Day 15 Philly Mural Tour and World Cafe Live November 22, 2008

Sunday, November 9, 2008- World Cafe Live

Kate Clark and I had been talking about taking a mural tour in Philadelphia as far back as a year and a half ago. With both of us in Philly, simultaneously, we made it happen, and her parents came too! They were in town visiting, but fortunately they were interested and we got along great so it all worked out. The tour starts from the Independence Visitors Center, which is the tourism center for the Liberty Bell and all the other historical tourist sites, such as where the Declaration of Independence was printed and signed, etc. Somehow it seemed strange to go to a tourism center for art, but I suppose it makes sense.

We were funneled onto a trolley bus, which is definitely a bit more fun than a coach. We thought we were getting a tour of Center City murals but it turns out we had our dates mixed up. The tour was of the North side instead. The North side is generally not a safe place to venture into on your own without knowing your way around. I was driving around there late one night a few years ago a bit lost and heard gun shots ring out a few blocks over. It’s definitely not someplace I’d venture back into unless I was with someone who knew their way around. So it turns out the North side tour was really wonderful because I got to see a part of Philadelphia I never would otherwise.

We started out in Northern Liberties, which is heavily under construction. I’d say about half the real estate is falling apart and the other half was just built new. The real estate market there is staggering. It’s an up and coming spot. The rest of the North side was just like it, except without all the new construction. At one point we were driving through some fairly beat up neighborhoods and the people out on the streets were waving excitedly to us, unsure why but glad tourists were finding their neighborhoods so interesting… pride can be a good thing. The murals themselves spoke to the populations around them. It’s just great to see color everywhere. There were plenty of stories of how at the mural unveiling ceremonies, the locals got to meet each other and make connections… like ex-convicts getting involved in at-risk teen programs and the like… A great tour. I wish for every city to have a similar experience.

 

Trolley Bus for the Philadelphia Mural Tour with Kate and family in front

This was my favorite mural... Didn't catch the artist's name but it's a recent one of a ferris wheel. It wrapped around the building so there's a lot more of it...

two cool things in one shot... a large mural and the Philly Car Share

Whenever I show up in Phoenixville I’m notorious for trying to talk my dad into doing something… going into Philadelphia, going to a bar, visiting a friend, something… My dad doesn’t get out much except when there’s a boat involved. Usually it takes a bit of arm twisting and even then sometimes I don’t succeed. However, that was not the case this time. In fact, he booked the tickets! He decided to celebrate his birthday he wanted to go to WXPN’s World Cafe Live with me to see Shawn Colvin.

WXPN is Philadelphia’s NPR station and they have a great mix of music they play. Some of their programs, including World Cafe, are broadcast around the country. I hear some of them on the stations in Syracuse. My dad has been a fan for decades. So a few years back someone decided they were such a great station that they needed a good facility. One was constructed containing offices, recording studios and several live performance spaces. There’s a full restaurant and bar set up in each.

I had been there a few years back and was completely impressed, so I had always wanted to go there with my dad. He was into it. It just so happened Shawn Colvin was performing and there were still tickets available to sit at the bar… So that’s what we did and it rocked. I highly recommend seeing a performance at World Cafe Live. It’s more like an intimate night club than it is a theater. Everyone is seated and is waited on. The lighting and sound system are great, although Jeffrey Gaines, who opened for Shawn Colvin, said the lighting made the place look like Metropolis from the stage. I half expected Batman to swoop down from the balcony.

I was really impressed with Jeffrey Gaines. He was sweet, funny, very friendly and his music moved me. My dad said he had met him in the audience of a concert a ways back and he was the same way in person… just very open to life. I’d love to see him perform again someday as a headliner.

For more info about this event and World Cafe Live, visit here: http://tickets.worldcafelive.com/eventperformances.asp?evt=2686

Jeffrey Gaines at World Cafe Live

Jeffrey Gaines promotional image

 

Shawn Colvin at World Cafe Live

Shawn Colvin promotional image

Day 13 Philadelphia First Friday November 21, 2008

Friday, November 7, 2008- As some of you may know, I am responsible for instigating Th3, The Third Thursday, Syracuse’s monthly art hop. So it may come as some surprise that I’ve never been to the First Friday art hop in my home city of Philadelphia… until tonight that is.

