Support the Pedal Co-op Next Wednesday!

A shindig to help the pedal co-op become a nonprofit, with bands, a bake sale, a second premiere of of the film Bicycle Cupid and valet bike parking. Fun! April 15 @ 8pm. The Marvelous, 204 s. 40th St. in Philadelphia.

Seriously, Stupidity

I will be showing some work in a big group show opening this Wednesday at a new gallery space above Kung Fu Necktie in Old Kensington. Stop by, check it out. Also, Jamie Dillon will be playing the Jamaican tunes on the first floor so bring some dancing shoes.

Shadow's Space
1248 N Front Street (above KFN)
Philadelphia, PA 19122

+++ Opening Wedensday March 18, 2009, 6-10 PM

Kung Fu Necktie, a new nightlife entertainment venue opened in Fishtown for the local arts community announces the grand opening of a new gallery for the Philadelphia art scene- Shadow’s Space. Operating in tandem with Kung Fu Necktie’s ongoing program of live music, performance and DJ events, Shadow’s Space will be an alternative venue for regional, national and contemporary art.

The premier exhibition at Shadow’s Space, Seriously Stupididity, curated by two of Philly’s most beloved aesthetic savants Adam Wallacavage and Damian Weinkrantz, features a veritable lexicon of emerging and established artists who have come to define this town as one of the great bastions of cultural production in America today.

A counterpoint of the divergent tendencies that make contemporary art simultaneously brilliant and brutal, Seriously Stupid brings together a broad range of visual provocateurs from the multivarious fields of comics, conceptualism, painting, sculpture and skate culture. By contrasting and collapsing the problematic boundaries by which we separate the intellectual and intentionally moronic tendencies inherent in picture-making today, we understand that both are legitimate responses to the complexities of our modern world, and each offers some quotient of sympathy and understanding for the dysfunction of our collapsing empire. For the super-smart and inebriate alike, this is art to get in a brawl over for no other reason than the make-up sex after will be the best you ever had.

Participating Artists Include:
Shelley Spector
Charles Burns
Drew Leshko
David Dunn
Danny Perez
Spencer Wunder
Mary Deevy
Manuel Dominguez, Jr.
Jessica Roberts
Gloria Joan Haag
Brieann Robyn Tracey
Carrie Collins
Jason Goldberg
Issac Lin
Kelly Turso
Adam Crawford
Aryon Hoselton
Andrew Jefferey Wright
Ken Sigafoos
Ben Woodward
Judith Schaechter
Amber Lynn Thompson
Crystal Stokowski
Matt Leines
Jim Houser
Jayson Musson
Andrew Clark
Plankton art co.
Erich Weiss
Dan Tag
Dave Fox
Nick Paparone

Derby Meetin Up

You may remember last year that we hung at the Trenton Avenue Arts Festival, a.k.a. the festivus around the Kensington Kinetic Sculpture Derby. Now, if you're just the spectating type, you have three more months of winter until the actual event.

BUT if you are interested in being part of the derby this year, this Saturday is the Meet N Greet for potential entries to the 2009 Rendition. From 2-4 this Saturday at Philadelphia Brewing Company, folks are meeting up to talk kinetics, probably over some of that fine brew. I imagine the ideas will be flowing like the beer and if you're a derby hopeful, you should try to go! I mean, you probably need a project in your life, right? A new hobby? Maybe bicycle scultpure is it.

My Plaid Pony

Following our credo for reuse and penchant for refuse, the ladies of FH sport a good number of vintage ensembles. We all know it's possible to find crazy awesome scores in the bargain bin at Village Thrift in Jersey, but sometimes we all deserve to go into a Vintage store and emerge with a vintage bathing suit in a nice color that actually fits, off the rack. And our very favorite outlet for vintage shopping in Philadelphia is hands down the closet at Plaid Pony, the garage turned living space and vintage depot. Lara, the proprieter of Plaid Pony, converted the auto shop a while back and now their house may as well be plucked from the pages of your favorite magazine. It's seriously that perfect.



From the collection of toasters wallpapering an entire surface of their kitchen to the furniture harvested from a closing mental facility, the place breathes modernism and thoughtful design, creating the perfect gallery for the treasures that Lara collects. How do I know all this? Funny you should ask. Last year Carrie gave me a gift certificate for Christmas and though Lara does most of her vintage business on the internet or through consignment at stores in the area, I managed to get the VIP tour and treatment with my friend Sue one day last spring.





