Fishtown

Many restaurants take a year or more to open. "Or more" amply covers the long flight of the Pickled Heron in Fishtown, which opened last week. I first spoke with Todd Braley and Daniela D'Ambrosio in August 2008 as they charted plans for the French-inspired BYOB with the punny name at 2218 Frankford Ave. (215-634-5666). And then? "Life intervened," says Braley. That is, family situations and innumerable delays and snags. He and D'Ambrosio met nearly seven years ago as line chefs at the Ritz-Carlton.

A second man has been arrested in the fatal shooting of a 27-year-old man during an attempted robbery in Fishtown over the weekend, police said. A funeral service in the meantime is set for Friday morning for Shane Kelly, of Mayfair, a pharmacy technician specialist at Jefferson University Hospital. Kelly was shot and killed about 12:30 a.m. Sunday after he and his girlfriend were confronted by a pair of robbers on the 1300 block of East Hewson Street. Police first arrested and charged Ryan McMunus, 20, from the 2600 block of Sepviva Street in Kensington, with murder, robbery and related offenses in the killing of Kelly, 27. On Wednesday, they arrested Richard Smith, 19, of the 1600 block of Eyre Street in Fishtown and charged him in the robbery and killing.

FOR AT LEAST two months, someone forgot about a mess of downed wires in Fishtown. The wires hung in the air over the sidewalk, forcing anyone in their path to duck out of the way. Neighbors wanted it fixed. And so did we. Now, we admit the wires weren't live, meaning they weren't dangerous. (Neighbors knew this because every child who passed by grabbed at the wires. Probably not the best way to test them. We do not recommend this.) But so what? They were eyesores. They shouldn't just hang there forever.

A 62-year-old man was taken to Hahnemann University Hospital on Monday afternoon after he bicycled into telecommunications wires that were drooping after a truck knocked them down. The accident happened about 3 p.m. on Delaware Avenue near Richmond Street, in Fishtown. Medics said the man, who was thrown from his bike when he rode into the wires, was injured but not seriously.  

One day 10 springs ago, Jim Smart was weeding in his Mount Airy garden and found his thoughts far from the daffodils. His grandson, an eighth grader who rode the bus and loved video games, was about to turn 14. How different the boy's life was, Smart thought, from that of his own grandfathers, who were 14 in 1876, the year of the great Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. "My mother's father worked 60 hours a week in a textile mill at that age," said Smart, a former Philadelphia Bulletin columnist.

IF YOU'RE SICK of trash and illegal dumping in your neighborhood, send The Marquis a note at trash@phillynews.com . DON'T TREAD ON ME: Looking for a used tire? There are thousands to choose from at a vacant lot on Beach Street near Susquehanna Avenue, in Fishtown. At Penn Treaty Park, the scent of the Delaware River and well-kept grounds make for an inviting riverside hangout. But a few blocks north, the stench of rubber and swarms of mosquitoes buzzing around the overgrown shrubbery cloud the air. It wasn't until walking deep into this jungle of overgrown plants and discarded tires that The Marquis realized how severe the problem was. Thousands - yes, thousands - of tires.

EDWARD John Staniszewski called himself a saver of soles. Yes, soles. What you have on the bottom of your shoes. Needless to say, Edward was a shoemaker. But not only a shoemaker. Edward Staniszewski was a legendary figure in Fishtown, where his Star Shoe Service, at 311 E. Girard Ave., kept businesspeople, lawyers, judges, politicians, celebrities, cops, firefighters and ordinary citizens well-shod for more than 60 years. As his son-in-law, Eric W. Herr, wrote in an obituary, Edward and his wife "became permanently woven into the rich tapestry of the Fishtown community.

Jim Maloney is a lifelong 'Yunker, calf muscles honed from six decades of walking up and down this very vertical neighborhood. With his wife, Maureen, 62, another lifer, he has raised four children in a 19th-century rowhouse on Shurs Lane, whose steep grade famously punishes masochistic bicyclists. Nina Phalen and Edgar Smith are relative newbies in comparison; they plan to marry Sept. 30. She's 32, from Easton. He's 43, from Vancouver and London. And for almost four years, they've lived in a sleek condominium in a former candy factory on Leopard Street, in now-funky Fishtown.

As Brad Helder took a soothing draw on his Oliva Serie V and slowly exhaled, smoke from the hand-rolled premium Nicaraguan cigar curling in the air around his head, the soft-spoken entrepreneur made a confession: Stogies were not the career he had mapped out for himself. Restaurants were. Until, that is, the 29-year-old Langhorne native, who had spent 15 years as a busboy, bartender, and restaurant manager, determined that owning an eatery was too expensive and "a very, very risky business.

In the mid-1990s, the World Wide Web was relatively new and just beginning to be appreciated by businesses for its e-commerce potential. To many, the Internet was still a great unknown and a source of anxiety. Thus, the name that Mia and Tracy Levesque chose at the time for their Web-design company: Yikes. It's a five-letter word the couple are uttering with regularity these days over their own anxiety. "This is the riskiest thing we've ever done," Tracy Levesque said, sitting cross-legged on the floor in the middle of a $1.1 million construction project in full sawdust-laden progress.