(no subject)
PICTURE POST! first week in philly. hello.
we started the trek to philly last friday. but it wasn't a straight shot! we had to move my sister to michigan first. yes. we loaded up a trailer in chicago with all of my stuff and all of my sisters stuff. it was a lot of work but between my sister, mom, brother and i it actually went really fast. we started at 8am and had my sister moved to michigan by 5pm. not bad at all. then mom, rover and i continued on for philly. rover is a really great traveler. this is what he did the entire 17 hours.
we drove from 6pm to midnight on friday night and stopped somewhere outside of cleveland to crash. we had been driving through torrential downpours most of that time. luckily there was a break in the morning for us to walk out to the car. and it gave us some really pretty morning light/glimmer.
my mom and continental breakfast
that nice light
a different kind of nice light as the storms rolled back in
the quiet companion. never a complaint from this guy.
slow and steady through the mountains and the downpours, with a 12 foot trailer, in a car neither of us were used to. my mom totally pulled 'the mom' and insisted on driving the whole way instead of letting me help!
later that night when we stopped again, we found out we were driving through tornado zones and that 25 people had been killed by the same storm system just a few hours south. yowzers!
after a run outside through the rain for a bathroom/refuel break
we could have made it all the way to philly that night, but the rain was relentless and we realized we would make it in after the uhaul place was already closed. so we opted to stay outside of the city another night since it would be easier to park the trailer overnight out there, and then we could hopefully wait out the rain instead of moving all my stuff through it. i gave rover a bath in the motel. haha.
we unloaded pretty quickly with the help of my new roommate, ryan, and then mom and i grabbed lunch from fu-wah after dropping off the trailer. tofu hoagies!
my stuff had to stay camped out in the living room for about a week because the upstairs was a construction zone.
this was my room when i arrived. after my mom left, i had the inevitable feeling of 'what now? now i live here. what do i do?' so i jumped right in with room renovation, since that was the plan my roommate had for the week.
first steps, move everything out. then rip up the carpet, which was surprisingly easy to do by myself.
second step, pull up all that plywood, which required going around with my drill and taking out about 40 screws, then prying the pieces up since many were also nailed to the floor. before i could pull the plywood up, i had to use a crowbar to pry off the trim around the baseboard that usually sits over the edge of the carpet. using a crowbar is fun.
of course, under the plywood, we discovered that they had originally glued tiles right onto the hardwood floor, so it was covered in dried glue. i put stripper over some patches and used a scraper to try to get the glue off. it was super strenuous and not really working. so i gave it a rest for a night. all that in my first day in philly!
after i didn't have a project going on, i didn't really know what to do with myself. i knew about a show happening at the bordello but was sort of nervous to bike around by myself, let alone show up at a punk show on my own. silly social inhibitions! but i forced myself to just dive in head first, and go to a show the first night to get it out the way so i wouldn't be nervous about that anymore. the bike ride wasn't so bad from west to south philly and i only got a little turned around.
my friend kettner's band was playing their third show. they're a dune themed hardcore band. i've never read dune, but they were good as a band regardless so it was cool to watch.
it's always interesting being new in a city and not really knowing the ins and outs of any of the show spaces. every diy show space has its own set of rules that you get to know over time. eventually i'll know which houses have a 7pm start time but don't actually get the show going until 10pm. for now i'll just show up early and have to wait around for 3 hrs for the show to get going.
i took a different route home on my bike and it was way more enjoyable and i got to see more of the city. i felt pretty content with my decision to move right then.
the following day i did more work on the house. rover got acquainted with his new territory.
and his new roommate, dodger.
i mostly helped ryan out in his room the following day. he only had the sander rented a few days so it was hard to prioritize when to do what.
i used a handheld edging sander to scrape off a lot of the glue and it went really fast but was a lot of work.
i also worked on getting glue off the hallway floors, which was a lot more effective than it had been in my bedroom.
ryan sanding away
we made a delicious dinner that night and watched some everwood with a guy named jon.
tuesday i saw dead dog play at the marvelous
they also played with big soda, which has two shared members with bad banana! it was really nice to see kyle and josh again, since they were who i went on tour with in february.
on wednesday we got the drum sander back so it was my turn to learn how to use it. i spent the entire day sanding my floor, going over it with several different grits until it was perfectly clean.
tough as nails.
all smooth and mopped
i also spent several hours in the nearby coffeeshop, satellite, working on comics
we've had really beautiful spring/summer weather and everything is already in full bloom.
when i got home, we all parked for a hockey double header! the flyers game and then the red wings game.
the two on the left are sarah and ryan, my roommates. the guy on the right is their friend ryan who came over to watch.
