There is a certain poetry to the recent announcement that the Crazy Horse Too, a Vegas strip joint, will be opening a Philadelphia venue on Columbus Avenue, just below Oregon. After all, now that the city will have Vegas-sized slots parlors, why not bring Vegas-sized strip joints too?

Still, neighbors in the Whitman section are none too pleased to be getting this new "entertainment" destination. They have vowed an "over our dead bodies" fight. They don't want this sort of place in their neighborhood and they have pointed out that the Vegas operation has long been tainted by rumors of Mafia connections. These neighbors are lining up politicians to help, including muscle man state Sen. Vince Fumo.

Personally, I hope they win their fight and drive the Horse back to Vegas. But if they do win, it will be for the wrong reasons. The real question this fight raises doesn't have to do with strippers, liquor or the mob. The real issue here is: What the hell is the long-term, comprehensive vision for the Delaware River?

Forget for a moment what goes on inside the Crazy Horse. As a building, as a site, as a piece of design, it is simply another big box retail outlet. It will surely have lots of parking in front, and no access to the river in back (and one suspects that the patrons won't be heading to the Crazy Horse for the river views). In that sense, the Crazy Horse will fit right in with the Wal-Mart, Home Depot and other developments that have been allowed to trash the river on the southern section of Columbus Boulevard over the last decade. Head south from Washington Avenue: No landscaping, no public right-of-ways, no fishing, no marina. No nothing, except loading docks for delivery trucks.

It's all one big, grim strip. That's the problem.

And the trashing of the Delaware isn't just happening in South Philly. Smack dab where Center City meets the river, of course, we have the ongoing saga of Penn's Landing, which has had more bad sequels than Rocky. Most recently, after a lengthy and wonderfully successful public process, including a review of development proposals, the whole project has apparently been put, as they say in show business, on long-term hiatus.

North of Center City, access to the Delaware is currently being walled off by the city's first—and let's pray last—high-priced gated development. Rumors swirl of developers buying up large old industrial parcels along the northern stretch of the river to fill with, well, presumably whatever they please.

That the Crazy Horse has been permitted to gallop onto Columbus Boulevard is the result of a collective failure to think about the Delaware River. A failure of City Council and the mayor to insist on a use plan for the Delaware; a failure of the planning commission, which has been made largely toothless by council; a failure of the zoning board, which has proved all too pliant in the face of lawyers representing big developers who seek to bend rules and win variances.

The Delaware is a major recreational, aesthetic and environmental resource for the city. Or rather it could be, if it weren't being treated with such contempt by developers and their city partners. If you want to get some sense of what kind of public asset the Delaware might be, forget London and the Thames, or Paris and the Seine. Head west just a few miles to our own Schuylkill, where, step-by-step, piece at a time, that unpronounceable river is being turned into a real urban jewel.

This is what the fight over the Crazy Horse needs to be about. Philadelphians need to reclaim the Delaware as a public treasure from the collection of developers, politicians and cronies who are currently strangling it. We should turn this fight over strippers into a fit about how to turn the Delaware from a patchwork strip into something spectacular.

After all, if the Crazy Horse is finally run out of town, there is no mechanism in place right now to protect that sight from some new but equally horrendous development. The strippers might not come to the Delaware, but as things stand now, the Delaware as a public resource is being stripped away.

Steve Conn is an associate professor of history at Ohio State University. If you would like to respond to this Slant or submit one of your own (750 words), e-mail duane@citypaper.net.