Nuisance

Dane Fife is a pest, a nuisance not only to the players who have to compete against him but to the guys on his Indiana team. "His locker is right beside mine," teammate Kyle Hornsby said yesterday. "He throws trash in it every day. I get mad at him every day. He usually does something to annoy me, once a week at least. In practice, he tries to get you mad and he never backs down. " During his four years at Indiana, Fife has developed a reputation as the player every opponent loves to hate.

New Jersey State Police say that for more than three decades, they have tried without success to stop sledding on hills built for Garden State Parkway ramps. On Saturday, they said, they were frustrated once again: A trooper ordered sledders to leave the hill by the ramp to the White Horse Pike, but after the trooper left, the sledders returned. And less than an hour later, two children were killed and six others injured when a car swerved out of control. The accident occurred about 2:30 p.m. when a Datsun 300ZX driven by So- Young Lee, 20, of Egg Harbor City, was changing from the fast to the slow lane and plowed into a guard rail, where the two children apparently were waiting to sled down the hill that forms the off-ramp.

Communities fighting to close nuisance bars will get a major addition to their arsenal when a new enforcement task force goes into action later this month. Calling the Nuisance Bar Task Force a "high priority," District Attorney Lynne Abraham and State Rep. Robert O'Donnell, D-Philadelphia, yesterday promised effective code enforcement and court action to bring relief to neighborhoods disrupted by problem bars. Operating with a $60,000 state grant, the group begins work Oct. 21. David Castro, a lawyer at Pepper, Hamilton & Scheetz, is resigning to become the assistant district attorney in charge of the team.

Many community leaders across the city have discovered that trying to close a nuisance bar not only presents legal hassles, but can be life-threatening as well. Nettie Doane, president of the Southeast Neighborhood Enterprises neighborhood association in South Philadelphia, said she has received death threats over the telephone from drug dealers who mistakenly thought she was responsible for the January closing of the VML Bar at 6th and Moore streets. "That bar was nothing but drugs, shootings, stabbings and fights," Doane said.

The Bensalem School District is investigating the feasibility of taking the nuisance out of its nuisance taxes. Board member Jill Davis last week requested the probe, which will examine tax-collection services used by other Bucks County districts. The study, backed by the full board, is expected to take up to two months, said Michael Braun, district director of business. Davis said the investigation was prompted by "havoc" within the local business community because Bensalem Township and the school district use different agencies to collect Act 511 taxes - the so-called nuisance taxes of mercantile, occupational and business privilege.

T&T Lounge from sun-up to shutdown: Sept. 2: The bar, at 4691 Hawthorne St., becomes T&T Lounge. Feb. 19: Former Frankford High football star Christopher Spence, 20, is fatally shot inside. Feb. 21: More than 100 of Spence's family and friends gather outside to call for its closure. The bar closes temporarily as Councilwoman Maria Quinones-Sanchez's office works with the District Attorney's Public Nuisance Task Force and the city to shut the bar down immediately.

Tooling down narrow streets past piles of brick rubble and graffiti-marred walls, beyond mounds of discarded tires, twisted metal kitchen chairs and open bags of garbage, Ralph Acosta arrives at what he calls an ugly site - a tiny bar in the midst of rowhouse Kensington. Pulling his pickup truck to a stop, he directs a passenger's attention a half-block to the right, toward the corner of Reese and Indiana, where four men - maybe in their 20s, maybe in their teens - are congregating.

About 25 Brittany Woods residents told the Township Council last night that unruly teenagers had been spraying graffiti, peddling drugs, and generally ruining their neighborhood. One resident said she has heard gunshots. Another said she couldn't sell her home because of low property values. Barbara Sanko said she had been trying to draw attention to the problems for two years. "It's progressively getting worse . . . there definitely needs to be a [town] watch," she said.

IT'S BAD enough hearing my own phone ring these days, because it's usually not good news. But I shouldn't have to be answering the phone every time there's a ring in the background of a TV show. With the development of good sound, the TV rings really match home phones. (C'mon, I know you too have tried to answer a phone ring that was really on TV.) With that annoyance, plus all the news tickers, network logos and name IDs on my TV screen, I sure wouldn't mind having another button on one of my six remotes to eliminate it all somehow.

The Liquor Control Board said yesterday that it had begun a new policy of yanking the licenses of bars cited repeatedly for alleged liquor-law violations, ranging from serving minors to condoning lewd entertainment. Rather than rely only on the time-consuming and costly court and administrative ajudication processes to close down bars, LCB Chairman James A. Goodman said the three-member LCB would simply decline to renew the annual licenses of the troublesome taverns. The unprecedented action against so-called nuisance bars began yesterday with notification sent to eight bars, including one in Lansdale, that their licenses would not be renewed at the end of the month.