We’ve been following this one for a bit, just waiting for it to hit the boiling point of crazy, and hot damn if it hasn’t come through like any good dog park story should. At issue: Residents of Fairmount near the Eastern State Penitentiary, their dogs, the City of Philadelphia and… deposed Inky scribe Ralph Cipriano? Like most dog park stories, this one begins with a parcel of land once wanted by no one and ends with a lawsuit, threats and somebody’s wife’s dashed hopes of a sculpture garden. It’s long and convoluted, but it’s like this: In 2001, a group of neighbors got together and decided to take a vacant lot and turn it into a legit (or at least semi-legit) dog park near the corner of Corinthian and Brown Streets. Everything was going well until Winter ’06, when a resistance group of local neighbors formed. Their major malfunction? They, ah, don’t like dog piss, they think it’s noisy (newsflash: you people live in North Philly) and who knows what else. Mostly, it looks like, they don’t like these yuppies and their dogs. Take a number, Corinthian Street.

Now, usually, battles like this end in a kind of compromise: You know, something like “no dogparking after 9pm” or “dog owners who do not pick up poop will be shunned by the community and looked at like freaks because they forgot to bring a plastic bag that one fucking time.” But here’s where it gets outright nutty: Through the magic of lawyering, the end result (for now) of a little court case called ” Cipriano, et al. v. City of Philadelphia and FESPP, April Term 2007, Docket No. 000353″ ended on Friday with Judge Gary DiVito shutting the entire dog park down to one and all, canine, human, you name it. As a result, taking your dog there could result in fines and, we guess, arrest. In the meantime, Phillyblog abounds with tales of alleged douchebaggery on the part of Cipriano et al — and let the record show such charges have been levelled at the dude before, in a slightly more professional but no less dog-eat-doggy setting. Among the accusations hurled at Cirpriano and his Corinthian Street neighbors? Stage whispering to dog owners about $5,000 fines, hiring local youths to “guard” the park from any neighbors and their pets and allegedly having people followed home. (To what end, we have no idea: Phillyblog is a haven for the paranoid and un-self-conscious, so you just gotta get that ol’ grain of salt out every time you load the page.) So what now? Of course, the dog park people, the new Palestinians of Fairmount if you like, are planning an appeal, and for the moment, the crabapples on Corinthian Street are living a life free of dogshit. But something tells us the bullshit is only just getting started.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 6th, 2007 at 9:20 am.