The Poverty Jet Set

One of my favorite travel blogs Intelligent Travel just did a fantastic interview with author Robert Neuwirth. He writes SquatterCity, a blog that covers the plight of impoverished people in urban areas. He’s also coming out with a book Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World which “is an attempt to humanize these maligned settlements.” In the interview, they talk about how to go about visiting these parts of the city, why you should and why it’s good.

I have a special place in my heart for downtrodden urban areas of the world. Not only do I live on the fringes of some of the worst neighborhoods in my own country, but I’ve been to others in my travels around the world. They are certainly sad places to be, but important for us not to ignore. And certainly not places or people to fear. Seeing the way people live in urban poverty compared to rural poverty is always striking, and I think we can learn so much from the contrast. About the cost of globalization. About human dignity. About the true price of material wealth.

This article also brings to mind a daring documentary I saw at a couple film festivals last year, “Ghosts of Cite Soleil“. It tells the story of some of the gangs in Haiti who struggle with control and survival in the big shantytown of Port-au-Prince. Not sure if it’s been released theatrically, but when it comes out on DVD, I highly recommend it.

Audrey and I have been lucky enough to be invited to a couple recent Philly Food Blogger meetups, an extravegant delight from the epicurian minds of some wickedly good cooks, wine lovers and foodies who like to write, eat and well, cook. Audrey and I don’t blog about food, per se, but we do have a video series about cool date spots in Philly called Illadates (in case you haven’t seen it!).

This time, the Philly Food Blogger meetup was hosted graciously by Taylor of Mac & Cheese. Her blog, IMHO, is one of the best-written, most beautifully photographed, and frequently updated restaurant/gardening/foodie blogs in the area. Plus, she’s one cool gal. Thanks for a great night, Taylor!

A quick shout out to some of our new fun foodie friends from the meetup (read their blogs!): the Two Fat Als, E of Foodaphilia fame, McDuff and his wine, David the PhilaFoodie, the lovely Urban Vegan, the wonderful Fork You! couple, and of course, the lovable duo Philly Food Guys. Cheers, all! Until next time.

Great party at Jeff Carpineta’s hacienda in lovely Kenso, New Years ‘08. I’ll let the photos do the talking. Here’s me, Maggie and Adam first thing in 2008:

Of course we needed to hit up ol’ Fishtown before the end of the season! Watch for those cameos! Alex, Brandy, Kyle, Sammy, Jeff and Will all make a brief cut!

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Last night was First Friday here in Philly, and we went out to see my friends David Kessler and Candace Karch’s show at the Babmi Gallery in Fishtown. His show is “Shadow World” doing a multi-media instillation of his excellent art-video blog of the same name. If you haven’t watched any episodes, do yourself a favor and check ‘em out. Her show is “Lost and Found” and is showing absolutely amazing prints of surreal-looking x-rays with pen and ink drawing. Show is up until January 20, 2008. Go buy some art! Have a look at the short vid I shot there:

Audrey and I just completed the 10th episode of Season 2 (the 22nd of 24 total) in our video series, Illadates. Now’s your chance to catch up on some of the episodes you missed! Did you see us getting crazy in a costume shop in Mount Airy? Did you see us watching the sunset from the Ben Franklin Bridge? Did you see us galavanting around Port Richmond? How about watching us suck it up at bowling? You can watch every episode in the viewer below! Just click the ‘book’ button, then the ‘episodes’ tab, and pick yr favorite.

This week’s date was to Washington Avenue and the amazing Mummer’s Museum! Fun!

We’ve had a ton of fun making Illadates over the course of this year. It’s been a fantastic project. We are, however, happy to take a break from making the show week-in and week-out. We’ve already shot episode 23 in Fishtown (stay tuned for that next week), and be sure to see the season finale, the ‘Win a Date‘ episode in two weeks.

What’s next for us, you may ask? Well…. Audrey and I are already scheming up our next project, of course! But it’s a secret for now. You’ll see. Watch for that in February of 2008.

I haven’t been able to get out to shows much this fall because I’m so dang busy, but I did get to go see Dragons of Zynth and Celebration at Johnny Brenda’s on Saturday night. It was a great show! And of course, I made a couple vids. Here’s one from Celebration’s set:

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Instead of having a party to celebrate the end of our second season of the Illadates show, we thought it might be fun to have a contest for our season finale show happening in a couple weeks. Isn’t that exciting!? Here’s the announcement we made yesterday:

Head over to uwishunu for details. You can email your date idea to iknow [at] uwishunu.com or leave a comment to enter the contest! We’ll be keeping track of the best pitches, and probably posting them in a blog post. You can vote for your faves, soon, too!

We can’t wait to hear what your favorite date in Philly is. Make ‘em good, people. We want to have some fun with you! Even if you don’t live in Philly, wouldn’t this be a great excuse for a visit?

And do us a favor… spread the word for us! Kthxbai.

Not that Audrey and I want to leave Philly any day soon (we love it here!), but this article in the New York Times (with accompanying video) makes me salivate.

Portland and I have a long, mythological relationship. I’ve only spent a grand total of sixteen or seventeen days there spread over four or five visits and passing-throughs. But it’s always lurked around my mind as one of the greatest cities in America, embodying so many ideals I want in a lifestyle. Biking, sustainability, art, music, proximity to wilderness. Oddly, even though I’ve gone on and on about “someday soon I’ll be moving to Portland” during the travel years of my twenties, I never have. And I wonder if I ever will. Once, in the fall of 2002, I even packed my car, ready to move, but somehow through a strange twist of fate, ended up in Philly for a year before moving back to Colorado.

