A Street Less Mean

Sheila, a longtime South Street musician, has left for Manayunk's kinder climes.

By Erin Mooney

Sheila, the familiar South Street recorder player, has moved from the street where she spent the better part of a decade.

Known for playing repetitive television themes and catchy advertising jingles, the blind woman with the loud, throaty laugh wanted a change.

The fortyish woman, who loves Carly Simon and the Carpenters, said she wanted to play music where teenagers wouldn't toss pebbles and lit cigarettes into her change cup. She yearned for a spot where her feet wouldn't be purposely run over by passing baby strollers, a place she could make money and feel comfortable.

Blind from birth, she thrives on familiarity and habit in her daily life. As familiar as South Street was, she said she wanted to move away from the constant smell of marijuana and the sound of shattering glass bottles landing inches away from her.

Along with several Center City merchants who have moved to the bustling, boutique-filled sidewalks of Main Street, Sheila wanted to test the much-heralded Manayunk scene. Now she plays for suburbanites and college students at one of the hippest places inside the city limits.

"South Street just changed," she said. "The kids were getting younger and meaner."

She would know. Raised in Philadelphia in a family of seven children, Sheila (she won't reveal her last name) left home when she was a teen and graduated from the Overbrook School for the Blind in 1974. After three months in business school doing medical transcriptions, and a stint selling leather goods at the Reading Terminal Market, she ended up finding her true calling as a street performer. For as many as 14 hours a day, her familiar face and identifiable recorder playing became a permanent fixture on the corner of 4th and South streets.

Sitting atop a plastic milk crate, rocking back and forth, Sheila was a presence that couldn't be ignored. Every day, in all kinds of weather, she would be there, tirelessly making music.

Marvin Finkelstein has owned South Street's PhilaDeli for almost a quarter of a century. Over the years he has gotten to know Sheila. She used to come into the deli to use the bathroom and get a drink, he said. Sometimes, she would stay on the street all night and be at his store at 7 a.m. when he opened the doors.

"You would always hear her flute," he recalled. "Maybe she figures she will have better tips up there."

It has been about a month since Sheila made the move. She has had some difficulty finding a permanent place to set up shop, but said she thought she would be able to stay in Manayunk.

"I love it. I love the people," she said. "I meet nice people all the time or I wouldn't be here."

She first planted herself in front of Canal House, near the corner of Main and Cotton streets. Tenants of the high-rent apartment building complained, and representatives of the Manayunk Development Corporation (MDC) asked her to move.

"No one is honest," Sheila said, emptying her Rubbermaid pitcher of change. "They won't say I'm disturbing them. Instead they complain about me."

She said she is sensitive to the fact that her music might be construed as irritating, but wishes people would talk with her first.

"If I slept upstairs and someone was playing at 2 or 3 a.m., I might be upset, too," she sympathized.

Kay Smith, MDC executive director, said the non-profit organization is trying to work with her to find a neutral place where she can play.

"I think that the few [street musicians] who are here are fine," Smith said. "It's a nice addition to the street."

But, she added, the situation must be controlled.

So Sheila is trying out some new spots. At night, she plays in front of a water ice shop, near the noisy Pitchers Pub, where loud rock music and drunk twentysomethings spill onto the late-night streets. On weekend days, she moves down Main Street to the Manayunk Farmer's Market, where there is always a constant flow of shoppers.

Last Sunday afternoon, sitting in front of the market's brick faade, she beamed over her success at the new location.

"I love it. I love the people," she said, her face breaking into a broad grin.

Charlie Durning, a Manayunk resident who works as a security guard at Canal House, was asked by MDC to approach Sheila about relocating. For the past week, he has done more than that — helping her get acquainted with Manayunk and making sure she gets on the bus each night for the trip to her Center City home.

Sheila said Durning is a true friend, someone whom she can trust.

"Through Charlie I've got good places to be," Sheila said. "I'm just glad that Charlie really cares."

When she first took her music to the streets, Sheila sang and played the kazoo, the autoharp and a battery-operated omnichord.

Playing the kazoo, she said, was a fluke.

"Someone handed me the kazoo... it was the child coming out in me," she said. "I had a lot of fun with it."

From there, she took to the other instruments, but after repeated bouts of carpal tunnel syndrome and the high cost of batteries for the omnichord, she turned to the simple sound of the recorder.

"I'm not very good," she admits. "I hear something and then I work on it."

From the Andy Griffith television theme song to the Oscar Meyer jingle, Sheila said she plays any tune she can replicate on her instrument. (She doesn't sing anymore — she says her voice gave out.)

She bristles at the way she is sometimes treated on the streets.

"As soon as you have a handicap," she said, "you're a beggar."

But even though she has experienced some unfortunate things, she said she has come in contact with some very generous people.

"I think we have a fabulous, fabulous city," she said. "I think Philadelphians are basically kind."

Sheila says being a street musician is what she will always be. Though the hours are long and it is often tiring, it is what she wants to do.

"I like this life," she said. "I like being part of the streets."