Mysterious Light at Lippincott House SPORE reading

A photographer captured this light image above my head during the Friday, August 13 Lippincott reading for SPORE. There was no light fixture on the wall, so the source of the light remains a mystery.

Nearly sixty people turned out for the event. The wine flowed, the food was delicious, and the conversation kept people "connected."

CONFESSIONS OF A CENTER CITY REALTOR

CONFESSIONS OF A CENTER CITY REALTOR
(Edward T. Gay, who died recently at age 81)


I received a curious email last week. It was from Martha Gay, who told me that her father-in-law, Edward T. Gay Sr. of Center City’s George Gay Realty, had died. This fact unleashed a lot of memories, since my interview with Ed Gay in the Center City Welcomat in the 1980s was one of the most unusual interviews I’ve conducted as a Philadelphia journalist. That piece, entitled Ed be nimble, Ed be Gay, Ed found another corpse today, was also one of my most popular Welcomat columns.

The column was unusual in that Ed Gay, who talked to me about his experiences as a Center City realtor, didn’t flinch when it came to telling the truth. Realtors today, some of whom who have become a new breed of celebrity, wouldn’t dare to open up and talk about what goes on behind-the-scenes in Center City apartment buildings: What happens when a tenant dies; what’s it like to discover a body weeks after death, when you discover that a tenant has committed suicide, or when a renter goes crazy and has to be evicted. In these overly litigious times, when “off the record” comments sometimes account for the most interesting part of any interview, you’d be hard pressed to find a 2010 version of Ed Gay who’d be willing to sit down and really open up about what he or she has seen over the years. But Ed Gay was different. Ed Gay couldn’t wait to tell his story.

Considering that I’d lost my only copy of the column and there was no chance of retrieving it online (no newspaper in the 1980s had online editions), I’d given up rereading the piece or including it in an anthology of my unexpurgated tales of the city. That ended when Ms. Gay mentioned that she had a copy of the column and just wanted to know when the piece was published. We both surmised it must have been 1987, give or take a year. Ms Gay then sent me a copy of her copy, in honor of her father-in-law.

(From Different Strokes, the Welcomat, 1987c)

One need go no further than Ed Gay (of George Gay Realty fame) to get the unexpurgated tales of the city. This real estate curmudgeon has seen it all—and then some.

The family business was started by George Gay, Ed’s father, in 1926. For 50 years the offices were located on the ninth floor at 1701 Walnut Street. Ed assumed control in 1962. Today, Ed works with his son Ted. The firm has been at its 2029 Walnut Street location for about 11 years.
Gay’s role as landlord enables him to observe hundreds of lives. He’s watched tenants grow into incapacitating old age. Fathers have come to him concerning their errant, sexually promiscuous daughters. In the 1960s, he met people like Ira Einhorn. Cathy Alessi, the Schmidt’s heiress who died of a drug overdose in the 70s, was a tenant of his. “A nice woman,” Gay recalls, “she just got mixed up with the wrong people.” (He shows me a National Enquirer article which mentions Alessi’s involvement with a MOVE member at the time of her death.)

Gay has seen his share of death and tragedy. When he and a young employee went to investigate an old lady’s apartment—there was some concern because neighbors hadn’t seen the woman in ages—his worst suspicions were confirmed when he smelled the stench of death.

“Let me go in first,” he said to his young assistant who, eager to prove his bravado, begged to take the lead.

“So I watched him enter…I heard him gasp, cough and wheeze. Suddenly he was running down the fire escape with his hands over his mouth. He stopped dead in the alley behind the building and threw up. I didn’t see him for three days.” When at last the kid phoned work he said he had never seen “a dead body look like that before.” What the kid saw was a corpse split open down the middle, a bevy of flies over the rotting entrails. The skin was every color in the rainbow: black, purple, green, yellow, blue.

A meticulous record keeper, Gay has kept crime report files concerning his properties since the mid-60s. The files document thefts, rapes, fires, attempted holdups. In a 1970 report, for instance, you can read that a Miss Potts of 1812 Pine had her Motorola TV stolen, or that Mr. Janis, a physician at 1600 Lombard Street, was robbed and left tied up in his office for three days.

