you want gentrification status:

first: graffiti writers/artists/musicians/diy squad/skateboarders etc.

( the actual fringe. )

second: gay dudes and teachers

(If you grow up in the hood this is when you start to really take notice. you might see a couple weirdos creeping around and not think much but when the coffeeshop opens…)

third: coffee shops and galleries

(this is hard to happen in the hollow because it’s all residential with very few possible locations. There is a restaurant on Germantown Ave and coffee place coming soon maybe. Nothing to do with us LOL. they are more than a mile away.)

fourth: bros, normals and students.

students beget bros or something like that.

Hollow is setting up for this. Around it is there’s all these big old apartment complexes they are rebranding and refurbing as like urban life on the park for students, bros, and young professionals that like to jog and have pets. I guess they see the lower priced big houses and are like hmmmm.

fifth: yuppies and “gourmet” delis

sixth: airbnb, retail and restaurants and no place to stay.
(I don’t see this really happening here, but hey who knows? The pizza restaurant looks like they put some $ into it. check in 10 years.)

You can not fight it. BTW. I mean if you want it to stay the same. Some people welcome it, some people despise it. I don’t really have a political side of the issue. I think it’s better to add to the neighborhood rather than change the neighborhood. That’s my personal opinion.

But it always brings change in the end. People stay, people go, but when prices max and you can make a bunch of dough a lot of people do leave.

In terms of resisting it:

Missing Foundation, Duke 9 et al tried in the East Village in the late 80’s early 90’s.

I had the pleasure of working with some of these guys for a long time. Long after all that. But I got the stories and then later watched the news reports and stuff on youtube.

Some of it I remembered.

Fake satanic cults and graffiti. burning trees. physical violence. burning cars. riots.

Do you remember all the pentagram with the 666 inside fill-ins around the east village and SoHo in the mid 90’s?

That was part of the plan.

For the US that was kind of the last big resistance from the fringe…

The hood tries to hold it down but…

You can try every crazy trick you can think of and money is always going to win.

Not that Germantown has anything to do with the East Village.

But that’s the general pattern….

I don’t know how it will be accepted here. It is happening.

Maybe.

IDK.

As the hollow declines in Landlords population I thought I’d show off some of the neighborhood before it’s all the way over.

I cut it at Queen Lane because I think that it turns into Pulaskitown right there. P-Town/Queen Lane . East of Wayne to Germantown Ave is Brickyard. past School House is more like Central G-town.

Happy Hollow is the Rec Center on Wayne. The actual Hollow is a largely unused park above the playground on the ridge above Wayne with entrances in the playground and from Pulaski. Fernhill is the park that is bordered by Roberts and Wissahickon on the far side, abbotsford and morris on the close side and bisected by Route 1. So our neighborhood gets called Happy Hollow or Fern Hill depending on who’s talking.

Sometimes it’s just SW Germantown.

The borders of our hood would be Wissahickon/Roberts/Wayne/Queen Lane.

Gentrification is in the reving up stage if you don’t know.

Our little corner of paradise doesn’t really feel like ours anymore.

All places I’ve lived in the last 20+ years have gentrified past affordability. At least I own in this neighborhood but geez…happening again. You see the character changing just a little bit at a time and then you decide it’s time to leave and when you come back nothing is the same and you don’t fit in anymore.

(I don’t know if that will happen here. The Hollow is different. Stays the same as much as it changes is the common thought. But… maybe that’s not true anymore.)

Center City, Bella Vista, Queen Village, (Saigon briefly), Graduate Hospital, West Philly, E Williamsburg/Bushwick edge, East Village, Lower East Side, Lower Deck, NY Chinatown…

Empty streets at night. Lurkers. Adventure.

All these places have amazing memories for me. I grew into an adult in these places. I chilled with friends in all these places. got in trouble in all these places. Miss all of these places. They are still there, but believe me they are not still there.

The Hollow was so special for our years of Landlording.

We started families here. all of us. these kids all have a tie to growing up here. A bunch of ex-messenger dads. Friends on every block. All of them learned to ride bikes here. Real magic stuff.

Before real life got in the way we were so connected…

French press Coffee in the AM, sima oner keeps the whole squad dipped in coffee beans. out of towner friends, skate jams, BBQ’s, holidays, road trips, getting drunk and blurry with a dutch in the McKean alley and walking home to Pulaski at night. Sitting in each other’s basements. Abandoned House Music. West Philly squad. Gary Knight on the Fuji Touring IV on Wayne Ave. Rolling around g-town on beater bikes, never locking up. Lurking.

We were a united front.

I know this is some shit you talk about when you’re 20.

“Yo it would be so cool if we all got houses in the same neighborhood.”

But we did it. And we held it for years, some for a decade or more.

Shit man I remember coming here 10+ years ago, staying at Nope’s.

Everything looked so dark at night. No streetlights. Grass everywhere.

