Saturday, December 24, 2011

list of documentaries screened at the party

during the party we screened two documentaries. here is the information for further reading. the first one was screened during the afternoon (sorry for the poor sound and early cutoff. we'll try to have a better sound setup next time). the second series was left on loop all night.


What Would Jesus Buy?

From IMDB

An examination of the commercialization of Christmas in America while following Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping Gospel Choir on a cross-country mission to save Christmas from the Shopocalypse (the end of humankind from consumerism, over-consumption and the fires of eternal debt.) The film also delves into issues such as the role sweatshops play in America's mass consumerism and Big-Box Culture. From the humble beginnings of preaching at his portable pulpit on New York City subways, to having a congregation of thousands - Bill Talen (aka Rev. Billy) has become the leader of not just a church, but a national movement.

7 Billion Others

From the website: 

In 2003, after The Earth seen from the Sky,
Yann Arthus-Bertrand, with Sybille d’Orgeval and Baptiste Rouget-Luchaire, launched the project “6 Billion Others”.
5,000 interviews were filmed in 75 countries by 6 directors who went in search of the Others.

From a Brazilian fisherman to a Chinese shopkeeper, from a German performer to an Afghan farmer, all answered the same questions about their fears, dreams, ordeals, hopes:



  What have you learnt from your parents? What do you want to pass on to your children? What difficult circumstances have you been through? What does love mean to you?

Forty or so questions that help us to find out what separates and what unites us. 

Questions played (looped not necessarily in this sequence):




thank you everyone for participating!

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Cupboard of Cold gets Coloured

The life of the unemployed is pretty dam hard I must say, going to sleep never before 2am and waking up after 11am everyday... With 3 of the 4 tenants unemployed life is lookin up. Ellen is off gallivanting and making out with people in Melbourne. Tamika and Ash go crazy in the warehouse creating gardens, benches, screen prints, art works and most importantly the crazy fridge!; All with help from CSs n HelpX of course. Joao works like a good boy to bring home the bacon (now that the vegans are gone). So plans are coming along and the place is moving forward in a really good way, more and more is getting done to make life easier to live.

Who woulda thought being unemployed and restless while it rains (all the grass seeds away might I add) that we’d have so much fun around the house. Minus the whole getting ahead in the money situation we’re doing pretty well.

Now for the most important part of this blog...

The fridge! My new small business plan... hahah ok so I was paining a “white” board for a notice board and shortly after opening the tin my eyes deceived me and the paint was blue, a lovely blue bad defiantly now white- thanks a lot there Dulux. So I painted the board anyway with a roller and it worked out sweet! But with so much paint left over in the roller paint holder thingy it seemed such a waste to not paint something and id already closed the tin back up and couldn’t be bothered opening it again.

Asking Mamma Ash about 100 times wielding a paint roller, “Can I paint this?” “No” “Can I paint this?” “No” “Can I paint this?” “No” “Can I paint this?” “No” “Well can I paint the fridge then?” finally the fun sucker that is Ash said “yes” stoked as I began painting...

Then the idea started storming in my head, we could make it retro with powder blue and pink, or draw clouds, or the ocean, we could make it into a television, or add glitter... No no no there all lovely ideas but way cooler (excuse the pun) is as fridge that eats you! And so became the amazing new fridge...

The blue layer first, then the mouth was pretty tricky with my impatiens of not wanting to wait for the paint to dry colours got mixed but its all sweet. The eyes we had to sacrifice a sexy fireman plate but its all worth it and the other eye is an old washing machine circle I picked up one night whilst walking home drunk... it does oright ey...

I think Blue is become a kind of theme for us...

Friday, December 9, 2011

our scrum board

one of the challenges of community living is knowing who does what and
what's to do.

transparency is essential because it prevents the "i never see you
doing anything" type of conflict.

some structure is also necessary to help everyone know how to contribute.

in order to tackle these problems (and prevent the bumming around) i
proposed a stateful task board similar to what's used in software
development. though these are totally different worlds, they both
share the need for a system that promotes creativity and positive
group interactions

each column represents a state of a task: to do, after this bong, work
in progress, done.

each postit is color coded: green not important, pink important.
people are assigned using yellow postits with their names.

as work progresses, new tasks are added and old ones are cleared out
periodically. one side effect of transparency is that it makes clear
who contributes and who doesn't, which in turn encourages
collaboration

it's still not clear if it's going to last, but for now i'm very
pleased with the outcome, and don't mind being the scrum master while
everyone gets used to the idea

