So, I've been meaning to write about this place I went last week with Amanda. The reason I have yet to do this is that I fear mere words cannot do it justice--and that's something coming from a linguaphile like me. I do love a challenge, though, so I'll give it a shot. Imagine a warehouse that is not really a warehouse, but more of a connected row of buildings. If you live in Philly, this should not be hard. Now imagine this place is in a rather sketchy neighborhood. The cab driver actually asked me if I was sure I wanted him to leave me there. I wasn't, but I let him do it anyway. It was the site of Amanda's first ADHD fashion show, so I didn't have much of a choice. Gotta support my girl, right?
I scooted in through the unmarked door and took the stairs to the second floor (I say this as if there was an elevator or some other option, which there was not). At the top of the stairs was a big skull; the entrance appeared to be through its gaping plywood mouth. Fuck that. I kicked open the door next to it instead. This may sound all tough and butchy of me, but it was really just because I was afraid to touch the door knob with my hand, for fear that it would either fall off or give me some weird disease. Once I was inside, the full ridiculousness of the place hit me. It was sort of a starving artist/dirty hippie/parole-violator-on-the-lam commune. There was a pretty interesting collection of original art on the walls, intermixed with a bunch of crap likely procured from the curb on trash day.
A brief list of just a few of the things there: a huge wooden saguro cactus with boxing gloves hanging from it, a wood-and-stained-glass shrine with a concrete monkey, a cast iron frying pan full of petrified eggs(?) hanging on the wall, a flat bed trailer full of mattresses and lawn chairs, a broken vending machine, a Fisher Price work bench, a giant inflatable boom box, bicycles hanging from the ceiling, one of those rowboat rocker things for little kids that turns into stairs when you flip it over, and oh so much more. You get the picture... sort of...
There were some makeshift rooms around the edges, with walls that didn't reach the ceiling and looked like they might just collapse; turns out that about 20 people live there. I thought at first that it was actually the kind of thing that would have appealed to me right after college, when I was still in sleeping-on-the-frat-house-floor mode. Well, I thought that until I saw the bathrooms, anyway. Amanda compared them to the one in Trainspotting, and I think that was pretty dead-on.
As if the decor (not to mention the crowd--more on that in a minute) wasn't entertaining enough on its own, they had entertainment. And by that I mean they had people howling into microphones with tons of feedback, DJs spinning noise, and oh yeah, a pretty interesting fashion show (when it finally happened, two and a half hours later than expected). The runway, by the way, was a couple of benches pushed together with a piece of carpet on top. Huh? The ADHD models were great--definitely the best looking ones--and they just wore the standard designs, but a little spiced up. The others looked like the Salvation Army reject bin threw up on them. Maybe it did.
The whole time I was there, I kept thinking, if this is cool, I must be really uncool because I am really not into it. But then if I stepped outside myself for a minute and reacted as an outside observer (which is really what I was anyway) rather than someone who was trying to fit in, it was actually a pretty interesting thing.
I sort of hate to sound so negative about the place, because it wasn't horrible--just different and totally outside my usual realm of existence. Everyone I talked to there was very friendly and generally pretty interesting (I guess you'd have to be if you're at home in such a setting). Some of them really could have used a shower, though. And not for nothing--I've certainly done my share of mind-altering substances--but there is such a thing as too much, and some of those kids had definitely done way too much in their time.
Come to think of it, the whole weekend was pretty straight. We went to Sugar Mom's on Saturday night instead of the burlesque show as planned, because the assholes at the Five Spot apparently don't know how many reservations they can actually accommodate. Sunday was the Super Bowl party at Amanda's, which was fun even though the E-A-G-L-E-S Eagles lost. Thank the goddess I had a good dose of gay the previous weekend at Blue Ball. It was a nice reminder that it's good to do different stuff every once in a while... and a nice reminder that I like my life exactly like it is most of the time.
I scooted in through the unmarked door and took the stairs to the second floor (I say this as if there was an elevator or some other option, which there was not). At the top of the stairs was a big skull; the entrance appeared to be through its gaping plywood mouth. Fuck that. I kicked open the door next to it instead. This may sound all tough and butchy of me, but it was really just because I was afraid to touch the door knob with my hand, for fear that it would either fall off or give me some weird disease. Once I was inside, the full ridiculousness of the place hit me. It was sort of a starving artist/dirty hippie/parole-violator-on-the-lam commune. There was a pretty interesting collection of original art on the walls, intermixed with a bunch of crap likely procured from the curb on trash day.
A brief list of just a few of the things there: a huge wooden saguro cactus with boxing gloves hanging from it, a wood-and-stained-glass shrine with a concrete monkey, a cast iron frying pan full of petrified eggs(?) hanging on the wall, a flat bed trailer full of mattresses and lawn chairs, a broken vending machine, a Fisher Price work bench, a giant inflatable boom box, bicycles hanging from the ceiling, one of those rowboat rocker things for little kids that turns into stairs when you flip it over, and oh so much more. You get the picture... sort of...
There were some makeshift rooms around the edges, with walls that didn't reach the ceiling and looked like they might just collapse; turns out that about 20 people live there. I thought at first that it was actually the kind of thing that would have appealed to me right after college, when I was still in sleeping-on-the-frat-house-floor mode. Well, I thought that until I saw the bathrooms, anyway. Amanda compared them to the one in Trainspotting, and I think that was pretty dead-on.
As if the decor (not to mention the crowd--more on that in a minute) wasn't entertaining enough on its own, they had entertainment. And by that I mean they had people howling into microphones with tons of feedback, DJs spinning noise, and oh yeah, a pretty interesting fashion show (when it finally happened, two and a half hours later than expected). The runway, by the way, was a couple of benches pushed together with a piece of carpet on top. Huh? The ADHD models were great--definitely the best looking ones--and they just wore the standard designs, but a little spiced up. The others looked like the Salvation Army reject bin threw up on them. Maybe it did.
The whole time I was there, I kept thinking, if this is cool, I must be really uncool because I am really not into it. But then if I stepped outside myself for a minute and reacted as an outside observer (which is really what I was anyway) rather than someone who was trying to fit in, it was actually a pretty interesting thing.
I sort of hate to sound so negative about the place, because it wasn't horrible--just different and totally outside my usual realm of existence. Everyone I talked to there was very friendly and generally pretty interesting (I guess you'd have to be if you're at home in such a setting). Some of them really could have used a shower, though. And not for nothing--I've certainly done my share of mind-altering substances--but there is such a thing as too much, and some of those kids had definitely done way too much in their time.
Come to think of it, the whole weekend was pretty straight. We went to Sugar Mom's on Saturday night instead of the burlesque show as planned, because the assholes at the Five Spot apparently don't know how many reservations they can actually accommodate. Sunday was the Super Bowl party at Amanda's, which was fun even though the E-A-G-L-E-S Eagles lost. Thank the goddess I had a good dose of gay the previous weekend at Blue Ball. It was a nice reminder that it's good to do different stuff every once in a while... and a nice reminder that I like my life exactly like it is most of the time.