I was there and I saw what you did...

In an early episode of the seminal TV series “Miami Vice”, ultra cool and extremely fashionable cops Sonny Crocket and Rico Tubbs cruise through the city -serious, determined, somber - as Phil Collins’ classic “In The Air Tonight” simmers and builds to it’s famous thundering crescendo. It was 1983, MTV was exploding and Michael Mann’s TV series was one of the first to incorporate music video techniques and, in turn, probably influenced more than a few videos itself. In any event, I think it inspired a lot of kids to drive around in the middle of the night approximating some degree of their own fashionable gravitas with Collins’ song blasting through the sound system.

Not much of this was new to me. The song was actually released in 1981 and, during that summer, the summer that I was 16, and hanging out on Philly’s legendary South Street, on at least one occasion, it was on the radio, playing in the wee, small hours of the evening as I rode in a car, cruising through the city while most of it’s residents were asleep on a hot summer night.

In the ‘60’s, South Street was Philly’s answer to Greenwich Village, the center of all things Hippie. By the late ‘70’s, many of the hippies had sold out, grown up, died off or otherwise moved on but the street remained a cultural center, albeit with an increasingly mainstream commercial vibe.

1981 was a strange time to be growing up I say, fully realizing that it is probably the growing up part that is strange, rather than the era during which one grows up. I have little doubt that, 30 years from now, there will be 45 years olds thinking about how strange it was to be growing up in the early 21rst Century. In 1981 there were still some hippies around but there was also the emerging punk-new wave sub-culture and the gradual cooling off of Disco Fever. I found myself in the middle of it all, still listening to classic rock but eagerly embracing punk and new wave and mixing it up with some beloved 70’s funk and bubblegum – you know, “K-Billy’s Super Sounds of the ‘70’s”.

A typical night usually began with a terrible movie at a grungy theater on Chestnut Street, an hour or so of video games at Spaceport or Zounds before heading to South Street for a series of long, leisurely strolls up and down the street, taking in the sights and sounds, bumping into friends, hanging out and, well, let’s face it, checking out girls.

Of course, I was not the only one experiencing this activity. In certain circles throughout Philly, this hanging out on South Street period is a time honored tradition, a rite of passage, if you will, even though there was not much in the way of rites or passage. It’s not like I had never stayed out really late or engaged in a bit of underage drinking but doing it on South Street felt so much better, and probably appealed to the budding filmmaker in me. I probably soaked it all in, assuming that it would make for some good reminiscing later on, in the future, when I might be prone to reflect to on my youth.

As in many rites of passage stories of this type (think “American Graffiti”) there was a girl, doing the same thing, being young, sort of free, hanging out on South Street with her friends around the same time. I saw her almost every night that summer, her auburn blunt cut, pouty bee-stung lips and a style that captured the times, not exactly a hippie, not totally punk but an original mix of both that she pulled off effortlessly.

She parked herself beside me, on the car I was leaning on, watching a bassist and drummer rock out. She slipped a Marlboro between her lips and smoked like she’d learned to by studying old movies; her way of saying “You know, you look like a really sweet guy but you have to know, somewhere deep down, that I am way out of your league.”

I, with my cascading Jew-fro and glasses that could have doubled as storm windows dominating my face, looked straight ahead, innocently ignorant to basic boy-girl 101 moves like making eye-contact, much less small talk. I must have been out that day.

Still, she stood next to me, I saw her frequently that summer, never exchanged a word and, writing about it almost 30 years later, I guess it made an impression. I heard later, after asking around, that, if we were all talking about the same girl, her name was Lisa and, within a few years, she had become a model.

I did a play at theater off South in the spring of ‘82 but, that summer, I was sent off to my dad’s place on Long Island where, instead of staying out ‘til 2 or 3 every night, I was getting up at 4 or 5 to work on a farm every day.

Nobody ever said anything to me and while my parents, ex-hippies themselves, were not especially restrictive, I suspect that they might have worried that I was up to no good during those late nights on South Street. Granted, the guy I was spending all of this time with was 19 and had a bit of a reputation ---no names here, he is a successful businessman now— nothing beyond flagrant curfew violations and the occasional public consumption of alcohol by a minor ever took place. Still, this improbable Fonzie-Richie Cunningham-“American Graffiti” dynamic was suddenly put on hold.

As mentioned, for many kids in Philly, hanging out on South Street during summer nights, is a time-honored tradition but, within that tradition, seems to be a built in period of disillusionment: the next summer is never as good as the first and, is often bad, lending itself to another time-honored tradition: talking about how the street had changed from one year to the next, how it used to be so much cooler. Okay, I grant this to the kids who came before me and the kids who came after me but, in my experience, the change from ‘81 to ’82 was like day and night. When I got back to town from my hard labor experience on Long Island, I was eager to hit the street once again even though I’d heard that things were different.

Gone was the sole beat cop who walked up and down the street; replaced by teams of officers who seemed to be on every other corner. The mix of hippies and punks were still around but there was a new element emerging: guys in muscle shirts, shorts and white socks pulled up to their knees who just seemed to be waiting for someone to look at them or one of their short-shorted-high heeled girlfriends the “wrong way.”

My hanging out on South Street officially went into the history book.


I never really spent that much more time on South St. after the summer of 1981. In ’83, hanging out on the street after a David Bowie concert, my friends and I were stopped for violating curfew --- remember that, at 16, I sat on the steps of the TLA dinking a beer at 2 A.M. --- but we were not cited for anything because three of us were in the company of a responsible 18 year old: me.

In ’86, after a semester of college in London, I got together with some of my flat-mates for a proper “glad to be back” cheesesteak at Jim’s. The “malling” of the street was in full swing.

By the late ‘80’s songs like “In Air Tonight” and Steve Winwood’s Madison Avenue bait “Don’t You Know What The Night Can Do?” were the stuff of ubiquitous rain slicked, neon lit, city at night, “Miami Vice”-esque gag-worthy beer commercials. Ever the media savvy lad, I once even caught myself running through the city at night with friends, thinking to myself “Wow, Miller time, I feel like I’m in a beer commercial, cool.”

In 1991, I worked at the TLA Video on 3rd street. In ’92, my fiancée and I went to the Eyes Gallery and bought tons of 1920’s Mexican postcards of happy couples to use as our wedding invitations. Within the past 15 years or so, there have been increasingly ugly incidents on South Street and, yet, I firmly believe that the tradition of hanging out continues.

I never saw Lisa again. In a best case scenario, she went on to have a decent life and got older, like me. I teach college students now and sometimes get paid to write screenplays. For the past 17 years, I have been married to a girl I fell in love with when I was 14 – and, okay, if she is, in fact, in my league, she is a starter while I am, as always, a bench-warmer. We have two daughters who, if I have anything to do with it, will probably never hang out on South Street.

About ten years ago I heard a demographic statistic that said that people, especially men, tend to return to the music they listened to between the ages of 16 and 20. My family doesn’t share my passion for popular music to quite the illogical level that I do, so we rarely listen to it in the car (okay, I’ll admit it, mini-van) but, every now and then, I’ll be driving around alone, “In The Air Tonight” will come on the radio and I’ll turn it up, just slightly, and glance back in time for awhile.