Gay remembers renting to a felon on the FBI’s most wanted list. The tenant, a former Navy SEAL underwater detonation expert, sociopath and crack addict, was in the business of converting semi-automatic weapons. When officials from ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms) searched the apartment, they found it filled with industrial machinery.

Gay recalls a naked young man who ran screaming throughout his apartment complex, writing on the walls with crayons. When Gay questioned him about the incident, the tenant said, “Look, I have a valid lease. I pay my rent—there’s nothing you can do!” Gay said, “Watch this,” and ripped the lease in half.

Mr. Woo, another of his tenants, was a neat, quiet Chinese man who led a double life as an illegal exporter of goods to Red China.

In the days when physicians used real skulls and skeletons for anatomical studies, one Walnut Street doctor/tenant boxed six human skulls and stored them under his cellar staircase. One night a thief discovered the box and, thinking it contained valuables, undid the lock. One look was enough: He dropped the box and fled as heads rolled in different directions across Walnut Street. Soon, the coroner’s office, police and forensic scientists were looking at the possible work of a serial killer.

Gay’s son Ted recalls checking out a property at 20th and Walnut in the early 70s. Describing the renter as “a leftover flower child,” Ted says his father had reason to believe the apartment was being trashed. Ted, only 15 at the time, found the place filled with candles, spoons and cocaine but no tenant. “Suddenly this guy comes up behind me and pushes me against the wall. He said he was a cop and wanted to know who I was. When I told him, he said the tenant had just killed his girlfriend and his girlfriend’s lover.”

The ‘60s and ‘70s, Gay says, were not as violence-prone as today. “Most hippies, even the drug dealers, were peaceful creatures who tended to vegetate in their apartments. Today’s crimes are horrific, even demonic. People kill for the thrill of it, for no reason at all. A thief, for instance, will hit the same residence repeatedly. That’s because they know the owner is able (with insurance) to replace everything that was stolen.

“Look, if somebody really wants to rob a place, they can. Locks, safety devices, these just make it more difficult.” Gay recalls the home of a jeweler whose well-locked door wouldn’t budge, so thieves demolished the walls with sledgehammers. Gay says that the untouched door “standing alone in space” was an odd sight.

Over the last 32 years, he has discovered 32 corpses. Spruce and Pine Street residences top the list of property tragedies. He recalls a twentysomething couple on Spruce Street—art school students—who decided to commit suicide together. They took pills, got into a double sleeping bag, and waited. She was the only one to wake up. “I didn’t know he was dead till I yanked him by the hair,” Gay says the woman told him later.

One young man, fed up with life, threw himself out his 17th story living room window. A neighbor telephoned Gay. “Will you please send somebody over to clean up the blood of a guy who jumped out of his apartment!”

Lovers’ quarrels on Spruce Street have ended in lovers murdering their significant others. One man threw his lover through a picture window to the street below. In another apartment, a young European woman decided to ditch her American boyfriend because she wanted to return to Europe and marry someone else. “Her American lover came back and whacked her 18 times with a knife. There was so much blood it even got into the refrigerator,” says Gay.
Gay says that cleaning up after a death takes time. “The apartment has to be fumigated. The best thing is to get a five-pound bag of moth ball flakes and sprinkle them around. This kills the stench right away. It makes breathing near a corpse possible.”

People have jumped from the top of the Medical Arts building on S. 17th Street and crashed through the roof of another Gay property. One woman, a psychiatric patient, crashed a third of the way through the roof and was wedged inside. “That was a real mess; she was caught in an upright position like a stand up bullet,” Gay reflected. The oldest corpse Gay’s ever discovered had been dead anywhere from five to seven weeks. “Not a pretty sight by any means,” he says.
Gay remembers a young male tenant, a professional with a good job. “One day he started bringing pigeons into his place and nursing them back to health. Soon he was claiming to be half blind; he was also canvassing the city with a shopping cart. I called Social Service and Mental Health agencies, but there wasn’t anything anybody could do. He hadn’t committed a crime. Eventually the kid died.”

