Finishing the Floor in the Upstairs Space

Finally, after months and months of waiting, we have the money to spring for the floor sanders... A good day! 

Et voila.

Coming Soon: Brandt Imhoff Senior Art Show + Special Guests

This show has been organized by Brandt Imhoff - wonderful designer of nearly all of Ben's printed material (L'Etage Bastille Day, Le Fits and the awesome 5th Side Benefit Poster) This is Brandt's senior show which we're hosting here. He's graduating with a Fine Art degree from Tyler School of Art this December, and has invited a group of other artists to show with him.

Opening: Saturday, December 11th

8pm-10pm

The Maas Building

@ 1325 Randolph St

Philadelphia, PA

Artists:

Brandt Imhoff

Joe Martin

Jon Irving

Adam Lovitz

Photos from the Benefit Show Nov 13, 2010

Well folks it was truly a blast. Thanks everyone for coming, and thanks to everyone who helped out, played music, moved heavy objects, swept the floor, set up lights, grilled hot dogs, manned the board, etc. It got us off on the right foot, and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly in the process.

Not Waving But Drowning, playing a great set after suffering much traffic on the way down from NYC.

Le Fits

BC Camplight

Chill time after the show. It's amazing what a campfire and a cypress tree will do to make you feel you are not in the middle of the city.

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* * * The Clean Up * * *

If you've seen the 5th Side space, (the open warehouse part of the Maas Building) you may be wondering how the hell we got all that junk cleaned up? May I remind you that just days ago it was full of crap? We get by with a little help from our friends. And of course, it's really all about lighting. (Thanks Kevin Muth for the awesome 2 hour lighting design)

Alonso Daco, Alex Yaker, and Brian Christinzio hoisting heavy objects up to the loft in preparation for the show.

Bye bye stuff! I guess we'll have to deal with you upstairs.

Hours before the show...

Benefit Show: Saturday, November 13th

Philly's own BC Camplight, Le Fits, and the NYC cabaret all-stars Not Waving but Drowning play at the 5th Side's first music show open to the public. Proceeds will go towards work on the performance space. $10 gets you in. We'll be serving beer, hot dogs and yes, there will be a campfire!

Applied Mechanics: Portmanteau

Photos from the Nov 7th performance by Applied Mechanics.

For more info, Applied Mechanics

The Word: Extended Shows Oct 29-30th

(photo by Johnny Osborne)

The Word: Extended shows by popular demand. Friday, October 29th at 8pm, Saturday Oct 30th at 10pm. All shows free. 1320 N 5th St. Philadelphia. Limited seats, reserve a ticket @ http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/132634

Elastic Theater presents: The Word

The 5th Side is presenting our first show open to the public: Elastic Theater's The Word. Double-click this flyer below to open larger, and for more info, visit http://www.elastictheater.com. If it's raining, the show will be held inside, in the large space upstairs, and if weather permits, the show will be outside.

New Paradise Laboratories Moves In

October 1st marked a new era for us over here. This is New Paradise Laboratories, moving their headquarters to the Maas building. They're setting up their office in one of the downstairs spaces. And they're super cool! Here's a link to their site: newparadiselaboratories.org.

Urban Academy Visits from NYC

Urban Academy, a public high school in NYC, sent a group down for a Philly field-trip. Ostensibly, they were in Philadelphia to study horses, but we think they came down just to camp out in our warehouse. It was fun, we made pasta and burgers and talked about the "G" word, but no one could beat Ben at ping pong.

All things have an origin: Rachel Birdsall, longtime teacher at Urban Academy "a small school with big ideas" is Catherine's sister.

September Photos

The entryway... with our home-made bench, hewn from an old beam left in the yard. Orange tree given to us frozen solid last winter by a neighbor. We nursed it back to life. It may need a new pot?

I stitched together this panoramic of the upstairs space. Try clicking the photo to see it a bit larger in a new window. This almost captures how cool it is. Anyway, it's quite nearly done.

The kitchen. Functional, needs some cabinets but the sink and stove work. 2 bathrooms off of this room also.

Great Leaps Ahead: Nearly Done with Phase 1

Trying to meet a deadline from the city's Façade Grant program (as well as a vacation - finally - in August) we have been hard at work getting our entrance on Randolph Street done. If these photos seem like a great leap ahead, it could be because our camera broke and left us blog-post-less for a while. It is as close to done as we've ever been with this phase of the project. Glass Commercial Door and Sidelights furnished by Roma Windows in South Philly. We tried to put them in ourselves, failed miserably because we didn't understand the interlocking parts, and finally hired a real sweet "glazer" named Spencer who worked 1/2 a day with us and didn't charge an arm or a leg. just a toe - and so we got it done right. It works. And then moved onto the project of the wall above the door.

