A Jacket to Die For?

Brookland Manor is a 16-acre complex of three-story apartment buildings located off Rhode Island Avenue, between Brentwood Road and Montana Avenue, near the Cluck-U Chicken carryout that is still promoting its Christmas special -- 50 Buffalo wings for $25.99. Officially, this section of Northeast is known as Brentwood, but the young bucks proudly call their neighborhood Saratoga, after a local street, coincidentally the street where Lee Marshall was killed.

About 3,000 people live in Brookland Manor's 535 apartment units. A majority are low-income residents on some form of government assistance. Many are solid members of the working class -- construction workers, city employees, barbers, salesclerks, teacher's aides. On the grounds are a Boys and Girls Club, a teen center, a senior citizens center, a health center, a "safety service center" staffed by a D.C. police officer, and a learning center where adults can get computer training and prepare to earn their high school equivalency diplomas. The basketball court, where youngsters play serious games for cash, is one of the complex's most popular hangouts. The Marshalls have lived at Brookland Manor for 15 years.

Violence has an eerily celebratory conclusion in some neighborhoods, a kind of swaggering salute is given to the fallen. Lee Marshall's homies left his burial and gathered outside his apartment building, staying late into the night. They drank Moet and Hennessy from the bottle and poured out Lee's share on the ground. They danced. "Saratoga for life!" some shouted. "This is all we got," said one boy.

The funeral, the burial, the aftermath were all captured on videotape by Curtis Mozie, who is becoming the city's unofficial street life documentarian.

"Life goes on," a young guy named Dave told Mozie. "It's a daily routine, man. We done lost a lot of good people. It's something we go through on a regular basis. Life just goes on, you know what I'm saying? . . . LeeLee, rest in peace -- and all my other homies who died and who are gonna die."

And after a while, the Hennessy and Moet bottles all empty, the young mourners disappeared.

Many of them wore North Face jackets over "R.I.P. LeeLee" T-shirts.

No Rhyme or Reason

It had been a risky winter for those sporting the North Face label.

The practice of riding around, searching for the wearers of North Face jackets to rob, led to the shooting of a 15-year-old Eastern High School student in the District. In February, Prince George's County police busted a North Face robbery ring that had committed armed stickups near Metro and school bus stops in Capitol Heights and Southeast Washington. The coats, each with a retail value between $200 and $500, were sold on the streets for $50 to $100, police said.

As an emblem of urban chic, North Face apparel is surprisingly plain. On each jacket the company's name is stitched in white next to an icon that resembles the seating chart of an amphitheater. The icon was inspired by Half Dome, one of the world's best-known rock formations, located in Yosemite National Park. And that's the point.

Adventure travelers, backpackers, skiers, snowboarders, rock climbers -- these are the customers the North Face is after. The company is not pitching its products to Brookland Manor. "We do no marketing whatsoever to attract consumers other than extreme athletes," says Joe Flannery, vice president of marketing for the San Leandro, Calif.-based company.

By extreme athletes he means people who aspire to be Dean Karnazes, aka "Ultramarathon Man," who ran 146 miles across Death Valley in the middle of summer, who mountain-biked for 24 straight hours. Karnazes is to the North Face company what LeBron James is to Nike. Except every kid in Brookland Manor knows LeBron; Karnazes is unknown.