Riding through the ghetto on my bicycle, I rush through the stares and swerve past the garbage and broken glass towards Brighton. That’s right, folks; Brighton is a neighborhood in this fine city. Heard of it? From McMicken I descend down the ramp that is the Brighton Aprroach, which lovingly hugs the large metal Pat Renning sphere which denotes the entrance to our beloved ghetto—hood. Just past the fear-inducing area dive, lovingly know as Queen Ann, lies the inconspicuous front entrance to Sterling’s Ice Cream Factory: home.
Yeah, there’s a lot of loving here. I certainly always get some from the boys hanging outside my front door: “Hey shorty! Can I ride wit choo?”
I smile in response and scurry through the entrance. I wheel my bike around a corner and through the mildew-laden machine room of dripping pipes, up the flimsy wooden staircase, duck under the i-beams to approach the little red door that stands guard to my apartment. Like a scene from Alice in Wonderland, I duck through the tiny doorway, leaving the dark and cluttered warehouse surroundings and entering my large, bright loft.
A crash is heard from Thin Air Studio next door - workspace of sculptors Kirk Mayhew, Richard Fruth and Chris Daniels. I climb over a drum set, a few amps and chords to mount a table and look through the corrugated plastic that makes up a good portion of my apartments west wall. “You guys okay?”
Kirk’s distorted, blurry face pops up after climbing a ladder up to my wall.
“Just trying to find the heater” his muffled voice explains through the plastic. “We’re about to search the basement.”
Yippee for exploring the bowels of the old warehouse! Kirk, Chris and I explore, stumbling across random art projects, pieces of a plane and an ice cream making vat, which the three of us crawl inside of and chill in for awhile, before embarking upon a trip through some sordid old tunnels beneath Central Ave. I grab my head lamp and the three of us crawl our way through cobwebs and decades old rubble ecstatic over the rare find.
Emerging from the dust and returning to ground level, Chris (one of two curators at the Mockbee) says “That was an adventure. So, what are you doing tomorrow night?”
The following evening is an opening at Mockbee.
I bartend. The event rocks.
Afterwards I cross the street, pass Semantics Gallery, walk a few hundred feet and arrive home – greeted by neighbors safely tucked behind our razor wire fence enjoying a raging bon fire. I’m offered a beer and settle into a chair in front of the fire. The pit burns fragrant pine and asbestos and boasts aqua blue flames from the various chemicals and trash in the mix. Entranced by the burning embers we sit in silence, save for the crackle of the fire, Jack-Ass blaring out rock from the warehouse basement, and the “unts-unts” throbbing bass of a car parked down the street for a suspiciously lengthy period of time.
“You coming downstairs for yoga in the morning?” inquires Joe, amazing instructor and warehouse resident.
Wearily I roll out of bed, crawl six feet to clamber out the door onto the roof of the old Ice Cream Factory. The early morning mist makes my ghetto-hood feel eerily peaceful. From this vantage point, pearched a top a chimney, I see Martin Luther King High School and a park to the South. Slightly North West I see the words C.M. Mockbee & Co on the side of my favorite gallery.
Turn my head to the right and I see a billboard visible from Central Ave. Currently it looms over our ghetto, gloating: Jesus Has All The Answers.
Inside, my roommate - recording artist and graphic designer Matt Parmenter - is brewing us some coffee and setting up for band practice. I absolutely love the fact that one of my favorite bands ever, Medic, gives me a private live show in my apartment a couple times a week! It’s also Sunday, which means one of Scotty Wood’s rocking incarnations will be blaring in the basement in a few hours.
But first, I drag my butt downstairs for my meditative morning ghetto yoga class.
An odd conundrum, our little ice cream factory in the hood.