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Imagine NINJA MOUNTAIN, where all the most sage, venerable, and deadliest ninja masters go to practice their craft. Ninja mountain is not in the middle of the capital city, because the bustle and high rent of a capital city are only good for the showiest ninja masters, for the crowd-pleasers, for the ones trying to get their facemask on the cover of Ninja Magazine — not for those that are deeply committed to their art. On Ninja Mountain, the quiet bamboo groves are filled with the quiet whisper of DELICIOUS PASTRIES.

Wait, I got my metaphors tangled up there. My point is that West Chester, PA, is CHOCOLATE MOUNTAIN, because… wait, hang on a second, damn. Let me start over.

World-class chocolatier Chris Curtin owns Eclát Chocolate on High street. It is a tiny shop with a case up front, a window filled with AMAZING cast chocolate, and a stainless-steel door that leads to the kitchen.

Chris started Eclát after studying in Old World master chocolate ninja kitchens, and makes amazing AMAZING chocolate. That’s an easy phrase to throw around, but check this out: Jeffrey Steingarten said that Chris makes “World’s greatest caramels“, in Vogue magazine. His flavors are INCREDIBLE: “Oh, mint? Yeah, that’s cool, let me just try th- DEAR GOD I UNDERSTAND NOW. UNTIL THIS MOMENT I HAVE NEVER EATEN A MINT CHOCOLATE.”

Randy took the picture above while I was talking to Chris about molds, and the picture at right because he (Randy) is running a promotion over at Lose It or Lose It where if you sign up and make a commitment to lose weight, Randy will reward you with delicious Eclát chocolates. If you lived in West Chester, this world-class choclatier is, you know, right on the walk home!

But that’s the thing — West Chester is packed with amazing restaurants. For example, down at the end of Gay street, there’s Gilmore’s Restaurant, whose chef Peter Gilmore spent 22 years at Le Bec-Fin (“Why did Georges Perrier ever let this man leave?” wonders Zagat.) You can see lots of them at West Chester Dish, Mary Bigham’s West Chester restaurant website.

See, the thing is, there’s SO MUCH amazing food here on NINJA MOUNTAIN, that you can’t run a simple errand without stumbling on really amazing world-class food. This morning, Kate and I picked up a box of croissants at the Strawberry Bakery in Frazer. Lydia needed to use the bathroom, so Kate walked her back, and I spent a few minutes watching them assemble really AMAZING-looking fruit tarts, while owner Jean Pierre Bournazel negotiated with customers over the phone via his assistant, in the most amazing Central Casting French accent I have ever heard: “Tell zem… tell zem I could do a QWAAART-er of zat!”

I asked if I could blog the process: “Say, Jean Pierre, may I take a picture of the tarts?” “Yes! Of course! Zey even smile! SMILE FOR ZE CAMERA!”

Jean Pierre opened the Strawberry Bakery in 2004, and teaches baking classes in his kitchen, through the Chester County Night School. Here’s a review of the class, in French. I see that there’s a Christmas Cookie class coming up on December 13th — is anyone interested in going?

Anyhow, the point I’m making is that, here in West Chester, PA, there’s a world-class chef, baker, or choclatier in every quiet bamboo grove. And not just Old Guard French, either — as the sizable Mexican population starts to open up their own businesses, there’s a crop of really amazing authentic Mexican restaurants coming along. YOU SHOULD SERIOUSLY LIVE HERE.

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Previous reasons why you should move to West Chester:

• #5: Downtown Beer Lab
• #4: Northbrook Canoe Company
• #3: Secret Mobile Robotic Pipe Organs
• #2: Rescue robots
• #1: Secret Skate Parks and Awesome Tack Shops

On Saturday night, Kate’s brother Matt got married to the wonderful Kristen Seidle (you might remember her as the Tequila dance teacher at the Guerilla Drive-In) at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. We went in on Friday for the rehearsal, and stayed at the Loews for two nights so we would be in town for everything.

