BY JOSH COHEN and CHRIS OWENS

In print | October 5, 2006

We’re on our way to The Lancaster Avenue Autonomous Center in West Philly. We’ve just left The Wooden Shoe, an anarchist bookstore just off South Street, near Ricky’s Sex Store and several Fair Trade coffee shops, a veritable representative of your college-area Radicalism (think Chomsky, live Sa’id, buy both here), and we’re hungry for some real radicalism. We have a feeling it’s only a trolley ride away.

The Philadelphia trolley is not, as you might believe - or hope - above ground. It is largely subterranean, and quite possibly from another dimension. We entered through a bus station-like construction, a portal to a Philly, we assume, many don’t know, despite its location just a stone’s throw from the 30th Street Station.

Indeed, the Philadelphia trolley is neither above ground nor, as you might believe, or hope, is it pretty. It is more the kind of vehicle you might ride were you crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, or being taken to jail. It is a large, rickety van. Underground.

Of course, it didn’t come right away. Following the lead of our other, trolley-riding comrades, and eager to take advantage of any opportunity life might offer, we lit cigarettes. Underground. A prophet, wandering directly onto the tracks which we assumed were intended for trolleys, not men, beseeched with bellyache and dole the coming of the next Tupac: “And where is he, dammit? Queen Latifah? Where are my Biggies?” Changes, indeed.

Presently our Nina/Pinta/Santa Maria arrived in all its short-bus, lurch-and-stop glory. We barely fit in, and held onto each other for leverage. Two boys laughed behind us, not meanly, but keenly, as the publicly-sanctioned transportation jerked forward. None seemed perturbed; in fact, all seemed trolley regulars, which made sense to us once we disembarked. If you can’t get to a place, we conjectured, you have a self-created but publicly acceptable reason for neglecting it. None the matter, for now: we were there.

Lancaster Avenue: walk down it. We did, finding along the way the LAVA space, a center for radical media whose collective mission is “to create an empowering and welcoming physical space where diverse communities converge to build connections and break down barriers, blending media-making, artistic expression and hardy nuts-and-bolts organizing in order to advance movements for justice.” But we walked too far, past closed churches and bars and murals fresh from the ’80s and found ourselves seeking direction at DC Tires.

“Oh, yeah. Where those white people are.” We doubled back. The LAVA Center, tonight supporting a free presentation by a counter-recruitment group of radicals and the Iraq Veterans Against the War, beckoned.

Chomsky and Sa’id graced the LAVA’s walls, but mostly it was others we’d never heard of. As we waited for the presentation, we perused, among other things, a zine claiming to be the definitive publication for horror rock and movies, as well as The Defenestrator, a Philly-based guide “for a world without cops or bosses.” For the time being, The LAVA was empty.

Outside, sirens roared; inside, the sound system was being tested, having had most of its parts stolen in a recent break-in. Soon, Chinese food and activists and a Scoobymobile carrying angry, poignant and saddened Iraq veterans would show up. Waiting, we went for a smoke outside.

There was a dead dog wrapped in a garbage bag on the curb. “One got killed out here earlier,” said the activist who pulled his hands away in calm half-revulsion as he wiped dog blood on his T-shirt. “Guess the fire department just didn’t feel like cleaning it up,” he remarked with the resignation and low expectations usually found in ignored people, animals and neighborhoods. It was clear that it wasn’t he who was cold, and it was clearer that it was we who were new to West Philly.

It was then that so many unshaven, torn-jean activists arrived on bikes and in pairs, wearing that same calm sense of mission. As if summoned by a bell we couldn’t hear, the LAVA came to life. They all knew each other and helped to set up. We were recruited, having offered, but without any of the obsequious thank you’s or no, no, you don’t have to’s that you might expect elsewhere: here, brotherhood was not only the law but the expectation. Several local Belmontians, noted by their curious air, wandered in, too; and groups from South Jersey, across the river, and Center Philly, here by bike, sat cross-legged on the floor, eating, waiting.

As we aimlessly played journalist, shook hands, talked War, we could do nothing to ignore the sense of Swarthmore encroaching on us like the night. Buried in a Philly ignored were kindred souls, we believed, our age and of our minds, but worlds away: we had to wonder whether Swarthmore would ever come to Belmont again.

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