Hunting Park to Fishtown

Fishtown seemed alright. I was looking for a neighborhood to work from, and across the spectrum of Philly neighborhoods, Fishtown looked like a decent place. I considered German town. I considered Fairmount. The cafes and coffee shops near the art museum felt like a good bet. But I still hadn’t found a job, and moving around unemployed is wildly uncomfortable. I walk into cafes, and it feels like everyone whispers, shun the non-believer. It’s cold without social status.

Until I got some, I figured Fishtown would be good. Right on Girard Station, so It’ll be awhile before the junkies and dealers, and outsiders are totally ushered out to make way for the domesticated demographic. The socially dependent. The shopping bag and stroller pushing people.

I got dressed, ate breakfast, and headed through the park towards broad street. Past 9th street, Hunting Park rolls out into 100 acres of green hills and ancient tree’s. An old Gazebo, a swimming pool, a football field, a couple of basketball courts and two baseball diamonds are scattered throughout. The pool was active when I landed in early September. By October it had been drained and closed for the coming winter. The gazebo was already closed. It was fenced up and pad locked off from public use. My cousin told me it was because people kept going up there to fuck. He climbed up the Gazebo steps to smoke one night, and found a couple together under a thin blanket. People like to have sex in the park. Early one morning I was jogging at the track around the football field, when I looked up to the metal bleachers above. A lady was on her knees, kneeling on one of the bleachers. A guy was sitting on the row above her. She had her arms wrapped around his waist, bobbing her head up and down into his lap. 

My grandma told me a story about one of her friends, who was on her way to a doctor’s appointment at ten in the morning. A kid caught her walking through the park and stuck her up at gunpoint. Frozen in  terror she told him all she had was her cell phone and a token. I think he took the cell phone and let her keep the token. Incidents like that give the park a bad reputation. Most of the time it's peaceful. In the summer it’s a party. Old ladies push carts around selling flavored water ice, cookies and chips. People set up colorful tents throughout the park greens. They sell barbecue and macaroni out of long aluminum pans. Music is everywhere. People drink and dance. Kids play. It’s nice. 

I made my way up the main path through the park. Then crossed Broad Street and made my way down the ashy subway steps, to the turnstyle. The septa attendant was sitting in their bullet proof box, filling out paperwork, when I crossed over and took a seat at one of the benches near the rotary exit. The subway shaft was illuminated at points by old orange sodium lights. The yellow head lights of the train rolled in. I got on and looked out, at the graffiti on the walls, and the blue sparks firing up from the tracks, as we sped south towards city hall. 20 minutes later, I hopped off and made my way up a flight of stairs to the market frankford line.

I was standing there waiting for the eastbound train, when a guy walked up and asked me “Is this headed towards Market?” I looked at the sign behind me and told him  “It’s headed towards Frankford and 2nd.” He had Light brown hair and light brown eyes, with dark bags underneath. He was wearing a pair of pale blue jeans and gray t-shirt with a green bar across the front. He was slouched. A little thin. Not addict thin. But skinny, like he wasn’t eating enough. We talked for a minute, and he said his name was N__ . I asked where he was headed. He said West, towards Market, then to Jersey. I told him I was going East, to Fishtown. I needed to sit  at a coffee shop and write for a minute. He asked “Where’s Fishtown?” “Around Girard station.” I told him. He thought about something for a second. Then he invited himself to come with me. We hopped on a train coming in and took a seat towards the end of one car. 

Pale white fluorescent lights sped by as the train headed through the subway shaft. I watched outside the windows as the stations came and went. We passed through 2nd street station and emerged from the dim shaft into daylight, near the delaware bridge. It had rained earlier but only for a minute. Heavy clouds were drifting across the open sky. To one side the Delaware river was flowing. Beyond it were some modern glass and concrete highrises. On the opposite side, Center city rose in the distance. Nearer to us, the 444 building drifted by. Then the union building. The Local 234 headquarters. A billboard for “Delilah’s.” the stripclub. A red background with a lady in a green dress lying on her side.