“Everything” turned out to be more than we expected — after seeing two roller-derby bumper stickers on the way in to the city, followed by a woman on the street corner wearing a “Donna Matrix” Jersey, we discovered that the Roller Derby Nationals were in town, right across the street at the convention center. On Saturday, while Kate and Barb went to get their hair done, Lydia and I walked over to watch skaters like “Heavy Flo” from the Rocky Mountain Roller Girls and “Violet Temper” from the Philadelphia Liberty Belles battle it out in what (I think) was a quarterfinal:

Roller derby is now an amateur, DIY sport, with rules an awful lot like Quidditch, and a great sense of humor — there’s a national registry of handles, so when you come up with your awesome nickname: “Correctional Felicity!”, you can be the only one. The convention center was filled with lots of smiling, enthusiastic rockabilly feminists in purple sequined socks, ripped fishnets, ace bandages, and Betty Page bangs (and just about anything else you can imagine; the teams and skaters are similar to each other only in their exuberant, kick-ass creativity.)

The roller girls were mixed on the convention-center escalators with mitre-carrying bishops from the Episcopal Diocese convention (Ballroom 2), and four-foot karatekas competing in the Amerikick tournament upstairs. These last were staggering under the weight of five-foot trophies. What a great visit to the Convention Center!

Now, for two weeks, Kate has been working carefully on Lydia’s black velvet flower-girl dress. First, she made a muslin, determining that the sizing needed to be adjusted here and here, and then spent a marathon few days at fellow Last Call Bags sewer Ericka’s house, cutting velvet, sewing linings, and stitching tulle. The end result was WONDERFUL:
You can click the photo to see many more pictures of the dress on Flickr.

Lydia is normally very camera-shy, but when she put on this dress for the first time on Saturday afternoon, she just beamed, and would happily stand in front of any camera for any length of time, holding her bouquet and smiling from ear to ear.

Kate estimated that about forty hours’ worth of skilled labor went into creating this simple, small, dress, which just goes to show you that this stuff is not easy, I guess, and there’s a reason why good suits cost a lot of money.

I’m going to continue to gush, here. Everyone looked beautiful: here’s a picture of Kate, Lydia, and Barb (and Ariadne) before the ceremony:


Shortly after that picture was taken, I walked Barb up PAFA’s front stairs to her seat, Lydia walked Matt out to his place in front of the assembled group, and Kate performed a reading during the ceremony. Matt looked amazing in a bespoke Edwardian-cut suit that he had made for the wedding, and Kristen was absolutely stunning in HER gown. (I don’t have any pictures of the ceremony, but there were any number of stylish pant-suited photographers there, so I think my few iPhone attempts will soon be replaced.)

I realize that I may be going on like an Evelyn Waugh society writer here, but it was clearly catching: check out this portrait of George Washington over the bar that makes Bill Clinton’s look positively demure. There were LOTS of stylish folks wandering around under the art. Including a huge, action-packed twenty-by-thirty-foot painting of Death on the Pale Horse that was rescued from a burning building by volunteer firefighters who cut it from the smoldering frame.

PHEW and then there was dinner! And a toast, by me! And dancing! And that’s when we saw the BEST DANCER IN THE ROOM: Matt’s good friend Craig, who (says Matt) at age 22 decided to turn his self-described “inability to dance” into an asset, and MAN did he succeed. Look at this free-form awesomeness, which I personally think has enough raw, vital material for five new dance crazes, including “The Moose” and (as Michele Melcher called it) “The Shrimp”:

Please note that I am not being sarcastic or derisive. If we could bottle the awesome on display here, we could solve the world’s problems. This is the closest thing to an actual human version of the Snoopy dance that I ever hope to see.

