A Bittersweet Renaissance

"It's strange," Bond said, "especially when you think about what was."

'A White Grain'

Sonny Brodgins sipped a malt liquor and smoked as he sat on a worn cushion on his front stoop, three unfinished cement steps leading to the rowhouse where he grew up and that he shares with his elderly mother. A friend he has known since they were teenagers lounged in a folding chair, drinking a Bud Lite tucked in a paper bag.

As shadows fell across the front yard, the men shifted out to the sidewalk, following the sunlight. Only a few years ago, they said, they would have crossed to the east side of Sixth Street to the empty lot where they grew up playing ball.

But that lot has been turned into $500,000 condominiums. Another new condo on the corner -- the Matinee -- has lured more new neighbors, more white people.

Until a few years ago, said Brodgins, 54, the area was entirely black, and a perpetual street carnival. "Like the Mardi Gras," he said. In the bad years, yes, there was drug dealing and violence, like the night his brother was shot twice in the leg. But it still was community. "I knew everyone," said Brodgins, a former data processor who is unemployed and recovering from a stroke.

These days, he said, an old friend greets him as the "last of the Mohicans." Whites live up the street, down the street, in the next block. They are mostly young professionals, like the medical school student and his companion across the street. Brodgins can see their 42-inch flat screen flickering above the mantel. Several doors over, a consultant moved in with her two Shih Tzus.

When Brodgins steps outside these days, he said, the stoops are empty, the sidewalk is barren and there is no one to talk to. He finds company around the corner where people still congregate outside the shuttered Howard Theater, under the rusting blue "Jimmy's Golden Q" sign, a vestige of a long-closed pool hall.

Brodgins's new neighbors seem to be in a hurry, he said, often checking him out warily, if acknowledging his presence at all. " They're the strangers," he said. "I'm here. I got here before you got here. Why can't you at least be cordial?"

Still, he said, he tries to adapt. As the houses on the street got fixed up, his family talked about replacing the busted chain-link fence with wrought iron. The cost, about $2,000, was out of reach.

He also has become mindful of not offending his new neighbors. One of the new condominium owners bounded outside with his dog and greeted a woman standing with hers. The dogs eyed each other, prompting Brodgins's friend to laugh and egg them on.

"Leave them people alone. Do I have to referee everything?" Brodgins said.

His friend swallowed the last of his beer, then threw the can into the street.