| 12/15/1999
Powelton
puts the rainbows up
Tom Ferrick Jr.
This tale of the city has
a happy ending, but it doesn’t begin that
way. It takes place in Powelton Village, the
neighborhood just north of the Drexel University
campus in West Philly.
To understand what happens
next, you should know that Kurt Conklin is gay.
Or, as he put it: “I’m pretty much
out as a gay person.”
Conklin moved to Powelton
two years ago. He bought a rowhouse on 35th
Street near Lancaster Avenue. He liked his new
neighbor-hood, except for one thing —
he thought his street was a bit drab.
So he decided to hang out
a flag, and the one he chose was the Rain-bow
Flag, a.k.a. the gay community flag. Conklin
says it was more a matter of taste than of politics.
He thinks the Rainbow
Flag as a symbol has become cliched. But he
liked it, mostly because it was bright, and
he figured it would add a touch of color to
his block.
It flew from a flagpole
mounted on a metal bracket between the first
and second floors of his house. Until earlier
this year.
Conklin came out one morning
to discover the flag was gone. Some-one had
ripped it down and broken the metal bracket
in the process.
Conklin fixed the bracket,
bought another Rainbow Flag and hung it out.
Within a few days, it was gone, too. Ripped
off.
Third try; third
floor
Enough of this, Conklin
thought. He went out and bought a third Rainbow
Flag and mounted it on the third floor, high
above the street. He anchored it with a cable.
That one lasted about
a month. It was pulled down by someone who,
Conklin figures, “must be pretty good
with a lasso.”
In September, Conklin
hung a fourth flag over the second floor. As
a precaution, he took it down every night
Conklin has reason to
believe that Drexel students did the deed. He
bas had run-ins with students who party at a
bar next door. One night this fall, some Drexel
men emerged from the bar very drunk, yelled
“homo” and “faggot”
outside Conklin’s house, and referred
to him as the guy with the gay flag —
even though the flag wasn’t flying.
Conklin wrote a letter
to the Drexel student newspaper and talked to
school officials about the incidents. At the
very least, he wanted the school to increase
secu-rity patrols around bars at closing time.
Before he sent the letter,
Conklin showed it to the Rev. Patricia Pearce,
who is a friend and pastor of Tabernacle United
Church at 37th and Chestnut Streets.
Pearce, who moved to Powelton
from Denver two years ago, was upset for Conklin,
who is in her con-gregation. But she wanted
to offer more than sympathy. She wanted him
to know she stood by him.
A rainbow coalition
She offered to fly a Rainbow
Flag from her apartment. First she talked to
her landlady, Betty Bauman, to explain why and
see if it would be OK.
Not only did Bauman think
it was OK, she thought they should spread the
word. The women wrote a flyer and distributed
it door-to-door, suggesting that people fly
a flag in support.
They also brought it up
with Ben Dugan, who is president of the Powelton
Village Civic Association, and he discussed
it at a meeting of his group in October.
Ed Hermance, who lives
in Powelton and owns Giovanni’s Room,
the gay bookstore on Pine Street of-fered to
make Rainbow Flags avail-able at cost.
This is why, if you ride
through Powelton today, you’ll see Rainbow
Flags flying from about three dozen homes in
the neighborhood.
It doesn’t
mean that all the peo-ple inside those homes
are members of the gay community. It means,
Pearce explains, that the people of Powelton
are making “a statement about valuing
diversity in our neighborhood, especially since
that value had come under attack.”
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