Read South Philly: Some Comedy \ South Philly: Women

Tediously, everything in Philadelphia is reputed to be the oldest/first/original specimen of its genus in America.* First hospital, first zoo, first liberty bell, first beer distillery, first raising of the middle finger. Often (OK, always) these firsts come with some conditions: First university! (Well, okay, the first one started by Ben Franklin). Oldest continuously operating public bathroom in the contiguous United States. And “America’s oldest outdoor market” (well, depending how you define “America,” “old,” “outdoor,” and “market”…): the Italian Market in South Philadelphia, also known as the 9th Street Market.

(Some of yuz may remember its bleak streetscapes from the murky 1970s classic movie Rocky.)

It certainly wins the honor of noisiest, smelliest market in America. A place with a plenitude of rotting vegetables, stinky cheeses, cheap China-made novelty items, stolen boxes of perfume sold to you dirt cheap, exotic olives and other household products. The kind of place where the vendors think it’s funny to throw buckets of slop at tourists.

*Philly is so full of shit

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At Sarcone’s Bakery right around the corner from my Bella Vista trinity, there was usually a line out the door to buy the crusty fresh breads that tasted best hot out of the ovens. Mind you, they just used white flour of the ordinary variety, and no matter what size or shape of loaf or bun you were buying, it was all the same dough. Sarcone’s, before it burned to the ground under mysterious circumstances a few years after I moved away from Philadelphia, was a characteristically tin-ceilinged brownstone with big old wooden shelves for the bread and glass boxes filled with more bread on the counter.

So one day in the middle of the morning I went over to Sarcone’s and was shocked to find no line. I walked in carefully, casing the joint and wondering what the explanation was. Only one Sarconette was behind the counter, and seemed to be inspecting her fingernails. An old man customer was standing facing her on the other side of the counter. I already knew enough not to step on any toes, especially with the older folks in the neighborhood, who were all connected, either to the stregheria or the mafia.

So I summoned my most pleasing polite voice to ask the man if he was in line. Or if he was the line. Without looking at me (do I need to even write this anymore? No one ever looked at me the whole time I lived in South Philly), he said in that rasp-voice common to old Italian men, “No, I’m waitin for peets.”

I stood dumbly for a moment trying to figure out if he was waiting for several friends named Pete, or beets, or peat moss. Looking around I noticed the photostatted color pictures of pizza taped to the glass bread cabinets. The sign also indicated that pizza was available from 11:30 to 2:00 each day. It was 11:20.

Using my sharp deductive skills: All the Sicilians and Italians in the neighborhood dropped the last vowel from words ending in vowels, per the Sicilian dialect of Italian. I had heard “rigot’” (ricotta), manigot (manicotti), antipast (antipasto/i), but didn’t realize the practice extended to the word pizza. Which is what the old man was waiting for, in case you haven’t figured that out yet.**

**As a footnote, part of the giant game of cultural Keep-away that South Philly played with me was a simple contrarianism: In a restaurant, if I ordered “manigot” the waitress would say “Mm hmm. Manicotti.” But if I said “manicotti” she would say “Okay, manigot.” Et cetera down the line of food words. God forbid this little fanook-sounding interloper should be included in the vowel dropping custom.

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In the outdoor booths, the purveyors of the impossibly low-priced, immediately perishable products*** (the fruits and veggies start to “go over” in the bag on your way home and are rotten by the time you get there) yell incomprehensibly, daring buyers to ignore them.

“Hammmunny!” The wizened, toothless, but still full-throated cucumber monger (that’s all he sold) would wail, over and over, just that: “Hammmunny!” … “Hammmunny!”

Is he saying “harmony”? Is he selling hominy grits? You know how sometimes you have to hear something a million times before you think, “Oh, that’s what that means!”? Finally I had one of those moments, just as I left the earshot of Mr. “Hammmunny”: He was shouting “How many?”. That is, he was operating on the assumption that you would presently walk right up to him and say “Give me some cucumbers, please.” To which he would respond, “How many?” So the hammmunny is some kind of song tribute to the pleasurable moment when he wraps up a sale. He sings that song to entice you and remind you, the erstwhile customer, of how it sounds when you buy cucumbers from him.

***Trader Joe is said to have modeled his business on the Italian Market

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At the other end of the block from the high-end kitchenwares shop called Fante’s, where you had to be a rich bitch from the Main Line to actually buy anything such as a $150 saucepan or $15 tea strainer, it’s a different story: Paul and Frances Giordano’s shop, on the NE corner of 9th St. and Washington Ave. It really has some of the nicest young men in South Philadelphia working in it. I’m offering sarcasm here, 49 cents a pound.

You can judge a grocery store (or whatever this place is) by how it treats its old ladies (or streghe). I’m eyeing the large cans of tomatoes and olives and stuff behind the counter as a Joey paces back and forth back there WLAM (Without Looking at Me: again, this is a given, but in the meantime I’ll use this abbreviation).

A Lucy Ball type (as in, from the era of “Here’s Lucy!” and “That’s Lucy!” and all those shows the beloved comedienne made when she was old) appears out of nowhere next to me (real streghe can do that). “Hey, gimme some salami, Joey.” He checks his watch and does a couple other little selfish chores, and makes her repeat her request; she isn’t sure he heard her. “You getting the salami?” “Yeah.” He wraps it up and slaps it up on the counter. “What else?” he says, then disappears into the back for a minute. Her mouth is still open and her finger is pointed in the air when he comes back out. “Oh, and this salami better not be dry. That roast beef you gave me last week was dry,” she says, drawing out the last word for a few bars. I’m curious what will come of this complaint, and await his eventual response, a few beats later: “Oh yeah? You want me to spit on this salami to make it wetter for you?” She swaggers back and forth on her haunches. “You want me to punch you in your f… in your jaw?” She says, making a pathetic old-lady fist, all arthritic joints, tacky gold rings and chipped salmon nail polish. Neither of them smiles or laughs and she takes her salami, shaking her head. I step up for my turn with Joey…

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Another day at Giordano’s, another old lady, this one with Q-tip hair, a little heavier and more beaten down by a long life in the Italian Market. Again I’m waiting for her to go first; I know how to act with old people. I don’t want my Italian Market shopping money found shoved up my dead ass when they find my body upside down stuffed into an oil drum full of burning fish heads because I crossed some old witch or some made man’s grandpa.

The old woman asks this other Joey to give her some cucumbers. In a mocking facsimile of polite service he tweets “Yes ma’am! Anything else for you today, ma’am?” She is looking around in a bobbling manner. “How about this lettuce? Did you see the lettuce we got?” She mumbles something about not needing any. “Did you see it, though? HEY! Look at it.” She looks at me instead and my heart stops out of fear I will become implicated in this elder abuse. She shrugs as I move to the hot peppers. As I’m removing myself Joey 2 snaps at her over his now tightened jaw and stiff foremouth: “Say it, then! Say the lettuce is pretty!”

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The Af-Am fruitslinger, 40s, standing on the corner – well, actually half-way into the middle of Washington Avenue, holding a stalk of bananas and yelling out, head tipped back: “I got bananas here, 39 cents a pound. You never saw bananas this cheap. Buy these goddamn bananas… Now! Spend all your damn money on these bananas! DO it!” I think my jaw had dropped, but WLAM he seemed to read my mind and address what I, and perhaps others, was thinking: “I know you don’t like it when I talk like this, and I DON’T CARE!”

Tags: Bella Vista, Ben Franklin, Fante's, Giordano's, Italian Market, Lucille Ball, Philadelphia, Sarcone's, South Philly