhere in America. We’ve drawn the ire of some of South Philly’s less-accepting citizens for the causes we’ve supported at Le Virtú, the fundraisers for immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. But many, maybe even most of our strongest supporters have also been Italian American and folks from the neighborhood. They’ve shown up when we’ve asked for help. We’re indebted to them. But the easy stereotypes often used to describe Italian South Philly and Italian Americans in general are tired, lazy, and profoundly ironic. They also have a long history. Most Italian Americans can trace their provenance to somewhere in the former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, the southern realm that lasted until most of the peninsula was unified at bayonet point in 1861. In Italy, southerners were often disparaged, labeled terroni for their connection to the earth and the dark color of their skin. Into the 1970’s, some landlords in northern cities openly refused to rent to southerners. Crackpot theories about their inferiority and tendency toward criminality began in northern Italy in the 19th century and followed them to the U.S. Nativist propaganda and even the editorial sections of papers as reputable as The New York Times attacked their character and lamented their arrival in America. During an earlier, xenophobic freakout in the 1920’s, we changed our immigration laws, in part, to stop the waves from southern Italy breaking on our shores. It’s painful to see how durable and apparently socially acceptable these stereotypes are. Just as it’s painful and shameful when some Italian Americans forget this story and mimic their ancestors’ tormentors.

What the future is for the Italian enclave in South Philly, I can’t say. I’m trying to enjoy as much of it that remains as I can, to savor it. The new immigrant communities, vibrant and essential to the neighborhood’s future as they may be, are understandably insular. And it’s unclear how committed the other newcomers are to the neighborhood, the young families, couples, and affluent professionals making their homes here. Will they stay or, as many do, move on when their kids reach school age? Some have had a real positive impact. Participation in school and neighborhood associations is important and has for sure contributed to the area’s betterment. But those types of organizations aren’t deeply organic. They can and do strengthen a community, but I don’t think that they often create the profound sense of belonging that palpably existed here when we arrived, and that persists among long-time residents. Many of the newcomers turn their eyes from and backs to the street. Their lives occur inside their homes, and they don’t actively participate in their block’s daily social exchanges and rhythms. Is this a suburban mode of being? I wouldn’t know. Since we opened our restaurant, we are also guilty of often hiding behind our door, preoccupied and occasionally overwhelmed as we are (we’ve nobody but ourselves to blame for this; no one held a gun to our heads and forced us to open a restaurant). It seems clear to me and to Cathy that the originals provide much of the social glue that makes our part of South Philly an actual neighborhood. Their emotional attachment to the place, their pride, their events still inform the place’s identity. Without them, this is just an amorphous cluster of streets and homes, meaningless real estate designations. They provide much of the framework that whatever’s to come will be built on.

And, again, the community is stronger than some reports might indicate. If you’re ever lucky enough to happen upon a serenade, you’ll see and feel how strong. Before a wedding, the bride’s street is blocked off, and her and the groom’s families, as well as neighbors, gather in front of the rowhome. The groom “serenades” her from the street. There’s music, wine, food, laughter, an epic party. It’s something brought here from the old country. My brother Fred got to participate in one in Abruzzo, in the mountain village of Pacentro. He held the groom’s ladder as he climbed to knock on his bride’s window. Once arrived at the window, the groom, a musician of note but, by his own admission, not much of a singer, had to belt out an appropriate tune while all his friends and half the town looked on. His musician friends then joined in. They’re more to the letter of the law in Abruzzo. In South Philly there’s often a DJ instead. The couple in Pacentro, dear friends of ours who’ve hosted us in their own homes, reluctantly left Abruzzo after their marriage to realize their dreams. They now live happily in our South Philly neighborhood.

Oh, and by the way, Joey made it. He’s okay.

#southphilly italianamerican philly abruzzo abruzzese southernitalian levirtu #nopassportrequired eastpassyunk

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