I edited wedding videos for my old boss Albert during the day and then headed into the city via car.  I was worried about the traffic getting into Philly.  It’s notorious.  There’s only one good way to get to Philly from Phoenixville and that’s I-76 (p.s. I love G. Love and his song about I-76).  Plus there’s this part of the highway called the Conshohocken Curve… where the traffic naturally backs up because of the nature of the gently winding curves.  Anyway, the traffic wasn’t too bad at 3 p.m. and I made it into Philly early since I’d given myself plenty of time.

The plan was to meet up with Kate Clark and her husband David, who recently relocated to Philadelphia from Syracuse.  I have to admit, since I have Philly roots, Kate and I talked about Philly a lot when in Syracuse together, so it was really satisfying to finally get to spend some time with her in the city.  We had talked about taking a trip together, but it never happened…

Since I got to the city early, I found a parking spot in a residential area.  It was easy.  That’s not always the case in Philly.  It’s usually hard to find a spot and the ticket cops are ruthless.  I’ve had one stand next to my car waiting for the meter to run out.  I walked up to move it as it was running out and the cop said too late and gave me a ticket anyway… coldhearted ruthless ****…  Sorry, forgive my parking rant.  To get to the point I walked down to the Philadelphia Art Museum to wait for Kate and David to get home from work and meet me there.

It turns out every Friday night there are live jazz performances at the museum.  It’s free for members, so that makes the $75 membership totally worth it if I was living in the area and could go every Friday.  It was around $15 for nonmembers.  It was packed and looked like fun, but when Kate and David showed up, we decided against it.  Kate wasn’t feeling well and David had a few other galleries to go to.  I ended up walking back to their apartment with them, catching up on the Syracuse news.  Kate then retired for the evening and David and I went gallery hopping for First Friday.

 

Philadelphia Art Museum

This has Philadelphia written all over it with the statue and the trolley...

 

David and Kate with Philadelphia in the background

We hopped on a bus a headed to Old City.  I never had a chance to really talk one on one with David before and I really enjoyed our conversation… talking about the intersections of science, art and entrepreneurship.  After hopping off the bus, we went the Fabric Workshop and Museum, which I’d always wanted to see, but sadly, it was closed.  So we pressed on and headed to a gallery in a printmakers coop studio and stopped in another random storefront.  Finally, we made it to what seemed like the most hopping place of the night.  Vox Populi is an artist collective that goes back many years.  Right next door was another gallery started by people David knew from his home state.  Enter the building and climb up several levels of shady steps to get to a balcony packed with people smoking, press beyond them and enter Vox Populi.

Then, who would have guessed, I ran into a cluster of old Syracusans.  Among them were Dan Fuller, Jeremy Drummund and his partner.  Jeremy was the main curator of Spark Video when I first came to SU.  I became a curator shortly after he left.  While we were catching up someone asked how we knew each other.  It turns out he was one of the founders of Spark.  It was Mark and his partner Becky.  It really is a small world.  I felt privileged to be in the middle.  There I was speaking to people who had come and gone from Syracuse before I ever got there.  Then I was able to introduce David to them as a newer generation of Syracusan now turned Philadelphian.  

How ironic is it that all of these people now live in Philadelphia?  Jeremy is on sabbatical, but the rest just relocated permanently to Philadelphia from Brooklyn.  The consensus is that Philadelphia has many of the perks of a big city with a fun art scene, but at about a third of the price.  (Which, by the way, is still significantly more than it cost to live in Philadelphia when I was there.)

Syracuse and Philadelphia remind me a lot of each other.  Both are rust belt cities trying to reinvent themselves.  Both have a salty perspective from the locals.  Philadelphia, it seems, has succeeded.  It has the advantage of becoming a second New York.  Still, I wonder if I came back to Syracuse in eight years, will it have succeeded as well?

 

I like the girl's face in the photo...

