inVESTED.: Frankford Avenue First Friday

First Stop was Atlantis, a bar favored by the guys from Philadelphia Brewing Company just around the corner, so don't hate on Kenzinger too loud in there if you don't want to get beat up by a bunch of beer brewers. Ryan Briggs (who looks like the lead singer of Yeasayer) was my guide for the night. He worked with the NKCDC to help organize the Frankford First Friday and went around making sure all the participating businesses were doing okay.

This is actually Ryan, not Chris Keating

Goldfish Gallery
Since this was our first stop I started to think no one was going to be out due to the biting cold weather, because there was one guy perusing the walls of Goldfish. There were a lot of interesting sculptures, bronze and plaster (I think) and these real kitschy photographs that made you blush if you were caught looking at them too long. The photographs were of older women, maybe late 30's to 40's, in really provocative poses or just straight up naked. It felt like that day you walked in on your parent's doing it and couldn't look them in the eye for a while. Yup. Anyways, the sculptures were really great though. There was a really really really fat cat sculpture with a little guy being crushed in its paws. I don't know, I thought it was funny.

Highwire was next and it was packed. Their exhibition theme was LOVE in honor of Valentine's Day. So keeping that in mind, I walk in and the first thing I see is a huge canon sized penis spitting out bubbles, oh and little kids were running all around it... basically frolicking. There were also some pretty graphic pencil drawings of girls getting it in with a dildo. gross, but also hilarious given the kids running around and all. There were some poetry readings that were mostly just three old guys saying whatever they felt like and being as over the top as they could be, which was great. The one poet wore a white button up shirt with Love written in lipstick on his collar and on the back of his shirt was, also in red lipstick, a giant penis. I bumped into my middle school art teacher and he remembered my name!? This is a photo of him and his daughter. I don't even think he was married when he taught me how to paint with numbers back in 7th grade.

Perpetua Antiques across the street was next. I really liked this place, but it was so cramped and there was SOO much stuff. The owner said he wanted to shut down early because he had to take the Mrs to Spaghetti Warehouse for dinner. I still don't know if this was a joke or not. After I told him about my dad's coin collection he slipped me this weird Chinese Silver Dollar coin or something... I'm not sure what it is. I didn't feel like explaining that I was actually Korean and being rude, plus the coin is pretty awesome. I'm gonna show it to my dad next time I'm home.
Anyways, woah, sorry I went so off tangent. I think this place is better explained through photos:

Mr. Ryan Briggs (aka the guy from Yeasayer) hahahahha.. don't hate me.

This place has a huge collection of Life magazine that I definitely want to go back to check out sometime!

The Germ Bookstore was next. I had interviewed the owner David Williams the other day for a short write up and found out all this info on the exhibition, which was DEITSCH HEATHEN HEXOLOGY. Like Pennsylvania Dutch Hexology. These hexes are found in barns all over Pennsylvania and their history relates to pagan practices by the first German immigrants that later became the Pennsylvania Dutch that we know today. Not necessarily the amish. There were four artists: Valúlfr Vaerulsson, Swan Hilde, Patricia Hall and Hunter Yoder. Hunter had this awesome piece that actually combined Indian mythology and had a depiction of Vishnu made out of parts from 9 different animals.

Phew... we were really tired at this point, so we dropped in the Rocket Cat cafe to get some tea and harass Holly behind the counter.

Bambi was our last stop. Even though First Friday was supposed to end at 9, we stayed there pretty late. I really liked their stuff and definitely want to go back to pick something up sometime.