Grid Magazine November 2021 [#150]

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Forage for food in Philly

Design competition uses Fairmount’s fallen trees

The magic and creativity of BOK

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NOVEMBER 2021 / ISSUE 150 / GRIDPHILLY.COM

T O W A R D A S U S TA I N A B L E P H I L A D E L P H I A SPECI A

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HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE 2021 S

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Inside the remarkable evolution of BENNETT CO M P O ST page 58

ORGANIC GROWTH Tim Bennett, founder of Bennett Compost

Zero-waste delivery of of Zero-waste delivery everyday everyday essentials. essentials.

TheRounds Roundsdelivers delivers your your stuff weekly The weekly on on our our fleet fleetof ofe-bikes e-bikes (likemodern-day modern-day "milkmen"). "milkmen"). Plus, (like Plus, we we pick pick up upyour your empty containers, containers, so so nothing nothing goes empty goes to to waste. waste.

SSccaann FFoorr

FREE PHILLLYY

S E T I R O V A F L S A E C T I O R L O LOCAL FAV New pickup location now open in East Falls!

New pickup location now open in East Falls!

Troy Musto Philadelphia, PA fishtownsigns.com @TXFishmonger TELL US ABOUT YOURSELF + YOUR STORY My name is Troy, and I am the maker behind Fishtown Signs. I came up with the idea of making fish signs while recovering from cancer in 2018. I couldn’t concentrate on my own art at the time, and I thought I could at least make the fish sign I had always wanted to make. So I made it, and I felt good, then I made another and another. Then one neighbor after the next wanted one. I realized I had a real business when a previous buyer put their house on the market without “my sign” hanging and was not able to sell it unless the sign went back up and was a part of the sale.

WHAT ARE YOU CURRENTLY WORKING ON? My current project is Fishtown Signs where I make unique, hand-made signs, mostly for residential homes and businesses, however, a few marinas have my fish hanging on their docks as well as a huge 48” tarpon that is hanging at a private dock in Florida. I get excited thinking about the increasing demand for the signs because the requests are very diverse and give me a lot of creative freedom and are incredibly fun to work on.

WHAT ARE YOUR GOALS? My goals are to bring these Fishtown fish to market (pun intended).

I’ve been sending them down the East Coast, and they’re in every state from here to Florida. I plan on increasing production to meet the demands and share some of what makes Fishtown and its surrounding neighborhoods so unique.

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EDI TO R ’S NOTES

by

alex mulcahy

A Proud Partnership

managing editor Alexandra W. Jones associate editor & distribution Timothy Mulcahy tim@gridphilly.com copy editor Geoff Smith art director Michael Wohlberg writers Bernard Brown Nichole Currie Constance Garcia-Barrio Siobhan Gleason Patrick Kerr Randy LoBasso Lois Volta photographers Chris Baker Evens Drew Dennis Rachael Warriner illustrator Lois Volta published by Red Flag Media 1032 Arch Street, 3rd Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107 215.625.9850 G R I D P H I L LY. C O M

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When Tim started, he was still working full time at Temple, and to launch his composting business, he made his pickups in the middle of the night. Then on short sleep, he’d go to work at his day job. It makes me tired just thinking about it.

He continued this draining schedule for about a year before he decided to take the plunge into pursuing the business. Even after becoming a full-time composter, he continued to work the graveyard shift because the roads were less populated, making pickups more efficient. The routes grew, and he ran himself ragged to keep it all working.

As a Bennett Compost customer, I’m grateful for that. He sacrificed his personal sustainability so our households could be a little more sustainable.

American culture celebrates entrepreneurs, and I will admit that I love hearing and telling the stories of small businesses.

But that narrative is always incomplete.

Tim’s partner Jen Mastalerz fine-tuned the company. Her contributions resulted in better working conditions, better pay and better benefits for the employees. She has always advocated for them. And, with her persistence in pushing for bike pickups, she has reduced their use of fossil fuels.

Her contributions make the business sustainable in a more holistic way, because we not only need to stop damaging the planet, we need to stop exploiting people.

Thank you to everyone who has made these 150 issues possible. We have so many more exciting stories to tell and some very fun things on the horizon. Stay tuned!

ALEX MULCAHY Editor-in-Chief alex@gridphilly.com

COV E R P HOTO G RAP H BY D RE W DENNI S

I L LU S T R AT E D P O R T R A I T BY J A M E S B O Y L E

publisher Alex Mulcahy

ull disclosure: I am a business partner in Bennett Compost and have been for over 10 years. Like the guy who claimed he liked his electric shaver so much that he bought the company, so too was I drawn to this business from the get-go. It was just an irresistible idea.

Tim Bennett, ever smiling and ready for a laugh, was equally charming. He will tell you that I warned him to never take a partner, but that advice was ignored by both of us. Tim and I would become friends and business partners.

Grid has covered Bennett Compost a few times over the years, and always with the disclosure of my involvement, but I feel like we have underreported their success due to that conflict of interest.

This month is our 150th(!) issue, which translates into 12 and a half years of monthly publication. In that time, we have seen a lot of things come and a lot of things go.

Our economy is not yet a green one, and the businesses we cover often begin with an ideal that goes against the grain. It’s an uphill battle for any new business to survive, but especially one adhering to values and principles that their competitors might not.

So how did Tim manage to convince people that they should take the time to sort their trash and pay to have their food waste taken away? The answer is easy, but only to an optimist: People want to do the right thing, and if they are given the opportunity, they will.

Consciousness about food waste in this city has skyrocketed on account of Bennett Compost. It’s Tim’s fault that I carry apple cores in my hoodie pockets, and cart banana peels hundreds of miles on a car trip.

In the era before Bennett Compost, I would throw perfectly good organic waste in the trash. Now the thought of throwing away organic waste makes me shudder. All the peels and skins left on the cutting board belong in one place and one place only: my Bennett Compost bucket.

Parka Fridays? Not the best way for your business to save.

PECO has energy answers.

Saving money is easier than you think with advice that leads to comfort and energy savings all year long. Learn more ways to save at peco.com/waystosave.

© PECO Energy Company, 2021. All rights reserved.

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TH E VO LTA WAY

by

lois volta

DEAR LOIS,

How do I clean effectively and thoughtfully?

I

wash the floors in the same direction.

Whether you are organizing or cleaning it should be the same process; methodically clean, declutter and go all the way with follow-through and vigor.

Sometimes when I clean, I get distracted. When I started my business I noticed that a focused approach to cleaning someone else’s home eliminated distractions, so I formulated The Method to keep myself grounded with the task at hand. The

Method worked so well for cleaning that I tried it for organizing and decluttering. It worked, but I soon came to realize that this way goes very slowly in the beginning, but does pay off and the house is healthier for it.

For example, if I was going to clean/organize a room I would start at the entrance and make my way around the room. If I came upon clutter I would address it. What’s in the pile?

Where do these things belong and do they belong in this room? Are these items used and

P O R T R A I T BY J A M E S B O Y L E

t’s not rocket science, nor am I reinventing the wheel: “The Method” is a way you can ensure that you don’t miss anything and you give proper attention to the entirety of your home, one room at a time.

Start at the door. Work top to bottom and systematically clean and organize the circumference of the room, then the center of the room. Vacuum from the back corner toward the door you started from and then

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appreciated or do they need to be purged?

I go through each item and consider the room completed when all aspects of the room are addressed. It might take eight hours to move from the closet to the nightstand, and that’s okay.

Clean deeply, stay slow and be methodical. To do this, you have to have patience with yourself.

Many times when we are going through piles of neglected items, emotions can bubble to the surface. Tackle whatever feelings that come up for you with the same type of approach you have been using to clean. How do the items actually make you feel? Do they make you feel emotionally and mentally tired? Go into the feelings. Unlike Marie Kondo, I don’t believe everything should “spark joy”—let’s be realistic—but we should be able to weed out apathy and neglect.

For instance, the pile of clothes beside your bed. How does it make you feel? Why isn’t there any room for the clothes in your dresser? Is your dresser filled with clothes that don’t fit or that you don’t wear? Going through your closet and drawers is a huge task, so you might have put it off. Does this make you feel like a negligent person? You might have prioritized escapism in your down time instead of caring for yourself and putting the work in. (Self care is making sure you aren’t tripping over piles. Make sure that you have your priorities straight.)

Accept that it takes a lot of work to set things right after we let them get out of hand. Go slow, and be patient with yourself. You are working in a positive direction.

When I’m training a new staff member or teaching a client how to clean and declutter, I tell them to be like the slug. When you see a slug it seems as if it isn’t really moving at all. But when you look away and look back, the slug has traveled farther than you thought it would, leaving a trail of sparkles behind it. Be like that. lois volta is a home life consultant, artist and founder of The Volta Way. Send questions to info@thevoltaway.com.

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bike talk Yes. Pennsylvania law does not require any physical contact with the vehicle that caused your crash. You could still have a case every bit as strong as if the vehicle hit you or if there was contact.

Often the crash victims we work for took evasive action because they were paying attention and saw the vehicle coming.

They ended up crashing or sliding out to avoid contact. A bicyclist/scooterist/skateboarder is not penalized for that and a lawyer can usually help the victim receive justice for that action.

What about if there’s no police officer involved, or if no ambulance is needed in the aftermath?

Zachary (left) and Stuart Leon represent bicyclists who have been injured in accidents, including hit-and-runs.

Know Your Rights PA cyclists can get access to injury funds, even if they wiped out without being touched by a motor vehicle by randy lobasso

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here are a lot of laws and disclaimers regarding what bicyclists should do when riding on the road.

