Taking a chance on the Delaware River Waterfront
By Patty-Pat Kozlowski
When I turned 21, the fairy godmothers in my life Maryann Cahill and Marie Contino took me to Caesars Palace in Atlantic City for my first legal bet.
For years, these two taught me how to play cards at Marie’s kitchen table-blackjack, poker and gin rummy all the while how to get Aunt Vera to curse in Italian because she never got the card she was waiting for.
Once, she was so angry, she picked up the tray of cookies she made and marched out the back door into the Blizzard of 2002, falling into a six foot snowdrift in the back alley.
When the snow melted, we found dozens of cookies and the Ace of Hearts she was hiding in her bra.
And when I turned 21, Marie and Mare headed down to AC thanks to Marie’s comps with visions of Sinatra’s “Luck Be A Lady” dancing in my head.
When we checked into the room, I noticed I was the only one who had an overnight bag. The Boom-Boom Sisters came to AC with the clothes on their back (which was those silky swishy workout suits that some call “Italian Tuxedos” in leopard print) and maybe a spare pair of underwear in their pocketbook and some Wet Naps.
Over the next 36 hours I did not see them except for at a slot machine or at the Let It Ride Table. Marie liked video poker, Mare was a table player. At her elbow she taught me the ins and outs of splitting your pair of tens, buying insurance, grabbing the waitress and tipping her well so she brings you two white zinfindels and a spare glass of ice and letting the pitboss know when you put another $100 bill down to play because when you got hungry, he would give you comps to eat at one of the casino restaurants. Who needs college?
Other than showing me how to put a condom on a banana (their version of sex ed), I will always be grateful to Marie and Mare for those life lessons about gambling. Their words of wisdom and hands on teaching, in conjunction with the lyrics to Kenny Rodgers’s song, “The Gambler” prevented me from losing my pants on many gambling weekends.
So you would think that when Philadelphia opened its doors to casinos I would be blowing on the dice.
But, truth be told, I did not want a casino in my backyard. Or to be honest, 1.6 miles from my front stoop. But last week, the ribbon was cut and the Sugarhouse Casino opens its doors to the City of Philadelphia on the Fishtown waterfront to record crowds and thousands waiting in line.
I was one of those pissing and moaning community people who thought that a Casino would kill my neighborhood, tear at the fabric of our quality of life and turn the side streets of the riverwards into Sodom and Gomorrah. I wanted gambling in the riverwards to stay where it has been-in the back of corner taprooms.
I was a firm believer that the Philadelphia waterfront was not the place for a casino, that building a gambling empire along the lip of Fishtown, Northern Liberties and Port Richmond was just bad planning and that hell yes, Philly should get a slice of the gambling pie that hops on buses with their social security checks and heads over to Atlantic City for one armed bandit action, but why not build it out by the Philadelphia International Airport with all that vast, vacant land out there with no homes directly across the street you can throw a pair of dice at?
But I also heard from people who really wanted this casino on Fishtown’s riverfront-a big majority of people-old time Fishtowners who lived in the neighborhood before it was cool and hip, before homes were a quarter of a million-those people wanted it. It was more their backyard than mine. The community was in a Hatfield vs McCoy war over this casino but in the end the casino opened and everyone waits and watches.
Once upon a time, the Delaware Riverfront actually belonged to the people of the riverwards. They actually spent days on the river like you and I would spend a day downtheshore. Fishtown had an annual “Shad Festival” because the catch was so plentiful and they ate shad in a style that would put the Wing Bowl to shame. I’m guessing many a Fishtowners were conceived during the Shad Festival too.
At the mouth of Allegheny Avenue, the people of Port Richmond had a river front park complete with fire boats, bandstand and a ferry dock that would take you over to Soupy Island or cruise up and down the Delaware. In the olden days, Port Richmond legend “Beebo” Gniewek once bet the guys in the neighborhood that he could swim from the Philly side to the Jersey side and back and urban legend has it that hundreds came out to see Beebo drown to death and local bookies had him 25 to 1 sinking to the bottom.
Beebo survived and to this day, the story gets better and better every time it is retold as he fights off killer catfish, barges, sharks and sunken 1956 Cadillac Coupe DeVilles.
Fishing shacks were built on the banks of Bridesburg and during high tide, everyone rowed their boat out and cast their lines. During low tides, those fishing shacks beat Sugarhouse to the punch as many a poker and craps game were played well into the night. Beaches and swim holes dotted the Bridesburg riverfront and days on the river were just an everyday part of life in the riverwards.
When I-95 was constructed in 1965, it cut all those neighborhoods off from the river. And for decades it was almost impossible to get to, let alone even enjoy a day on the river.
At the end of this summer, I had the pleasure of being a tour guide for Tom Corcoron, the new head of the Delaware River Waterfront Corporation as I showed him the riverward’s public access to the river, or lack there of.
The DRWC is a nonprofit corporation organized exclusively for the benefit of the City of Philadelphia and its citizens to design, develop and manage the central Delaware River waterfront in Philadelphia between Oregon and Allegheny Avenues. Their goal to serve as a catalyst for high quality investment in public parks, trails, maritime, residential, retail, hotel and other improvements that create a vibrant amenity, extending Philadelphia to the river’s edge
I took him to the spot of Beebo’s infamous interstate swim and then I took him to places along the river where we had to hop over concrete barriers, walk through waist high weeds and quite honestly trespass on private property until we reached the water’s edge. And in our trek we encountered plenty of beer bottles, makeshift bonfires, ATV and 4 Runner tracks, plenty of doggie doo and finally the riverfront, where nobody was spending a day on.
There’s an old saying that I have to clean up a bit for the newspaper but you’ll get my drift, it’s along the line of “Hurry up or get off the pot!” Your grandparents yelled the uncensored version when they were waiting for the outhouse. It means get done what you have to, but if not, move out of the way and let somebody else go.
That’s the way I feel now about Sugarhouse Casino-they got on the pot and did their business. Good for them, I wish them luck and hope they succeed.
For decades, we had this untapped, underdeveloped miles and miles of waterfront space on the Delaware and nothing was ever accomplished. The only trails blazed were the ones done by riverwarders trying to fish off an old industrial pier as they walked through weeds and hopped fences and walls.
And so now, as our new neighbor Sugarhouse Casino becomes part of our backyard, we’ll see if once again we’ll have “days on the river”.
Are there any descendents of Beebo out there who want to place a bet? If so, do it at the new Sugarhouse Casino on the Delaware River Waterfront.
Patty-Pat Kozlowski will hit on 18 at the Sugarhouse Blackjack tables. This column was published previously in the Philadelphia Daily News.
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