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

gardening

i've spent the last couple of days working on the garden outside. a lot of space was being wasted out there, and with summer here it makes sense to have more things happening outside.

harmen and i started by building some planter boxes for the existing plants we had. this was done by collecting a few of those flat bread crates and raising them with some bricks for drainage. we lined the bottom of the crates with some old cardboard, then pulled an old wooden crate apart to build up the sides and have some depth. we raked the old leaves away and found beautiful, fertile soil underneath. lots of happy worms, slaters, witchetty grubs and scary-as-fuck centipedes (scolopendromorpha variety. thanks Centipedes of Australia). apart from the bugs, our garden is now home to a tomato plant, chili, eggplant, capsicum, passionfruit, basil and parsley. apart from the plants themselves, all of the materials/soil was found or built by us.




the next project was to build a rainwater collection system for the garden. whenever it rains here we have a huge amount of water running off the roof of our warehouse as well as the two places next door. rather than watering our plants with fresh drinking water, we may as well catch and reuse the rain. i found a big plastic barrel at reverse garbage for $20 (about 200L capacity). we bought some second hand pvc pipe and garden hose from the bower for about $15. harmen cut the lid off the barrel and covered the hole with shadecloth to keep the leaves and mozzies under control, then fixed the pvc pipe to the existing gutter so the rainwater flows into the drum. eventually we will have a gravity fed hose punched with holes continuously feeding the garden beds.




i also bought a box of grass seeds yesterday. we spent today breaking up the concrete, digging up fresh soil and redistributing it across the garden. it's a lot of work, but i'm sure it will be worth it once we have a nice green lawn instead of concrete and leaves. we'll finish up tomorrow so we should (hopefully) see grass starting to sprout in the next week or so.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

the new sink and lighting

we've been engineeringly busy here. two of our several simple but
useful projects were a working sink and light switches.

one of the challenges of communal kitchens is the clutter and how much
washing up is always necessary. our previous setup was ok, but it was
making people do the washing in the bathroom, since there we had
working plumbing versus the bucket in the kitchen. so we got some
proper plumbing gear, drew up a sink and set it up in a better place.
now our sink has a working drain and tap, which has made our washing
up much easier. the whole setup was made out of scrap stuff, except
the drain connections, courtesy of the bower.

another issue has been the lighting, which until now was all connected
to a single socket. if anyone would get up in the middle of the night
and wanted just to heat up something in the kitchen, they'd have to
light up the whole place. so now thanks to the new switches, we can
selectively turn on lights in the kitchen, bathroom and living room.
in fact, the light is so good in the bathroom now that we had to
double up the curtain, since the light from the inside made the
existing one transparent. not nice if you're showering.

depicted are also the new occupied sign for the bathroom and the
removed doors from the kitchen. the whole space is now much more open
and makes it easier to cook big meals.

another side effect of rewiring the place is that now we have two
sockets on the back room, which until now has had little use, but
hopefully will be turned into a small workshop

end of engineering report. live long and prosper

Thursday, December 1, 2011

our first helpxer

our profile is up and running, and i've had a bunch of requests already. i've noticed a pretty big difference between these ones and the cs guests. while a cs request will typically read something like "hi! :):) i'll be in sydney from __ to __ and i need a place to stay", the helpx ones are more interested about the project and what we're working on. helpxers tend to wait for me so suggest dates and length of stay (i haven't had a single person request a particular date yet) and it's just generally more formal. like they're applying for a job rather than a bed in a messy warehouse. i've stopped accepting CS requests, but might still accept them if they're happy to be a part of the project as a helpxer would.

i've gone and broken our 2 week rule for harmen, a dutch engineer who has been staying with us as a tag along CSer. apart from being a generally cool dude, he's very hardworking and interested in helping with the place. i spoke to him about helpxing and he's going to stay on until tuesday doing that. while i respect and agree that we need to have some kind of consistency with our guests, rather than just making exceptions for the ones we personally get along with, i think harmen is a good place to start with my new way of hosting. he understands the place and is willing to be involved while i figure out exactly how i'm going to run it.

one of our guests dorthe is going to run a little house meeting tonight. she's run bigger, functioning communities in the past and is very into the organisational side of things, so it will be interesting to see how she does things. i'll post a rundown of what happens later on.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

i haven't posted here in a long while. been very busy with my last weeks at work and then was traveling for a bit. it has given me a chance though to think a bit more about the place and the direction that it's headed in. 