We wanted to do something that looked modern, not cheap, yet cost was an issue, as always. So we looked at some design books and liked the look of vertical slatted wood in modern Scandinavian architecture. We made a design, bought a bunch of 1x4 pine boards at a lumber yard, and pre-stained and sealed them on the ground. Then we cut them to length, fabricated sets of 2 on the ground, and fastened them to nailer strips on top of the old plywood. I believe what we did could be called reverse board and batten. It's kind of barn, kind of modern, kind of soft, kind of hard.

Gerhardt, dancing on the scaffolding.

Halfway done! Kickin ass is what I say... and the windows (although they are fairly cheap pre-existing windows and slightly off kilter) look great when they're recessed a little.

The Facade Grant will match funds for replacing windows as well - so we took out all the old broken single-paned windows, cleaned things up and spray painted the green grating black. This is the first time since owning the building that these windows haven't been boarded up or covered by dirty plastic! Now open, the sun shines in. There is so much light inside it feels great.

Cleaned up a little inside, and it's nearly ready.

The Yard goes Green

Amazing what a little time will do. The clover is coming up, we've got a few plants in the ground, we are putting together some frames for raised beds.   It's been a hot summer, so we've been using tons of water.  Can't wait to get our rainwater system running - but that looks like that will have to wait for next season.  Again, when in need of gardening help, call your mother.  Pictured, Laura Birdsall and Ben, oggling the new plants.

Life where for years there has been none...  

Note small fig tree on left.  Grow little guy, grow!

Using our Cobblestones

We decided to use all our cobblestones to pave an area by the gate for parking.  Here's our neighbor Victor helping us set the stones.  How many wheelbarrow loads of stones did we move?  That's some heavy stuff, stone work.  Wouldn't recommend it for more than a week.  

Et Voila.

Dirt Farm

We got a couple loads of free fill dirt from one of Irish Kevin's work sites, and one load of healthy dark topsoil from a nursery.  Above is a picture of the free dirt.  I guess we got what we paid for.  We spent a week cleaning out all the trash and rocks.

When you need help with your garden, call your mother.  Ben's mom came from Minnesota to help get things going.

Once we got the soil into reasonable shape, we seeded the yard with clover.  Dutch White Clover, to be exact.  We were incredibly excited when it started to poke up. This is like an ultrasound for clover.

Excavating The Yard

Kevin (Irish Kevin) claimed that he would excavate the whole yard in one day. I didn't quite believe him. He started at 7am. This photo shows where he was at 7:15. And thus it was and it was thus and all that it was was good. Thursday, May 20th, 2010 our yard was liberated of the confines of it's asphalt.

We found the remnants of a cobblestone street under the asphalt. We saved them a big pile. We're imagining parking area made of cobblestones.

There was also loads of slate and bricks. We saved what was good. Bricks for building repairs, slate for a patio.

THE AMAZING STORY OF THE CHEAPEST RAINWATER COLLECTION TANK EVER, AND HOW BEN NARROWLY ESCAPED BEING BURIED ALIVE AND YES I POSTED ANOTHER PICTURE OF OUR CATS AND THERE'S A BURNING BUSH AND OTHER STRANGE BIBLICAL STUFF TOO.

We measured our $25 1000 gallon water tank and picked a spot for a 7' deep 6' wide hole. We'll eventually run the gutters into it, and stick a pump down into the bottom and irrigate our garden with rainwater. But first before the garden exists, we wanted to bury the tank. A "cistern" I believe it's called. I gave Irish Kevin four pendant lamps that I bought at an auction. I had bought 28 of them for $7.50 a piece (I have trouble with quantities at auctions) Anyway, Kevin liked the lights and said he'd dig the hole for the tank as a trade. So we're up to $53 now...

Funny thing is that we found an old basement right where we started digging. A nice flat basement floor 7' below the ground. How odd. It seems perhaps that the Lord wanted us to put our tank here.

My job was to go into the hole (may I call it a "spider hole"?) and help place the tank as Kevin lowered it in.

It was a little scary but apparently not scary enough to stop taking pictures. Have I really become such a blog-dork? Can I invent the word "blork"?

B L O R K

And now here's the blork underneath the water tank.

Wait! No Kevin! Arrgh!

I narrowly escaped a horrible fate.

The world is just a giant litter box isn't it? I've always thought so.

A post-work barbeque in front of a gaping hole, beside a fig tree. It seems rather biblical, doesn't it? Perhaps it is the fig tree that is on fire, and God (or perhaps Satan) is speaking to us through this burning tree... and then suddenly the earth opens up and swallows the young Abraham (Blork) into it's dark crevasse. And then the followers of Jesus all ate hot dogs and drank cold beer. Hip hip hooray!