At the end of the first Landlords video I made in 2007 there’s some footage out the window of Lew Blum’s F250. Leaving Germantown to go back to NYC.

It was just dark with porch lights moving.

People could not figure out what we were doing out here.

I remember this dude told me a rumor he heard where Nope was keeping alligators in his basement.

I was like…

LOL!

Queen Lane Projects was going off. They knocked it down a couple years ago. But I remember it.

I stayed on McKean that night. Helicopters and cops everywhere searching the alleys. They put the whole neighborhood on blast.

The helicopters aren’t out that much anymore.

You’d be in your kitchen and look in the backyard and it would be lit up like a UFO movie with the chopper blades thumping over you.

Often. Every night in the summer.

Unnerving first times for sure.

It’s changed.

In those first years the 1/2 block skate over to Serge’s was dangerous. I’d jump on my board right off the steps and push fast all the way there…

Rick O inspired pushing where you lift your foot up high and push hard as shit and go fast.

Deli mission was a mission for real.

Have to warn friends from safe places not to be so casual and to guard their grills.

That was nighttime outside.

Everyone got mugged before I got here. All OG Landlords. I think every dude that had a house before me.

I got stuck up on Wayne , on a Sunday at like 7am, but didn’t have shit and did not get stomped out.

I still won’t walk with a wallet late night dog missions but I’m not thinking I’m getting my wig split if I walk on the sidewalk and not in the street.

Through the hourglass like sand the days of our lives LOL.

-Danlord // Chill Cycle

Missing Foundation. 3-6 BTS Party’s Over. Die Yuppies!

9:30ish

animals sighted:
large raccoon
bats

people seen way up:
-2 people leaning on a van at Valley Green
-old scientist type guy putting together a brompton style bike with what looked like bmx bars.

people seen way down:
-old scientist on brompton rolling with lots of lights and I think some cameras.
-family of kids at Valley Green
-rolled past a ranger truck at some point.

devil’s pool update:
-it was going off on the way down. loud. lots of phone screens lighting up.

illness factor
-hard to say. seemed pretty dead but when it gets this hot this long lurkers start lurking everywhere. devil’s pool attracts most of the crowd.

queen lane report:
-Morris corner was going off. I didn’t fuck with Pulaski. But I did see a large dice game happening around 5. Avoided.

off topic:
I remember walking to Devil’s Pool for the first time back in the 90’s. I didn’t know where I was, couldn’t believe I was still in Philly. Not sure who led that expedition. Just remember walking back up the trail with gravel and water squishing out of my shoes and like 1 million mosquito bites.

hey a lot of Landlords used to pool hop around the western philly suburbs. That was very live. Good times. One time we got chased and Esher walked the tracks all the way back to Philly. I remember getting pretty good at hurdling bushes.

Out now! @psa_press psapress.com

A post shared by HAMBURGER EYES (@hamburger_eyes) on Jun 13, 2017 at 9:24am PDT

Caps and Towels should be arriving so soon.

Kenny Kaos wrote in 2 times freaking out about his shirt.

Dogs, I got you. Pre-order is a long and winding road. This one contained hills and valleys. Right now I’m on the descent waiting for everything to arrive. Then when I get the kit I will put it in packages and sit on my computer transferring addresses for a couple miles and then climb up a figurative mental hill to the Germantown PO and then we will all be dipped. I will get a medal and go to Wildwood Crest for a week to celebrate.

In the meantime fuckers–

There are still caps and towels available from this order. And wool sweaters. And issues 2-4 of the magazine. And back issues of #1. And I’m pricing out a package deal for issues 1-5 in the under $100 category or maybe over IDK yet.

Check out Andrew’s sweater…

BUY NOW!

Issue #2 will be hitting back issue status soon!

Here’s a ringing endorsement

The G.S. Landlords zines are all on Blurb. Support good folks making what we love about cycling!

A post shared by MASH SAN FRANCISCO (@mashsf) on Jun 6, 2017 at 1:51pm PDT

You can still cop the LO hat from Mash!

BUY HERE

You know that’s Woody holding the poster in that flick?

Hey Real Shit:

Our 2017 Santini Line is in the works now! Fuuuuuulllll kit. That includes the fall and winter shit we did not do in 2016. OMG bruv. It’s fucking nuts.

I was thinking I was going to hold off on LL street kit for a second now and move into the fabled artist series.

OK see enough selling….

hot as shit out there right?

Erik Z still putting them out.

Buy Here.

(no advertisements on Landlords! Just supporting the things we appreciate! And this is another one of those things I really suggest you get. Someday you will not be able to buy these wallets. And you’ll see someone take one out in front of you at a store. And you’ll be like “shit, I should have got a Zo wallet.” And you’ll feel like an asshole. And maybe you are one. I don’t know you. I can’t make that call. We all have our shortcomings. )

-Sean