The life and times of the street artist named Air Rat

By Sam Fox

At first glance, Air Rat looks like the kind of guy you’d like to bring home to your parents. He has a neatly-trimmed beard and a “Mad Men” style coiffure. Today, he is wearing a pea coat over a matching blue button-up, and he is offering to buy me a cup of coffee.

We have met at a Starbucks in Old City–his suggestion–so he can show me pictures of his various art projects and then take a tour of his street art in the area. It’s a shame it’s raining, he says, because he would have liked to “put up” some pieces during the tour.

Sitting down at a table by the window, he pulls out a laptop and begins flipping through a selection of images culled from the 4,500-photograph gallery on his phone. As he turns his head towards the computer and types, tattoos wink in and out of view: between his fingers, behind his ears, and poking out from under his shirt collar. They are the first signs that he might not be so square, and once you learn to look for them, they keep showing up.

When asked what mediums he works in, he says “everything.” This is not far from the truth. He paints, stencils, sculpts, makes wood cuts, crafts stickers, and reappropriates trash.

The artist’s alias comes from a solo show he did a number of years ago, which featured cartoonish pigeon sculptures. Some of the birds were clear, others had glow-in-the-dark skulls. “Air rat” is slang for pigeon, so the artist decided to adopt the name for his own pigeons, and, later, for himself.

Air Rat identifies with pigeons because of their “roll with the punches” attitude. Though the artist has faced a number of legal, physical, and financial obstacles, he persists in his work much like the hardy, ever-present bird.

Right now, Air Rat is passionate about two main projects: one involving glass etch and the other involving Legos. Both projects move between the street and the gallery.

One of his first glass etch projects was a kitschy Ouija board, which earned him encouragement from other artists to pursue the medium further. Next, he completed a series of 40 hand-etched glass bottles that serve as aquariums for beta fish. A more recent project involved candle votives, which, when lit, project dancing shadows on their surroundings.

These functional, gallery-suited pieces are complemented by more informal work. If he is in a bar at 2 a.m. and nobody is there, he might run into the womens’ bathroom and do a quick piece on the mirror. He has learned that these pieces often get posted on Instagram later–unless he is interrupted mid-etch by a closing-time employee.

Since glass etching is so destructive, a Buddhist friend has given him advice for fostering good karma: only etch things that have already been etched. Air Rat says this goes against the graffiti artist ethos of doing whatever you want, wherever you want, but the idea stands to help him in the future. He has received plenty of angry phone calls for his etchings. In response, he even got a tattoo of a bottle of etching chemicals, wrapped with a banner that says “So Sorry.”

Air Rat’s Lego project involves casting resin replicas of Lego minifigures and gluing them in “little nooks” around the city. He has teamed up with photographer Matthew Kendig, who documents the installations as they change within the volatile, human “playscape” of Philadelphia. Thanks to passersby and shifts in weather, figures fade, get melted, dismembered, and taken. Fifteen of Kendig’s photographs have been assembled into a “one-page book” for a show at the Church Gallery in OldCity. The two plan on continuing the project with other galleries, but these ideas are still in the works.

After reading a pictorial history of the Lego minifigure, Air Rat discovered that Lego made a series of minifigures in the image of the founder of the Adult Fan of Lego association, as a tribute to the man’s popularization of the toy. Perhaps, Air Rat dreams, one day Lego will make an Air Rat Lego. Either that, he muses, or the toy manufacturer will sue him.

Both the Lego project and the glass etchings represent Air Rat’s two main artististic visions: developing a connecting theme and struggling against transience.

Though he is critical of most other Philadelphia street artists, he looks to stikman as a sort of model for these visions. Even though stikman works with stickers, wood cuts, and other materials, his work is always recognizable because of the character he uses. The artist also introduced Air Rat to the idea that all art is “ephemeral,” a word Air Rat now uses constantly, with urgency and reverence.

Love of the ephemeral

“Everything I feel like I’ve been doing has been an attempt to beat that idea [of ephemerality],” he says.

Street art is frequently removed or painted over soon after it is put up. And even when the art lasts, the structure on which it is plastered eventually gets torn down or altered. In order to combat the ephemeral nature of street art, Air Rat began taking pictures of his work and posting them on Instagram. And yet, as one of his friends pointed out to him, Instagram is just as ephemeral as the street. Pictures of art get lost in the hundreds of other images people receive on a daily basis.