The space has no traditional storefront, but several rooms of the house have been devoted to the business she runs through her website, one for priced items, one for backup, one for housewares and bits and one for decorations and actually doing business in. The former three are packed, packed! full of stuff. If you need further baiting just go look at her website, and imagine that quality of stock but multiply it times at ten. The girl has a treasure TROVE.

Normally, to access Lara's collection, you'd have to go through the website or schedule an appointment, but this weekend is the third annual holiday open house she holds so that everyone gets VIP treatment. Saturday and Sunday this weekend you can go and see her beautiful house and her expansive collection of vintage in person. Hers is one for the ages, I promise you, so if you can manage to hoof it up to Fishtown this weekend, you won't be sorry. A rare glimpse awaits you.

Just Food

A week ago, Friday night was the usual Art Murmur Festivities in Oakland and I attended. The opening for the group show "Food Justice" at Rock Paper Scissors was a particular draw, for me anyway, and judging from the usual horde-sized turnout I'd say the topic seems to crowd some other people's minds too.



Maybe it's just California, but the whole foodsystems-MichaelPollan-Urban-local-slowfood thing has started to infiltrate pretty much...everything. It seems that nothing is safe from the consideration of where and how your food is grown. Especially in the design world, people whose job it is to produce and promote aesthetics are now pulling on the ideas of locality and seasonality for the substance of their work. See also: Slow Food Nation. The boundaries between design and action are more blurred today than ever before, as innovation has become the battleground for the shaping of our society's future. Call me postmodern, but I see design, economics and science so intertwined at this historic juncture that it is sometimes difficult to tell the three apart. And I'm all aboard this smushsmash of issues. Of course the exhibit at RPS seemed only too timely and so I headed over for a closer look.
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The show touched on all facets of our local East Bay alternative food production rockstars: People's Grocery, ForageOakland, the Secret Cafe and CitySlicker Farms Backyard Garden Project. Rock Paper Scissors contributes more regularly to this movement by providing a pickup point for the people's grocery Grub Box program.

ForageOakland contributed maps of the North Oakland Neighborhood documenting the location of found fruits and edibles. And SecretCafe, a house turned sometimes restaurant, displayed an archived collection of menus: each illustrated carefully and beautifully and hung about for all to see.





The real centerpiece of the show, however, belonged to the Backyard Gardeners, who as part of RPS's Community Collaboration Project used Holga cameras to document each other, their surroundings and the gardens they've sewn in an attempt to bring real food to their neighborhood.





For those who know it, West Oakland's unique situation within the food justice struggle demonstrates the severe reality of inaccessibility to quality foods in low-income neighborhoods. From People's Grocery,

There is only one supermarket to serve over 25,000 people...With a short supply of full-service grocery stores, many residents depend on over 40 convenience stores for their food shopping. These convenience stores carry mostly canned, processed, and poor quality foodstuffs and promote the consumption of candy, chips, liquor, and cigarettes. A 1998 community food assessment of West Oakland showed that only three of these convenience stores offered a selection of fresh fruits and vegetables (Farfarn-Ramirez, 1998). Prices at convenience stores were found to range between 30%-100% higher than prices in supermarkets.

Though some indirectly, each of the contributors to the exhibit address the issues surrounding our food systems in their own way. Some point to the abundance of foods in the urban landscape ready for the picking. Others illuminate the intimacy and sociality lost by the factory farming and sterilization of commercial food commodities. The juxtaposition of each of the components paints a truthful, critical and most of all hopeful picture of emergent views on food justice. The show stays up throughout the month of November, but more importantly I'd encourage anyone with free space to curate a show like this one. Different to your own place and the facets of food justice prominent in your own community, but present. Because I promise you it's present. I'd venture that if you go looking, you're likely to find some pretty remarkable folks at work doing similarly radical food justice work in your own city. You won't even have to look very hard.

Biketoberfest? Biketoberfests!

Yes, that's plural. This year will see the inaugural Biketoberfest in Philadelphia, put on by the Philadelphia Bicycle Coalition at Dock Street at 50th & Baltimore in West Philadelphia. I can't think of a more suitable location in October, with W.Philly's wealth of autumnal color and just downstairs from the wonderful bike shop at Firehouse. The brewery has crafted a special brew for the occasion and there are prizes up for raffle including a R.E.Load Bag, a bike and a service package at TrophyBikes. There's only 300 tickets available for sale so you'd be advised to purchase early (now!) to ensure you get in to see the entertainment: a lineup featuring Stinking Lizaveta, Natural Selection, the West Philly Orchestra and DJ's Danophonic & Hoagie Jawns...who you may or may not recognize as an FH model. 25 bones gets you entry, a food ticket and a commemorative pint glass; 15 gets you just entry and pintglass. (for those of you investors hurting from the recent market nosedive) Cash bar, 21+ and all proceeds benefit the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, who absolutely deserve your support! That's this SUNDAY OCTOBER 19 2-6 pm.