But there isn’t much public information about what they should do if a crash happens. Of course, no one should go through the traumatic experience of a crash with a driver—especially, as has become more of the norm, a hit-and-run driver—but we know the reality of biking.

That’s why we asked Stuart Leon, bicycle crash lawyer, some questions about what to do in a crash, and whether a lawyer can help in some of the most dire situations.

(Full disclosure: I’ve written for his firm outside of my work for Grid and the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia.)

This interview has been edited for brevity, clarity and style.

What would you say are the most common misconceptions regarding bike laws in Phil6 GRID P H IL LY.CO M NOVEM B E R 2021

adelphia and the region?

If you get crashed out by a motor vehicle there is a 99% chance that a lawyer will be able to get your hospital or medical treatment paid for. If the condition of the road [pothole, ditch, messed-up trolley rail] or road surface crashes you out, same deal.

I’ll bet you a lawyer can get your bills paid.

The other thing is, you do not need video of any kind to prove that you’ve got a case.

Video rarely exists, and almost never shows a tag number. We do not need video to work for you and win your case.

A lot of bicyclists and folks riding micromobility devices (including bicycles, e-bikes, scooters and e-scooters) have gotten into crashes without necessarily getting hit by drivers, even though a driver may be at fault.

Is there still something that can be done if a driver causes a rider to fall without actually hitting them?

In a no-contact crash, the driver often gets away without being identified. If that happens, the rider is eligible to get paid for all of their damages from one of several sources, but Pennsylvania law and insurance policies require either a police report or an ambulance ride to back up the rider’s claim.

You should keep in mind you have 30 days after the crash to file the police report.

If the cops give you a problem about reporting it, call a lawyer to help you get it filed.

But in a no-contact crash, who pays the victim out?

If the crash victim gets the tag number of the vehicle that crashed them out, they can win all their money damages from the vehicle’s insurance company.

If the crash victim doesn’t get the tag number or identity of that vehicle, they should file a police report. Filing the police report makes the victim eligible to get paid for their damages from the Pennsylvania Financial Responsibility Assigned Claims Plan.

Pennsylvania insurance law is kind of great in providing that safety net of $15,000 for crash victims of uninsured or unidentified motorists.

You’ve represented cyclists outside the region, including at least one who was in an officiated race in the Lehigh Valley. Can you

tell me about what that experience was like?

There’s not much difference between the city and outlying counties. The issue is, the Philadelphia police are overwhelmed and there’s no consistency in how deeply they get involved in an investigation.

County and Pennsylvania state police seem, in our experience, to have unlimited resources to investigate a report. The one universal is that the bicycle rider is rarely able to gather info on witnesses, ID the driver, get the driver’s tag number and their insurance information. So we always start behind the eight-ball there.

So long as we get involved, get the bicyclist’s story and give the cyclist an opportunity to tell their story at a deposition or a Q&A in court, we usually win.

Thankfully, there has been a huge amount of press dedicated to hit-and-runs in Philadelphia recently. Have you seen an uptick in your clients being involved in hit-and-runs?

We’ve seen an epidemic of hit-and-run crashes in the past five years or so. We attribute it to more smartphone usage, less

enforcement and more traffic.

They drive away because they can, they don’t know, they were never looking nor paying attention in the first place. Usually we don’t get to find out who they were or where they went. On average we work for one hit-and-run victim every week or so.

What’s the normal series of steps when a client comes to you and says the driver took off after hitting them?

We always poster the crash scene for two blocks in each direction with a brief description of the crash and the hit-and-run vehicle. Although it is rare for us to identify the vehicle, we often get contact from a witness in the aftermath.

We also believe that the driver probably passes by those signs and knows that people are on the lookout for them. It also serves as notice that we have eyes in that neighborhood. We canvas the neighborhood for video, surveillance or Ring/home security bells that might have video of the crash.

None of the video ever shows a tag though.

Once the victim contacts us, we make

sure they file a crash report with the police so we can follow the normal series of steps, as I outlined earlier.

How has the pandemic changed the way you’re able to practice law on behalf of cyclists?

Since we always met you where you crashed so you could show us what happened, we’ve been doing those meetings straight through.

So even during the worst of times, we’ve done outdoor meetings.

We’ve been attending Zoom court since April 2020. If you’re vaxxed, we can meet you in our office. The Pennsylvania courts have either fully adapted to Zoom court or are open for usual business.

There are delays, of course, but the crash victims we work for are so deserving, and their cases so strong that the insurance companies seem anxious not to delay and to move forward with the cases. I think because of the laws that apply to insurance companies, they cannot hold onto too much money that has been set aside for a strong claim, so the bicycle crash victims seem to go to the front of the line.

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urban naturalist

Ed Edge, experienced forager, on the hunt for the native paw paw fruit.

Bounty Gathering Foraging edible flora around the city can be fun, fulfilling and filling by bernard brown

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hen my editor asked if I’d like to write a foraging article, I said I’d think about it.

I have avoided writing about foraging for a while now. Foraging—looking for wild plants and fungi to consume—seems to be growing as a hobby, and it’s an obvious topic for a nature writer.

But it has always struck me as a little crass.

The natural world has its own value. I want to get beyond considering a plant, an animal, a mushroom or anything else as interesting only to the extent that it fills a material human need. Wildlife is worthy of our attention on its own terms, not just ours.

8 GRID P H I L LY.CO M NOVEM B E R 2021

The irony here is that as much as foraging can bug me, I’ve been doing it for years.

On a counter in the kitchen, not far from where I write at the dining room table, sits a tall glass jar full of a brown, murky liquid. At the bottom rest a couple dozen immature black walnuts that I picked back in June from a tree in my in-laws’ suburban yard. Every few years I make nocino, a bittersweet liqueur that hails from northern Italy, by steeping the walnuts in grain alcohol.

In the freezer I’ve still got some pesto I made this spring from garlic mustard, an invasive weed I yanked out of the woods at the end of a birding walk. For dinner last week

we had a bean stew flavored with epazote, a Mexican herb that grows from sidewalk cracks around my neighborhood in West Philadelphia.

And that’s just what made it home.

When I’m in the garden I munch on the lamb’s quarters, dandelion and purslane as I weed. On hikes I keep an eye out for the fruit of the season, snacking on serviceberries, mulberries, wineberries or chokecherries. Throughout the year I Iook out for wild persimmon trees with their scaly, deeply fissured bark. Their fruit is at its best in the winter.

I was still dragging my feet on this article when local naturalist Ed Edge pitched a series of foraging topics for Grid’s #GreenFriday video series, including late-season targets like pawpaws, black walnuts and mushrooms. Edge, who splits his time between Philadelphia and Costa Rica, where he helps run a wildlife clinic, enjoys birding, tracking P HOTO G RAP HY BY D RE W DENNI S

Above: Pawpaw trees found in their natural habitat along Boxer's Trail in Fairmount Park. Left: Pawpaw leaves.

mammals and otherwise observing wildlife.

He eats what he finds where he finds it.

“I spend an asinine amount of time frolicking in the bush,” he says. “I’m notorious for carrying two things: a machete and a fanny pack. Because of the lack of gear and supplies, eating the plants surrounding me became an essential activity for lasting 12 hours outside.”

Edge showed up to our first video shoot with a ripe pawpaw. Pawpaw is the fruit of a native tree related to the tropical custard apple. They get up to the size of a mango and are shaped like a kidney. Inside they have a creamy, pale yellow flesh with large black seeds, and they taste like a cross between a banana and a mango.

Pawpaws are hard to find locally, though more trees are getting planted, as native

fruit enthusiasts and land managers realize how yummy they are. (Their leaves also host the caterpillars of a spectacular butterfly, the zebra swallowtail.) Edge told me that a local patch was fruiting, and I made a point of going the following Saturday, dragging my sharp-eyed nine-year-old daughter with me. Together we gave a few trees a gentle shake and collected the handful of soft, ripe fruit that fell.

Soon after I emailed my editor to say that yes, I would write about foraging.

Of course, there is no rule that we can’t value the natural world on its own terms and consume some of what it produces. Indeed foraging, as well as hunting, is the original way we humans fed ourselves, obtained medicines and sourced building materials.

As Edge says, “Few things bring me more

joy in life than being outside in the elements and eating the plants that surround me. It reminds me of how I’m supposed to act as a Homo sapiens.”

To keep it sustainable, it’s important to observe some basic guidelines: 1. Whatever you harvest, leave some for your fellow foragers, human and nonhuman.

2. Following on Rule #1, stick to foraging methods that preserve the source.

Avoid digging up roots or taking whole plants, unless it’s an exotic weed you’d be removing anyhow, like a burdock or a garlic mustard.

3. Know what you’re eating before you put it in your mouth. There are a lot of plants and mushrooms that can make you ill, and a few that can outright kill you. Go on plant and mushroom walks with experts, use virtual tools like the iNaturalist app to help with identification, and get some guidebooks that cover your target species. When in doubt, don’t eat it.

4. Follow rules of parks and other local spaces. With so many people using so little park space, local land managers have to be careful about what they allow. Keep an eye on park programs for foraging walks and other opportunities to sample wild fare in a sustainable way.

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water

Dammed If You Do Centuries of watermills destroyed marshy, flood-resistant terrain. Can we restore it? by bernard brown

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n a walk along Cobbs Creek in West Philadelphia I inspected some old ruins. On the opposite side of the creek I could see the tall earth bank interrupted by a stone block wall, covered in some parts by crumbling concrete.

10 GR ID P H I L LY.CO M NOVEM BE R 2021

I walked to the water and found I was standing on a matching surface.

Obviously some structure had straddled the waterway, likely part of a mill. Looking around at the forest—dominated by box elder and silver maple on the floodplain close

to the creek channel and towering oaks on the valley’s slope—it was hard to imagine a factory there.