And THEN the next day we went to the Reading Terminal Market for coffee, and then after THAT we went to the amazing Fante’s Kitchen Wares Shop in the Italian Market, which I had never been to before, and was a lot like NY Cake and Baking Supply was in NYC, except much MUCH nicer, and with “Mister G.” sitting there right behind the table so you can ask him what the liquer flavoring “caffe sport” or “strega” tastes like, and he smiles and says, in a thick Italian accent, “It tastes like… caffé, but… sporty”, which (and I am not trying to be sarcastic) manages to be somehow a completely accurate description of something that you would really very much like to own.
Oh, MAN, so then we got back in the car and came back out to West Chester, and I figured if I didn’t get this blog post done tonight it would NEVER get done, because how do you synthesize roller derby, homemade couture, a beautiful, elegant wedding, and the mind-blowingness of Philadelphia in one place? You don’t, I guess, you just put it all next to each other and see what happens. If you’d like to see more pictures, you can check out the photoset on Flickr.

Congratulations, Matt and Kristen, and thanks for a wonderful weekend! I am honored to be a part of such a fun and creative family!

Marching bands are like mana for small-town awesomeness, I think. The little girl in the stroller certainly thinks so!

That’s Bayard Rustin’s high school marching band. The West Chester Halloween Parade is organized by West Chester Parks and Rec, and they did a great job. Coming up, the Christmas parade is organized by none other than Todd Marcocci, who I talk all about in the post below. It’s fantastic, and you should not miss it!

I wrote this post in 2002, back when you capitalized “Blog”, and “my homepage” was still something you said with a straight face. I published this story as a bunch of short pages, but then they got lost in series of site reshuffles. I’ve stitched them together here, with horizontal lines to show the page breaks. I hope you enjoy it!

The house that Kate and I bought in April is a small, 1950s-style ranch. It’s in a quiet working-class neighborhood: our left-hand neighbor, Jerry, has a long, grizzled beard, cool merchant-marine tattoos, and an elderly springer spaniel (our catsitter, I think, has a crush on him.) Our right-hand neighbor, Todd, is an event producer, and has been sprucing up his small house with bright white and blue paint, low-voltage lighting, concrete benches, flags, and a hot tub. He also owns every two-stroke gas-powered yard tool that Home Depot has to offer.

(more…)

Our last Guerilla Drive-In showing of the 2009 season was Saturday night; we showed Edward Scissorhands in the big, beautiful auditorium of the Chester County Historical Society (our only showing ever scheduled indoors!)

Real-life scissor impressario Anthony Giunta III of Salon Chemistry was on hand to give 32-second haircuts to the audience. That’s because Kathy Baker’s haircut in the movie lasts exactly 32 seconds on screen.

A sudden and massive thunderstorm knocked out all power on the block just as we were getting ready to start. We found the building’s only working emergency outlet, and ran a long extension cord all the way to the projector. Anthony used a straight razor under emergency lights, for a moment of amazing “life-imitates art” verisimilitude. Especially with local pianist Terri Moss playing the grand piano up while we counted down the 32-second time limit on a big Gra-Lab darkroom timer.

Here’s a short video that Chris Young made about the showing! Don’t miss expert submarine-service projectionist Eric Lewis stripping and rebuilding the projector while the movie was playing, and Anthony’s big entrance at 1:10:

I had a wonderful time, and learned a couple of valuable lessons. For instance, don’t plan GDI showings indoors, since it will just result in typhoons destroying the building we are in.

Here are some links from Saturday’s show:

• The “Listen Local” series at the Chester County Historical society is a cool BYO event next showing on November 6th. Come on out and enjoy the auditorium with actual electricity in it!
• Given more than 32 seconds and electrical power, Anthony Giunta can give you an even better hairstyle than the ones he gave at the show! You can find Salon Chemistry behind Limoncello in West Chester.
• Pianist Terri Moss, who leaped onto the stage to deliver impromptu piano music for the haircuts, is available for lessons and gigs (I’m pretty sure she does regular events in addition to secret speed-haircut sessions.) You can reach her at mailto:terrimoss@gmail.com

The next Guerilla Drive-In showing will be in spring 2010. I’ll see you there!

As you may know, there’s an Edward Gorey-style mansion near my house, featuring a wonderful Victorian/Bavarian/Miyazaki stone-and-cast-iron cuckoo clock of a water tower. I’ve breathlessly written about it before, going as far as buying a domain name with the intention of donating it to the group that runs the park.

Tonight, my friend Jim Haigney and I went to a meeting of the Friends of Oakbourne in order to:

1. Meet the folks that take care of the park and give the domain name to them,
2. See about possibly having a Guerilla Drive-In showing next year, and especially
3. Maybe get to see inside the water tower.

We pulled into an empty parking lot and walked into the mansion, to find one gray-haired man sitting halfway back in a room full of empty folding chairs. He turned to greet us, revealing a jaunty curled Salvador Dali mustache and a pair of wide rainbow suspenders.

“Hello!” he said. “Are you here for the meeting?” We replied that we were.
“I don’t think there’s going to be one tonight”, he said. “I’ve been here for half an hour, and it hasn’t started.”

We checked our flyers. The meeting was indeed supposed to be tonight, according to the papers we held — but then Jim spotted a stack of minutes from the last meeting, which indicated that tonight’s meeting would actually be held a week from now, on the fifteenth.

“Oh!” said the man. “Well, the secretary of the association wrote that, and he should know.” He stuck out his hand. “Hi, I’m Walt. I’m the secretary of the association.”

The evening only got more awesome from there. I am absolutely not being sarcastic about the awesomeness. If you called Central Casting and asked for an English colonel to come charging down the mansion’s stairs in the middle of the night with a Webley revolver on a lanyard and a leopard-print bathrobe, Walt is the man they would send you.

Walt showed us the inside of the mansion: Giant carved bear-head newel posts! Marble fireplaces! Oak paneling! He told us all about how big, rambling house had been used as a convalescent home for sick episcopal women confirming my suspicion that the house must be packed with ghosts in frilly white victorian gowns.

But the best part was still to come:
“Walt, do you think you could show us inside the water tower? I’ve been dying to see it.”
“Oh, the water tower… no, I don’t think anybody has been inside the water tower for many years!”

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The most eccentric piece of mysterious steampunk architecture in Chester County, and the slatted castle door has been BARRED FOR YEARS?

Obviously, this amazing architectural relic is packed to the steeply-peaked rafters with magical sarcophagi. Or brass monkey hands. Or jewel-topped staffs brought from the furthest reaches of the Kalahari, their evil gemstones throbbing with an eldritch light.

Walt seemed amused at my theories, and suggested that I get in touch with Westtown township’s roadmaster, who is likely to have the keys. “You know, the tanks don’t hold water any more!” he warned me.

Of course they don’t hold water. Because, I’m quite sure, the water tanks are now full of imported, sun-bleached Egyptian sand, beneath which the withered form of ancient prince Amonhotep slumbers… until his rest is disturbed.

I snapped the picture of the floodlit tower on my iPhone before we left.

Driving back across route 202, we saw a stream of water arching high, high up into the night air, over the treetops. Investigating, it turned out they were doing night exercises at the West Chester Fire Safety Training center — the concrete building was shuttered and smoking, and fellows were bustling around with radios crackling. Wow, all in all an adventurous and entirely successful trip. Thanks, Jim!

My Internet friend Kenn Munk is one of my very favorite designers. He’s made a number of things for me that I really love, including the Tikaro Interactive “gear pixel” logo, the designs featured on the top half of my “commando nerd” patches, the Coworkout Wi-Fir, the logo for the dormant Gorilla Suit Construction Workshop, and the upcoming grid bike project.

(I picked just about the most embarassing picture I could find of him, wearing his sashimono for the “Sweaty Sightseeing” project, where he takes tourists on jogging tours of London.)

This morning, I saw a bunch of photos in his photostream of him taking a medal-making workshop. Which, given that one of my ambitions is to someday get away with wearing a Napoleonic frock coat with a chest full of medals, is extremely relevant to my interests!

Here’s his first effort after the one-day workshop; a “curse” medal with nordic runes and a prototype, impressionistic mermaid. According to his photo commets, Kenn likes the idea of making medals for physical attributes, which seems very recursive and satisfactory to me. Also punny — a hair medal!