Who knows. Maybe I’ll get my stint in Portland yet.

Okay folks, this is a must-see! My wife’s band, Hunter Gatherer, previously a solo project, now a duo, is performing at Johnny Brenda’s on Sunday evening (October 28th at 9pm). Should be a lovely show as she’s opening for the excellent Scout Niblett. Come out and support her, hear her amazing songs! Of course, I’ll be video taping the performance and will be blogging it regardless, so if you’re far away or have a good excuse to miss it, just check back here in a couple days. Thx! See you Sunday!

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Port Richmond isn’t the first place to pop into most young urbanite’s mind when pondering a date, but it should! It’s a great neighborhood, the heart of the Polish American community in Philadelphia. Audrey and Mark head up there in Episode 16 to have dinner at Syrenka, one of the most famous Polish restaurants in town. They ride the historic trolley Route 15 up there and have a beer at Byrne’s Tavern. Join us!

Last week was, understandably, a bit crazy. I didn’t get much of a chance to promote our last episode of Illadates. In fact, I completely forgot to cross-post it here. It’s one of my favorite episodes to date. Do have a watch!

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One of my best friends, Sammy bought a house a couple years back in Fishtown, an up-and-coming neighborhood on the outskirts of downtown. He’s been rehabbing it, spending his blood, sweat and tears to build it out to something nice. Every so often, something jumps out and reminds him - he’s a pioneer here. Poverty and violence persist still in this area of town. It’s getting better. But then he emails me when something like this happens:

“monday night a dude tried to rob me, my neighbor beth, her friend maureen, and my buddy steve. we sit in beth’s livingroom with the front door open every night, drinking beers. black man around 40 165 lbs 5′11″ at 8 pm walked in and told us not to move and to give him our money. all four of us immediately stood up. i said ‘are you fucking kidding me’, to the reply ‘i’ve got a piece.’ dude obviously didn’t have a gun, but apparently had a small (brand new shitty little) knife. i cornered him in the doorway, as he wasn’t about to get any further in the house, and began to tell him ‘everything’s okay, i’ve got money right here, all the money, just calm down, you can take the money and leave, it all be over soon.’ i began counting out the $83 bucks i had in my pocket. he didn’t trust me, thought i was tricking him. the girls were leaving the room and calling the cops. dude didn’t take the money and wasn’t looking at me, seconds passed. Steve was directly behind me, ‘that’s it you have to leave right now’, pushes past me slamming the guy against the screen door.

Read more after the jump… (more…)

Up there, top floor. My loft. Good or bad, this sure looks like the future to me.

Behold, Illadates: Queen Village! Enjoy!

BTW, we’re showing you the version we uploaded to Viddler. I just wanted to give those nice fellas a quick shout out ‘cuz their player is dope (how cool is it that you can comment within the videos!) and they’re doing good work up in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania, my old high school stomping grounds. Oh yeah, plus, they did us a sweet favor and featured us on their blog! Do yourself a favor and go upload some vids there!

Audrey and I brought our video camera along with us on some errands around town and decided to shoot a quick couple of vids for Lonely Planet TV, the new video site made by the fantastic travel book publishing company. They’ve got a contest up on the site asking for videos about places you feel at home. Obviously, that’s what Audrey and I love to do, so we had to enter. Here are our goofy creations. Goofy being an understatement. We’re nerds. Please forgive us in advance. But if you get a chance, click over to the site and rate them high for us! FTW!

Oh baby! Can you believe it? History, folks. That’s history. And now, I give you this… a video my friends and I made on opening day back in April… when everyone knew this was possible. When everyone thought it could happen. The vibe was right. It was in the air.

Congrats, Phils! You rule! Onward!

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about bike safety in the city lately. Recently, a bicyclist in my neighborhood, George Gonzalez, got crushed by a bus just two blocks from my house at a spot that I bike past dozens of times a month. And this morning, I’m reading about a popular blogger named Adam Finley of TV Squad who was killed last week by a bus in Minneapolis. What a bummer. Hearing about this just makes me so mad. Didn’t the bus see him? Wasn’t he riding safely? Even rock stars aren’t immune. Remember Mary Hanson of Stereolab?

If you’ve read my blog for a while, you know that I like to post about bikes and biking. I love my bike, it’s a sturdy ride. An old steel-framed Schwinn with a single speed on a freewheel hub. It’s got a weird LiveWrong sticker on the downtube that a previous owner slapped on the frame. He told me it was to raise awareness about bicyclists being hit by cars, but when I google it, all I get were stupid tounge-in-cheek references to another campaign.

I was thinking about covering the sticker over, but instead I am going to declare a new meaning. I want it to be about fighting the senseless carnage of road rage, careless driving and unsafe habits when bikes and cars collide. Literally. Those of us who ride around big cities on a daily basis make our best efforts to be safe (usually). I sure do. Let’s all remember to keep an extra eye out for those two wheelers while driving cars, okay? And I guess I’ll be making sure not to casually cruise through red lights anymore.
Lastly, I hate news like this because it discourages some people from getting in the saddle. We need more bikers, not less. Here are some resources and tips to help your make urban bike riding safer:

BikeSafe.com
Bike Safety Tips on Treehugger.com
Paul Dorn’s Bike Commuting Tips
Urban Cycling Resource Guide

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