Mess with Newark Main Street and the former mayor will bring the Funk

Ryan Cormier | The News Journal

Show Caption Hide Caption Former Newark mayor still keeps town clean Former Newark mayor Vance A. Funk III gets up early every morning and helps clean up litter on Newark's Main Street. 8/20/18

It's been nearly five years since Vance A. Funk III was mayor of Newark, but don't tell him that.

From his condominium perched above Stone Balloon Ale House, Funk still rules over the bustling college town, but without the levers of power at his control.

The 75-year-old is still a major force in town, dispensing on Facebook and elsewhere a non-stop flow of opinions about how the town should be run, the impact of the University of Delaware and just about anything else that ticks him off down below on Main Street.

He is perhaps best-known these days for his ritual of stepping out of the Washington House Condominiums at 6 each morning with a trash grabber in search of garbage while surveying any damage hard-partying crowds may have inflicted.

"I think doing this helps keep me alive," says Funk, hobbled by a 1993 stroke and a later diagnosis of Bell's palsy.

He has limited use of his right side, giving him an unsteady gait as he slowly marches up and down the street.

When he stepped down from office in 2013, he cited his skyrocketing blood pressure, tied to a neighborhood battle that pitted him against his neighbors who didn't want a Wawa on South Main Street.

After selling his house and moving to Main Street, he found his morning Main Street routine relaxes him, but that might be hard to believe for some — especially if you've been on the receiving end of a call or e-mail from him complaining.

Just last week, he was on Facebook after promotional flyers for a Deer Park Tavern concert appeared on Main Street light poles promoting an original rock show featuring popular Wilmington acts Grace Vonderkuhn, Tetra and Eyebawl.

"Just took down 30 illegal posters on Main Street for this concert at 6 a.m. this morning. Not Happy!" Funk thundered on Deer Park's Facebook page. "Will have them arrested if they do it again. At $200 a poster, hopefully this will stop."

Music fans shot back at the retired real estate attorney.

"Not the kind of funk I'm trying to hear," joked one.

"I hear there’s a mayoral opening in the town in Footloose," wrote another.

The tall, gray-haired former mayor couldn't really care less what they think from underneath his ball cap. He has no apologies. Whether it's a poster by an independent artist, a beer company sticker or a cigarette butt, if it's not supposed to be there, he's taking care of it himself. And if he can figure out who did it, they will hear from him.

"Public property," Funk, a University of Delaware graduate, says about his war on posters.

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Tetra frontman Zach Humenik, 32, a fellow UD graduate who has been performing in Newark for more than a decade with acts such as Travel Songs and Diego Paulo, admits he was "boiling" when he first saw Funk's post. Soon after, he just had to start laughing.

The idea of a takes-no-guff former mayor policing a college town while living above one of its best-known bars is inherently funny, even if it was also somewhat aggravating to a musician coming to town for a show.

With Newark's once-thriving original music scene already all but dead, it stung having the former mayor of a town Humenik also loves take the actions he did — and then publicly attempt to shame the venue and band.

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"It's silly to me. If he does care about the town, these are original artists coming into town and bringing their pals to see music in a local, non-chain tavern that's been there forever. It seems counter-intuitive to me," Humenik says.

When Tetra returns to town next time for a show, he predicts Funk might have more work on his hands.

"Chances are we will flier again. Everybody's got their opinion. But he's not the mayor any longer, so fortunately he and I are just two citizens with a disagreement and that happens to be OK with me," he says.

A few minutes after complaining about the posters during a recent morning walk, Funk tells of how he paid Newark Art Alliance artists $2,500 out-of pocket several years ago to paint a mural depicting the town at the Newark Amtrak/SEPTA station without permission.

When Amtrak Police confronted them, he had to think quick.

"They said, 'Who gave you permission to paint this? We don't have any record that you have permission," Funk says. "I said, 'Well, Sen. Tom Carper was down here a couple of weeks ago watching us do this and he really loved it and said, 'Thank God you're doing this.'

"They left and nobody ever bothered us again," he adds, punctuating his tale with a distinctive high-pitched laugh.

He doesn't see the irony when asked about making his own rules: "Sometimes you have to twist a thing, but you have to get it done."

In fact, Funk keeps several buckets of different colored paint. If he sees graffiti during his morning walk, he's not going to ask the city or the property owner to clean it. He gets a bucket of paint closest to the color needed and does the job himself.

No questions are asked and no thanks are requested.

As Lee Mikles, co-owner of Main Street's Grain Craft Bar + Kitchen, puts it, "He gives zero f---s."

Grain and Funk have a strong relationship. Funk and his wife Elaine dine there, Funk donated a University of Delaware basketball jersey for them to display and Funk's face is even painted on the dining room's wall along with other special customers.

Even so, when a Colorado's Left Hand Brewing Co. had a tap takeover at bars on Main Street and gave out stickers promoting their brand last year, some landed on the streets and Funk turned his ire on Mikles & Co.

"Not happy. Spent over an hour removing your Left Hand Brewing stickers from Main Street this morning. Gave up after three blocks taking down over 40 of them. If I find any more tomorrow, I will be very disappointed!!!" Funk wrote on Grain's Facebook page.

"He took us to task on Facebook and we had to go over and apologize. We wanted to take our lumps and move on," says Mikles, who even sent a bartender to walk up and down Main Street to make sure there weren't any other stickers from that brewery out there.

