tenleygwen's Profile

I love how cohesive it is -- the art and objects bring together what would otherwise be a pretty bland collection of furniture, and give it a vibrant personality. Except that amazing blue velvet chair, which I covet!

The stools are an interesting concept, and I'd like to see what comes from some longer experimentation with the process ... also, the artist is supercute. (Yes, I'm shallow.)

Someone stole the baby hosta I hadn't potted yet, from my front stoop. The thing was barely 3" tall, and cost me $1.50, but someone felt it worth their while to steal it.

Then there's the trash everywhere -- a by-product of moving into a "transitional" neighborhood, where there are not and never have been public trashcans, so people throw things indiscriminately on the sidewalk, or if they feel like being a bit "neater" in the storm drains.

The renters a few doors down are pretty horrifying -- drunk always, yelling at each other and their maybe 8-yr-old daughter, and generally walking around looking like a less glamorous version of Mickey Rourke and Faye Dunaway in Barfly.

But I love my nosy neighbor (who keeps me up-to-date on the neighborhood), my next-door neighbor who talks to my cat when she sits in the window, my filmmaker neighbor who invites me over for impromptu barbecues, my block captain neighbor who knows every person who's lived on the block for the last 50 years, and the rest of the neighbors who generally make me smile. Not all of them do, but most.

I was hoping you'd talk about the urban necessary evil of having your dog pee on the concrete -- and the resulting smell! My tiny South Philly back "yard," a 10' x 14' concrete square, positively reeks in the summertime, because it's just not convenient *always* to take him out on the leash to pee. I hose it down, I spend tons of money of Nature's Miracle, and still, yuck.

Would taking out a block of the concrete and covering it with gravel, as a "pee spot," help the odor to dissipate?

I do love the bunkbed idea. I'm definitely going to consider this -- possibly as a base for an urban "tree" house for my son!