I really enjoy having an Internet correspondent and collaborator that is always doing doing so many different interesting things. Like meatcards maker Chris Thompson, Kenn is a master both of Illustrator and of making things in the, you know, Real World, and I love seeing the results.

Here’s some of the range of things that Kenn does:

• Rubber stamps
• Heraldic and Medal symbol fonts (which I’m using to stitch needlepoint presents this Christmas)
• Papercraft mounted-head trophies
• Architectural chocolate
• Vinyl toys

If you want to see a really cool product-redesign story, go to his site at http://www.kennmunk.com, and in the topnav, click “self initiated work”, then “truth in packaging” for a Revell model box that I think is really great.

Saturday night, we showed Pee-wee’s Big Adventure at the West Chester Guerilla Drive-In. We had planned to show the movie at Baldwin’s Book Barn, but rain moved us to the wonderful old wooden barn at the Brandywine Valley Association.

Highlights of the show were the Tequila dance class that Kristen taught (with toe stands in Matt’s silver platform shoes!) and our special musical guests the Spinto Band, who came and played Danny Elfman’s overture, as well as a few of their own songs — and, of course, “Deep in the Heart of Texas!”

Here’s 37 seconds of video that Chris Young pieced together from the photos and video that folks took at the show! Thanks, Chris!

 

Before and during the show, my 16MM projector broke down no less than three times, in three different ways; you can click the photo at left to see the gory details. Fortunately, we were able to fix it three times, and I’ve sworn to study and faithfully follow that projector’s service manual.

I had a great time, and am very grateful to all the folks that came out to help. Our last movie this year will be in October! If you want to know where and when, all you have to do is get out there and find the MacGuffin!

My brother Oliver, who is spending six weeks as artist-in-residence here at the Barcode Building in West Chester, surprised me with this watercolor when I came in to the office this morning. I think he painted it this weekend before (after?) he visited Frank Frazetta. It’s a watercolor about 10″x14″. You can see it larger on Flickr.

This deserves a better photo/scan than this iPhone snapshot. I’ll look into local art-photography services (any suggestions?)

What do you think Spock is crying about? Science fiction shows where the spaceships make noise?

UPDATE: in case you need to tell someone that they are making Spock cry, you can link the photo at www.cryingspock.com.

In January, I wrote about the “Green2Steam” mad-scientist tea party that Randy, Eric, Harold and I had at Harold’s studio: “Like a tea party. With fire. For MANS!“.

Eight months to the day later, Jim and Ellen hosted a second version of the “let’s make the most complicated cup of coffee possible” party on their deck. Eric and Sue roasted beans in his custom-built hot-air roaster. Harold Ross brought his hand-crank grinder and a freestanding clamp stand, so we could mount my siphon brewer over a white-gas coleman stove. Randy cranked. Andy Rodriguez’ friend Lana stirred the “upstairs” siphon precisely four times without touching the side of the siphon. There was a mountain of scones! Pots of eggs! Fresh homemade kombucha, waiting in never-been-opened bottles that might explode! All in all, I had one HELL of a time.

Fueled by three cups of freshly-roasted rocket fuel and Ellen’s elderberry kombucha, Chris Young made this fantastic video of the morning’s event!

Thanks very much to everyone that came. Parties where we do something are my favorite kind of party. Especially when that something is as complicated as possible. Maybe we can have Green2Steam III at Seven Stars Farm, and milk the cream for the coffee ourselves!

Oliver even came up with an official “Green2Steam” logo, since making logos and domain names is the twenty-first-century equivalent of doodling band names on the canvas cover of your three-ring notebook. So I’ll make some Green2Steam T-shirts, and some Green2Steam coffee mugs. I’ll also order some more siphon brewer parts, since the siphon bulb cracked from the lava-like heat of the Coleman stove that we put under it.

Once we’re up and running, we’ll do this again — follow @green2steam on Twitter if you’d like to find out about the next one!