Solomon Jones: Doing the hustle - North Philly-style
I GREW UP in two different parts of Philadelphia. One was West Oak Lane - a working-class neighborhood where everyone worked and looked out for one another. It was a place filled with two-parent homes, two-car families and people who took annual vacations.
I GREW UP in two different parts of Philadelphia. One was West Oak Lane - a working-class neighborhood where everyone worked and looked out for one another. It was a place filled with two-parent homes, two-car families and people who took annual vacations.
When I was 12 or so, we moved to North Philly.
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking of the North Philly popularized by folks who know too little about it. The North Philly filled with crime, poverty and little else. But that's not the North Philly I knew. In the North Philly I knew, the streets were tough, but there were good people who knew more about hard work and sacrifice than their well-heeled neighbors on the other side of the tracks.
North Philly is where I really grew up, because that's where I learned how to hustle.
I'm not talking about the kind of hustle involving drugs and guns, or worse, the kind of hustle involving computers and wire transfers.
No, I'm talking about the kind of hustle born of necessity rather than greed. The kind of hustle the whole neighborhood embraces, because everyone knows that while you're the one holding a rent party this week, it could very well be them next week.
I watched a lot of folks get by on good old-fashioned hustle. I even saw some folks prosper. I still remember a little storefront church on Stillman and Jefferson streets. Back in the day, they sold dinners on the weekend, and everyone - from the gamblers in the speakeasy, to the grandmothers up the street - plunked down $5 for a steaming chicken or fish platter.
Kids would get in on the hustle, too, taking orders for the platters and delivering food from the church steps to the bar steps. We washed cars for candy money, cleaned lots for water ice and shoveled snow during storms.
When the Pop Locking craze hit in the early '80s, my friends and I decided we would take our hustle to the next level. We put together a routine, went down to the Big Dollar Bar and danced onstage. We earned five or 10 bucks from people who were more amused than entertained. Then, my friend's mom came in. She cursed us out, then chased us out, treating me no differently than she treated her own. Kids didn't belong in a bar, she said, whether they were hustling or not.
I often think back to those days when I'm out hustling as an adult. Back then, the barflies looked out for children as earnestly as the church folks did. Neighbors settled grievances and came back together when they were done.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying we should return to the good old days, because the past is never as wonderful as it's cracked up to be.
In times like these, however, when even the rich are feeling the pinch of tough economic times, it wouldn't hurt for all of us to adopt some of the habits I learned about in the North Philly of my youth.
We knew the crew in the corner bar as well as those in the church. Learning to navigate the two worlds taught us about diversity. We knew that an honest hustle was to be applauded. That taught us to be enterprising. We knew that there were certain lines we couldn't cross. That taught us to be respectful.
Many of us internalized those lessons, and grew up to be productive. Some of us ignored those lessons, and didn't grow up at all.
Overall, though, the best example of hard work and faith is that little storefront church that sold the chicken dinners, never turning anyone away. I drove by it the other day. Their hustle and prayer has obviously paid off. That church is now a half block long.
We could all take a lesson from them. *
Solomon Jones' column appears every Saturday. He can be reached at