Nov 16, 2013

Tacos after midnight

Yesterday was a good day. I started off by applying to firm in Copehagen, which everyone tells me is an amazing city. I then took busses over to Old Town to meet Rich. Rich and I are working on a 3 week project to propose a grocery store expanded public market for Phoenix.

Took me about 90 minutes to get over there via busses, and the second bus had a guy who was clearly tweaking on something, looking around, looking around, standing up, sitting down, rubbing his face, very erratic behavior. Made me happy when he finally got off.

At Rich's place I met Mason and his girlfriend, who are also deaf, and they're going to help us with the project as well. I communicate more easily with Rich- Mason said I talked too fast to read.

We had a good meeting, picked a site, picked a kind of outline for the program, and set assignments for ourselves before I headed back out. The bus to Tempe arrived fifteen minutes late (note to self- the east valley busses do not run on time) but it was a straight shot that dropped me off at the Tempe transit center just north of ASU where I hopped the light rail over to Mill ave for the concert at the Mill.

There was very little that was not personally significant to this event. The venue is a new outdoor concert space just north of the eponymous mill and the silos on Mill ave. This is actually a partial realization of my capstone project from ASU, the conversion of the mill into a Tempe Urban Arts Center.

It was strange and great to walk around to the far side of the stage, and see the band and the crowd with the silos and the mill looming behind the strung lights. Surprisingly, a lot of the machinery is still in the mill- whoever has been doing work on it has opened up some of the walls.

The headlining band was Black Carl, a band formed not long after I started architecture at ASU, and actually, one of the guitarists, Matt, was in the class behind me from the architecture program, and was friends with Sal. They've had a great rise in the valley, and next month they're opening for True Music Fest with indie icons like the Flaming Lips and Lord Huron. They played at the architecture school's Beaux Arts Ball, and I remember going to a raucous house party for "The Twins," Ben and Andrew, where they played for their friends. People were jumping off the roof into the rented bouncy house, I recall.

Sal met me there, who is of course, a very old good friend, and we also ran into some other architecture alums, people inclined to follow the old band from college. Actually, the crowd was largely made up of people my age or within a few years on either side. Black Carl brought a particular generation with them.

FourPeaks, one of the sponsors, brought five of their beers to tap, and really the whole thing was an irresistible combination to people my age- craft beer, indie music, everything uber local, and priced basically above the usual college crowd.

We drank too much, got some fries from the food truck, and caught the light rail back to Sal's neighborhood after the show. Sal drove us to a late night taco stand illuminated by fluorescents and full of people ending thier late nights with some cheap tacos. Sal grabbed us some asado and pollo tacos and two horchatas. These are not the best tacos I've ever had, but they're Mexican, hot, and hit the spot at 1am.

Sal kindly dropped me off at the house afterwards, completing my cycle through Phoenix sans a vehicle. A good day.

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Medium is the message

I moved the blog again. I deleted the Tumblr account and moved everything to Medium.com, a more writing-centric website. medium.com/@wende