But that wild forest is a new development, compared to the centuries of industry along the creek.

In 1642, decades before William Penn drew up the plans for Philadelphia, Swedish colonists built a mill on Karakung, the Lenape name for Cobbs Creek, at what is now Woodland Avenue. Over the following centuries the land was cleared and dozens of mills along the creek harnessed the water’s force to run machinery that ground P HOTO G RAP H BY RACHAE L WARRI NER

The author explores the remnants of a mill in presentday Cobbs Creek Park.

wheat into flour and ran saws to cut logs.

“When settlers came from Europe and arrived in this Mid-Atlantic region, they saw a landscape they were familiar with,” explains Dorothy Merritts, professor of geoscience at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster. Faced with hills and creek valleys just like in Europe, they applied the same farming and industrial techniques their people had used for centuries.

“As soon as they arrived they began building dams and mills,” she says.

The basic template for a mill includes a dam to raise the surface of the water well

above the natural water level and create a pond. From there, water running out of the pond through a channel, called a “mill race,” turns a large wheel, which in turn drives the machinery.

In the early aughts, when Merritts and geochemist Robert Walter started examining creek beds in central Pennsylvania, they realized that these dams, multiplied up and down the length of creeks, had altered the valleys themselves. Left exposed by deforestation and farming, soil had washed into creeks. When that flowing water stopped at a dam, the suspended sediment dropped out. Over the centuries this sediment pollution, or “siltation,” filled in the ponds behind the mill dams.

Eventually the power that drove industry shifted to coal and then to electricity. Trees reached for the sky along the creek valleys, and mills crumbled into ruins.

Whenever the persistent force of the water breaches a dam, the liberated creek slices down through the sediments upstream until it reaches the downstream water level. Thus the landscape we see at Cobbs Creek Park—a creek cutting a deep channel through a forested floodplain—is the legacy of centuries of water-powered industry.

Every remaining dam is a time bomb.

When they fail, the current carries centuries of stored silt and pollutants downstream. On Chiques Creek in Lancaster County, Merritts and Walter have been documenting the upstream effects of a 2015 dam removal.

“The channel has cut deeply down so it has about 12-foot-high banks along much of its length for almost two kilometers. It’s eroding the banks rapidly and trees are falling in,” Merritts says.

When Merritts and Walter dug down into legacy sediments built up by the old dams, they found evidence of a different world buried underneath. Instead of flat floodplains with a single deep channel, they found marshy valley floors. In these pre-colonial creeks the water spread out, meandering through multiple shallow channels.

To see what would happen if a waterway was freed from its legacy sediment, in 2011 Merritts and Walter turned back the clock at Big Spring Run in Lancaster County.

Working with a large team of researchers, ecological restoration specialists and the

You can make some pretty nice things that look amazing, have some benefits and do some ecosystem functions better than they are presently.”

— d orothy merritts, Professor of Geoscience at Franklin

& Marshall College in Lancaster

landscape engineering firm LandStudies, they restored 3,000 feet of the stream, removing 20,000 tons of sediment.

At a cost of about $1 million per 800 meters, it wasn’t cheap, but the results were profound, with marsh-loving species such as bog turtles flourishing. The project inspired other restorations, and over the years researchers have found that the resulting marshy creeks are also more flood resilient. After heavy rain the stormwater spreads out and slows down rather than scouring the valley.

For a creek like Cobbs, Merritts notes that we can’t undo history completely. Uphill forests and fields have been replaced by our grid of streets and houses, and in the valleys other constraints such as bridges, golf courses and cemeteries limit how much area can be restored.

Nonetheless, she points to the ecosystem services (e.g. flood resilience, pollution control and wildlife habitat) provided by the marshier creeks after restoration.

“You can make some pretty nice things that look amazing, have some benefits and do some ecosystem functions better than they are presently,” Merritts says.

There is a lot more to imagine now when I walk along Cobbs Creek. I picture the area two hundred years ago, with naked hills and a valley busy with turning water wheels and the traffic of wagons hauling grain and logs in and flour and boards out.

But further back in time I can picture a quieter scene: a gentle braid of streams running through a marsh, bristling with sedges and flanked by willow and alder thickets.

Maybe I’ll live to see that again.

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city healing

Blowing the Whistle Asian Philadelphians stand up to rising assaults and racism

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ei chen grimaces and shakes his head when talking about how it’s been a hard year for many in Philly’s Asian community.

“It’s at the point where many of our elders are afraid to go out,” says Chen, 30, civic engagement coordinator for Asian Americans United (AAU).

The organization was founded in 1985 to join people of Asian ancestry in honoring their culture and fighting oppression.

Verbal and physical assaults on people of Asian heritage, who constitute about 8% of Philadelphia’s population as of 2019, surged by 200% from 2019 to 2020, says the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, at California State University, San Bernardino.

This year on Easter Sunday at 11th and Filbert streets, a man hit a 27-year-old Asian woman in the face so hard in an unprovoked attack that she had to go to Jefferson University Hospital. In early June in Mayfair, two teenagers randomly punched a 17-year-old Chinese American student. A week later, Wei Lin, 28, the owner of a Chinese takeout restaurant in the Feltonville neighborhood of North Philadelphia and the father of two small daughters, died days after a stranger punched him in the head.

“That’s probably only a sliver of the attacks,” Chen says. “Many people don’t report incidents because they don’t know where or how, or they don’t speak English.”

AAU, VietLead and other Asian organizations are working to promote healing from current fears and grief as well as historic trauma.

Philadelphia gave its first Asian residents an uncertain welcome almost 200 years ago.

By the 1840s, Chinese people were living and working here after Philadelphia merchants began sailing to Canton to buy tea and silk in the 1700s, according to “Walking on Solid Ground,” a book by Shu Pui Cheung, Shuyuan Li, Aaron Chau and 14 GRID P H I L LY.CO M NOVEM BE R 20 21

Deborah Wei that was published by the Philadelphia Folklore Project in 2004.

In the 1870s Lee Fong ran a laundry near 9th and Race streets, then a low-rent district. Fong’s cousin, Lee Wang, soon opened a restaurant nearby, the book says.

Those businesses helped to anchor the new community.

On the national scene, from 1863 to 1869, some 15,000 to 20,000 Chinese laborers worked on the mammoth, grueling construction of the western leg of the transcontinental railroad. Many history books sweep aside these men, who were denied citizenship.

by

constance garcia-barrio

Racism and an economic slump led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prohibited the immigration of Chinese men.

(Chinese women had been banned from immigrating in 1875.) Congress repealed the act in 1943, about two years after President Franklin Delano Roosevelt issued an executive order that uprooted people of Japanese ancestry, including U.S. citizens, and incarcerated them in concentration camps from 1942 to 1945.

Chen believes that the economic and emotional ravages of COVID-19 have spurred the rise of anti-Asian hate crimes.

Many people don’t report incidents because they don’t know where or how, or they don’t speak English.”

— w ei chen, Civic Engagement Coordinator for Asian Americans United

The Yellow Whistle campaign reclaims the color yellow as a symbol of self-protection and solidarity in the Asian community.

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Wei Chen of Asian Americans United under the Chinatown Friendship Arch at 10th and Arch streets.

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In Chinatown, Wei Chen hands out yellow whistles, to be blown in case of an attack or emergency.

However, for him current assaults feel like déjà vu. In 2009, when he was a student at South Philadelphia High School, he and his friend Bach Tong organized a boycott

by Asian students after 30 of them, including Chen and Tong, were beaten without provocation by 100 of their fellow students.

“I followed Martin Luther King’s nonviolent approach,” Chen says, explaining that bullying and assaults had gone on for months before the mass attack.

“Chen’s action changed how we addressed bullying,” says Otis Hackney, now the city’s chief education officer and South Philly High’s principal from 2010 to 2015.

“The school’s culture changed.”

Hackney adds that students can now report incidents in their first language, and that the school added an Asian history elective to the curriculum.

Today, AAU and VietLead have become 16 GRID P H IL LY.CO M NOVEM BE R 20 21

hubs of healing anti-Asian violence and racism in Philadelphia. After the March 16 murder of six Asian women in Atlanta, the AAU became a rallying site for Chinese, Cambodians, Koreans, Indians, Indonesians and other people of Asian ancestry.

They crossed ethnic and linguistic lines to make a common cause against anti-Asian violence, Chen explains.

“AAU coordinated a citywide vigil after the shootings,” he says, noting that they held online town halls to address hate crimes.

“We also did a series of online teach-ins about the history of the Asian experience in Philadelphia,” Chen says.

AAU, VietLead and other organizations have cooperated to produce a safety booklet in several Asian languages on how AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islanders) can protect themselves, access victim services and receive mental health support.

Chen emphasizes that Asian Americans and African Americans support each other in antiracist work.

“AAU has always been an ally in the fight for justice for all people of color,” he says, “not just Asian Americans. We tie our struggle to Black Lives Matter because this fight can’t be done without allies. We’ve seen huge support from the Black community.”

VietLead also believes in combined strength.

Nancy Nguyen, executive director of the organizaiton, says ethnic and racial division and animus is baked into our society.

“The lack of ways to process the trauma of racial bias exacerbates this. How are people who’ve experienced violence supported?

What therapy do they have to process the harm done?” she asks. “The best way to ‘deal’ with this requires approaching this problem on multiple fronts: interpersonally, we should reach out to each other, the way so many have in mutual support during the pandemic.”

On one wall of its South Philly headquarters hangs a poster that dissects anti-Blackness. Near it is a painting expressing Black and Asian solidarity. VietLead aims to “to develop leadership in the Vietnamese community in solidarity with other communities of color towards improving health [and] increasing self-determination.” For example, VietLead partnered with Juntos, a community-led Latinx group, in offering COVID-19 vaccinations.

