City Safari: Slouching Through Philadelphia
 |
13thand Walnut Streets
|
|
Wed, Jun 24, 2020
|
City Safari:
Slouching through Philadelphia
Nothing is sacred
The ceremony sinks
Innocence is drowned
In anarchy
The best lack conviction
Given some time to think
And the worst are full of passion without mercy
The ceremony sinks
Innocence is drowned
In anarchy
The best lack conviction
Given some time to think
And the worst are full of passion without mercy
– Joni Mitchell
By Thom Nickels
Contributing Editor
Walking in Center City recently I passed the area of 13thand Walnut Streets and noticed, to my horror, the façade of Printer’s Place, a popular Center City family owned business (1310 Walnut) since 1971. Another Printer’s Place enterprise, John C. Clark Stationers, just up the street at 1326 Walnut shut its doors some time ago. Printer’s Place was the business card, resume and printing "go to” place while Clark’s sold office equipment, cards and stationary.
I worked for Printer’s Place in the late 1990s as the manager of its affiliate shop, The Resume Place, located on the first floor of a nearby office building. The Resume Place was part of a cluster of a string of stores, including a Yogurt and sandwich shop, a jeweler’s and a hairdressing salon.
In the 1990s-resume writing was big business. There was an "art” to resume writing then that for the most part has been lost. I helped customers choose a resume format after interviewing them about their past employment history. I’d work up a rough draft; the draft would be finalized and then sent off to the Printer’s Place printing shop. It was quite an operation. The easiest resumes were updates on existing resumes; creating a resume from scratch was more challenging. Resume writing taught me that for most people there was no such thing as job security, since nearly every client I met had been laid off, fired or resigned from positions that no longer seemed adequate for them.
Standing at 13thand Walnut last week I was shocked to see the Printer’s Place walk-in shop reduced to boarded up panels. There was also a swath of paint smeared on what used to be the building’s glass exterior. On top of the paint there seemed to be scribbling or graffiti of some sort. The very top of the building, just above the sign Printer’s Place, looked as if it had suffered a structural accident or a harsh attack from the rioting looters in early June.
I stood there and pondered the building, wondering if the exterior damage was permanent or just something that could be easily fixed.
My hunch was that this would not be a quick fix, especially as I scanned the entire block, a shadow of what it was in the robust 1990s and early 2000s. The block was replete with stores with paneled boards, a checkerboard of good and bad like Sarajevoin 1993 when Susan Sontagstaged Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot, in that war torn city.
I watched as people on Walnut Street walked past Printer’s Place, wishing somehow that the scene before me was a movie reel that I could rewind to a happier day in the past.
This shock, this injured little "nothing” of a building that I always took for granted, is a symbol of where the city is headed in the future if things don’t change. (Change as not handling looters with velvet gloves.)
As my eyes settled on the wrecked top exterior of Printer’s Place, I recalled the people I used to work with there.
Old man Lenny, the business patriarch, had his offices in the John C. Clark building. That’s where he hired me. This was Lenny’s homegrown business, large enough to offer employment opportunities for every member of his family, including his wife, Goldy, a slender petite brunette who would glide in and out of the Resume Place like a bird. Goldy, who always had a ready smile, was never one to bark orders.
Son Steve was the tall hands-on applicator of Lenny’s mostly benign rules. Steve was so quick on his feet, I imagined that he was always playing a soccer game in his head. Like his father, he did not have the iron fist of the bad employer who overrules. Some family businesses are small tyrannies but not Printer’s Place.
Non-family employees included Allison, who ran the print shop in the Resume Place building. Allison was officially my boss but you’d never know it. She had a rare sense of humor. Laughter came easily to her; she could get the most serious point across without succumbing to the droll scolding of lesser talents.
It seemed to me then that such a family business would go on forever, but of course, nothing goes on forever.
After I left the Resume Place—the need for specially crafted resumes ended with the advent of do-it-yourself resume kits, home word processors and PCs—I’d go back to Printer’s Place periodically to get business cards, meet Allison and catch up on the news of the family.
Printer’s Place was always there, a Center City staple like Bundy’s, Brooks Brothers, Macy’s and CVS.
Lenny had been slowly switching his focus on retirement and a life in Florida, so when he and Goldly went south permanently, son Steve took over the business. Then I heard news that both Lenny and Goldy had died, Lenny who seemed the very opposite of death with all his plans and enterprises, and Goldy with her youthful looking body and Audrey Hepburn bounce.
How did that happen?
Sitting at my desk in The Resume Place, I could look into the window of the Yogurt shop, run by a redheaded Jewish guy who came from a family of Orthodox Kabbalah-Zohar educated rabbis. Over frozen vanilla yogurt cones we would often discuss the mystical commentaries in these books that dealt with reincarnation.
I could also look into the window of Rena’s jewelry shop where the air seemed to be scented with an intoxicant that made you want to buy jewelry. On most Friday’s Rena would produce a bottle of champagne and invite me and another store manager over for happy hour. We drank flute after flute of the bubbly while checking out her new shipment of rings and bracelets. A good man’s ring was always hard to find, but not in Rena’s.
When I saw a lapis ring that she said was particularly special, I made a down payment and walked out with it a month later.
Looking back on that era—when plagues were a thing from 1918 or ancient Egypt, or in a scary story written by Albert Camus---the expectation was that the only threats to our individual lives were isolated "individual” assaults like coming down with cancer, getting into an auto accident, dying in a plane crash or of a sudden stroke like the one that caused the death of Anne d’Harnoncourt of the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Sunday, June 1, 2008.
Unimaginable in the 1990s were city-wide riots and looting that would go on for days, along with police and fire truck sirens piercing the night air, and the sound of explosions that recall images of broken Sarajevo. Center City looted and boarded up? "Why, the police would nab any rioters within an hour,” most people would have thought then. "The powers that be—the city government-- would never, never allow downtown to be held captive!” Yes, this is what we would have thought in 1999.
That is how naïve we were.
How terrible things have become: they are tearing down public statues of Junipero Serra, canonized a Catholic saint by Pope Francis in 2015, and immortalized in a book (Junipero Serra, Pioneer colonist of California, 1933) by the great Philadelphia-based essayist, Agnes Repplier.
From 13thand Walnut, where I said my mental good-byes to Goldy and Lenny, I headed into Suburban Station, intent on taking a train to Malvern for a family birthday party.
Since I had time to kill before my train, I found myself walking around the station, disappointed that there wasn’t a sit down café but glad at least that I could walk with take-out coffee and hang out by the Clothespin and look at City Hall. I’m sorry to report that I found the scene around the Clothespin to be somewhat depressing. There were mostly street people milling about along with a few gray haired old Quaker types carrying protest signs.
Back in the station, I noticed a police officer sitting in one of those station-mobiles. He was stationed by the entrance, obviously on the lookout for troublemakers. We exchanged friendly hellos and then wound up talking.
I realized that just by saying hello to him I was, in a sense, "voting” against rioting and siding with law and order.
I told him how I thought the mayor had failed the city during the days of looting. He seemed to agree. Then I mentioned how important it was for police to spring into action after the first ‘rioting’ brick is thrown. The longer you wait, the more dire the consequences.
The officer indicated the businesses in Suburban Station and shared the news that many of the owners of those stores did not want to reopen.
The pandemic and the days of the siege had killed their urge to move forward.
