A mayoral show-and-tell

THE MOMENT Mayor Nutter got to their neighborhood for a ceremony to open a new basketball court, the women of North Sydenham Street began plotting to get him on their block.

They dutifully attended the festivities Friday at nearby Heritage Park. They enthusiastically applauded the state-of-the-art court donated by Beyond Sports and ESPN. They nodded when organizers and residents noted what a boost such a gift would be for a neighborhood that just months ago was begging the city to replace a basketball hoop inside the park.

And then, just as the mayor was headed to his car to leave, they pounced. It was time for a little show-and-tell.

"Sometimes you gotta take it to the source," Lorraine Falligan told me as we watched block captain Maggie Werts slowly walk the mayor down the street, staff members in tow.

The Water Department had made some repairs under the sidewalk and street about five years earlier, Werts told the mayor, but the walk- and roadways were never adequately repaired.

In a city with more issues than resources, you have to get creative to get things done. And as I watched the women of Sydenham Street work the mayor, it was clear these women know how to get it done.

That vacant lot around the corner? Another resident of the street, Joetta Johnson, told me the women of Sydenham cleaned it up, and keep it tidy.

The nearby vacant warehouse residents said was used for prostitution and drugs and gambling? You guessed it - the women of Sydenham pushed for a fence that now keeps all that nonsense out. The women of Sydenham don't play around.

Look around, the ladies told me. The street, cleaner than most, is also their doing. They do it old-school, they joked, sweeping up daily like their mothers and grandmothers did before them.

But there are some things even take-charge types like these ladies can't do - like fix busted sidewalks and streets. Or take down vacant homes, like the crumbling one next to Terry Wright's house. The shell has a tree growing right through it, a big one. But it still hasn't been torn down. Wright and her neighbors are afraid that one day soon the walls will come tumbling down on her and the six grandchildren she's been caring for since her only daughter was killed in 2006.

"It's doing a job inside my house," Wright told the mayor as he inspected the notice of violation sign put up by L&I in June. "My walls are moist and I called several times. Someone from L&I comes, says they will be back soon and soon never comes."

"This is going to be a disaster if they don't do something," Wright said.

"Another Market Street," Falligan said, referring to the deadly June building collapse that killed six people and injured 13. The women certainly knew how to get the mayor's attention.

"Are there other vacant houses on the street?" he asked. There are, and the women wasted no time pointing them out.

"It's not like we're sitting around here waiting for people to do for us," Johnson said later.

"We do for ourselves. But some things you have to get help with. Some things you need the city for."

And by the looks of it, hopefully, they'll get some much-needed help from the mayor, who took notes and had a staffer collect numbers and information.

But in case he doesn't follow up, the women of Sydenham Street assured me, they will. Because these ladies learned long ago that there's a certain way to get things done around here - and it starts, they said, with making them happen.

"This is a family-oriented community," Falligan said. "We get out and clean, we have block parties, we look out for each other. So now, if we do everything that we can to keep this part of the city up and running, then [Mayor Nutter] should be able to do his part as an elected official and help us get the job done."

There you go. Don't mess with the women of North Sydenham Street.

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On Twitter: @NotesFromHel