"Fire? What Fire?"

Finding hope in smoldering ashes near K&A.

by Nathaniel Popkin

But for the melted vinyl siding on Westmoreland Street, it's hard to see evidence of June's inferno at Kensington and Allegheny. The lot where the warehouse once stood is cleared and graded. Reflecting the late summer sun, it's a beacon of light from a place that was dark indeed. "A shooting gallery" is how John Calloway, a neighbor, describes it. From what I've heard, derelicts firing guns in the night was the least of the misanthropy that took place inside.

Now life continues — bored women stoop-sitting, mopping their steps; children running; workers standing in line for empanadas at El Coqui at F Street; mothers awaiting their young ones outside the Ascension Church's school. The church itself, constructed at the turn of the last century, towers over this neighborhood of two-story row houses with bay windows, contiguous porches, ample flies and the faint sound of construction now endemic to our streets.

"Fire? What fire?" asks Adam, who shares the porch with Calloway. But Calloway sees what I'm after.

"There was a sound like tzzzzzz," he says. "And then boom! The transformer blew. See all these porches? They glowed orange. I'll tell you what — when the wind shifted, I thought it was going to be like MOVE."

Calloway has a soft voice and no fierceness — or fear — in his eyes, as well as a diamond stud in each ear. "God takes care of you. Only when you're not asking," he says.

I guess the neighbors at K&A weren't asking, then, when Shane Claiborne came along almost a decade ago. Claiborne's the fire-breathing circus performer, writer and Christian hippie who is the shaman (he says "elder") of The Simple Way, a group that tries to emulate the asceticism and love of early Christianity. The Simple Way took over vacant houses on Potter Street, across from the warehouse, started community programs and businesses, and made friends with everyone. "We came here to be good neighbors," he says.

Claiborne, 32, is tall; his hair is long and dreadlocked. When we leave his house at Potter and Westmoreland, I ask if I should shut the door behind me — a stupid question for a man so well-known and respected.

It's only because of The Simple Way that, post-fire, the neighborhood looks this good. "We learned from the neighbors," Claiborne says. "They policed the streets and cleared the snow. So we boarded up houses after the fire; they had already been broken into, the copper stolen." He goes on to explain that residents weren't allowed back in and the city didn't do anything to protect them.

We walk to the corner of Potter and H streets, where the bright sand and gravel has replaced one Simple Way house lost in the fire. Claiborne talks of building a green community center and a park.

"I took a neighborhood kid, his head in my hands, and we turned to face the lot. I said, 'What do you see?' He said, 'An empty lot.' I repeated my question until he got it. 'I see trees.' His eyes finally lit up. 'A place to play.'"

K&A isn't just any corner in North Philly. One of the busiest neighborhood El stops, it boasts scale, worthy architecture, wide sidewalks and a vitality that endures beyond drug dealing and prostitution. It is densely populated and growing, by 6 percent from 1990 to 2000, when the Latino population increased by 984 percent. At K&A, neighbors speak 26 languages, including Persian, French Creole and Vietnamese. Simply put, it's the future of this city, the kind of place a Mayor Nutter had better see as a strength — and a place to invest. Make K&A as finely urban as it ought to be and you've created a model for a dozen other corners.

It is unclear what the Street administration wants to do with the vacant lot, which is in foreclosure. Impact Services, which had hoped to rehab the warehouse for elderly housing, is still interested. Outgoing Councilman Dan Savage and the presumed incoming Councilwoman Maria Quiñones-Sanchez both say they would turn the lot over to neighbors.

Claiborne says the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society is interested in helping to build and manage a park. They're bringing landscape architects to the site, a prospect which excites him. "This has got to be a good a place to live," he says humbly.

Yo, Shane! Right on, Brother.

Nathaniel Popkin writes about contemporary city life, mythology and history.