July 28-August 3, 2005

cityspace

Fishtown undergoes big changes. Just don't call it "gentrification."

by Jenna Portnoy

Fishtown's past and future meet at the corner of Frankford Avenue and Norris Street. There, Dan Tocci Jr. sits at a desk in the back of the butcher shop his father founded in 1947 and remembers what the bustling business district once looked like.

Women shopped for fresh meats for dinner every day. A five and dime and three restaurants thrived across the street. Tocci used to see movies at the Palm Theater, which is now a car wash that emits a booming hip-hop track. The bass thumps out beats on a suffocating afternoon as guys emerge from the shade to wipe down a maroon sedan with tan leather interior.

"It's not a bad neighborhood," says Danny Nash, a 56-year-old employee of the New City Car Wash, as he rubs his hand across his sweat-soaked white tank top. "It's changed a lot."

Those changes started about five years ago when artists gravitated toward the working-class neighborhood for its mix of huge, empty manufacturing spaces and affordable real estate. Instead of the typical scenario of well-educated professionals pushing out poorer residents through gentrification, families are settling down here and enhancing, rather than destroying, the community's spirit.

Across the street, resident and business owner Karen Breese muses on the state of her neighborhood, where $70,000 buildings are fixed up and sold for $200,000. "Doubling or tripling your money normally doesn't happen," the 34-year-old says. But it's happening here as people turn around apartments and commercial spaces for serious cash. "I hope it sort of slows down a bit," Breese says. "Some people I really like who would want to live here are sort of getting priced out."

A TAIL OF THE CITY: Rocket Cat Cafe is the hub of Fishtown's recent resurgence. Dan Tocci Jr., owner of a butcher shop that has been a fixture on Frankford Avenue for more than 50 years, welcomes the changes. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Last summer she and her husband, Tom Roach, also 34, turned Little Ethel's, a diner coated in grease and tobacco, into a comfortable coffee shop. They started Rocket Cat Cafe — named for the owners' affinity for strong coffee and the corner's proliferation of feral felines — "mostly because we like coffee and there wasn't any place where we could drink coffee and hang out," Breese says.

Regular Drew Allan calls it "the hub of the new Fishtown." Allan, 30, came to the city from Montreal six months ago — "The move was not un-girl-related" — and he would prefer a hold on development. "Gentrification is inevitable," he says. "It's great in the transition period, then [the community] loses its essence."

At the counter, he and Mike Kennedy, a 33-year-old transplant from Northern Liberties, and Jenny Prescott, who started working at the shop a few months ago, talk about the "originals." As an air conditioner inherited from Ethel's days hums in the background, they talk about how some people who have lived here for generations see increased property values and other signs of a renaissance as a threat to their way of life.

Besides the bar stools where they are sitting, the cafe is furnished with mismatched, tattered chairs. A wooden chess set waits for players. A broom and dustpan lean against exposed brick walls. The rotating art collection features a collage of images in wood frames placed at diagonals. There are 13 studio spaces upstairs and in the fall a rear garage will house a boys clothing line called Boy Named Sue by Breese and her friend Tina Heuges.

Breese and Roach have a 4-month-old son, Heuges is expecting and lots of their friends have small children. Heuges says some days there are a half-dozen babies cooing and gnawing on their toes.

Next door, Dan Platt watches over a thrift store that supports the work of a Mennonite church network called Circle of Hope. Platt, 28, has a tangle of bushy hair and wears a black Dungeons and Dragons T-shirt. He strolls through Circle Thrift pointing out old televisions and appliances and trying to cram the top on a stubborn glass jar. "We have cool stuff, old stuff," he says, walking by an alcove where clothes sell for 50 cents.

Platt opens the door to a big room with rows of folding chairs and a stage with a place for a band to play where the first church service took place in January 2004. The thrift shop opened three months later. He walks though the main room — filled with neat rows of old blue jeans, blazers and shirts — and into the sun. He complains that the recently mowed lot is already overrun with weeds. A sign sticking out of the greenery bears the name of Positive Space, a group of local artists who built a sculpture garden along Frankford Avenue.

Two new eateries are also in the works. Ken Shriver, the chef at Finnigan's Wake, says he's sprucing up his former bar, Kenbo's Nut Hut, in time for a fall opening of Kenbo's Cafe, a restaurant specializing in barbeque. Mary Kate and Feargus McCaughey of Dauphin Street plan to open a restaurant called Ida Mae's Bruncherie, at the corner of Norris and Tulip streets.

The New Kensington Community Development Corporation picked artists to design five bike racks, like the metal cat outside the coffee shop, and there are plans to have the city install a bunch more standard U-shaped racks. The agency is pouring resources into maintaining the epicenter of the Frankford Avenue Arts Corridor, extending from the Delaware River to Lehigh Avenue, as a place for people who work with their hands. By September, an old textile factory should be transformed into 27 units for low-income artists.

"The theory is if you work in the middle, the improvements will spread out in both directions," NKCDC Executive Director Sandy Salzman says.

With new development sprouting up everywhere, Tocci of Dan's Fresh Meats may get his wish "that we have all the business along here like it once was. New apartments, condos, people restoring their homes, people taking pride in their community and properties."

Tocci is 68, but the few wrinkles on his face and his eagerness to chat make him seem younger. He looks down the narrow shop that has consumed much of his life. Yellowed newspaper clippings about baseball games and posters of Phillies heroes from years ago are tacked to the paneling. A regular walks in and Tocci calls out, "Hey!"

"I welcome everybody," he says, turning back to his present conversation. "There are a lot of nice people moving in."

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