The Pixies at the Tower Theater

It was with a tinge of sadness that Mr. DS and I walked down 69th St. in Upper Darby; we're getting to that stage where we realize that each concert may be "the last one". You can probably relate; you focus on your career, go back to school, maybe start a family or a cat rescue, your favorite artists sell-out or blow their heads off…attending concerts just drops to the bottom of the list of priorities. Then there are other little things like how the music industry as a whole is just a big machine, with no more moral high ground than any big pharma or oil company anymore. Purchasing tickets has become an adventure in racketeering. Simply put, there are easier ways to spend a Tuesday night.

But when I found out that the Pixies were actually coming to Philadelphia, I broke down and I had to go. They are really the last vestige of music as I remember it being when I was just out of school, very broke, totally prodigal, with more good years ahead of me than behind me. But a lot of time has passed and things happened to all of us: loved ones got sick, people we cared for died, we got divorced, we lost touch with friends or lost friendships altogether, we got fired from jobs or had to look for new jobs. The Pixies and I have more in common now than we did 20 years ago. And that's why I went.

So they played some B-sides and the entire Doolittle album which was cool on one hand, but totally reeked of path of least resistance on the other (20th anniversary not withstanding). But path of least resistance is what it's all about when you get to that certain stage of your life when you just don't want surprises anymore…because when you get past 40, most of the surprises ahead of you are not good ones. I did sense that the band was not totally into what they were doing. They seemed glad enough to be there, but they really didn't interact with the crowd – I mean come on, this was the opening show of the tour, you can't be tired of it already. But yeah, you can. Some people can come to work every day on auto-pilot and still do a pretty damn good job because they are so good at what they do and they've done it for so long that it doesn't require full engagement. They've got it down to a science. The Pixies, after playing since the 80's, have got it down to a science. They didn't need to work too hard at it because they know they're good and they know we know they are good. I'm willing to cut them some slack for that. On the other hand, they did give me what I came there for…loud music written by folks from a generation who didn't think they would still be here by now.

For those of you who missed it, here's the set list:
Dancing the Manta Ray
Bailey's Walk
Weird at My School
Manta Ray
Debaser
Tame
Wave of Mutilation
I Bleed
Here Comes Your Man
Monkey Gone to Heaven
Mr. Grieves
Crackity Jones
La La Love You
No. 13 Baby
There Goes My Gun
Hey
Silver
Gouge Away

Encore 1:
Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)
Into the White

Encore 2:
Nimrod's Son
Isla de Encanta
Vamos
Where is My Mind?

Who are the (Sketchy) People in Your Neighborhood?

The Early Years - New York

Comedian Patton Oswalt describes a condition called "Sketchy-Head" wherein a person is drawn towards that which is shabby, shady, and perhaps tinged with risk and danger. Usually this is a condition of economics, but sometimes it's a character flaw. I cop to the character flaw, enhanced by economics.

The first place after my parent's house was an apartment over a nail salon, deep in the urban heart of Albany, NY. The entrance had that fake nail chemical odor, but you would stop smelling it after a few minutes in the apartment. We had a beautiful view of an overpass and an abandoned church. The abandoned church attracted crack-heads and teens looking for a place to fornicate. But you know you are living in a shady neighborhood when the Chinese place with bullet-proof glass at the counter won't deliver to you. No Chinese restaurant would deliver to us unless we took great pains explaining that we lived on the north end of Green St. and not the south end. And even then, it was only 50-50 that they would agree to deliver.

Then there was the place "just outside the Stockade district" in Schenectady. To the outsider, Schenectady has a reputation as all sketch all the time, but it's not. There are many beautiful, historic places to live. I just couldn't afford any of them. So I moved into a shoebox on the second floor of a pre-civil war building that was literally next to the bridge that divided the Stockade from the its shabbier neighbor. Rents dropped by $150/month just by virtue of a bridge. Talk about being on the wrong side of the tracks.

The first flaw of this zoning disaster was that there were no closets. Blinded by the appeal of cheap rent, I never noticed the lack of closets until moving day. I kept my clothes in laundry baskets (the Louis Vuitton of sketch-head luggage) during the entire time I lived there. The bathroom was so small that you had to climb into the shower to close the door. The landlord hadn't bothered to clean the place between tenants and there was birdseed stuck between the edge of the carpet and the wall. My downstairs neighbor (in an unwitting attempt to be ahead of the drug trend) was an un-employed meth tweeker who called me the N-word when I banged on the floor to let him know his wife-beating was too noisy. Since using the front entrance meant that I would have to encounter "Tweeking White Guy", I routinely used the back steps…also known as the fire escape. There were no bugs. That's the only nice thing I can say about it.