when i started out on this project i was wary to attach any kind of solid goals or plans to the place. i was simply curious to see what would happen if you provide a public space, free of charge, without any real restrictions or rules. we've had an amazing few months. travelers from all over the place connecting and sharing space together. lots of goon and cigarettes. cool artwork all over the place. occasional impromptu jam sessions and backyard fires. it's been great.

i have to admit though, that i was hoping for something a little different. not that i don't value the stuff that's been going on and the people we've met through it all, but since we moved in around the middle of august, there has been only one organised gig. i'd like to see more of this, as well as workshops, discussions and projects. there are hundreds of places in sydney where you can drink goon and have a party. i think the garden is capable of more than we're using it for.

anyway, enough whinging about it. what am i going to do?

personally, i'm going to move away from CS a bit. CSers are in the most part, amazing, interesting, productive people. but, it's a fact that CSers are primarily looking for a free bed. they don't usually arrive with the idea that they're going to be a part of a project. i'm writing up a profile for helpx and will start looking for guests through there. i'll draw up a list of projects that would benefit the house/community (things like gardening, setting up a water reuse system, organising gigs) as well as the boring maintenance stuff (cleaning, cooking, rubbish disposal) and maybe ask for 1-2 hours of assistance a day. realistically, this is less time than many CSers donate to the place, but i think this way we'll have a more even distribution of work and more productivity.

i've shied away from too much structure and organisation so far, worried that i would be stifling creativity or freedom. but now i think that a bit of careful structure and planning would make the place run a lot better for everyone involved. i'm not talking about rules and restrictions and "do-not"s (no zip, smoking will not be banned as long as i have a say in it :p), just setting a bit of a common goal for the place so people who want to get involved have some direction.

thoughts?

p.s. if you're up brissie way make time to visit these guys. they're running a beautiful hosting house/permaculture garden up there. i'm glad i had the chance to chat with them about their philosophy and the see how they manage the heavy hosting that they're doing.

Thursday, November 17, 2011

The Coming of the Piano

The Shepherd st Warhouse welcomes a new blue member to the building. Sadly not a smurf... A piano, a 120 year old piano that a bored housewife bought, painted blue, then gave away to some desperate poor musicians thanks to the handy- gumtree.

Here is a breakdown of how it came into being in the warehouse.

1. Bored Tamika searches Gumtree for a “job”

2. Then somehow finds herself in the free section

3. “A free blue Piano!” She exclaims to Joao. “Well email them, lets do it!” Replies Joa

4. The email is written.

5. The next day a reply that someone else is interested too but if the scummy kids from Marrickville get there first its all ours. Done!

6. Enter Eugine 10am- a German couch surfer. Tamika and Joao both unable to drive legally in Australia. The Couch surfing initiation begins

7. A Ute is hired from the Servo on the corner.

8. The drive to Curl Curl, long, lost and excited for its was the first time Tamika and Eugine will cross the Infamous Sydney Harbour Bridge.

9. The arrival at the house. “hello, I'm here to pick up the piano” states Tamika to an elderely man, confused he says “umm no, not from this house” “Hmm, well then” replys Tamika as she walks back down the stairs to the ute.

10. The troublesome threesome double check the address and it is confirms that it is number 45 not 44.

11. The classic Aussie ute is reversed into the drive way and they walk around the back of the house- a nice house it is, a pool, lawn, and a picture- perfect husband and wife with cure kids.

12. The piano is spotted and smiles all around

13. The smiles soon fade when the trio tries to lift the blue beast. With help from the lovely wife they all finally get it to the Ute. Impending rain and thunder are seen in the distance.

14. With a huff and a puff the piano is on the Tray, with help from Tamikas Slackline

15. The Warehouse reps squish themselves back into the Ute and begin the long drive home. With a piano.

16. A pizza order is placed for 30min time at the local pizzeria

17. They pick the pizzas up

18. The arrival at the Shepherd st Warehouse is met with excited couch surfers confused tenants and goon

19. Pizza and goon are consumed to replenish the tired removalists.

20. Then the Smurfiano is lifted off the back of the ute and placed at its new home in Marrickville. It goes surprisingly well with the deco, the tuning isn’t that bad and it shall remain forever.

