Thursday, October 8, 2009

Braddock

Today is my first day off work since two Mondays ago, and my to-do list has begun to overflow with letters to out-of-town friends. As much as I like the idea of old-fashioned letter-writing, I'm not in the habit of it and since I do so little writing by hand I write illegibly and get cramps, so maybe it's better to do the regular life updating via new media and leave the analog communication to fewer letters with more personal content. So, without further preamble, back to blogging.

As most of you probably know, I'm living in Braddock, PA. Moving here was part of the first phase of a plan that will hopefully culminate in a radically-minded art and music collective situated on property that it owns and allowing its members to devote more time to their creative pursuits. Unfortunately, that plan is predicated upon a few of us -- those without partners, jobs, leases, or anything keeping us in one place -- moving here before there is really a place to move and long before the majority of the collective members. So in early August, immediately following, in my case, a six-month period during which I was already away from home for about 3/4 of the time, we borrowed my parents' Ford Focus and bike rack and drove from the suburban DC-Metro area that we know and love/hate/are often ambivalent about to a building that used to be a convent, which is now an informal hostel owned by the mayor, across the main street from the Edgar J Thompson steel mill in the post-industrial outskirts of Pittsburgh.

Unfortunately for Welch, who was to spend his second and third weeks in town mostly on his own, my transient period was not quite over so after a week of looking for jobs and getting settled in and a weekend of collective meetings I left town again for Dewey Beach with the family, a wedding in Seattle, and an aborted visit with a friend in Portland. Just before midnight on Thursday, September third (a few days earlier than planned), my plane landed at the Pittsburgh airport. A long busride later I was eating half-priced Indian food with Welch and Mo (who was visiting for the evening) in my new city, and feeling relieved to finally be staying in once place for more than a few weeks.

1 comment:

Ryan Martin said...

I'm with the US Pirate Party and we're more or less looking to try the same thing in Braddock to start our national HQ.

Curious about possible collectives and groups that are already operating, cause I KNOW there have to be a few.