Stay tuned for the New Jersey installment.

The Hopewell Furnace: A Colonial, Industrial Cathedral

We took a very impromptu trip to the Hopewell Furnace in Elverson, PA on Sunday. Our typical holiday ritual involves enjoying one of the many beautiful parks that are plentiful in this part of Pennsylvania. After a late breakfast, I got the idea to visit French Creek State Park. When we arrived in the park, I saw a sign pointing to something called Hopewell Furnace. I suggested that we follow that sign and we found ourselves at an historical site that is actually run by the National Park Service.

Mark Bird hounded the Hopewell Furnace in 1771 and it operated until approximately 1883, primarily manufacturing pig iron and cast iron stoves. Now the site provides an excellent example of early American industrialism. I found it surprising that such "heavy" industrial enterprises should be located so far from anywhere. Hopewell Furnace is nowhere near Philadelphia or Pittsburg. There were no train lines or canals to deliver the products out of the forge. The Park Rangers are quick to tell you that everything that wasn't produced at the furnace came in and went out went by horse and cart. I think of urban industrialism when I think about the industrial revolution. But my impression was completely changed when I learned that there were similar forges dotting the landscape of southeast Pennsylvania.

For those of us who remember studying medieval history in school, the cathedral represented the heart of a community. It stood in the center of the town and all activity flowed from it and circulated around it. The Hopewell Furnace was a self-contained complex, surrounded by a main house, livestock, barn, cultivated farmland, fuel for the furnace, a store, a blacksmith, and tenant housing for workers. The furnace complex is w few steps from the main house (where the owner lived) and the tenant housing. Since many of the workers and craftsmen lived on the property, for these folks, there was never any getting away from work as the furnace operated 24 hours a day. You could always see the spire from the cast house from anywhere on the property. And the air was probably thick with dust from coal and smoke from the furnace. You didn't just come to work for a shift. A craftsman had to make each cast, wait fro the iron to be ready, then pour the mold and wait for it to cool. This was a long, involved process you simply could not walk away from. On Sundays, pig iron was made from what was left over in the furnace. Living next to where you worked meant you could be "on the clock" almost all the time, much as we are now. It seems in the age of Blackberrys, email, and teleconferencing, we've come full circle – we're never off the clock either.

The craftsmen who made the products were paid a higher wage, but they were not paid for the time it took them to make the product. They were paid by the piece. So all the time it took them to create and pour a mold was not paid for. If the finished product was perfect, they were paid in full. If the product was imperfect, but still usable, they were paid half. If the product was too flawed to use, they were paid nothing and all the time and effort creating it was lost. So there was a lot of incentive to get it right the first time…do-overs cost the furnace owner and the craftsmen money.

Apparently, Ikea did not invent the idea of flat-pack construction either. Cast iron stoves were Hopewell Furnace's hot item. But the stoves were constructed in pieces that could be stored flat and assembled on site. Not only did this make transportation more efficient, but it protected the stoves from damage. Cast iron may be heavy, but it is brittle. A cast iron stove was also an expensive, made to order, consumer item that would have been the pride and key element of a home. Imagine your dismay if your stove arrived broken! This flat pack idea was a brilliant piece of engineering.

No description of the furnace is complete without mentioning the water wheel that drove the bellows in the cast house. If you've never seen a working water wheel, you will be struck by the level of engineering it would have taken to conceive of and build such a thing in an age where a simple infection could kill you. The combination of the falling water and the low groan of the wheel echoing throughout the cast house are soothing and melodious to the modern tourist. But at the same time the water wheel feels like a barely controlled animate creature; a Polyphemus that could crush and devour you. You know you are in the presence of something very powerful – the casting house itself reminded me of some kind of crazy, industrial cathedral with its high ceilings and Romanesque arches. The craftsmen would have been its high priests and the molten iron would have been a daily communion.

While the furnace produced cannons for the American Revolution and weapons for the War Between the States, it was plagued by economic downturns, natural disasters and ultimately cast upon the industrial, evolutionary heap. Eventually, the Federal government obtained the property and its restoration became a public works program during the first great depression.

In addition to the historical site, where we were treated to a sand-casting demonstration and a brief overview of life on the complex and exhibits of typical farm livestock, the traditional park elements are available. In the fall, there is an apple orchard with a variety of apple species to pick. There are picnic grounds and walking trails. It is surrounded by forests that promise a majestic foliage show in the fall. It was a hidden gem that we literally stumbled upon by serendipity alone.

More information about Hopewell Furnace is available here.
And a free, downloadable book about the site's history, prepared by the National Park Service is available here.