Ed says the last name of “Gay” has brought him and his family some grief over the years. College kids, mostly guys (perhaps the ones from a certain Center City art school he’s not likely to rent to) will leave prank messages on his answering machine. “Maybe they’re bored. It’s usually a drunk, lonely guy on a Saturday night. Often I hear lots of giggling in the background—dumb, stupid kid stuff, you know…:

Ed Gay prizes some students, however. Curtis Institute music students get first dibs on any of his properties, anytime, anywhere.

“Music,” as Confucius said, “is the blossoming of virtue.”

The AxD Gallery Reading and Reception

The crowd at AxD Gallery, 265 S. Tenth Street, on Saturday, July 24, for the third official reading of SPORE. It was a very hot day but nearly 50 people came out. The reception lasted until 8 pm. A group of us then went over to the Westbury for dinner. A special thanks to the two "Ed's"--Ed from Giovanni's and Ed from AxD.

THE 'PROBLEM' WITH MONEY

Most people have heard of the New Age concept of plenty and wealth.

In a nutshell, this philosophy says: What you focus on, you attract. If you harbor beliefs of scarcity, separation or inferiority, the world will give you evidence to suggest this is true. Or: If you are always worry about your low checking account balance, your account will always stay low because you are not allowing the universe to work through you to change that. Translated: the less you worry about money and the more you spend the more money you will get.
Thank you, benevolent universe!

Now, I don’t which Swami on which mountain top in the Himalayas thought this up, but Oprah sure seems to love it. And some very practical people seem to swear by it too. (Is it an irony that most of these practical people happen to be wealthy?)

I got a heavy dose of this philosophy the other night when I was invited to dinner by a wealthy friend. My friend means well and I have no wish to criticize him too harshly, but when he invited me to be his guest in a local popular suburban restaurant, I assumed I wouldn’t have to spend anything. A guest is a guest, right? Well, what I didn’t count on was that after dinner he asked the invited guests to “chip in for the tip.” This sounded reasonable until I threw in a five dollar bill for my twenty-one dollar entrée, and was told that it was not enough.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve never heard of anyone inviting someone to dinner and then demanding that they pay a fixed-sum for a tip.

“Put in a ten,” he said, “the wait staff works hard.” That they work hard I have no doubt, but I also work hard, and five extra dollars is five extra dollars I can use for Septa tokens. A ten dollar tip was roughly half the cost of my dinner. As it was, the server was getting a huge fifty dollar tip for the table’s one hundred dollar bill.

I am not cheap. I give to homeless people. I even help out a much younger friend by buying him soda and lunch several times a week. But when somebody invites me to dinner in a restaurant, I think it should be up to me what sort of tip I leave.

“You need to adopt the prosperity mentality,” my friend told me. “If you fear for every dollar you spend, money will not come to you. If you spend money freely, let it go in and out, money will come to you—easily!”

I’ve heard this New Age sauerkraut before, first from author Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich. But even Hill admits that the fear of poverty is the most destructive of fears and the most difficult of any fear to master.

Years ago I delved into Indian and New Age philosophies where the underlying teaching was, “Thoughts are things.” I still believe this to a large extent but when it comes to money I think we’re talking about a different ballgame. Money just doesn’t flow to you because you project positive thoughts or because you visualize an overflowing bank account. You may find random cash in the 15 trolley, or you may spot a five dollar bill while walking through the neighborhood, but for the most part these are freak occurrences.

My friend insists that I have a poverty mentality because I always think of the account balance in my checking account before spending anything. Well, don’t most people?

This reminds me of a recent talk I had a talk with a Dominican gentleman who pushes a shopping cart around the neighborhood. “Sam” collects aluminum cans and throwaway appliances that he can then cash in at the local bone yard. Two years ago he won a $65,000 insurance claim and proceeded to spend the money in an easy “in and out flow” that reminded me of the prosperity mentality my friend keeps talking about: cash- out, cash- in. Unfortunately, the cash out thing for “Sam” worked like a charm, while the cash- in thing stayed stalled like a car on I-95. “Sam” is now homeless.

