A Million Stories

	print	email	reply	rss feed

Published: Apr 1, 2009

"Illegal guns kill cops and children," reads the sign, and car horns blare in support. Members of Heeding God's Call, a group of local religious leaders, have been holding protests at Colosimo's Gun Center, on the 900 block of Spring Garden Street, once a week since January. Inside the shop, Jim Colosimo sits smoking a cigar, and again flatly rejects the idea of negotiations.

When the protests began, they got coverage — columnists, cameras. The group asked Colosimo to sign a 10-point "code of conduct," but he was unwilling to install a computerized system that would flag purchasers who previously bought guns used in crimes. Bryan Miller, a representative for the group and executive director of CeaseFire New Jersey, acknowledges that attendance at the protests has since gone down, and that no other reporters are currently asking about them. He predicts renewed interest in coming weeks, however, as the group expands.

A man named Andrew, a small business owner, approaches on his bicycle and asks why he should avoid the store: He wants a gun, he explains, in case of a home invasion. Miller makes his case against Colosimo's, then takes things a step further by telling Andrew that owning a gun wouldn't actually make him safer.

"You don't live in West Philly," Andrew replies.

—Charles Cieri

The driver's side front tire on Dana Pulli's car was slashed on March 1, the day before the biggest snowstorm of winter. "I was parked on Lombard between 18th and 19th streets," Pulli says. "I didn't notice if any tires on other cars were slashed, because of the snow." She didn't make a police report. A resident of Gerritt Street was also heard saying he'd been "gotten good" when tires on his van were slashed a couple weeks later, and other residents in the 3rd Police District complained that cars had been vandalized. Police did not respond to multiple requests for comment. With parking growing scarcer, is it more likely that this is the work of some punk kids, or simply a frustrated car owner looking to scare away competition?

—Felicia D'Ambrosio

Fresh off the trial of his former chief of staff, in which Councilman Jack Kelly testified to being ignorant of basic goings-on in his own office, we find our public servant featured in a new book, The Foie Gras Wars, by Mark Caro. "The veteran councilman is a no-nonsense type with street smarts accumulated from his years in the feisty middle-class enclave of Northeast Philadelphia," writes Caro. "He's blunt and salt-tongued." We think of Kelly's tongue as more akin to a stale piece of licorice.

—Doron Taussig

If all goes according to plan, over a thousand people will crowd onto the Ben Franklin Bridge this Saturday to demand better health care. The event is being put together by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), a coalition seeking congressional action on health-care reform by the end of 2009. Local activist (and former candidate for state representative and City Council) Marc Stier is an organizer for HCAN; he explains that the bridge location serves as an apt, if somewhat cheesy, metaphor: "The path Americans take from hard work to quality affordable health care has become a tightrope over a chasm," he says.

—Daniel Schwartz

My Gambling Problem
Back by Popular Demand
Career Alternatives
The Bell Curve
At the Hearing
Icepack