And in 20easy steps, and $100 (28 on pizza) we welcome a blue piano to the residence of Shepherd st.

Since then we had an amazing Italian boy shred it up rag time style, lots of tinkerers plus it’s a very valuable part in the Jam seshs.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Photos from Ramsi

Excited anise for pootiiinnneeee!!!

Fridge and feasting.

Joao and I went on a dumpster mission a and visualised biscuits and bakery treats!!! We were let down on a disappointing note. As we were solemnly cycling home it seemed as a mirage stood before us! A fridge with WORKING written on it stood before us!! Joao stood guard while I collected the women to help haul our finding home...balancing it awkwardly on joao's bike! Now we have a working fridge!!!

Thursday, October 6, 2011

tonight!

SHITuation: normal!

it happened! we're all clear! i can't really explain how happy this makes me.
the third plumber came around this morning, stuck a machine down the hole, BOOM! toilet works! no more shit!

Sunday, October 2, 2011

THE SHIT STORM

The true nature of the plumbing system was revealed this week. We had a sneaking suspicion that the more bum-holes in the house would result in a blocked up the toilet...we did not foresee the unimaginable horror that lurked below. There was shit coming out of the toilet, the hole in the ground sink, and shower if it built up enough. So we had no functioning toilet. The guys got it easy...they had a luxurious storm water drain to piss in. The girls had an option to piss in the festy toilet or brave the backyard and risk exposing our tassies to the neighbourhood. Our backyard only has privacy by night. We contemplated creating a piss skirt that would keep our dignity in tact. Poos were to be done elsewhere.

Joao was elbow deep in shit trying to solve the problem...used 2 litres of draino and still didn't budge! After ringing around getting quotes from plumbers we realised that the beautiful trees lining the alley way let their sneaky roots make a home in the drains! It looked like an alien nesting in there or something. Ash hooked us up with the madest of all cunts WESLEY the plumber to fix the mess for a speacial price :D but his skills and machines were no match for the alien lare!The land lord is going to pay for the damage and hopefully in the not so distant fututure we will be able to relive our bowels inside :) ahhhh sweet reliefe. Although you kinda realise the simple pleasures in taking a shit...like the amazing feeling of washing after a camping festival or eating that food you've been crazing for millions of years. The garden and alley is full of dry leaves perfect for composting.


But with more bum-holes comes lovely people and their interesting ways. Our worm-hole home container has opened it's doors (well they have been open since day 1) but people are starting to drift through at a constant pace. Joao (and his portugese bagpipes) our friend from Portugal has came to stay...Ash and I both stayed with him in Lisboa and his projects have inspired us to create another!! This one! Big ups J! He's really embracing the Aussie culture http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4AchHTN-XQ


Its kinda cool! Its all coming together in its own way!! Joao has really instigated the lost feeling of the something...I can't explain... I lost eventually when I came back to Australia....we all discovered living outside of the matrix and them coming back in is fucking hard. We all got messed up and down. It took me a lot of guts to open up in that way again because it there is so much emotion that I had to bury. He has made a few separate reading and working areas and heaps more plans to best use the space here.


We have also been feasting like kings!! Pizza, awesome other food and FRENCH ONION SOUP cooked by a guest! MMMMMMMM!!!!


there is some real cool art starting to appear on the walls and our Shroomy Alien Skully's face always has something new happening to it. It sort of feels like its a worshiping god if you sit on the right couch!
Mojo is loving it, there are so many new people and smells to inspect and keep in order...and endless attention and affection.


So bag-pipes and shit storm aside things are really getting going! Anyone coming to stay is feeling at home and you can hear laughter first thing in the morning when you wake up! Try frown at the day...JUST TRY IT!!..Possible? IMPOSSIBLE!!! We welcome the strange strangers that aren't strangers...really.


Over and out.


E.

Thursday, September 29, 2011

cs invasion

our first guests have started to arrive! this week we've had maybe 8 people come through and it's great to see the space used this way. everyone has seemed really comfortable here, even though there is very little privacy and dodgy plumbing. all but one of our guests have been french or german so far, will be interesting to see if this is a trend or just a coincidence.

ellen and joao have been super-productive, building us an awesome sink for the kitchen, a blackboard, different spaces too hang out and a poof-loft. it's really starting to look great and feel like a home.

this long weekend i really want to get the garden started. we've got some trellis so will probably go with climbing plants and a bunch of big pots so we can move them around. i also want to get some guttering set up so we can start collecting rainwater from the roof for the plants.

we may also be brewing own own beer in the very near future! things are happening!