After ironing out or respective theories on money, my friend wanted to drive his daughter and me to Johnny Brenda’s on Girard Avenue for an after dinner drink. As we cruised down the avenue, she suddenly began to worry about finding a parking space. Not only was he worried about not finding a space, he was holding that worry “inside her head” in a tightly controlled manner, the same way I get when it comes to spending cash.

I saw my opportunity.

“What about prosperity parking?” I said. “Don’t hold it in, open up! Let it flow! Make a U-turn, drive anywhere, the universe will provide: prosperity parking!”

He game me a cross look but then something happened. Within two minutes we had found a suitable parking space without any effort at all.

Had I unknowingly tapped into an ancient truth while thinking I was making a joke?

I’m still holding onto my money, thank you.

Thom Nickels

SPORE 11 AT THE LIPPINCOTT HOUSE, AUGUST 13, 6:30 PM READING AND RECEPTION

SPORE II, A Reading and Reception with Thom Nickels Friday, August 13, 2010 at the Lippincott House Mansion B&B, 2023 Locust Street.
Executive Chef Brendan Smith-designed Hors d'oeuvre/Wine/Soda Reception Start: 6:30 pm End: 8:30 pm. Location: Lippincott House, 2023 Locust St. Hosts: Mary Beth and Jack and their little dog, JR. Built in 1897 by the famous publishing family, J.B. Lippincott as a wedding giftfor their granddaughter, the mansion is the perfect environment for SPORE II.

This Philadelphia author has set his new novel in Philadelphia's neighborhoods: Germantown, East Falls, Valley Green (Fairmount Park), Roxborough and Center City. After his wife leaves him on their honeymoon, Dennis. a struggling Philly architect, begins a quest to find out who he is, why he does what he does, and how to understand it all. He begins his mission to liberate the world as a "street preacher," but in so doing, stirs up reactionary forces that want him dead. Dennis's dire warnings shake up the status quo. One warning is that people who do not act on their latent desires will develop diseases caused by a spore and that religions that condemn love in its many forms will not inherit the new kingdom.Will his predictions prove right? Will he be condemned? And, what about the spores? SPORE will leave you wondering about the world you think you know.SPORE is truly a thought-provoking novel that will leave you wondering!

Cassizzi's Ristorante in Port Richmond

When I first went to Cassizzi’s Pizzeria Ristorante at 2533 E. Clearfield Street in Port Richmond, I was struck by how much the place reminded me of the restaurants in the city of Florence. Here was a taste of Europe right in the neighborhood! I liked the homemade food, the restaurant’s lack of pretension, and the fact that it was a BYOB.

Recently I sat down with the owner, Nick Cassizzi, and asked him why the place wasn’t packed like “frozen food process restaurants” like Applebee’s. Why, after all, would people opt for frozen processed food over homemade fare?

“People’s palates have really been prostituted in this country. The fast food industry has really done a number on us,” Nick answers, sampling a new sauce his chef has just whipped up. “Here, go ahead, try some.” I dip in. It’s not sweet like an Applebee’s sauce. Another thing: Nick doesn’t have to scream over background music. While gobbling up French fries and Fillet ‘O Fish sandwiches at McDonald’s has a certain appeal, it doesn’t measure up when you want to do more than just eat on the run.

Nick Cassizzi is asking God why his place isn’t drawing them in like flies. Sitting with him and counting the very countable heads in the restaurant, I’m asking God the same question, especially since nearby restaurants like The Hinge have managed to hold their own for the last several years. “The owners there are friends of mine, nice people, but they’ve weathered a few storms,” Nick says. “The problem may be that we’re only two years old.” Two years, like the seven year itch in a marriage, is a crucial milestone for most restaurants, and Nick is feeling the pinch.

“I’m open to starting something creative in here, like a Pen and Pencil Club or having a Chess Club or musicians or even writers reading from their works,” he says. “Do you have any ideas?”
Judging from his background, Nick could even get up and entertain diners himself. He’s got more stories than O’Henry or Hemingway. This Lincoln High School grad left Port Richmond in the early 1960s to go to graduate school in NYC where he became a noted clarinetist before going into arts management. From NYC he went to Los Angeles. Name a famous entertainer, like Better Midler or Barry Manilow, and Nick’s probably had dinner with them. His creative management skills are still being sought after the likes of the San Antonio and Buffalo Symphony orchestras.