Girard station came and we got off. On the way down the stairs N__ asked me again about the coffee shop I was headed to. I told him I needed to go write at some point, but that I was fine following him around. He said “Alright, I'm trying to get a beer from a deli.” Down the steps, at the bottom of Girard station a few people were hanging around. Most of them talking, or smoking cigarettes. A few of them were nodding off. Standing up but drifting in and out. Or sitting down and slumped over completely. One tall guy wearing blue capris jeans, and an old red baseball cap, was nodding off with a lit cigarette in his hand. The embers at the tip were still smoldering. Little red sparks would break off from the tip and skate into the wind. He kept trying to draw the cigarette towards his mouth and take a puff. But before he could get it to his lips, he’d close his eyes slowly, slouch forward like he was about to fall asleep. Then jerk back awake, look at the lit cigarette in his hand, and try again to get a hit. He looped around like this a few times. I wanted to see what would happen if he could stay awake long enough to get a hit. 

N__ asked a guy standing outside of Da-Wa Sushi, if he knew any delis around where he could get a beer. The guy had a scruffy beard. His hood was up and the draw strings were pulled tight. He looked up the street towards Northern Liberties and said we could get one at the ACME. He pointed up Girard to a series of new grey buildings. Two and three story shopping centers with outer staircases that ascended to the upper floors. Behind them, modern luxury apartments, all grey with glass fronts. The new McDonalds have the exact same aesthetic. We headed up the street towards the ACME. 

Further up the street, we walked past a Chinese store. A guy with long dreads wearing a columbia rain jacket, was standing outside. N__ asked him if they sold lucy’s inside. He said they did for $1.25. N__ walked in, and came back out a minute later with a cigarette between his fingers and asked the same guy if he had a light. He didn’t, so we kept on towards the ACME. On the way over he started telling me about the state of the city. That things were dangerous, and I needed to be careful. That I should consider getting my gun license. I told him, so far most people seem pretty cool. The conversation stopped for a minute as we crossed Frankford to get to the acme. 

We climbed the staircase of one of the shopping centers, to the acme on the third floor. Inside, N__ picked up a can of coors light, from the refrigerators at the back of the store. As we were checking out of, he told the cashier to let me know how Philly was, because I was still new. The cashier was a tall chunky guy, a little older. Dark ringlets had formed around his eyes, and gray threads weaved in and out of his beard. He looked at me and said “You’ll be alright. Stop smiling so much.” That made me laugh. We went back outside and took a seat at the bottom of the steps. N__ was about to pop open his can and start drinking when he saw an older couple standing near the glass storefront of a Trend Eye Care, at the bottom of another bright grey building. A wrinkled lady with white hair, and a balding man, sitting in a wheelchair. They were hanging out by the storefront. He told me to hold on for a second, then jogged over to the older couple, and hugged them. They lit the cigarette he’d been holding, and he ran back over to the steps. I asked him, “How’d you know them?”  He said “That’s Mom & Pop. I used to sell them to them.” We talked for a while about the different neighborhoods in Philly, what was going on where, who was into what. He said he went out to Jersey to go clear his head. To get some peace.  Then I remembered he was headed that way originally, and that I still need to go check out Fishtown. 

I told him that I had to go. He asked if I’d walk him back to the station. When we got there, the guy who’d given us directions to the ACME was still standing around with his hood pulled up tight. But the tall guy who kept nodding off with the lit cigarette in his hand had disappeared. We walked up girard station, as the train was pulling in and exchanged numbers. The market frankford line headed West pulled out, and the sky behind became visible again. Still baby blue with thick thunder clouds rolling past. There was a lady, very thin, just bones and muscle beneath a thin sheet of skin, sitting on the other side of the tracks. She was reading a book. I wondered about that for a second, Then headed back down the steps to go see Fishtown proper.