“I hope that Philadelphia residents, all of us, can come together and push for more funding for programs centered on healing,” Nguyen continues.

AAU recently joined the Yellow Whistle campaign. Chen and volunteers have walked the streets of Chinatown and other parts of the city, giving out thousands of yellow whistles that people can blow in case of danger.

“In America, yellow has been weaponized against Asians as the color of xenophobia,” the organization’s website says. “The Yellow Whistle is a symbol of self-protection and solidarity in our common fight against historical discrimination and anti-Asian violence.”

“The yellow whistle helps to promote safety for people of Asian ancestry and for anyone who feels threatened,” Chen says.

AAU invites all Philadelphians to blow the whistle on racism and violence.

Holiday

GIFT GUIDE ❷⓿❷❶ #nextfabmade ------------

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Maker Annette explores clay experimentation to evoke joyful expressions through her handcrafted small-batch clay and metals jewelry studio, Ursa Marea. see more on page 30

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Learn more about these Philadelphia special gifts on pages 30-31.

E

ach of us is a maker.

Whether you’re making connections, curating your style or physically making products, we all need that place to express our creativity. NextFab proudly helps support small, local handmade businesses by providing a shared community of professional resources, tools and support to go from making to selling, and from selling to thriving. In this year’s Gift Guide, we aimed to provide a roadmap for everyone’s creative aesthetic or intention to shop for even those that have “everything.” Each product you purchase not only supports the local maker community, but provides an avenue to connect your motivations in a new and unique way. “Feel Empowered” to encourage gifts with meaning. “Elevate your Aesthetic” to expand on current trends. Modernize your home through a maker’s craftsmanship, instead of the latest tech. Don’t take yourself too seriously, and be “Playful yet Practical” with the space in your apartment. Stay “Sustainable and Stylish” by providing a positive impact on our people and our planet. It is our pride to be able to connect you with some of our favorite designers for the holidays, all while fostering what matters most this holiday season—our communities, our local businesses and the creative makers that make it so wonderful.

“At NextFab, we believe in local artisan entrepreneurs and our team dedicates itself to helping more people to make things for themselves—and to feel empowered, to create new art, new products and new businesses. With the opening of our new North Philadelphia space last year, we will be able to do that at an unprecedented level.”

—­Evan Malone, President, NextFab

This year’s Gift Guide showcases the talent of over 40 of our makers working out of the NextFab makerspaces, both who are already successful, as well as many budding artisan entrepreneurs.

Showcasing their creativity and craftsmanship that provides a little something for everyone, we’re thrilled to introduce another year of NextFab members, small business artisans and professional creatives in the 2021 Gift Guide. From our community to yours, happy holidays and even happier shopping!

HOLIDAY GIFT GUIDE 2021

Table of Contents • FEELING EMPOWERED Asata Maisé greyteeful Historical Dream Kpellé Designs Modest Transitions

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nudeworks Saint Manifest Seven21 apparel Yemisi art

• MODERN & HOMEY ABI Woodworking COVR EMAengrave Eric Zippe Fine Art Good Measure Loma Living

10 Maria Schneider Arte Pandemic Design Studio Pellegrino Cutlery Rosewood Home Untitled_Co

• SUSTAINABLE & STYLISH Addi Naturals Ash & Rise Atelier Idol Light LEL Fashion Ordinary O

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Ray’s Reusables RethinkTANK Salvaged Woodworks Small Wonder Honey yrcinc

• PLAYFUL & PRACTICAL Cartrageous Cocoa Press Fishtown Signs Girl Holding a Pen Jawnaments

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MiniAlley Philadelphia Laser & Industrial Design Scrapyard Aesthetics T-shirt Box by Mado

• ELEVATE YOUR AESTHETIC Cherné Altovise Feast Jewelry KKACHI Linda Celestian Livetodream

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PIECES + PARDONS Rebecca Ledbetter Art Ursa Marea

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Untitled_Co maker and woodcrafter, Cody Hughes crafts heirloom quality goods designed through an artist’s lens for your home. see more on page 10

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Maker Lauren Parrow of Ash & Rise Atelier focuses on upcycling old clothing items, and creating new fashions from scratch, for any size and gender. see more on page 19

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• FEELING EMPOWERED

NUDEWORKS AYLA KNIGHT

Nudeworks is an art shop filled with works modeled after the women of nudegang. The works sold by nudeworks aims to help all women feel better about their bodies and change society’s view on them, and includes custom sculptures, wall hangers, earrings and photographic prints. $12-$200 @_nudeworks nudegang.com

SAINT MANIFEST DIDIER GARCIA

Saint Manifest’s artwork seeks to destigmatize sex and instead celebrate it as the physical expression of love and connection.

With self-love comes freedom, and with freedom comes peace.

Wanting us all to live a life full of joy, pleasure and self-actualization, Garcia hopes their artwork can inspire you to be true to yourself. $1.50-$100 @saint.manifest saintmanifest.com 6

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MODEST TRANSITIONS MELANIE HASAN

Modest Transitions aims to empower women through conscious clothing, beauty and inclusion.

From sourcing fabrics with integrity, to creating baths of natural dyes—their products help eliminate toxic waste, while creating timeless, aesthetically pleasing wearable art to help embrace your natural self. $35-$500 @modesttransitions modesttransitions.com

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ASATA MAISÉ ASATA BEEKS

Asata Maisé Beeks is an independent designer based in Wilmington, Delaware. The designer is an advocate for preserving tradition through storytelling with handmade, slow fashion, and currently offers limited quantities of accessories, such as handbags and jewelry. $50-$400 • @asata.maise • asatamaise.com

HISTORICAL DREAM NINA GRIER

Historical Dream is a small women’s owned online business that specializes in reawakening and paying tribute to society’s pioneers across the cultural spectrum, portrayed with jewelry, apparel, upholstery items and more. $75-$570 • @historicaldream • historicaldream.com

KPELLÉ DESIGNS GWEN BARKER

Kpellé Designs makes handmade jewelry and accessories, which include earcuffs, loc jewelry for hair and head scarves. Powered by their mission to create jewelry for women to feel inspired, empowered and educated on the power of embellishing themselves in culture. $10-$48 • @kpelle.designs • kpelledesigns.com 8

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SEVEN21 APPAREL NEIKO WIGGINS

721 stands for 7 days a week 21 hours of grind, 3 hours of sleep, in unique and creative apparel.

If you’re passionate about making and creating a brand that the world will never forget, Seven21 Apparel is the foundation for your brand. $10-$100 • @721apparel_ • Seven21apparel.com

YEMISI ART YEMISI AJAYI

Yemisi art designs and produces hand printed and hand dyed fabrics for exquisite women’s clothing, home furnishing and every woman’s essential accessories—silk scarfs, T-shirts and bags. $20-$500 • @yemisi_art

GREYTEEFUL NICOLE V. STEWART

GreyTeeful offers a variety of print services for apparel and other promotional items via vinyl graphics, direct to garment (DTG), embroidery, patches image transfers (HTV), screenprint, graphic design, logo development/edits and more. $10+ • @greyteeful • greyteeful.com 20 21 HO L IDAY G IF T GUID E

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• MODERN & HOMEY

UNTITLED_CO CODY HUGHES

Untitled_Co is a home goods and furniture design studio based out of Philadelphia. With a mindful approach, they create heirloom-quality goods with an emphasis on traditional craftsmanship and sustainable design. $10-$220 @untitled_co_ untitledco.design

ERIC ZIPPE FINE ART ERIC ZIPPE

Wilmington-based artist Eric Zippe Art crafts photographs transferred on to wood, laser engraved art and fine art prints.

From $5 to $500 @ezippe ezippe.art

ROSEWOOD HOME COREY KILBANE

Every room in your home should bring you peace and joy.

Rosewood Home’s mission is to help you make those spaces special through inspired products and decor for your home.

From $10 to $100 @rwh_decor rwhphl.com

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• MODERN & HOMEY

BEFORE

COVR DAMON HARVEY

COVR products are appealing, decorative solutions that cover, enclose and disguise unattractive gas meters, electric meters, pylons and other utilitarian hardware to enhance the visual and curb appeal for homes and businesses.