His first restaurant venture was a pizzeria he opened with his family on the boardwalk at Cape May. After two years time the decision was made to move the pizzeria to Philly.

Law of the universe: Great dreams always attract obstacles. In Nick’s case, it meant transforming a Port Richmond funeral home run by the Flanagan family into a restaurant. Flanagan’s had been doing funerals in the area since 1910. “In 1918 [during the flu epidemic], they were doing 150 funerals a month. The last funeral was in 1985 or ’86. I bought the place in 2007. When we came in there was dust everywhere,” Nick tells me. “Drain pipes, sinks, everything had to be replaced. We even found an old metal casket.”

Nick says that after the last funeral the building was occupied by an elderly “eccentric gentleman” who liked to walk the beaches in Wildwood in a string bikini and a big straw hat.
“One day after I bought the place I was in here working when this guy knocks on the front door. He asks me if he could come in, and I said sure, but then he said he wanted to make arrangements for a funeral.”

For a short time the funeral-parlor connection generated a fair amount of jokes. One friend suggested that Nick name the place “Pizza to die for.”

Fixing the place up was no easy task, especially when you have to deal with rezoning issues and the Philadelphia Gas Works. Nick quickly went through his private stash of $150,000 emergency money to get the restaurant going. “The most brutal situation in the city is the Gas Company,” he tells me, adding that the Gas Company overcharged him $3,000 before it finally admitted that the building’s meter was “faulty.”

“I pray a lot,” Nick says. “We recently found out that TV’s Chef Ramsey is looking for another Philadelphia restaurant to visit, so we applied online. We’re doing everything to stay alive, from slashing prices--$4.00 for a sandwich and a 25% off all Cassizzi meals when you join the Diner’s Club. “

The sad thing is this: Nick Cassizzi shouldn’t have to do a thing. What can be better than cheap, homemade food in beautiful surroundings?

PUTTING ONE'S BODY ON THE FRONT LINES FOR ART

(From ICON Magazine, July 2010)

You wouldn’t think it would be difficult to find a straight man willing to pose nude with a gay guy for a wall calendar in this still “fresh” 21st Century. After all, isn’t this the “so-what-if-you’re gay’ era, when Hollywood celebrities who announce their homosexuality no longer even make the front pages?

Posing for a calendar, after all, is not exactly like having an Alfred Kinsey experience (that’s for the pages of Craig’s List, where straight men often ask gay men to “induct” them), but simply this: putting one’s body on the front lines for “art.”

Yet exhibitions of the male body as art, even in those sophisticated enclaves known as art schools, have never become mainstream happenings like depictions of the female nude. Go to any student show at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, for instance, and you’ll see a plethora of female nudes and very few to zero nude males by male artists, as if the nude male-male thing somehow conferred on both parties a suspect ‘gay knighthood.’

For Butch Cordora, a former local TV talk show host (In Bed With Butch, which ran for 10 full seasons, or 173 shows from 1999 to 2001 on DUTV and then on WYBE), finding straight men to pose for his 2009 nude calendar, Straight and Butch, was a bit like climbing the Matterhorn. Although his original idea, in 2005, was to do a calendar in which he posed nude in “hugging and kissing and spooning” positions with different naked straight guys, photographer Tony Ward got him to expand the idea.

“An even better idea,” Ward suggested, “would be if you actually showed that the guy was straight…and showed the tension, the vulnerability and the vibes, that’s more interesting to the viewer.”

Cordora ran with Ward’s idea, then made the decision to have some of the photographs revolve around Annie Libowitz’s and Herb Ritts’ rock’n roll photos, with himself as the gay naked man posing with naked straight guys in pictures that copied iconic photos such as John and Yoko in bed, Abbey Road, and the Vanity Fair cover which showed Cindy Crawford shaving singer K.D. Lang.

