October 29–November 5, 1998

critical mass

Dead and Alive

		Still Standing: Julia Zagar and Bill Curry with undead friends.

As the Day of the Dead approaches, South Street pioneers talk about the many businesses still thriving on the street after 15, 20, even 30 years.

by a.d. amorosi

It's a sunshiny October afternoon and Jack Downey, Bill Curry, and Julia and Isaiah Zagar—all owners of long-running, legendary South Street businesses—are sitting in a bar. Curry's bar on South Street, Copabanana, to be exact. The reason they're here is to celebrate Copa and its 20th anniversary later that evening.

"I'm actually here for lunch," jokes Isaiah Zagar, the renowned mosaic artist who, along with Julia, has owned and operated South Street's center of Mexican folk art and design, Eye's Gallery, for 30 years. "I'm too busy with everything else to be here for anything else."

Everyone at the table takes a moment to reminisce about the oddities that made the street unique. Downey, the owner of the Front and South seafood kingdom that shares his last name, reveals how he got the license for his (then unheard of) sidewalk cafe: by getting his nose broken by the drunken nephew of a prominent politician, who was grateful Downey didn't press charges and eased the way toward a license. They all giggle about the Northwest Mounted Valise, the sundries shop that ran a sperm bank on the side, offering free steak knives for first deposits. The tiny breakfast salon with a bed in the window whose owner would lie draped in a different nightgown every morning to attract customers. The youth drawn here by punk rock, piercings and midnight screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Legendary characters like artist Woofy Bubbles, Crown of Creation's Heshi Schlachterman and Seamus the red-bearded bouncer.

But the real reason they're here is to celebrate survival, to celebrate themselves and the joys and struggles of coming to and remaining on Philly's original "hippest" street. While areas like Manayunk and Old City win headlines for restaurant openings and cultural events, South Street's old-school businesses have maintained their cool—and helped to set an example. "We were the breeding ground for other areas to expand," says Curry.

Among the businesses now 20-plus years old on the street are Downey's, Copa, Jim's Steaks, Backstage, Judy's, PhilaDeli, Theater of The Living Arts, Garland Of Letters, Eye's Gallery, Book Trader and Crown Of Creation. The 15-plussers include South Street Diner, O'Neal's, Manny Brown's and Monte Carlo Living Room. This says nothing of famous spots like Dobbs, Lickety Split, Black Banana, Rosebud and Curry's Cafe Nola that, once prosperous, have only recently faded away.

How did these people get here, stay here and survive? In 1968 the Zagars—native New Yorkers back from a Peace Corps tour of Peru -went into reverse culture shock on their return to the United States, then under the cloud of Vietnam and the killings of Kennedy and King. "I had a nervous breakdown," says Isaiah. "So we decided to reinvent our lives. But we needed to find a place that was in decline also." That place was South Street, a place inhabited (barely) by bohemian artisans and folk of questionable occupation. "Taxi drivers would drop you off on Lombard because they didn't want to drive down South, they considered it so seedy," says the bearded Isaiah of South's boarded-up buildings, one of which he bought for $10,000.

Curry concurs, stating that when he first came here—a transferred Miami journalist working as a Philadelphia Inquirer local gossip columnist—he was assigned a story on South Street. Landing on the corner of Front and South, he was accosted by packs of wild dogs and winos.

"But I was attracted by the sense of community I felt here once I made my way down the street," laughs Curry, a hardy gentleman with a Cheshire grin. "It was the bohemian flavor and inventive shops like Eye's, Cracked Mirror Cafe and Black Banana when it was next door to Lickety that made this street what it was. And those places were created by Philadelphia artists. The artistic community is what saved South Street. Saved it from being torn down to become a crosstown expressway, fought it from remaining derelict."

So enthralled was Curry that in 1975 he opened a smoke/magazine shop, Paper Moon, across from the T.L.A., then Copa in 1978 on the corner of Fourth and South, where Turk's Open Kitchen, a shot and beer joint, used to be. (He currently pays $16,000 a month rent on the space; he paid $1,800 a month in '78.)