AFTER $50-$450 • @covrproducts • covrproducts.com

EMAENGRAVE RON FIERRO

Engrave My Achievement creates uniquely shaped laser-cut and engraved imagery from your favorite photos. Their Engrave My Animal line focuses on pets, even working pet’s name into the unique shape. $50+ • @ema.engrave • emaengrave.com

LOMA LIVING KEN HOLIDAY

Loma Living creates home goods that look beautiful and solve real problems for their customers. Offering solutions for most rooms in the home including home office, kitchen, bedroom and living room. $12-$175 • @loma_living • lomaliving.com 12

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PANDEMIC DESIGN STUDIO DAVID ROZEK

Pandemic Design Studio is a design and manufacturing enterprise that specializes in organic and contemporary ceramics, lighting and furniture. $40-$400 @pandemicdesignstudio pandemicdesignstudio.com

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• MODERN & HOMEY

ABI WOODWORKING EDWARD ROSE

ABI Woodworking crafts decorative 3D relief wood carvings for home and business, featuring plaques for desk, shelf and wall with standard or custom quotes and images. $25-$300+ @ABIWoodworking decorativewoodcarvings.com

MARIA SCHNEIDER ARTE MARIA SCHNEIDER

Artist Maria Schneider crafts compositional hand-colored photography and laserengraved images on plexiglass to adorn your spaces. $300+ @mariarschneider mariarschneider.com 14

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PELLEGRINO CUTLERY STEVE PELLEGRINO

GOOD MEASURE ROSS STOOPS

Pellegrino Cutlery designs and builds high performance tools for the kitchen and field bringing unencumbered designs for the home cook and the professional. $300-$1,500+ @pellegrino_cutlery pellegrinocutlery.com

Handcrafted furniture and home goods focused on helping promote and encourage the talents of local makers, while bridging the gap between consumers and designers. Specializing in handcrafted furniture and home goods, they also offer custom residential and commercial fabrication throughout the tri-state area. $30-$500 @thegoodmeasure thegoodmeasure.com

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• SUSTAINABLE & STYLISH

ADDI NATURALS YEMINA ISRAEL

Addi Naturals uniquely grows personal care products for men, women, baby, pets and home from seed using organic farming methods and hydroponics. $5-$400 @addinaturals addinaturals.com

LEL FASHION LAURA LOMASCOLO

LEL Fashion is an independent sustainable fashion designer who currently offers 14 scrunchie styles, 18 square scarf patterns, 5 llama fashion illustrations with variations and soon to be one-ofa-kind jackets and handbags. $5-$200+ @lauraelomascolo lel.design

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IDOL LIGHT MACHELE NETTLES

Idol Light is magic channeled through jewelry that uses salvaged scientific glass to capture UV light and raise your vibration. By wearing Idol Light, you become a walking art installation, by effortlessly interacting with your surroundings, reminding you of your place within your environment, and putting you in the present moment with an act of pure joy. $69-$600 @idol.light idol-light.com

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• SUSTAINABLE & STYLISH

RETHINKTANK JASON LEMPIERI

RethinkTANK Manhole covers from around the world are permanently etched into functional art. Celebrating the art that’s underfoot, but often overlooked, products include 100% sustainable cork coaster sets and trivets, wooden magnet sets and wall art. $16-$125 @rethinktank rethinktankdesign.com

SALVAGED WOODWORKS GORDON RICHARDSON

Salvaged Woodworks provide sustainable, one-of-a-kind goods as unique as you and your home. $20-$300 @salvagedwoodworks salvagedwoodworks.com 18

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RAY’S REUSABLES RAY DALY

Ray’s Reusables sells eco-friendly lifestyle items in addition to bringyour-own-container style refills.

ASH & RISE ATELIER LAUREN PARROW

$5-$40 @rays_reusables raysreusables.com

Ash & Rise upcycles old clothing pieces and creates new fashions from scratch for any size and gender! $25+ @ashandriseatelier ashandriseatelier.com

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• SUSTAINABLE & STYLISH

YRCINC

SAMUEL YANKELL

A series of iconic figurative sculptures in a broad range of themes that exhibit tremendous geometric freedom and vitality while incorporating innovative and unique construction and finishing materials. sculptures on bases “found” at NextFab. $100-$700 samyankellart.com

SMALL WONDER HONEY KAITLIN FANNING

Small Wonder Honey is a women-owned and operated apiary located in Delaware since 2017, starting with two hives and expanding to 8. Shop for local honey and infused honey such as hot honey and cinnamon, as well as products including lip balm, soaps and candles. $5-$10 @smallwonderhoney • facebook.com/smallwonderhoney

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ORDINARY O OLIVIA KAUFMAN-ROVIRA

Ordinary O is a collection of unique sculptures for your home that highlight the extraordinary in the ordinary. The work is about finding and creating moments of joy and intrigue in our everyday lives. Adorn your home! $40-$200 @ordinary_o ordinaryo.com

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• PLAYFUL & PRACTICAL

THE T-SHIRT BOX BY MADO LINDA WATSON

CARTRAGEOUS

The T-shirt Box by Mado is a mystery t-shirt subscription box, with a twist! Each month you will receive a new premium soft style tee and informational card about that month’s brand. Managed by one-stop shop creative agency, Mado.

DEANNA MCLAUGHLIN

$65-$100 @officialtshirtbox thetshirtbox.com

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Cartrageous crafts stylish necklaces, earrings, tie tacks, and cuff links that are true conversation starters utilizing the most iconic image of our consumerbased culture: the shopping cart. $80-$285 @cartrageous cartrageous.com

FISHTOWN SIGNS TROY MUSTO

Fishtown Signs handmakes unique and whimsical wooden fish and maritimerelated signs for people’s homes, businesses and beach houses. $150+ @txfishmonger fishtownsigns.com

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• PLAYFUL & PRACTICAL

SCRAPYARD AESTHETICS SCOTT CUNNINGHAM

Handcrafted scrap metal clocks and lamps and sculpture inspired by work in the auto shop. $45-$120 @scrapyardaesthetics scrapyardaesthetics.com

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COCOA PRESS EVAN WEINSTEIN

Cocoa Press offers personalized, 3D-printed artisanal chocolate for any occasion. $20-$60 @cocoapress personalcocoa.com

GIRL HOLDING A PEN LAUREN KELLEY

Girl Holding a Pen is a calligraphy-based design company that focuses on Christmas ornaments, weddings and signage. $24-$150 @girlholdingapen girlholdingapen.com

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PHILADELPHIA LASER & INDUSTRIAL DESIGN SHARIF PENDLETON

Philadelphia Laser & Industrial Design creates useful, beautiful, and clever housewares and gifts. $8-$150 @laserphilly laserphilly.com

MINIALLEY KHAI VAN

miniAlley Bookshelf Insert is a fully assembled, high quality, handmade gift, perfect for the bookworm in your life.

Combining laser cutting and 3D printing technologies burnished with an artisans touch, each miniAlley will transport you to a new world. $199-$239 @mini_alley minialley.com 26

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JAWNAMENTS SUSAN MURPHY

Show the love for your hometown with a hyperlocal Jawnament! Offering unique “that’s awesome” gifts, including holiday ornaments for lovers of Philly, NJ, Boston, NYC, MD, RI, NH (and soon for Seattle, San Fran and LA). $15-$20+ @jawnaments jawnaments.com

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• ELEVATE YOUR AESTHETIC

CHERNÉ ALTOVISE CHERNE JEAN-LOUIS

Handmade jewelry and accessories for the everyday fashion icon that have a meaning, tell a story and create lifelong memories! $20-$350 @chernealtovise chernealtovise.com

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FEAST JEWELRY ADRIENNE MANNO

Feast is a line of handmade everevolving jewelry and accessory capsules that is inspired by both industrial design and nature.

Combining found and sourced organic elements of pearl, shell, coral and glass, Feast borrows from the environment with restraint, and upcycles vintage and deadstock chain when possible to lighten the footprint of the brand while adding a vintage aesthetic. $32-$120 @feast_jewelry feastjewelryshop.com

PIECES + PARDONS SHANNON ARAGON

Mixed-media jewelry made with purpose and intent, to be adored and adorned, made with polymer clay, resin, jewels, metals and precious stones. Buy a meaningful piece with a message from the #passmypieces line and pay it forward to another when it’s time. $28-$50 @piecesandpardons piecesandpardons.com 20 21 HO L IDAY G IF T GUID E

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• ELEVATE YOUR AESTHETIC

LINDA CELESTIAN LINDA CELESTIAN

Local artist Linda Celestian crafts inspired, lasercut wood and acrylic earrings and pendants. $25-$60 @lindacelestian lindacelestian.com

KKACHI GRACE CHOI

Playful and elegant explorations in ornithology.

KKACHI art and jewelry comprises of mixed materials and processes. $25-$100 @kkachi_curiosities instagram.com/kkachi_curiosities

URSA MAREA ANNETTE SHANTUR

Ursa Marea began as a creative exploration during the pandemic. Each piece is made by Annette in her home, and is designed to be a natural extension of the human form, so that jewelry and body complement and augment each other. $25-$75 @ursamareaclay etsy.com/shop/ursamareaclay 30

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LIVETODREAM ELIZABETH KARASEK

Livetodream depicts everyday life through precious metals, gemstones, wood, and leather in the form of purse and jewelry designs. $40-$300 @livetodreamliz etsy.com/shop/ekarasek

REBECCA LEDBETTER ART REBECCA LEDBETTER

Rebecca Ledbetter is a Philadelphia-based artist who paints abstract oil paintings and encaustic work utilizing inspirations from beloved novels, memories, the intensity of communication and the narratives around us to guide her work. $350+ @rebecca.ledbetter.art rebeccaledbetter.com 20 21 HO L IDAY G IF T GUID E

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NBW is Dedicated to Educating Youth About Cycling and Their Environment.

Ride Club is our first Watershed Trailblazers level. It enables youth ages 8-12 to explore Philadelphia by bike! Through group rides, we explore natural, historic, and artistic spaces in West Philadelphia. Ride Club emphasizes bike safety and the rules of the road, along with the joys of bicycle adventure. Youth will ride on and use Circuit trails and bike paths that are connected to initiatives such as The East Coast Greenway. For more information scan the QR code!

Freedom Riders explore Philadelphia parks, watersheds, and green spaces! this program is for youth 12 to 18 who have finished either Earn-A-Bike, Ride Club, or NBW's Summer Camp. This is a ride program where we'll explore Philly's green-spaces and watershed areas, with an emphasis on learning about our watershed environments and enjoying all the sights, sounds, and bike trails they have to offer. For more information scan the QR code!

Neighborhood Bike Works 3939 Lancaster Ave. Philadelphia, PA 19104 info@neighborhoodbikeworks.org : neighborhoodbikeworks.org N OV E M B E R 20 21 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 49

URBAN RESOURCES

Design competition aims to stimulate creativity and demand for the city’s fallen trees story by siobhan gleason

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photography by Chris Baker Evens

M

ulch, compost and wood chips are piled high on the concrete grounds of the Fairmount Park Organic Recycling Center in West Fairmount Park.

