philly

I shot a story for the January 2011 issue of Mariposa Co-op in West Philly and their expansion into some new, bigger digs a few doors down the street. I met Bull, Esteban and Mike in the empty Beulah Tabernacle building at 49th St & Baltimore Ave. More information on the expansion project here.

Walking around the empty building with Bull, I could see the work they'd already put into the place. Decades old paint was being stripped and I think walls may be coming down. He and Esteban were talking about what used to be there – an afterschool program, a church, a bank.

The offices will be upstairs in this room and the goods will all be downstairs in the space you can see in the topmost photo.

Here's the view of the building as it currently stands. A new sign will go up when all is completed.

Here's a shot of the inside of the current home of Mariposa at 48th St & Baltimore Ave. Two aisles packed with goods.

Read the article and more from the January 2011 issue of Grid here.

So Philly got a lot of snow on January 26 – 27, 2011. I got up early and shoveled the area outside our new place in the Italian Market area of town and saw a couple guys already up and at it. While at work, Kate tweeted that:

dudes outside drinking beer on a couch they made out of snow. i applaud their effort. i prefer being inside.

I couldn't wait to get home to see it myself. By the time I got home around 3p, they had ordered a pizza (delivered to the snow couch) and built a second couch loveseat next to it and were starting on a third couch which became a corner sectional. Up in the first photo is the original gang. Rachel and Jake, on the ends, are our new neighbors.

I grabbed my gear and went back outside with lights and a couple lenses to capture the scene. With an SB800 tethered to my D700 and 2 SB600s on stands, I snapped a few frames and that's all it took. I chatted with my new friends for a bit, but had to make yet another trip to IKEA to get some stuff for our new place.

When we got back, it was almost dark so we lugged our stuff upstairs and went back down to properly hang out snow couch styles. We met our buildingmates, exchanged info and NBC10 showed up and interviewed the original snow couch gang. I watched the 11p news, but we didn't make the cut, but below is a 9 second clip I shot with my phone of Michael being interviewed by Claudia Rivero.

And at 10.24a on January 28, the 3 couches are still there outside.

SNOW COUCH 4EVA!

A few more snow couch shots in this flickr set: