For his 50th birthday, his wife Kate blithely tells him to just go to his favorite corner tavern and have a good time.

Philadelphia in summer is still the hot, placid city where street life means corner taverns with open doors and row-house stoops occupied by supervising grandparents.

A year or two of pleading, lies, late-night phone calls from the corner tavern, hang-ups, resolutions, backsliding, banishments, scolding, apologies and despair follow.

Today, the city is a patchwork of blue-collar neighborhoods, dotted by wood-frame homes, corner taverns and churches.

Suddenly, this tiny piece of West 40th Street and Broadway might as well have been a corner tavern, and these two friendly old antagonists.

A neighborhood populist, he celebrated the corner tavern and the weekend softball game.

Though I didn't see a sign, I spotted what looked like a corner tavern half a block down.

Pretty soon theyll all close up, have supper, then the menfolk will head for the corner tavern.

While he made it he led me to and into the corner tavern with the name I found unfathomable.

There were dozens of corner taverns with open doors and groups of young blacks sitting on benches outside drinking quart bottles of Stag beer.