Meet the Cast

"All I can say is there ain't gonna be any Michael Phelps coming out of this jerk-off city!"

by Mike Newall

Dispatch spends a lot of time detailing the exploits of people with names like Fun Ray the Silversmith, Nicky the Bear Wrestler, Bresnan the Coffin Maker, Felix the Painter, Enrico the Mummer, Gerald the Puncher, Dom the Bartender, John the Hat, Tommy Ticket and even a guy named Joey Two Chairs. People you find on street corners and in social clubs and union halls. Honest, funny, broken — and, sometimes crackbrained — characters. Some folks have no time for these people. I can't understand that. They help me make sense of things.

Sadly, there's only so much ink to go around. A lot of things get left in the wastebasket. Like the day Dom the Bartender played the movie Apocalypto on the television set he keeps above the entrance to the men's restroom. It was a quiet afternoon. Perry was there. Perry's an unassuming guy who sounds a lot like Lenny Leonard from The Simpsons. Perry was engrossed in the film, whispering "wow" every few minutes. That is, until the movie's climax, when Jaguar Paw finally kills off the last of the Mayan warriors stalking him and makes it to the safety of the shoreline with his wife and children only to spot a fleet of European ships on the horizon. At that, Perry shook his head and said solemnly, "There goes the neighborhood."

Stuff like that should make the newspapers.

Then there was Joey Two Chairs at a November protest over the proposed fire, library and pool closings. Joey Two Chairs is a firefighter out of South Philly, a big guy who wears small glasses and spends a lot of time on the computer in the house he shares with his mother. Joey Two Chairs is excitable by nature and is an extremely fast talker. He shouts when he gets emotional and has the habit of picking up sentences he began hours earlier. Keeping up a conversation with Joey Two Chairs could be an Olympic sport.

There he was standing in the middle of Frankford Avenue with about 75 other protesters, holding a sign at his chest, sweating in the freezing night air, and shouting into the din like a madman. Going on about the now-shuttered city pools of his youth, if I remember correctly.

"All I can say is there ain't gonna be any Michael Phelps coming out of this jerk-off city," his rant ended.

A valid point.

Then there were more poignant moments, moments full of heartbreak instead of humor. Moments, that in some form or another, will, sadly, be repeated in the coming year.

Like in late September when Highway Patrol Capt. Michael Cochrane stood at attention at the head of an honor guard outside the John F. Givnish Funeral Home, where a long line of mourners processed to pay their respects at the casket of slain police Officer Patrick McDonald, who was assassinated in the street by a released felon who got a hold of a .45 caliber handgun.

HALF OFF DEPOT

Why live life at full price?

As a custom, the Highway Patrol serves as honor guard at every police funeral, and they had done so six times in the last two years for fellow officers killed in the line of duty. McDonald, however, was a member of the elite Highway Patrol Unit. The honor guard was burying one of its very own.

"A member of the unit has been by Pat's side from the moment he was shot to the hospital to here," said Cochrane that night. "Tomorrow we'll take Pat to police headquarters at 4:15 a.m., passing his house on the way, and then we'll transfer Pat to a horse-drawn caisson for the procession to the cathedral and then on to the cemetery."

"He'll never be alone," said Cochrane.

Amen.

And for some, this New Year brings unforeseen challenges.

Like for our friend and former City Paper Managing Editor Brian Hickey, who was severely injured in a hit-and-run the night after Thanksgiving. Brian lay in a coma for weeks, his brain bleeding and swollen, the right side of his body motionless, the prognosis grim. Brian finally woke up a few days before Christmas. He's talking now, but the words are coming slowly.

"Where ya from?" he likes to ask the nurses.

He began moving his right arm on Christmas Day, and he has walked with the help of doctors.

He faces more surgeries and months of rehab, but things are looking up.

"Every day he gets a little bit better," says his wife, Angie.

"Hey," said Brian when reached on the phone on Monday. "Can I call you right back?"

Dispatch is filed from all corners of Philadelphia. E-mail mike.newall@citypaper.net.