we stained our floors after the games, even though it was late. we were too excited to finally finish.
rover in our temporary room
thursday i hung out with karen and kettner at grind core to work on comics. i also interviewed with a family to babysit for.
after biking all over the city, i went home and varnished the floor.
friday morning i met an acquaintance, joelle, for coffee. she's really rad and self-employed full-time as an artist which is very inspiring, especially since she's so young! (i think 22?). we have a lot of mutual friends from chicago so it was pretty fun talking with her.
a reference photo of our house for a comic i'm drawing. we live in the yellow and brown row house on the left.
that night i went to a ladies night dinner and met a lot of really rad gals
it was at my friend joanna's house. she's holding the cat. i knew joanna from when we both lived in baltimore.
everyone there was really cool and i only had one or two degrees of separation from them already through the few people i know in philly. this is a small city!
i'm completely charmed by west philly, especially at night. chicago seems so midwestern and uniform in comparison.
watching dawsons creek and cuddling with a rover ball
on saturday i had my first babysitting gig. i had lined up a family to work with via craigslist before even moving out here. i'll be working with their 2 month old baby, but that doesn't start for another month. however, upon meeting them this week, they introduced me to their friends who could use some help here and there immediately. it panned out really fast and i had a babysitting gig a few days later. this is pepper.
pepper is 3 and a half and her brother smith is one and a half. their mom is starting the philadelphia free school, a k-12 school opening this fall! really rad. pepper and smith are smart and easy going kids. as an activity, i showed pepper how to use my camera and she took some really great shots, including this one of me and smith.
i was really impressed by how she considered what to photograph before pushing the button. a lot of kids will just rapid fire shoot once they have a camera in their hands. here's another really cool one that she took.
and another by pepper
me and pepper with the self-timer
pepper and smith
meeting dom for coffee at satellite. dom and i became buds at the fest this past year in florida. he's rad and lives in NJ but comes to philly a lot. it was nice catching up.
2nd page of comics done. i just started a year long comics project about my first year in philly. i'm going to do one page a week and each page will be about the previous week i had. so it will be one long autobiographical story about being in a new place. i did two intro pages, and am about to start drawing my first week in philly! some weeks will just be about what i did, others might just be one conversation from that week. it will depend on what happens i guess! philly friends, i guess, be warned that you might make some appearances in comic form.
we started the trek to philly last friday. but it wasn't a straight shot! we had to move my sister to michigan first. yes. we loaded up a trailer in chicago with all of my stuff and all of my sisters stuff. it was a lot of work but between my sister, mom, brother and i it actually went really fast. we started at 8am and had my sister moved to michigan by 5pm. not bad at all. then mom, rover and i continued on for philly. rover is a really great traveler. this is what he did the entire 17 hours.
we drove from 6pm to midnight on friday night and stopped somewhere outside of cleveland to crash. we had been driving through torrential downpours most of that time. luckily there was a break in the morning for us to walk out to the car. and it gave us some really pretty morning light/glimmer.
my mom and continental breakfast
that nice light
a different kind of nice light as the storms rolled back in
the quiet companion. never a complaint from this guy.
slow and steady through the mountains and the downpours, with a 12 foot trailer, in a car neither of us were used to. my mom totally pulled 'the mom' and insisted on driving the whole way instead of letting me help!
later that night when we stopped again, we found out we were driving through tornado zones and that 25 people had been killed by the same storm system just a few hours south. yowzers!
after a run outside through the rain for a bathroom/refuel break
we could have made it all the way to philly that night, but the rain was relentless and we realized we would make it in after the uhaul place was already closed. so we opted to stay outside of the city another night since it would be easier to park the trailer overnight out there, and then we could hopefully wait out the rain instead of moving all my stuff through it. i gave rover a bath in the motel. haha.
we unloaded pretty quickly with the help of my new roommate, ryan, and then mom and i grabbed lunch from fu-wah after dropping off the trailer. tofu hoagies!
my stuff had to stay camped out in the living room for about a week because the upstairs was a construction zone.
this was my room when i arrived. after my mom left, i had the inevitable feeling of 'what now? now i live here. what do i do?' so i jumped right in with room renovation, since that was the plan my roommate had for the week.
first steps, move everything out. then rip up the carpet, which was surprisingly easy to do by myself.
second step, pull up all that plywood, which required going around with my drill and taking out about 40 screws, then prying the pieces up since many were also nailed to the floor. before i could pull the plywood up, i had to use a crowbar to pry off the trim around the baseboard that usually sits over the edge of the carpet. using a crowbar is fun.