Now remember how I said fests? There's also a Biketoberfest here on the west coast in Fairfax, CA. If you're in the bay area, this fest--hosted by Access4Bikes and the Marin County Bicycle Coalition--in its 5th year will benefit bicycle advocacy in Marin County, the number one destination outside of the city for Bay Area cyclists. The event features a marketplace of bike builders, manufacturers, merchants, teams, clubs and land management and environmental representatives alongside a brewfest, bringing over a dozen handcrafted beers from Northern California brewers: Lagunitas Brewing, Iron Springs, Broken Drum, Anchor Brewing, Bear Republic, Moolight, Eel River, North Coast Brewing, New Belgium and Sierra Nevada.

You'll find guided group road and mountain bike rides finishing at the festival, a vintage bicycle exhibit, bike swap and even more G rated events for the kiddies. This version of Biketoberfest also advertises live music and food organically grown in Northern California. This one takes place SATURDAY OCTOBER 18 11-6 at Fair-Anselm Plaza Parking lots, 765 Center Blvd (next to Iron Springs Pub), downtown Fairfax, CA. It's free for all parts except the beer tasting, which costs $20 per person.

I think the simultaneity of these two like-minded events is no coincidence, just the beginning of a nice trend. I'd like to believe that next year there will be dozens of these in every city across the land. Because really, what better way to benefit community bike initiatives and strengthen community?

CMWC My Dudes

Delinquent! Delinquent. We've been back five days. I really wanted to be your correspondent and bring you photos ON LOCATION but you know, one beer leads to another, and before you know it the weekend is over with not a sober moment to spare on reporting. Do forgive.

Last Friday we set out for that great city in the north, Carrie, Mary and honorary FH Abbey "Snakes" Gunn. See Abbey above modelling our hot new ladies' tank. We stayed til Monday, ate lots of snacks, made some friends, broke some hearts. You know, the usual.

Finally though today, I'm happy to report that Toronto was pretty awesome. As a city, we found it friendly and inviting, despite being somewhat expensive. There were trolleys, to keep us from homesickness, with tracks as far as the eye could see to keep us on our toes. There were hippie girls singing into carrots, strip clubs offering European lap dances, old bleach blonde and permed diner waitresses and hot dog trucks on every corner serving up vegan dogs and dozens of condiments. Oh goodness, Canada.

The festivus mostly took place on Toronto Island, which required a ferry boat to reach. The island holds significance in the city's cycling history as the location for one of the first outdoor cycling tracks. This allowed for much bonding time and camaraderie, as you might imagine. Friendships were forged, sea legs were gained. By Festivus, I mean the CMWC's...Cycle Messenger World Championships. Maybe you are wondering the same thing the folks at border control were wondering. What exactly does that entail? Well from the organizers' brain to your eyes:

CMWC is a world championship sporting event, but it is also a world festival celebrating messenger culture and its broad influence on modern urban culture. CMWC hosts a variety of related galas, shows, parties and vendor markets where spectators mingle with messengers to get a jump on the latest bike trends and urban utilitarian fashion. The side events showcase the artistic, photographic, musical and literary talents of the world’s hardest working professional athletes.

Basically a competition for messengers the WORLD over coming together to run a course of checkpoints and have lots of fun and celebrate the glory. The event's taken place in various cities since 1993. The race takes place on a closed course that is sanctioned by the International Federation of Bike Messengers Associations (IFBMA). And most competitors are bike messengers but the weekend's events were open to everyone. And no cars on the island, did I mention that? Which made the race a lot safer, albeit less like actual messengering. The island is home to a small community of permanent and deliberate carfree residents.

Because this was a business trip, ahem, we didn't get to watch the actual racing quite as much as we would have liked, but the course snaked all over the island and we could glimpse it through the trees from our tent spot. We were in the Vendor Market with RELoad and across from other Philadelphians, Bilenky Cycle Works.

There were several other events taking place as part of the Championships: 300 Meter Sprints, a Cargo Race, Bunny Hop Competition, Skids, Track Stands, a Slow Race, a Pedal Boat Race and a Bike Polo Tournament. In other words, lots of people doing lots of things, all at once.

I'm not suprised that Toronto was named Bicycle Magazine's Most Bicycle-Friendly City in North America. I found it both bikable and friendly. You might say we had a pretty good time. Got a tan, got stormed on, saw two rainbows, got detained at border control inexplicably, and made it home in one piece. A success.