“Like a lot of gay men, I’ve always been fascinated with straight guys,” Cordora told me by phone. “You know, it’s the thing where everybody wants what they can’t have, how straight men want lesbians, how lesbians want straight women, and straight women want gay men.” Then he tells me, “There were a few times in my life that I actually fooled around with straight men…”

As if by osmosis, the calendar generated another project: a documentary film about the making of the calendar, called—what else—Straight and Butch. Over 100 hours of raw footage had to be edited down, but within those many frames you’ll find the sweat and guts and “reality show” drama of what went on behind the scenes just to get 12 straight men to disrobe. The film also includes the personal reflections of the models a good two years after the photo sessions.
Straight and Butch, the movie, will have its world premier on July 14 (7:30 pm) at the Ritz Bourse, as part of this year’s QFest 2010, or the Philadelphia International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival. A solo show of Straight and Butch photographs at Philadelphia’s Ven & Vaida Gallery (July 2-August1) will include images that didn’t make it into the calendar, such as an electrifying copycat photo of Eisenstaedt’s 1945 Life Magazine photo, ‘V-J day in Times Square’ in which Navy seaman Cordora (in white) swoops down on smaller, vulnerable (straight) sailor to plant a Victory Day kiss and cosmic hug.

It’s no wonder that Cordora is on a high these days, but for a period of 2 ½ years he wondered whether anything would get produced at all.

At a special preview of the film in Cordora’s Lombard Street apartment, I mingled with two of the models and Leah MacDonald, one of the project’s photographers. The mood was light as Cordora served drinks. MacDonald sat on a small sofa with her husband, Duncan MacDonald (February’s model), while model Eric Wagner (September) sat with his girlfriend sipping beers on matching barstools.

“So where’s the popcorn?” Wagner joked, a tinge of nervousness in his voice since nobody had actually seen the final cut.

At lights out, the first few frames brought us face-to-face with photographer Tony Ward, an artist Cordora considers world class a la Annie Libowitz. “Ward,” Cordora would tell me later, “has the ability to get sexuality out of a guy or girl.” We watched as Ward orchestrated the photo shoot with Survivor cast member and former “In Bed” correspondent Gervase Peterson. Peterson was getting his head shaved by Cordora on a rain or oil soaked suburban porch.
The first session, Cordora remembers, was pretty close to perfect. Ward had agreed to a scale down his initial fee of $30,000 for shooting the whole calendar for a relatively humble $825.00 per session. When the shoot was over, Cordora had every reason to believe that the remaining sessions with Ward would flow like a Margaret Cho comedy routine.

“Tony Ward couldn’t have been more professional at the Gervase shoot. He showed up by himself, there was no diva stuff; he was nice, professional, set up the shot himself. But during the second shot at Tattoo Mom’s in Center City he couldn’t have been more different,” Cordora said.
During the Lombard Street screening the former talk show host let fly a few Ward-related expletives. Later, I asked for an elaboration.

“He showed up with some guy who was his buddy, and with a girl. He said the guy was Sam, his assistant. But he completely ambushed me. He tells me, ‘Maybe for the last role of the film we could throw the girl in and shoot her as a witness to this crime or car accident.’ At first I thought fine, and then I realized he meant a naked girl. I mean, for $825.00 a session, you’re going to listen to me! I’m paying for these 72 frames. But I didn’t know how to say that then. He knew I was new to photography. I was like a deer in the headlights. I’m not a stupid person but I think at the time I was in awe of him.”

Because a reporter from City Paper was present, Cordora opted to send Ward an email about a week later rather than “cause a scene,” although he insists that the on-screen confrontation between him and Ward is good because “a movie needs turmoil.”
“In my email I told him I was really uncomfortable with the last shoot, that I didn’t know who the guy Sam was, and that I’m trying to do this guy thing with guy vibes, although I appreciated him trying to spice it up with a woman.”

Ward responded with an email that Cordora says was “nasty.”
“That’s just goes to show your insecurity,” Ward wrote, “The least you can do is let me piggyback your photo shoot with some of my own stuff.”

After Cordora fired Ward, he hired photographers MacDonald, Michael Itkoff (Annie Libowitz’s New York assistant), Chris Gabello, a cameraman for “In Bed,” Thomas Ignatius, and Philadelphia legend, Joe Bowman.