On a typical day at the center, city residents fill out the sign-in sheet and waiver form and collect whatever organic materials they need from the scattered piles with shovels and buckets brought from home. Residents in need of firewood can bring a chainsaw and splitter to cut the available assortment of logs, all of which come from trees harvested from parks and playgrounds managed by

Left: Marc Wilken of Philadelphia Parks & Recreation stands in front of fallen trees at the Fairmount Park Organic Recycling Center. Right: Wilken’s hand on a tree trunk.

This is a great way of getting our wood out there to various markets.”

— m arc wilken, Director of Business and Event Development,

Philadelphia Parks & Recreation

Philadelphia Parks & Recreation (PPR).

The center had 3,894 visits in 2020. The new Urban Wood Design Competition seeks to improve those numbers.

A partnership between PPR, the city’s Rebuild initiative and the Center for Architecture and Design, the competition was first envisioned as a way to highlight possible uses for urban wood while supporting Rebuild projects. Rebuild, which is funded by the Philadelphia Beverage Tax, invests in improving parks, recreation centers and libraries throughout the city.

Extreme weather, invasive species and aging forests have contributed to PPR’s increased wood inventory, which typically includes ash, tulip, poplar, cherry, and red and white oak.

“Parks and Recreation is the hub for all wood that comes from city projects,” explains Marc Wilken, director of business and event development at PPR. “Whether it comes from the Philadelphia Streets Department, the Philadelphia Water Department or Parks and Recreation, we are responsible for managing it.”

PPR has always turned wood into mulch and wood chips, but in recent years has begun milling wood into dimensional lumber for various city projects. Between 2016 and 2017, PPR worked with a local sawyer to

generate more than 1,700 board feet of lumber. This lumber has been used for garden beds and bridges, as well as cubbies and bookshelves for recreation centers.

“We’re averaging about 1,000 tons of logs coming in per year. It certainly is more than what it was a few years ago,” Wilken says.

PPR first approached Rebuild to brainstorm a way to make use of the extra wood.

After some discussion, they brought in the Center for Architecture and Design to manage a competition and interact directly with designers. The partnering groups have centered the competition around the pool at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Recreation Center, which is in need of new furniture.

“We said, ‘Where are some Rebuild sites that aren’t getting a total renovation?’ We ended up going with pool furniture because many pools are looking for additional amenities. MLK has a large pool deck, so it can accommodate furniture. It was also open this year, so our designers can observe the pool and talk with community members,” says Rebecca Johnson, executive director of the Center for Architecture and Design.

PPR staff were inspired by the Baltimore Wood Project, and participated in the Urban Wood Academy, held in Baltimore in 2018, that brought together 18 participants from 10 states. The academy offered discussions

and advice for other municipalities interested in creating local economies from urban wood, either fresh-cut from felled trees or from deconstructed buildings.

PPR also recently issued a request for proposal to have a private firm operate a lumberyard out of the organic recycling center. A lumberyard would prepare, sort and sell the wood; sales would help support the urban forests of Philadelphia.

“The idea with the lumberyard, or any wood we sell, is about putting some of the proceeds into our forest management and natural lands,” Wilken says.

“The decision to go from a dumpyard to a sort yard is a huge strategic difference.

If those materials could be put in a place where they could be aggregated and sorted, [there] wouldn’t be wasted materials.

People who buy these materials can come in and say, ‘I want white oak.’ If you don’t have those sorted, it’s just a big pile of sticks,” says Mike Galvin, registered consulting arborist at SavATree Consulting Group.

The Urban Wood Design Competition was launched in July with a call for submissions for designs or fabrication using wood from the organic recycling center. Participants can be an individual, team or firm.

“This initiative doesn’t just add a fantastic asset to one of our project sites. It also energizes Philly’s local designers and fabricators,” Raymond Smeriglio, director of communications at Rebuild, says.

Participants’ designs must be predominantly wood, last outdoors in all weather, fit community and outdoor pool deck facility needs and have reasonable production costs so the model can be replicated.

“The wood will have to be treated. They’ll have to think about joinery, [which] allows wood to expand and contract. They’ll have to explain how this [furniture] can live outside,” Johnson explains.

Final submissions will be due November 1. Finalists will be chosen by November 30.

In 2022, a sawyer will mill for all prototypes at the organic recycling center, and they’ll be exhibited at the recreation center pool through the summer of 2022. A winner will be announced in September 2022.

“This is a great way of getting our wood out there to various markets,” says Wilken. “Raising awareness of it to the local design and architecture community and inspiring folks to think about our wood at different scales.”

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Scout Managing Partner Lindsey Scannapieco helped take BOK from an old vocational school to a home for creatives .

52 GRID P H IL LY.CO M NOVEM BE R 20 21

THE NEW SCHOOL

A closed vocational school became home to hundreds of small businesses. Could it be replicated elsewhere? story by nichole currie

I

n 2013 the School District of Philadelphia closed 23 schools, including a massive gray stone building on South Ninth Street, the Edward W. Bok Technical High School.

In an unexpected twist, the development and design firm Scout bought it for $1.75 million and has been gradually repurposing it into a sanctuary for creatives since July 2015.

Seven years later, BOK is home to more than 225 small businesses and organizations.

“What is this place?” asks Emmanuel Scipio, BOK tenant and founder of Scipio’s Commercial Cleaning. “It’s old and looks like a school, but it’s not a school. I don’t know the vision that Lindsey had. I don’t know what this chick was thinking, but it’s amazing.”

Scipio is among some of BOK’s long-term tenants. The South Philly native started his cleaning company in 2014 and says he

—

photography by drew dennis

received a call from Scout in 2017. Scout Managing Partner Lindsey Scannapieco was looking to contract Scipio to clean the BOK Bar, a popular watering hole on the building’s rooftop.

Scipio knew this building well—he’s an alumnus.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he says of the day he arrived to meet with Scannapieco.

The two walked through every floor as Scipio reminisced about his high school days. In addition to accepting the contract to clean the bar, he found a place to house his business. Today, with the building finished, Scipio says Scout’s work in revamping the building is remarkable.

“The school still looks like a school, but from the time that I was in here, I really don’t see it anymore,” Scipio says.

It’s no accident that the 340,000-square-

Emmanuel Scipio, founder of Scipio’s Commercial Cleaning, is both a tenant at BOK and an alum of the vocational school.

foot shared workspace kept classroom numbers on the door, lockers in the hallway and occasional graffiti throughout the hallways. Scannapieco says Scout bought the former school with these plans in mind.

“When we submitted our bid for this building, we said that what we would do is try to reuse the infrastructure here that was a part of this vocational school and see how that infrastructure could be valuable to different businesses,” she says.

Unique and Resourceful Scannapieco says that while Philadelphia has several shared workspaces and offices, including Pipeline, Task Up and WeWork, she believed the city needed a shared workspace for “dirtier” businesses, rather than another Class A or B office building.

“I think oftentimes creative makers and artists get put to the fringe of what’s an occupiable building,” she says.

An old vocational school was the perfect backdrop for this vision. Classrooms designated for cosmetology and culinary arts would suit businesses like hair salons and bakeries. The former school was built in 1936, funded by President Roosevelt’s Public Works Administration. When it opened its doors in 1938, 3,000 students from all over Philadelphia attended to learn a wide variety of trades.

“I think that one of the things that makes this building special is that it was made to accommodate students from various subjects,” Cacie Rosario, BOK’s marketing and communications manager, says. “Like wallpapering and auto mechanics and bricklaying. The classrooms are outfitted for majors of study like that.”

With this history in mind, Scout began its redevelopment cautiously in 2015. The team was looking for businesses whose needs would naturally meet what each classroom could offer. Scannapieco met with neighbors and learned many were running busiN OV E M B E R 20 21 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 53

BOK tenant Conscious Cultures is a gourmet vegan cheese business, founded in 2018 by by Steve Babaki.

We’ve really had to be laser-focused on making this building work ... ” — l indsey s cannapie co, Scout Managing Partner

nesses out of their homes and would benefit from a space nearby.

“They said, ‘Oh my gosh, my living room is exploding,’ or ‘My workshop in my basement isn’t working’ or ‘I would just love somewhere close to where I live to be able to work that’s affordable,’” Scannapieco explains. “And that’s kind of how it started.”

Today, 71% of the building’s occupants are residents of South Philly.

Scannapieco says the ability to walk to work is a considerable amenity.

“I think that that has a huge impact on not only people’s mental health but also the health and the wealth of their community,” she says.

Makers and Doers Conscious Cultures founder Steve Babaki started his gourmet vegan cheese business in 2018. Before taking over a friend’s lease 54 GR ID P H IL LY.CO M NOVEM BE R 2021

at BOK, he had been working out of a yoga studio’s basement, and before that, his home.

Babaki says getting a space at BOK was the beginning of his professional career.

“They got me legit,” he says. “I no longer had an illegal business.”

Today, Conscious Culture’s business is booming. The cashew-based cheese is sold throughout the United States, including California, New York and Delaware. The company has also been featured in the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, VegNews and in the pages of Grid (#134, July 2020.)

A similar story follows Second Daughter Baking Co., also fairly new to BOK. The sister duo, Rhonda Saltzman and Mercedes Brooks, began their bakery out of their mother’s kitchen in Overbrook. Last year the sisters started reaching out to find a suitable location that met their needs, but the pandemic

threw a wrench in the process.

“We called different bakeries, catering companies, you name it,” Saltzman says. “We called everywhere to figure out what would make sense for us and our usage. Everyone, literally every single person, told us no.”