Downey had worked for WCAU radio and television for 19 years before buying the corner building in 1976 in order to turn it into a rental unit and living area for himself. "South used to go down to the river," says Downey, with the sound of Copa's drink blenders sputtering behind him. "There was no I-95 exit, no pedestrian bridge, nothing but slums." No sooner had Downey purchased the property for $50,000 his job was taken away in a programming turnaround. After hearing a handful of offers about how somebody else could make a restaurant work there, his accountant coaxed him into doing it himself. And "do it yourself" has been the catchphrase for South Street's business owners.

None of these business owners have ever thought of their success in terms of dollars. Genuinely. When I mention "peak" and "success," they laugh. "You're building a life," says Julia. "And that's an ongoing process." Though they had been running small springtime street parades since the mid-'70s to drum up business, the event didn't take off until WMMR appropriated it in 1979. "They used to draw 17 people each year," says Isaiah, talking about how the street that serviced such floats as the Crowning of the Slum Queen became the hub of the home of rock 'n' roll. "Suddenly, the street had 190,000 on it. And from that point on the streets were packed, the change effected."

All say they've shoveled a lot of their own money into the survival of the neighborhood. "We never got any tax breaks, never got any special parking garage, never got any special treatment from the city or the press unless it was troubling," says Curry, pointing to the Parking Authority as South Street's principal "overzealous, terrorizing" culprit. "They support us by not supporting us."

"How many benefits did we throw for Rendell and Street?" Downey asks with a frown, "only to get little support toward tourism, the street closed down for oncoming traffic and a 10 percent liquor tax?"

But, in turn, the city's blind eye allowed the area to bloom creatively, to open exciting new ventures and titillating new shops inexpensively (as opposed to, say, Old City restaurants, which go for $1.5 million minimum) and enlarge upon its mythic status as the street of music and mirth. "It's that forbidden-zone mentality," says Isaiah of South Street's "alien" nature, the idea of danger, of sexiness lurking around every crevice. "Well, we're the ones who started that. That's who we are."

The "who we are" of South Street can be seen in the street's mix of cultures, the integrated crowds that keep the area vital. "The people who come here all feel like they belong here," says Isaiah. "The amount of mixed-race couples, gay couples, you can't find that in Manayunk. Or even Old City. Here it's welcomed, celebrated."

Though they mention Old City and Manayunk, they feel no competition.

"Between Old City, Northern Liberties, South of South and South Street, it's a fertile mind crescent," says Curry. South Street offers something even Old City has yet to come up with, they point out: services, usable businesses and affordable properties. Stores that are open and selling stuff. "We have poverty near us and we have richness near us," says Curry.

And part of the community of stores that line South Street is that dreaded corporate entity, the chain store. But even this cannot dampen these pioneers' old-school enthusiasm. They credit chain stores like Tower Records (the first in 1987), Pearl art supply, the GAP ("Where do you think my outfits come from?" laughs Isaiah) and McDonald's as positive within the scope of South Street's 300 independently owned businesses, pointing out that each biz gets subsumed by the South Street aesthetic. "Look at South Street's McDonald's, with its lively mural, and the employee makeup of Starbucks [one of 14 coffee shops on the block] and Tower," say Zagar and Curry. "Those businesses didn't change the street. We changed them. We gave them our look."

What keeps Curry, the Zagars and Downey, all of whom live in the South Street area, fresh to new ideas and trends is this constant influx of young crowds and new shops like Infinite Piercing, 611 Records. "I love going in Infinite," says Isaiah. "I love looking at genital piercings. Not for myself, mind you. But where else could you find this? Through a young entrepreneur on South Street."

"Everyone thinks South Street is theirs, for one little moment. But for us we see the changes, the kids, the bigger chain businesses as even more fun," says Curry. "It must be a Peter Pan complex—a desire to never grow old."