- Mayor Nutter, challenging Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama to debate urban issues before the April 22 primary.

Enel Brown cackled at the "Al Gangster" line.

The retired construction worker was the first person I met at 56th and Master yesterday, hardly surprising since he spends most mornings perched on a Pepsi crate in front of an abandoned house at the West Philadelphia corner Nutter picked to symbolize all that ails the nation.

"I've been shot at, I've been robbed, I've been hurt, but I'm still sitting here," is how Brown, 66, sums up survival for anyone who thinks guts is running for office.

"Why they got to go over to Iraq and fight when we've got our own war right here in this country?" the front-step sage asks, before shifting into advice mode:

"Clean your own backyard before you go cleaning someone else's."

And the sidewalks, and the streets. Because if there's one thing city people agree on, it's that there's way too much trash.

A moment for a mother

Nutter may suspect that bin Laden wouldn't last long at 56th and Master, but I spent two hours without so much as a hoot or a hassle.

Well, it isn't every day someone asks regular folks to school the future president in urban woe.

"Last week, I buried my mother. She was only 60," explains Cheryl Williams, fretful as she limps across the street. "Her house is in foreclosure. She was disabled and borrowed against it. Now I have to get a lawyer to try to save it."

Except Williams, 39, has her own problems, from the cast on her right foot to the fact that she hasn't worked in a year. She's got an interview at Target, but wants the campaigns to know of her office skills.

"I need a job right now," Williams admits. "Somebody mentioned that Obama might be hiring."

As sad as the woman with red nails and a gold lame purse seems, Williams beams when I ask what she'd want the candidates to know about raising kids in the inner city.

"My daughters are 18 and 17," she shares. "One's in college, one's in the Job Corps, and neither are pregnant or on drugs. They're not scandalous. I'm so blessed."

Now, she's just got to worry about her son. He's only 10, and we both know that when it comes to gun crime, both shooters and victims are getting younger and younger.

The corner store

The weathered sign reads "Almonte Mini Market," because a new one would cost $3,000 Marleny and Odanis Espejo don't have.

The young couple bought the corner store at 56th and Master from a relative last year thinking it was a step up from jobs at the airport. Instead, the economy is crushing their entrepreneurial spirit.

"A loaf of bread was $1.69 when we bought the store. Now, it's $2.79," explains Odanis, 25. "People complain."

Customers, his 23-year-old wife adds, can't sympathize about the rising cost of cooking oil when they're unemployed or underpaid.

"We've caught people stealing, and they say, 'You're robbing us by raising the prices.' "

As Marleny talks, the couple's two children - Ariana, 5 and Melvin, 3 - play on the sidewalk.

She'd love Clinton and Obama to know that though she can't afford day care or health insurance, some government agency decided the couple's $20,000 income means "we make too much money to be poor."

I tell Marleny that I just read a story that the war in Iraq costs the United States $5,000 a second.

What, I ask, might she do with that kind of money - for her family, her neighborhood, the city?

"I'd build some factories so people could work," she says. "There's too much struggle around here."

She'd spend $300 getting Melvin vaccinated and pay the $500 ambulance bill from a blood-pressure scare that sent her to Lankenau Hospital. She'd quit her second job at a day-care center and enroll her children in the best schools.

And if Odanis still refused to sell the store and move far away from 56th and Master? Well, they might as well buy a sign to tell the world who's now running the store:

"Espejo Mini Market," where milk may be $5 a gallon, but hope is all you can drink for free.