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

the alien skull black board

sorry for the low quality images. we painted up this nice black board,
but figured it would be nicer if we gave it a custom shape. not sure
if it's an alien skull, a mushroom or something else. what do you
think?

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

first days at the garden

hi everyone! first post!

i got here on saturday and despite the jet lag immediately felt like contributing, it's a wonderful space with lots of potential

i started off by making a strawberry juice bottle shower, which works fine for now. the place has enough roof for a good solar shower, but for now we just use the kettle. i also worked on the lounge space to make it more distributed, so we get several little spots to sit and hang out

the garden also has lots of plant potential, especially on one of the walls that gets a lot of sun. i guess my next steps revolve around gardening and doing a kitchen sink. we already have the first green resident: a little basil plant!

Monday, September 19, 2011

get some giggin soup inya!

a beautiful day with sunshine, music and a so-bad-it's-good rendition of waltzing matilda.
it was a bit of a trial-run for me, just to see how much noise we can get away with. i was half expecting noise complaints and fun police but it went off without a problem. i wouldn't want to go too much louder than that though. we had maybe 35 people there and we fit comfortably between the outside garden and the back room. beautiful performances with a wide range of music. was extra nice once the beer started flowing and setlists were thrown out in favour of improvisation.

thanks to miles for supplying the PA and mics, aleks for the decks and sara for the projector, as well as everyone who played, sang, set up, cleaned up and trashed the place. i love you all. look out for round 2 next month.


Wednesday, September 14, 2011

joined by the lovely ellen, rian, duffy, mojo and gabby this week. things are lively.
our first CS requests have started to come through. if it looks like a copy-paste job i'll reply to it making sure they realise what the place is like. a couple of surfers have dropped off the radar after this. oh well. no requests through BW just yet.
this sunday we're hosting giggin soup. not sure exactly what it is yet, something involving a lot of live music and soup. let's wait and see.
snaps by aleks



Monday, August 29, 2011

me vs. the tv

my parents were never big on tv. we had one in the house but it wasn't a big deal. when i moved out of home i didn't feel the need to get one, and have never owned one since. i don't really go to the cinema and don't download movies or tv series online. not as any kind of tv rebellion, i just don't really enjoy it. if there's a particular film or documentary that's recommended to me i can stream it online, but i just find tv in general to be, at best, a waste of time. at worst, fucking dangerous.
when cam brought his tv along to the garden i was a little uneasy with the idea of having one in the house. what's the point? is it really necessary? it's been sitting there alone in the corner all week. nice and quiet. off. fairly benign. maybe we can coexist.
last night i cooked up a huge vegetable soup and we invited some people over to help eat it. everything was going well. people were talking. and then it happened. "should we move the tv up here?". we had 6 bright, interesting people together, why bring tv into the mix? the subject changed and the tv was forgotten about. a near miss. then the movie quotes came out. one after another after another. conversation had been replaced with hollywood one-liners and hysterical giggles. maybe it's because i didn't "get" any of the references, but i actively changed the subject now. "miles! play us that song you wrote!" "grace! can you tell me more about that nasal fungus you're studying at uni?". i'd developed a ridiculous aversion to that ominous grey box in the corner. i felt like once it had been opened it would all be over. we ended up singing and playing and talking about nose fungus and maths and futurism and computers, but i felt like i was constantly trying to avoid that elephant in the room. maybe it was selfish of me, but the tv stayed off last night.
ash = 1, tv = 0

Saturday, August 27, 2011

another productive weekend in. the bedroom is all set up now - moved the rest of my stuff in and it's starting to look a bit more like a home.
made a trip to reverse garbage and picked up some more gear. about $50 got me a couple of mattresses, two big carpets, a few chairs and a bunch of wooden crates. set up a living/hosting room for people to use. we've been having a few jam sessions lately. beautiful musical stylings of cam, miles, louise and co., along with sara's videos on the projector.
it seems that saturday night is the best night for dumpstering. had another great find with crates of fresh pumpkins, mushrooms, zucchinis, tomatoes, sweet potato and carrots. going to be a veggie soup week i think.
we're ready to start hosting now, so have posted on CS, bewelcome and friendswiththings

Monday, August 22, 2011

photos of the garden







the rabbit hole

our findings

light play
shadow puppets


the garden walls...