Out of the Ashes

The lost and found fortunes of painter Felix Giordano.

by Mike Newall

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Published: Dec 9, 2008

Michael T. Regan BURNED: Giordano had the money he made selling his paintings in a wooden box near his bed when fire destroyed his South Philly apartment.

Felix was sitting at the bar across the street from his house the other afternoon, sipping orange and cranberry juice and shooting the breeze with Dom the bartender, when John the Hat walked through the door and said, "There's smoke outside, all over."

"It looks like it's coming from your direction," added Dom, peering out the window.

"Oh shit," said Felix. He leaped off his stool and ran across Washington Avenue to the wrought-iron gate at the mouth of the narrow alley where he rents a crumbling brick house for $200 a month. He fumbled over the chain lock and groped his way down the smoke-filled alley, tripping over rubbish and weeds. The front doorknob seared his fingers. The first floor was engulfed in flames, and the fire was spreading up the spiral staircase.

Felix stood there watching the fire gain life. For a moment, he considered going in after his money and his paintings, sketchbooks and family photos, but he knew if he went in he'd never come out. He made his way back down the alley.

"Oh, dear God," he said.

The firemen arrived in minutes. Felix told them nobody else lived in the alley. Then he told them, "I left all the money I owned up there."

A crowd of bystanders formed; some smiling and laughing, others holding up their camera phones. A fire official approached, and the crowd parted.

"I left the microwave on, I think," Felix said. "Or, maybe a mouse bit into a wire, and short-circuited it." Then he sat down in the Anastasi Seafood parking lot and watched as the fire grew to the top floor. "Oh, dear God," he said.

Felix Giordano, 62, is well-liked around the Italian Market. As a painter, he tasted some fame back in the 1970s and '80s. He'd lived at the place on Washington Avenue for the past eight years, painting in the early morning hours and passing his afternoons in the bar, sipping juice, discussing politics and sports and impressing people with his savant-like knowledge of the causes of death of little-known actors. He's been storing his paintings in a friend's dusty basement. Two weeks before the fire some neighborhood friends organized a benefit art show on his behalf, hoping to help him find a safer place to live and paint. [That was the inspiration for Mike Newall's story on Giordano — "Still Life Yet" — in the Nov. 13 City Paper.]

Fliers were distributed, somebody donated a keg and boxed wine, and over a hundred people showed up. At the end of the night, Felix had sold 30 paintings for a total of $1,700 after expenses.

It was a start.

Before going to bed, Felix tied a thick rubber band around his money and placed it in a wooden jewelry box next to a gold watch his uncle gave him as a child. He kept the jewelry box near his bed on the third floor, alongside his oil paints. 

He slept well that night.

Firefighter Shawn Flynn of Ladder Company 11 at 12th and Reed remembers the alarm bells going off at 2:30 p.m. As the truck turned onto Passyunk Avenue, Flynn, a 17-year veteran, saw the plume of smoke.

"We got a job," he called out to the other firefighters.

They squeezed down the narrow alley — Flynn recalls the scene in Animal House when Stork leads the marching band down the dead-end street — but the smoke inside was so heavy and the floors so cluttered, they could not find their way to the spiral staircase. Instead, they entered the adjoining property, knocked down a masonry wall and put out the fire.

The firemen began shoveling out the sea of smoldering debris.

"Everything was wrecked," remembers Flynn, who was digging into another pile of burnt wreckage when he spotted a $20 bill.

"I thought it was play money at first," says Flynn, a married father of two young boys who lives in the Northeast. He fished out the rubber-band wad of money, and blew the ash off it. "Yo Cap, you better check this out," he said.

"Give it to Battalion 1," replied his captain. Flynn stuck his head out the window and tossed the money across the alley to Battalion 1 Chief Bob Lewandowski, who was standing on an adjacent roof.

"This guy's gonna be real happy," said Lewandowski, turning the money over in his hand. He found Felix in the Salvation Army truck where nurses were treating his burnt hand.

"Don't let anyone tell you there aren't any honest firemen," he said, placing the money in Felix's hand.

Felix hugged the chief.

"Our job is to protect and salvage property whether it's the poorest pack rat or the richest guy in Philly," said Flynn. "I'm glad the guy has a few bucks in his pocket for the long road that lies ahead for him."

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A few hours after the fire, a crowd of well-wishers gathered around a dazed Felix at the bar.

"To be an artist and have the luck of selling all those paintings," he was saying, "and then to see that kind of honesty and decency on behalf of the firemen. ... I'm at a loss of words. ... It's a miracle."

That night Felix slept on a friend's air mattress, jolting awake every time the radiator hiccupped. Since then he's been splitting time between friends' couches and his brother's house near City Line Avenue.

He tried to get back into his old place to see if he could salvage more of his belongings, but neighbors piled their trash in the alley, blocking his entrance.

He has the $1,700, and his paintings, which still hang in the Ric Rac Gallery at 1132 S. Ninth St. (The show has been extended through the holidays.) But nothing else. No clothes, no art supplies, no family photos, no home, no prospects.

The other day he sat at the bar waiting for a Red Cross representative to come assess the fire damage.

"When I don't think about it all, it's not too bad," he said. "But how long can I rely on other people's kindness?"

He took a sip of his juice. "Thank God for them firemen," he said.

(mike.newall@citypaper.net)

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