of course, under the plywood, we discovered that they had originally glued tiles right onto the hardwood floor, so it was covered in dried glue. i put stripper over some patches and used a scraper to try to get the glue off. it was super strenuous and not really working. so i gave it a rest for a night. all that in my first day in philly!
after i didn't have a project going on, i didn't really know what to do with myself. i knew about a show happening at the bordello but was sort of nervous to bike around by myself, let alone show up at a punk show on my own. silly social inhibitions! but i forced myself to just dive in head first, and go to a show the first night to get it out the way so i wouldn't be nervous about that anymore. the bike ride wasn't so bad from west to south philly and i only got a little turned around.
my friend kettner's band was playing their third show. they're a dune themed hardcore band. i've never read dune, but they were good as a band regardless so it was cool to watch.
it's always interesting being new in a city and not really knowing the ins and outs of any of the show spaces. every diy show space has its own set of rules that you get to know over time. eventually i'll know which houses have a 7pm start time but don't actually get the show going until 10pm. for now i'll just show up early and have to wait around for 3 hrs for the show to get going.
i took a different route home on my bike and it was way more enjoyable and i got to see more of the city. i felt pretty content with my decision to move right then.
the following day i did more work on the house. rover got acquainted with his new territory.
and his new roommate, dodger.
i mostly helped ryan out in his room the following day. he only had the sander rented a few days so it was hard to prioritize when to do what.
i used a handheld edging sander to scrape off a lot of the glue and it went really fast but was a lot of work.
i also worked on getting glue off the hallway floors, which was a lot more effective than it had been in my bedroom.
ryan sanding away
we made a delicious dinner that night and watched some everwood with a guy named jon.
tuesday i saw dead dog play at the marvelous
they also played with big soda, which has two shared members with bad banana! it was really nice to see kyle and josh again, since they were who i went on tour with in february.
on wednesday we got the drum sander back so it was my turn to learn how to use it. i spent the entire day sanding my floor, going over it with several different grits until it was perfectly clean.
tough as nails.
all smooth and mopped
i also spent several hours in the nearby coffeeshop, satellite, working on comics
we've had really beautiful spring/summer weather and everything is already in full bloom.
when i got home, we all parked for a hockey double header! the flyers game and then the red wings game.
the two on the left are sarah and ryan, my roommates. the guy on the right is their friend ryan who came over to watch.
we stained our floors after the games, even though it was late. we were too excited to finally finish.
rover in our temporary room
thursday i hung out with karen and kettner at grind core to work on comics. i also interviewed with a family to babysit for.
after biking all over the city, i went home and varnished the floor.
friday morning i met an acquaintance, joelle, for coffee. she's really rad and self-employed full-time as an artist which is very inspiring, especially since she's so young! (i think 22?). we have a lot of mutual friends from chicago so it was pretty fun talking with her.
a reference photo of our house for a comic i'm drawing. we live in the yellow and brown row house on the left.
that night i went to a ladies night dinner and met a lot of really rad gals
it was at my friend joanna's house. she's holding the cat. i knew joanna from when we both lived in baltimore.
everyone there was really cool and i only had one or two degrees of separation from them already through the few people i know in philly. this is a small city!
i'm completely charmed by west philly, especially at night. chicago seems so midwestern and uniform in comparison.
watching dawsons creek and cuddling with a rover ball
on saturday i had my first babysitting gig. i had lined up a family to work with via craigslist before even moving out here. i'll be working with their 2 month old baby, but that doesn't start for another month. however, upon meeting them this week, they introduced me to their friends who could use some help here and there immediately. it panned out really fast and i had a babysitting gig a few days later. this is pepper.
pepper is 3 and a half and her brother smith is one and a half. their mom is starting the philadelphia free school, a k-12 school opening this fall! really rad. pepper and smith are smart and easy going kids. as an activity, i showed pepper how to use my camera and she took some really great shots, including this one of me and smith.
i was really impressed by how she considered what to photograph before pushing the button. a lot of kids will just rapid fire shoot once they have a camera in their hands. here's another really cool one that she took.
and another by pepper
me and pepper with the self-timer
pepper and smith
meeting dom for coffee at satellite. dom and i became buds at the fest this past year in florida. he's rad and lives in NJ but comes to philly a lot. it was nice catching up.
2nd page of comics done. i just started a year long comics project about my first year in philly. i'm going to do one page a week and each page will be about the previous week i had. so it will be one long autobiographical story about being in a new place. i did two intro pages, and am about to start drawing my first week in philly! some weeks will just be about what i did, others might just be one conversation from that week. it will depend on what happens i guess! philly friends, i guess, be warned that you might make some appearances in comic form.