 

vox populi building

Day 12- Hoboken, NJ – Red Bank, NJ – Phoenixville, PA November 15, 2008

Day 12- Thursday, November 6, 2008- I woke up in Hoboken, helped Ros layout artwork and sage her house with sage from my family’s ranch in Texas, then packed up my car, said goodbye and headed to meet my aunt for lunch.

My aunt Cathy lives on the Jersey shore with her husband Captain Mark. It’s a great rags to riches story for another time… I met up with Cathy for lunch in Red Bank, NJ… home of Jay & Silent Bob. It’s actually a great little art town with a concentration of galleries, home design shops, clothing stores, etc. It’s a regular stop for me whenever I go to see my aunt. I actually worked in Red Bank editing videos while living at the shore one summer. The 4th of July fireworks are great.

Anyway, Cathy is searching for a professional creative outlet. She’s decided staging houses is it. Over waffle fries (I’d never heard of these but they were good) Cathy told me about the certification class she was taking and the entrepreneurship and real estate courses she was in the midst of. I’m sure she’ll be good at whatever she puts her mind to as long as she can figure out the business side of it. She recently made all the decisions on her rebuilt waterfront home and it looks great. It was great to learn about the business of staging… setting up interiors to make the home sell faster… My favorite word from that conversation is one I’m still thinking about today- depersonalizing. For example, removing family photos and decisions that are unique to the previous owner like weird windows.

After window shopping with Cathy I headed to Phoenixville, PA to see my dad and brother…

waffle fries

11/6/08 Late Evening- Finally, time to think, but I’m exhausted. I am fortunate enough to be settled next to a fire in an open faced woodstove.

I’m at my dad’s house. The place is piled with stuff, in more ways than one. My painting experiments line the walls. One year, I became so turned on by Mike and Mike’s studio above Awful Al’s that I came home in December, bought 4 x 8′ sheets of plywood and turned my dad’s living room into a studio. It only lasted a few weeks. My painting was cropped and turned into decoration. I suppose in years of wisdom beyond my age, I will admit that everyone goes through revelations at their own rate. I manifest that my dad will have a revelation one day to live lightly and shed baggage. Pairs of shoes not worn in decades can be passed on to their next life.

I haven’t been here in a year. Since my mom moved to Chicago, it’s been awhile. When my dad turned 50, I was a junior in college. While I was in Syracuse, I organized a surprise birthday party at Jen & Ray’s. I had blue hair then. That means he’s turning 56.

Here’s a revelation of my own… What does it say about me that I use location and hair color to determine length of time? Right now, I’m traveling and I have highlights. I’m trying to grow my hair out actually. I’m ready for something looser and not so precise.

Home today has been home for a long time. This morning home was Hoboken. Yesterday it was the Upper East Side. Last week, it was the Upper West Side. The week before, home was (and still is) Syracuse. Home is where you lay the souls of your feet.

For dinner we went to Rocco’s Pizza as a family (Dad, Devon and I), where we chatted to the owner (who remembers us as little squirts) and reminisced about what it used to look like, what changed, and the stories my dad used to tell based on the history channel. Earlier I drove around Phonixville, which has come a long way from the armpit of Chester County that it used to be. Now there are nice restaurants and micro brewerys on main street along with two bookstores, several coffee shops and an art gallery or two. I read about an art gallery in Phoenixivlle in NICHE Magazine, a national industry publication. The phoenix is rising. The same will happen in Syracuse, eventually.

My head is screaming but there are no words. Only acceptance. Responsibility calls, but feels irrelevant. If the tarot card reading was true, I should have a good idea by now of what will be different. I don’t think it was referring to 6 days. Perhaps it was 6 weeks, or I’m inclined to believe 6 months. Perhaps I’m scared that what is to come will somehow distract me from my real purpose on this journey, whatever that revelation that I sense coming will be. Perhaps there is none and I begin to think this might be all there is. No, it seems far too unlikely. The world is too funny for it to be boring. I grow more still every day, but not where I’m surrounded by unnecessary confusion. I need time to myself when I’m not exhausted.