tangents

news & views

by dal mcintire

Philly cop Captain Rizzo has an awful time trying to keep the center of the city clean and pervertfree. Extra terrible job with this Beat Generation. Imagine a 100%, patriotic, real he-man cop having to see things like grown men playing chess! And men (women too) sitting around arty little restaurants sipping coffee and reading books yet -talking all that egg-head stuff! And that highbrow music! And those beards, and turtleneck sweaters, and tights and things! A he-man just doesn't have to stand for that sort of thing going on.

So Captain Rizzo (with some buddies) raided the Humoresque Coffeehouse on Sansom St., a couple weeks ago-hauled off 35 patrons and the owner. Few nights later, he raided 3 other coffeehouses. The cops had been keeping an eye on those places. Undesirables hung out there. Several plainclothes agents posted there every night for 6 or 8 months. What they saw was pretty disgusting, man, all that jazz and highbrow music, talk about zen and stuff like that, and chess and crazy paintings, and man, the poetry..

It wasn't exactly clear that the

cops ever saw anything illegal during their months of spying. One female undercover agent said she'd bought some dope from a man who said he was a patron of the Humoresque. Had she met the man there, or had the sale taken place there? No.

Narcotics officer Addario said 6 men left the coffeehouse before the raid, "making loud noises" and the cops tracked them to a house on H Street which house the cops raided pronto. They found someone playing bongo drums (obviously criminal behavior) on the first floor, and elsewhere in the house they found a man and a woman with no clothes

on.

Our intrepid knights returned posthaste to the Humoresque-lest any felons escape-where they discovered 3 men dancing ringaround-the-rosie about a table, and 2 others hugging one another around the waist, so they raided the joint-naturally. Eighteen patrons were booked and fined $10 each; several minors (imagine minors in a place where coffee is being served!) were booked.

Owner Melvin Haifetz, 23, sued Rizzo in Federal District Court for