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~South Philly Steaks~ click for music
It seems like everyone in South Philly has
a "nick name", sometimes people will pick up a nick
name as a child and carry it with them their entire
life, take for instance Joey "bag of donuts" Da
Nato, from an early age Joey had a serious love
affair with pastry, he also lived in an apartment
above the neighborhood bakery, from the age of
eight years to eighty years old, Joey will always
be Joey "bag of donuts".
Another curious thing about South Philly is,
everybody hangs on a corner, from the very young to
the very old, there are people that have hung on the
same corner for over 60 years.
These two little tidbits lead us into our story
about a nick name and a corner;
Location: 9th and Passyunk ave Time: FEBRUARY
1961 Mike Conte tells us this story;
Everybody in the neighborhood knew Vinny "Steaks"
Storino , he was the coolest guy in South Philly,
maybe even all of Philadelphia, "steaks" as we
affectionately called him was a mixture of James
Dean, Bobby Darren, Fabian and Rocky rolled into
one , he was the
"Fonze" before there was the Fonze.
Steaks got his nickname because his corner faced
two legendary South Philly landmarks, Geno's steaks
and Pat's steaks, what you may ask are "steak
sandwich's"? firgeddaboudit! That 's for another
story, but if you are buying something frozen , you
ain't even close.
Wells anyways. "Steaks" Storino had a 57 chevy
which he would wash and wax every Friday afternoon
and race on Delaware ave every Friday night, Steaks
was a legend on Delaware ave too, he never lost,
people would come from all over the area to
challenge him and to watch him race.
The last time "Steaks" raced was the night of my
brother Tony's bachelor party, we had gone out
celebrating that night, and when we had gotten back
to the corner we were all feeling pretty "good", it
was about 3 am when these guys from south west
philly pull up in a thunderbird and challenge
"Steaks", maybe we should have stopped him but that
is all hind sight now , I will always remember that
night, "Steaks" won his last race but lost his life
when his brakes failed and he hit a tractor
trailer.
It's peculiar to South Philly, guys never leave
their corner, we are all old men now , but we still
hang there at 9th and Passyunk and so does "Steaks",
when we are about a block away, within sight of our
corner, "Steaks" let's us see him, he looks just as
he did back in 61, with his hair in a Tony Curtis
pompadour and a black leather jacket, as soon as we
get closer than a half block he disappears.
It seems everybody hangs on a corner in South
Philly,even the ghosts!
Place Mouse Over Photo !
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