Fathead was killed here. It was four Saturdays ago, a couple hours after midnight. Fathead was hanging with some friends on the corner of Seventh and Girard, directly across the street from the Melrose Bar. It was last call. The bartender was turning off the music. A black car pulled up outside. A man with a pistol stepped out and started blasting. Fathead was shot through the skull.

There have been no arrests. Police cannot provide a motive.

On a recent gray afternoon, a collection of rain-soaked teddy bears, half-deflated balloons and a burned-out holy candle marks the spot where Fathead fell.

Seventh Street is a tattered, trash-strewn block. There are a half-dozen brownstones, a post office, an old warehouse, the bar and a vacant crumbling structure where the hookers, stumblebums and junkies lay their heads on a grimy green mattress propped up on milk crates.

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Gentrification is slowly making its way down Girard Avenue and developers recently bought up five homes here which, for now at least, still house Puerto Ricans who pay between $200 and $300 a month for rent. As the homes are being remodeled, rents will rise and new tenants will move in.

"You looking about Fathead?" yells a curly-haired, goateed man sitting on a nearby stoop. "I got his obituary." The man disappears into the house and quickly reappears with a memorial booklet handed out at the funeral.

The memorial contains a photo of Fathead. He was a tall, lean, handsome man with a normal-sized head and a bright, engaging smile. His real name was Joel Holden, he was 28 years old, had attended Cheyney University and leaves behind a young son.

"They wasn't even coming for him," says the curly-haired man, who knew Fathead from around the neighborhood. "But it's always the innocent person who gets killed."

A few doors down, three Puerto-Rican men drink beer around a small white table. It's Santos' apartment. Santos is a 69-year-old retired fruit peddler. Now, he sells cans of Budweiser from his icebox for a dollar. The two-room apartment is cramped and there is small TV upon a chipped blue dresser, a cassette radio in the open window and "no smoking" signs on the wall. Santos, a sturdy, pot-bellied man with graying, slicked-back hair, sits shirtless on the bed.

Drugs and violence spill out from the bar, he says in broken English. Fathead's shooting is just the latest incident. The men at the table nod their heads in agreement.

"When the bar opens, the problems come," says Santos. "When the bar closes, the problems leave."

Across from Santos' place, and next to the bar, is the crack house. Used needles and broken beer bottles litter the floor and, in the middle of the room, next to the feces-stained mattress, stands a small, headless religious statue clutching a cross.

Down the block, John Downing, a 42-year-old New Jersey resident, is busy remodeling a second-floor apartment in one of the three brownstones he recently bought here for a combined $450,000. With all the development in nearby Northern Liberties and Fishtown, real estate prices are skyrocketing.

"The neighborhood is changing," he says, adding that one of his new properties has increased by $60,000 in just the last few months. "It was a great investment."

Happy hour is approaching and the Melrose Bar is coming to life. The barstools and the knicked and torn booths along the wall are filling up.

David Byers, a thin, bespectacled white man in his 50s, has owned the Melrose for the past few years.

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

"The bar gets a bad rep," he says, standing on the sidewalk outside. "It's a shame about the guy who got shot, but it had nothing to do with us."

After twice being held up at gunpoint, Byers now keeps the Melrose door locked at all times with customers having to knock to get in.

"I look forward to the day we can take the locks off," he says.

Byers says he plans to give the Melrose a facelift as the neighborhood continues to gentrify and the yuppies and hipsters move in.

"I haven't done much with it yet," he says. "But I will when the time is right."