News

Keepin' It Real

Continued from page 4

Cherokee streams with interracial friendships. But the stream's lined with hate because, in the minds of some white South Siders, the recent economic decline is chain-linked to the African-Americans who've moved in from the North Side, looking for peace and quiet. The old-timers are making slow peace with "barrio," but they'll resist "ghetto" until they die.

Friedson battles the blind fears daily, convinced that much of Cherokee's hope rests with African-American entrepreneurs such as Kenamen Bettis, a COCA artist-in-residence and business teacher who sells African shea butter, jewelry and custom clothing at Aboriginals; and Dunkor Imani, owner of Ghetto Koool Stuff, who sells thug books, hip-hop CDs and "getting-over" books for people just out of prison and does "some educating" along the way, talking with customers about better ways to live. Imani defines "ghetto-fabulous" with the melodic precision of a poet: "Fashion and gear and music that's cutting-edge, that might be considered gaudy somewhere else. Every little pocket of society has its own code. St. Louis has its own feel -- the way we talk, the way we roll our R's: 'errybody'; 'pirckle' for "pickle." And for better or worse, it's urban. When you live in the inner city, you feel, like, 'OK, I need something that is going to distinguish me.' So a word that would be derogatory, we make it positive. And it's spreadin'. White kids are ghetto-fabulous now."

Friedson leaves such conversations pumped, his mind on what Imani calls "that risin' tide raising all boats." Then he goes to City Hall and finds out that people there are wondering about his credibility -- who is this Friedson guy who knows everybody on the street, why's he hanging out? Maybe he should wear a suit more often, they whisper. He sputters about this for a minute -- but, like Cherokee Street itself, his moods change fluidly. "Understanding the community means understanding the human beings who are here," he finally says, shrugging. "Cherokee Street's raw. Nobody's hiding what they're doing on Cherokee Street. Nobody's afraid of being busted for being themselves. And there's a huge supply of culture right here -- Vietnamese, Hispanic, African and Egyptian and ghetto-fabulous. People need to embrace and own that culture. No hating, no blocking. Keep it real."

Revved again, he runs outside to feed the parking meter. "You think the street's going to get better?" he asks a clerk from a nearby business who's feeding hers.

"One hopes," she replies. "One has a tendency to lose hope, though." They kvetch for a minute about inspectors who "only cite the ones they can find," about city officials who don't even wait till the paint's dry before throwing violations at a new business, about those nice black gates they got on Lower Cherokee, and why not up here? "You have dreams," she says, "you wait for the street to come back. Eventually you just get worn down." Her eyes go distant as she looks east, toward Jefferson. Then she turns back to 2851. "So you're the one going in there?"

"Yeah," he says, and the energy's back, full throttle. "We're going to have classes and an art gallery. We've got these really beautiful watercolors of the Cinderella Building and the Carniceria and Globe Drug and the Cherokee Indian...."

Back at Taqueria Azteca, Patricia Garcia clears away the remnants of a burrito and wipes the red-plaid tablecloth, scrubbing twice over a salsa stain before picking up the tip. Two stubble-bearded German-Americans sit down, looking as if they've worked hard all their lives and don't want to anymore. A young woman finishes her guacamole and reaches for a Spanish-language newspaper, bending close to read the news of another world.

Garcia and her husband, Jos Garcia, rent the taqueria space from R.L. Jones, but they hope someday to own a big restaurant. "This is going to be the future for our kids," they say, unaware that they are the official future of Cherokee -- along with the other Mexican restaurants, the cinnamon-dusted El Chico Bakery, the thick scallops of cactus and shopping bags of dried chili peppers at the Carniceria grocery, the ostrich and crocodile boots at La Mexicana, the salsa music piped onto the sidewalk. Members of the Cherokee Business Association talk eagerly about Cherokee as a barrio, wax sentimental about the immigrant work ethic, court the Cinco de Mayo Festival.

"That's fine -- bring the Hispanics here -- but this is not going to fix the place," says Ahmed Abusharbain, owner of Liberty Wireless and several other properties on Cherokee. Dressed in a silky black-and-white houndstooth shirt, he greets every patron with deliberate respect and does his best to make the street safe. The other day, he stepped into a cloud of whiskey fumes to pull away a guy who was pawing a young woman, and now he's donating one of the fixer-uppers he just bought to the police as a substation. "We do the best we can," he says, his black eyes soft with worry, "but the society out there, that's on them." This summer, Abusharbain watched wryly as the Cherokee Business Association, desperate for Lower Cherokee stability, spent $3,000 to install the same old-fashioned light standards. They couldn't afford the actual lights, so they hung flower baskets instead. "Who's going to smell the flowers if nobody's coming?" he bursts. "What we need is security!"

A Palestinian from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, Abusharbain started working in a tiny grocery store on Cherokee in 1993. Eventually he bought the store. He now owns several others -- including a building purchased from R.L. Jones. But when he tried to convince Lloyd Jones to improve the street, he says, Jones just reminded him that Cherokee was never going to be West County.

Jones has been furious with him, Abusharbain says, ever since he joined with other business owners to block the HDC rental. Loyalties severed, Jones turned around and rented a building to one of Abusharbain's competitors. "So I'll drop my prices and the other guy will drop his and I'll drop mine again, and then I'll end up saying goodbye to Cherokee Street," Abusharbain says with a shrug.

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