But BOK was actively trying to help creatives during COVID-19, and they told the sisters yes. “[It] was really that yes that set our business on this course to what it is today,” Saltzman says. “Without it, I don’t know if we would have achieved any level of notoriety or growing success.”

Second Daughter has been featured in the Inquirer, Philadelphia Magazine and Grid (#143, April 2021), and recently prepared an order for the Philadelphia Eagles.

Paving the Way After almost two years of the pandemic, BOK and its tenants are going strong.

Though many small businesses went under during the pandemic, Rosario says the BOK turnover rate was low. Between April 2020 to April 2021, only 10% of units in the building turned over.

BOK’s low turnover was partially due to its rent relief program. Scout received $138,000 in Paycheck Protection Program funds in April 2020. They began deferring rent for tenants and assuming the costs of some tenants’ rent, fully or partially. After receiving 118 applications, Scout provided some level of support to 94% of its 200+ tenants.

“Even though obviously everyone took a big hit ... overall, we tried to make sure that we would really just meet with tenants on a person-to-person level and see where they were at,” Rosario says. “Seeing what things looked like for them.”

In the midst of the pandemic, BOK also managed to expand. Opening up its sixth floor in the fall of 2020, it managed to welcome around 25 new tenants.

Scannapieco notes the BOK building still has a few final spaces under construction today. Still, with its level of leasing success, one may wonder whether Scout envisions revamping buildings elsewhere to construct more unique spaces that meet the needs of creatives.

Scannapieco says Scout has been approached by cities like Detroit, Baltimore, Newark and Memphis that are looking to repurpose older buildings to sustain small entrepreneurs, makers, artists and nonprofits.

For the moment, Scannapieco says, Scout remains focused on BOK and ensuring that the space accomplishes its initial goals.

“For us, this was a huge leap of faith. And for so many other people who believed in us from the beginning—or maybe didn’t believe in us,” Scannapieco says. “We’ve really had to be laser-focused on making this building work ... but we’re certainly looking at other opportunities because I think that a lot of places would benefit from spaces like this.”

Second Daughter Baking Co. is an artisan bakery based out of BOK, run by sisters Rhonda Saltzman (left) and Mercedes Brooks.

N OV E M B E R 20 21 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 55

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PICKUP ARTISTS

Bennett Compost has scaled up its bicycle usage—and created good jobs in the process story by patrick kerr

I

n a former municipal building on Rising Sun Avenue in Northeast Philadelphia, cycling enthusiast Rudi Saldia is doing something he never imagined: working at a desk.

It was a long and winding road—well, often a straight road on a grid—that led him to Bennett Compost’s Lawncrest headquarters.

Before the days of DoorDash and Grubhub, he was doing deliveries for restaurants. He

Jen Mastalerz, Tim Bennett and Rudi Saldia have made compost pickup by bicycle a reality for 40% of their customers.

58 GR ID P H IL LY.CO M NOVEM BE R 2021

—

photography by drew dennis

was a messenger and courier with Sparrow Cycling. He even rode a pedicab for a while.

“Working on my bicycle has always been a passion of mine,” says Saldia.

When he was recruited by Bennett Compost to pick up organic waste by bicycle, the position almost seemed too good to be true.

“This was the first job [I’d seen] that offered cyclists full-time benefits and salary, which is pretty much unheard of,” says Saldia.

He was hired by Jen Mastalerz, a cyclist herself, who had just recently become a partner at the company. She has a long history in organic waste, first working for the Mount Airy-based Philly Compost and then starting her own business, City Sprouts, in Fishtown where she lived, picking up organic waste by bicycle at neighborhood restaurants, including Johnny Brenda’s and La Colombe.

On a small scale, she was able to make

bicycle pickups work. “I found it very enjoyable and easy, weather permitting. And I had backup—a Honda Fit,” Mastalerz recalls.

But when she bought into Bennett Compost in 2018, she had a vision to push this model further.

“I really saw an opportunity with Philly being flat,” says Mastalerz.

Her business partner, founder Tim Bennett, however, was skeptical.

“I thought there was no way this could possibly work,” he remembers.

Mastalerz set out to prove him wrong.

Through a grant from The Merchants Fund, Mastalerz had acquired a trike with a sizable bin in the front designed to transport a person in a wheelchair. When she rode it for her first Bennett Compost route, her optimism was tested. It took 13 hours to complete a route of 100 customers.

“Not efficient,” she says with a laugh. “It was a terrible day.”

Despite the inauspicious start, Mastalerz was undeterred. She was still pondering how to make bicycle pickups work when JT Look, the owner of the now-closed bike repair shop Fishtown Bikes-N-Beans, suggested Saldia as a hire.

Saldia proved to be exactly what Bennett Compost needed to launch the bicycle pickup service. His idea of fun was doing bike deliveries all week and then going for 100mile rides on the weekend.

With his help, what once seemed like impossible bike routes became routine.

“Jen and I would regularly have conversations about whether this would be feasible without Rudi,” Bennett says.

The problem that they were facing was that, superhuman cycling aside, they didn’t have the density necessary to support pickup by bicycle.

“That route Jen did was a sprawling route that went from probably almost Port Richmond all the way down to the end of Northern Liberties … We now have five routes over two days [in that area],” Bennett says.

E-bikes are also part of the operation now. Tern GSD e-bikes (purchased from Firth & Wilson Transport Cycles in Fishtown) are outfitted with trailers, making hauling much easier.

But the key to their success has really been building customer density. Twelve years into business, Bennett Compost now has over 5,500 customers, and picks up organic waste from over 2,200 of those

Bennett Compost partner Jen Mastalerz shows off the trike the company acquired through a grant, which allowed them to start bicycle pickup.

This was the first job [I’d seen] that offered cyclists fulltime benefits and salary, which is pretty much unheard of.”

— r udi saldia, manager at Bennett Compost customers by bicycle. This has resulted in employment for three full-time cyclists.

Saldia, who has been promoted to a management position, is not one of them. He will still fill in for a shift when necessary, but he no longer does pickups on a daily basis.

“On one hand, I miss riding my bike for work,” Saldia says. “But on the other hand, I now get to help grow the bike division of Bennett. I went from being the only full-time cyclist at Bennett to now managing a crew of three full-time cyclists. So even though I don’t ride my bike for work everyday, I still get to

work with the bikers and keep this part of Bennett Compost rolling forward.”

A Business is Born Twelve years ago, Tim Bennett was living in a second floor apartment in South Philly when he began looking at ways to reduce his impact on the environment and learned about composting.

Composting is a natural process. It’s the decaying of organic matter, and when it’s complete, the result is rich soil ideal for growing food. But managing that process N OV E M B E R 20 21 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 59

Rudi Saldia has had many gigs that involved biking around town, but he found his first full-time position with the compost pickup business.

can be tricky, especially if you don’t have access to outdoor space. “[Composting] seem[ed] like something I should be doing, but I didn’t have a way to do it easily in my apartment in South Philly,“ he recalls. So he looked around for a place that could take his compost but didn’t find any good options. It occurred to him that others might feel the same way.

At the time, Bennett was working at Temple University’s Small Business Development Center, doing “very boring office management type work.”

“The nice thing about it was it exposed me to all these people who would come through the office who were trying to find ways to start various businesses. It was a great way to learn,” Bennett says.

He put $100 in a bank account to make the business official and hung flyers at coffee shops.

“A couple days later someone called me,” he says. “I was shocked.”

Throughout the summer of 2009, Bennett continued to hang flyers until he’d converted about 10 customers. By that point, he’d had built a relationship with a community garden where the organic waste could go.

60 GRIDPH IL LY.CO M NOVEM BE R 2021

Bennett did not own a vehicle, but he noticed there were low rental rates for pickup trucks, especially in the middle of the night, through the now defunct PhillyCarShare.

In early September 2009, Bennett took most of the money he had made, and signed up for Greenfest Philly, the annual festival of all things sustainable held in Society Hill.

A novice to the scene, Bennett hung a sign around his neck that said “composting.” After the event, he looked in astonishment at the email signup sheet, and the 125 emails in his inbox the next day.

The demand for composting in Philadelphia was budding.

At that same Greenfest, Bennett met Alex Mulcahy, Grid’s publisher. The two forged a friendship, and before long they became partners in the business.

Eleven months after Greenfest, Bennett decided the time was right to make the leap and go full time.

“Alex’s belief in me, and the growth of people subscribing to the residential pickup, gave me the confidence to go all in.”

In 2020, fueled by a surge during the pandemic, Bennett Compost signed up their 5,000th customer.

Composting Not Permitted Their current location on Rising Sun Avenue is Bennett Compost’s third address.

The first place they rented was a narrow garage on North 21st Street near Cecil B. Moore that was only 1,000 square feet. It was a modest beginning, there was no heat or hot water, but they did have cold water to clean buckets.

Next, their operations moved to Share Food Program’s headquarters on West Hunting Park Avenue in the Allegheny West neighborhood of North Philly. There they had ample indoor and outdoor space, which allowed them to do some on-site composting. The operation never got too large because, surprising as it may sound, composting is largely illegal in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania.

Before you panic and disable your tumbler full of leaves and food scraps, there are places in Pennsylvania where you are allowed to compost, and your backyard is one.

You can also apply for a permit to compost if you own a farm, or have access to a rock quarry, or if you are a business or institution that is composting material generated on site. But, as it stands right now, there’s no

permit for composting residential pickups.

This situation came to the attention of Nic Esposito, who was the sustainability manager at Philadelphia Parks & Recreation (PPR), when he was serving on the Solid Waste and Recycling Advisory Committee’s Organics Subcommittee.