In the beginning of the project, TV’s “In Bed with Butch” was still getting maximum rerun exposure on WYBE after its initial run on Drexel University’s DUTV. Then, in a surprise move, WYBE cancelled “In Bed” for a programming ‘wreck-o-vation’ called Mind-TV, or groupings of micro-mini programs, from theology to fashion lasting anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. Though saddened by the loss, the years of TV exposure enabled Cordora to find the first few models easily, such as Gervase and a local pizza parlor guy (Angelo DeLeone) who worked near Cordora’s apartment and who approached him one day with an offer to pose naked.
“At first I thought I was going to make a 20-minute film, just get 12 guys, rent out a photographer/studio for a long weekend, and have straight guy after straight guy come in. I thought I could bang this out in a week,” Cordora said. “That was my stupid idea.”
Money was also an issue. Although the models were not paid, the photographers did collect a fee. “I figured I’d either max out a credit card or beat somebody at poker, but I’ll figure it out, even if I had to push the calendar back a year. It was supposed to be a ’08 calendar but it came out in ’09.”

When the well of models dried up, it looked as if the calendar would have to be scraped.
“For six months I couldn’t find any straight guys! Some of them said yes, then backpedaled and backed out. This problem was a sign of the times, the decade of computers and goolging names, who’s a professor at this college, who teaches aerobics for kids or is a lawyer. You know, there are so many jobs now where you can get fired if you posed nude with another man.

“Then, of course, there were those straight men who said, ‘My girlfriend would kill me,’ or ‘My wife or fiancé would have my head, especially since she’s been trying to make me pose naked.’ A lot of the women want to take a professional nude shot with their boyfriend.”

That certainly was not the case with Scott Yelity (December), an African American CC bike messenger whose girlfriend, a Swedish looking white girl with platinum hair, accompanied him to the shoot where Cordora and Yelity would “pose” as k.d. Lang and Cindy Crawford, with Cordora getting the face shave.

“I asked her whether she wanted to come down to the basement with me while I shaved her boyfriend’s pecker, and she said, ‘No, I don’t need to see it.’ But her face in the movie would lead you to believe she was pissed,” Cordoa said. “But the truth is, the three of us went out to South Philly after that shoot and drank most of that night, and had a good ole time. I didn’t know what those faces she was making were for, but they work for the movie.”

One of the toughest challenges was to find out whether a straight model was really straight. As it turned out, one model found in the adult section of City Paper turned out not to be so straight. Models rejected for the calendar were turned down because they were-- in Cordora's words-- “femy straight guys.”

“There were a couple of dancers who go to my gym and I know they are straight. I know their girlfriends. They go to the gym together and hold hands. I see them on Chestnut Street kissing. But they’re just so gay—I didn’t see it coming across as being a straight guy and a gay guy. I wanted guys.”

The film’s most memorable moment is when Cordora and three of the models prepare for the Abbey Road photograph. Here we see a very nervous crew and cast finishing their morning coffee in an Elkins Park house before going outside to strip. It’s a Sunday morning and Elkins Park is asleep, but that’s no guarantee that an insomniac won’t rise up and shout, “Whad’ya think your doing’ out there!?” Somewhere a dog barks-- never a good sign, since pet owners tend to want to know what’s bothering Spot-- as the models are instructed to spread out over the painted crosswalk in frozen Beatles positions with Cordora, like Lennon, the last in line.
Nude with penises dangling, the four men rearrange their feet to match the famous photo, an interminable process that seems to take forever.

“It felt like we were there for an hour,” Cordora says, “but when I looked at the footage we were there for 3 minutes and 25 seconds. I told a woman lawyer earlier that she might be getting a phone call at 6 am.”

The shot, which was taken by Libowitz’s assistant, went without a hitch even though Cordora expected to be hauled into jail.

“Tony Ward,” he said, “who has been arrested a zillion times, said ‘It’s just a ticket, they take you in, but it’s only for a couple of hours. And if you have no previous arrests, it’s like $50.00. You don’t even get a police record.’”