"But he's only doing all this because he loves the town so much. He's not doing it to run for office or for his business or for accolades. There's no end game other than his love of the city. I love his vigilance."

Even so, Mikles can understand the frustration of some when it comes to Funk's passionate opinions and actions. But when you put it all in perspective, he says, it's hard to get angry at Funk.

"I get it. Newark is always in a constant struggle between being a college town and Vance's town," Mikles says. "But I'd much rather have us complaining about somebody cleaning up the street too much than the opposite."

Ask Funk about any subject matter relating to the town or university and he has an opinion spring-loaded and ready for you.

He's not a fan of a newly-announced student tailgating section called The Barn that will be at Delaware Stadium this fall, serving beer to those 21 and older. He's especially not a fan of them announcing it without first asking what he thought, even though he's been out of office since 2013.

"Quite frankly, when I was mayor — I had [former UD president David] Roselle and [former UD president Patrick] Harker — before they did something like that, they would call me up and talk to me about it. The new group just charges ahead," he laments.

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Funk, who took a token salary of $1 each year as mayor while donating the rest back to city projects, has always roamed the streets in search of trash, actually. It's not just a post-retirement hobby.

As mayor, he would regularly walk by himself the 1-1/2 miles from his then-Beverly Road home off South Main Street to his law office, located on the east end of Main Street across from Grain, picking up litter along the way.

These days, Funk doesn't walk alone in the morning. He usually has one or two other early birds with him, people inspired by his dedication and wanting to help.

One of them is Jimmy Ball, who also cleaned Main Street this summer on days when Funk was away for vacation at his Bethany Beach home.

Ball was at Newark's Memorial Day parade two years ago when Funk sat beside him. Ball watched as a non-stop stream of people gravitated to the the man they still called mayor. Ball soon found himself doing the same.

"He's really an inspiration. It's uplifting, every morning. He's my best friend, really. He's the only former mayor I've ever seen out at 5:30 a.m. picking up trash," says Ball, a Newark native. "With that stroke he had, I stay to his left side and listen to his feet. If he starts to fall, I'll catch him.

"He tells everybody I'm his bodyguard."

Ball watches as Funk hugs just about everyone he knows. With limited use of his right hand, he greets people by opening his arms wide, adding to his down home, old school charm. He didn't get the nickname The Hugging Mayor by accident.

Ball also sees the side of Funk that comes out when he feels someone has wronged the town by littering, being disrespectful or perhaps the worst crime of them all — damaging one of downtown's trees or planters.

If Funk finds stickers promoting a band or a bar, he will do his research to find what business on Main Street he thinks is at fault and will blast them, sometimes both privately and publicly.

"Man, you don't want to mess with Main Street. I'm telling you, you don't want to get on his bad side," Ball says. "He told me a long time ago, I don't get mad, I get even. And I'm sure he does."

Funk is fully aware that he ruffles feathers, but he believes in his end goal of upholding his ideals for the city so much that any awkward moments or pitched battles that ensue are worth it.

He's also fully aware how he stands out on Main Street surrounded by baby-faced students. They get the same attention he gives everyone during his walks.

When classes begin at UD Tuesday with a fresh batch of new, nervous students walking the city's streets for the first time, he knows what they see: a 75-year-old trash-picker who really stands out.

"The first three weeks of the school year are a little bit tough because they don't know who I am and think I'm a little bit strange," he says.

He delights in meeting people from New Jersey and asking them what the name of the city is. If they say it like Newark, New Jersey instead of "NewArk" (that's how he always spells it), they get an unsolicited pronunciation lesson.

Noise isn't as much of a problem for Funk as you might think, considering he lives in the heart of town, which is lined with bars and restaurants serving until 1 a.m.

He lost his hearing in his right ear when he had his stroke and sleeps with his left ear on his pillow. But if he does hear you, you'll know.

Just like his cleaning efforts, he doesn't call the police to complain and hope someone else will act. Instead, he goes onto his balcony and screams, "Oh my God, the police are coming, the police are coming!"

"Everybody runs," he says with a laugh. Funk says he does the same routine about once a month during the school year due to disturbances.

During a recent morning walk, Funk bumped into the City of Newark public works employee whose job it is to keep Main Street clean.

Funk with his trash-grabber and John Bello Jr., with his own cleaning tools came face-to-face. And if you think it might have been an awkward stand-off, it was actually the opposite.

The 29-year city employee credits Funk with helping him get his job on the cleaning detail two years ago, a job he loves.

"He told me image is everything and I carry that to this day. Without him, I wouldn't be where I am today. He's like a dad to me," Bello says. "When he's gone for two weeks, everyone asks me where he is. He really is loved. When he walks down Main Street, it's like a parade."

Sometimes Funk's parade finds something he's not expecting along Main Street, which is not surprising considering he's out there only a few hours after the final drunken bar-hoppers make their way home.

One Sunday morning, he spotted three pairs of women's underwear in the middle of the road near Academy Street. Just then, a young woman stumbled out of one of the apartments across the street and walked right into a telephone pole.

As a Vietnam veteran, former Newark Alderman's Court judge and mayor, he thought he had seen it all in his city.

But that moment proved him wrong: "I was like, 'Oh my God, I hope they're not hers!"

And, yes, he did pick up the panties.

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Contact Ryan Cormier of The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier), Twitter (@ryancormier) and Instagram (@ryancormier).