“This was the first I had heard that [there was a] major hindrance to growth because Pennsylvania lacked an urban composting permit,” Esposito says. “Basically compost operations like [Bennett’s] were being regulated almost as if they were landfills, which is impossible to satisfy in the city.”

According to Bennett, “[Pennsylvania] doesn’t distinguish between someone who wants to do 500 tons a year … and 500 tons a day.”

Esposito began working with Marc Wilken from PPR, who had gotten the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to grant a permit for the Fairmount Park Organic Recycling Center.

When he approached the DEP about getting a permit for a business like Bennett Compost, they said that they would need a test site.

Esposito realized that, given the upfront costs associated with outfitting a location for composting, this scenario would be untenable. Who would make the investments knowing that, if the permit failed to happen, you could be forced to move?

Esposito then had a unique idea. What if they could limit a company’s cost by making a trade? Esposito approached Molly Riordan, the city’s Good Food Purchasing Coordinator, and she helped him put together a contract for a cashless exchange.

The deal that was offered was free rent

We’ve taken pride in our ability as we’ve grown to offer better employment opportunities.”

— tim bennett, founder of Bennett Compost

and the ability to compost on site in exchange for picking up organic waste from the city’s 256 recreation centers.

A request for proposal was posted, and Bennett Compost won the bid, largely because they were the right combination of big and small.

“The processing is on a small scale,” Bennett says. “So it’s not interesting to a larger company. But the collection is on a very large scale because you go to 156 locations spread all throughout the city.”

The project was derailed by the pandemic, and the loss of Nic Esposito, who was promoted to lead the Zero Litter and Waste Cabinet, only to have the position eliminated by the city’s budgetary cuts. However, the EPA has stepped in with some funding to cover the city’s shortfall, and pickups began in September at 25 recreation centers.

A Fair Deal Bennett Compost’s mission is to make composting easy to do, but Bennett says that just as important has been their commitment to their employees.

The company now employs 16 people, 15 of which are full time. “We’ve offered opportunities for people to grow internally into

more leadership roles,” Bennett says.

Take for instance, Mr. Saldia.

“Rudi is a special person. Had we hired a less competent person it might not have worked.”

When the pandemic hit, Bennett Compost offered hazard pay, raising workers’ rate from $15 per hour to $18, and they’ve made that rate stick. They also offer their employees, 85% of whom have no more than a high school diploma, healthcare and a 401K. “We’ve taken pride in our ability as we’ve grown to offer better employment opportunities,” Bennett says. “We’ve hired people who are returning citizens [from incarceration] and who might have difficulty getting a job.”

After a dozen years in the business, Tim Bennett is no less enthusiastic than ever.

“I still think the work we do is meaningful.

It’s part of what I found so attractive about it when I was starting. Not just that it was a business opportunity, but it was an opportunity to do something that I thought could have an impact in our city and in the world.

“But I also enjoy it because it’s fun to figure things out. The challenge helps me get out of bed every day and work on it.”

N OV E M B E R 20 21 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 6 1

An independent studio prepares to release its first zero-waste, feature-length film story by siobhan gleason

A

16-ounce mason jar filled with trash feels like a trophy to Emily Gallagher and Austin Elston, cofounders of Fishtown Films.

It was the designated place for all waste produced during the creation of their first feature-length film, “Citywide.”

Partners in life and in business, Gallagher, cinematographer and editor, and Elston, writer and director, have been committed to zero-waste filmmaking since 2016. Their queer romantic thriller about a wild night in Fishtown is set to be released in January 2022.

Janice Amaya, lead actor in the film, plays a New Yorker who visits Philadelphia with a friend.

Amaya describes the film as “a bit of every genre … [It captures] the possibility and potential of a good night out, the hope you have for a good night.”

Gallagher and Elston hope to spread the word about reducing waste on set and share the strategies that they employed to create a sustainable movie.

For those unfamiliar with the film industry, it can be hard to imagine just how much waste is produced on the typical Hollywood set. Between plastic-wrapped food, utensils, props and constructed sets, waste can pile very high.

Certain items that are essential to filmmaking, such as gaffer tape, cannot be recycled or composted. Gallagher and Elston have learned to plan for the waste they cannot avoid and to accept some trash that comes from community-building activities on set.

“We have foil from Polaroids because everyone loved taking Polaroids on set,” Gallagher says. “That is a waste, but there was so much energy and community from it. It’s worth putting in the jar.”

62 GRID P H I L LY.CO M NOVEM BE R 20 21

Actor Alice Kremelberg immediately noticed Fishtown Films’ commitment to sustainable filmmaking and how they often avoided using anything they didn’t absolutely need for the film.

“They were really conscious of [using] tape for marks on the ground. We hardly used tape at all. Usually you’re pulling up tape and putting down more. That was a huge change,” Kremelberg says of the tape often used to make dolly marks or mark where actors should stand.

Though viewers don’t see tape on screen, they do see the largest source of trash: the

Writer and director Austin Elston cofounded Fishtown Films with his partner Emily Gallagher. Opposite page: Gallagher at work behind the camera.

P H OTO G R A P H Y C O U R T E S Y F I S H TO W N F I L M S

REDUCE, REUSE, ACTION!

sets. The buildings and rooms that we admire in TV and movies often become refuse once shooting ends.

“The average movie set creates about 500 tons of garbage,” Gallagher says. “That’s primarily [due to] set construction.”

Gallagher points to the famous house in the 1998 film “Practical Magic” as an example of a set that created excess waste. The architectural shell, built on San Juan Island in Washington state, was torn down after filming ended.

“Imagine the debris of deconstructing a three-story Victorian home,” Gallagher says.

To avoid waste and save money that would have been spent building sets, Elston and Gallagher filmed in existing businesses, like the dive bar The Monkey Club and the bookstore The Head & The Hand, both in Kensington.

Filmmakers often rely on constructed sets because they can achieve a level of control that would be impossible inside existing buildings. Walls can be removed for different shots, lights can be moved easily without a ceiling, and background noise can be eliminated.

Gallagher and Elston have had to think more creatively when filming.

“You find a new way. If we limit ourselves to just what we know, we’re not going to explore anything new,” Elston says. “Everything will be carbon copies of what somebody else accomplished.”

Their decision to film in local businesses strengthened the pair’s connections with the surrounding community, which helped them capture more of the feel of the neighborhood.

“We allowed Philadelphia to be itself in the film,” Gallagher says.

The actors featured in “Citywide” stayed in Airbnbs in the neighborhood, which created an immersive experience. They also talked with business owners and employees between shooting scenes.

“I was shooting at the bookstore. My character worked there,” says Sonia Mena, who

The average movie set creates about 500 tons of garbage.”

—emily gallagher, cofounder of Fishtown Films

played a supporting role. She got to know an employee of The Head & The Hand, which helped her embody her character and give an authentic performance. “I said, ‘Hi, I am you. Let’s talk.’ For a movie about that neighborhood, it felt right to be shooting in those spaces.”

Fishtown Films turned to local businesses for more than just sets.

All the catered food came from restaurants and bakeries that provided zero-waste meals for the cast, including Crust Vegan Bakery and Miss Rachel’s Pantry, and ReAnimator Coffee filled up a thermos each day. Elston and Gallagher used reusable cups, plates, silverware and cloth napkins to eliminate traditional plastic and paper waste found on many sets. This required planning ahead and extra cleaning.

“There were many nights when we were up late doing dishes and getting prepped for the next day,” Elston says.

Over the years, they have learned how to manage their time efficiently and become

This 16-ounce jar holds all the waste produced on the set of “Citywide.”

more detail-oriented, which has made it easier to commit to zero-waste choices.

“You’re not running out to the store to buy disposable plates or getting rid of trash.

Instead you’re spending that time doing laundry or managing compost,” Gallagher says.

Gallagher and Elston believe that zerowaste filmmaking will get easier over time, especially as awareness grows. As more film studios begin to request zero-waste catered food, more companies will begin to provide it. Similarly, if more studios look for ways to reuse props or sets, a circular economy will crop up.

“The Resource Exchange exists here in Philly,” Gallagher says. “You can take existing sets and props and they can resell it to the next film or play that needs it. If we [as an industry] start making sustainable films, every city will have props and sets that we can all rummage through.”

There is already some evidence that other movie studios are starting to embrace sustainable filmmaking. Mallory Wu, a supporting actor in “Citywide,” noticed a craft services department with plant-based plates and silverware while on set on a new TV show.

“That was the first set outside of [Fishtown Films] where I was like, ‘Look, they’re trying,’” Wu says.

Amaya believes that Elston and Gallagher’s zero-waste focus helps create a community environment.

“What really stood out to me was the care that goes into making a zero-waste film. With Austin and Emily, you’re eating really well, with food made by locals and wrapped in sustainable fabrics. That sets the tone for how the day is going to go,” Amaya says. “From the food to lighting, we’re all on a team. We had such agency in creating our characters and it’s all an extension of zero-waste, it extends into everything else on set.”

“Citywide” will be released in January 2022.

The film will be shown at The Monkey Club and will be entered into several film festivals.

N OV E M B E R 20 21 G R I DP HI LLY.COM 63

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At Penn, Izzy took as many courses with field work as possible, immersing herself in sustainable practices for conservation, farming, and climate change mitigation in the mid-Atlantic states and beyond. “We have a lot to learn from other people in other parts of the world,” says Izzy, who also studied ecology in Puerto Rico. “We’re going to be dealing with so many unexpected changes that it is really valuable to widen our perspective.” Now a Resource Management Specialist for the New Jersey Highlands Council, Izzy puts her environmental education into practice for a state planning agency dedicated to protecting and enhancing the region’s natural resources.

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