The trick, Air Rat realizes, is to find a medium that makes a lasting impression. In each of his projects, he remains in search of a “fountain of youth.”

The pursuit of these lofty goals has been a long time in development. Continue reading →

Afgan women

By Saira Kitagawa

This is a story about Asma, an Afghan women age 24 from Kabul who came to live in America. Like so many other immigrants who migrated before her, she too sought a better life. Seven years have gone by since she first arrived in this country as a teenager, but her dream still remains the same: To go to school.

Asma was 17 when she first stepped onto land in America. However, she was not alone. Her husband, an 52-year-old American Afghan man named Abdul was beside her and she was pregnant with their baby girl, Hamida. (The names of the persons in this story have been changed to protect the woman we call Asma.)

Her marriage was arranged by her aunt in Kabul. According to Asma, being set up with an older husband was not “a new story for the Afghans”. However, her aunt had tweaked “a little” about his age and she recalled the experience as “frustrating”.

“I was told that he was younger!” said Asma, looking annoyed with wrinkles on her forehead.

Asma wore a bright pink coat and her wavy black hair, lightly shaded with red. was tied into a low pony tail. Her jeans were a nice dark color and she looked stylish, just like many other young mothers today. However, her dark eyes looked tired and looked a lot older than her years. She had a wary look that added tension to the air.

Asma’s father and mother were both originally from poor villages in Kandahar and Jalalabad. They had seven children and they thought it was the best option for their eldest daughter to leave Kabul and grab a new life with Abdul, who was “looking for a wife”. He was an Imam at the Mosque of Shaikh M.R. Bawa Muhaiyadeen in Philadelphia and had lived in America for a long time with his family. His English was perfect and they thought he was good enough to make her life better. Next thing she knew, she was married and off to America, the land of liberty and freedom.

“It was good when I came here,” said Asma, as she started fidgeting her hands. “People treated me as a human being. People would be nice and respectful. I like my country but it’s strict towards women. Here, women can go to school easily…women can say what you want to so…in my country, women can’t do these things easily.”

Although she gained her freedom as a human being, tragically, her life with Abdul was not what she expected.

“When we came here, he started pushing me,” said Asma. The fingers that had been fidgeting now were clutched tightly together. “I liked to go out and study alone. I wanted to be with my friends. Be social. Have a normal life. Some men don’t like this. He didn’t say but he didn’t like it. No.”

Two years ago, she filed for divorce.

“I had enough,” said Asma giving a big sigh, looking tired and looking at her five-year- old daughter who had just came down to sit next to her. Her eyes and hair was exactly the same dark color as her mother and her light grey dress had a trim of short black fur on it. Continue reading →

A look at the changing restaurant scene in Pihladelphia’s Chinatown

By Qingyi Gong                                                                                                                    

Philadelphia’s Chinatown is a popular dining area in the Center City. Search “Chinatown restaurants near Philadelphia, PA” on Yelp, more than 200 entries will appear, along with thousands of food reviews from Chinatown diners.

Philadelphia’s Chinatown is small. Its core area spans roughly from North 9^th to North 11^th Street and from Arch to Vine Street, with banks, barber shops, Asian supermarkets, clinics and a mix of other community facilities.

But it’s the food that accounts for most tourists’ enthusiasm. The small neighborhood lays claim to some of the nation’s best Chinese restaurants and is traditionally seen as a paradise for Cantonese and Hong Kong cuisines.

“Dining in Chinatown kind of reminds me of the Hong Kong movies I watched,” said Shuyu Meng, a freshman at Bryn Mawr College. “I once went to Joy Tsin Lau with my friends to drink early breakfast tea. I’d say the Cantonese food there was fairly authentic. The choices of dim sum were also not bad compared to what I ate in Hong Kong.”

Hailing from a northern province in China, Shuyu said she personally liked Hong Kong food. The only thing she complained about was that there were fewer choices of congee, a rice porridge, available in Chinatown.

The first Chinatown restaurants were opened by immigrants from the southern region of China. The legacy continues till today. A lot of restaurants, such as Siu Kee Duck House, Ting Wong Restaurant and David’s Mai Lai Wah, still use traditional Cantonese spellings on their signboards and sell mostly Cantonese style food.

However, a new trend has taken place in Chinatown in recent years, as many budding restaurant owners started to sell Sichuan, Shanghai, Lanzhou and other regional foods of China. While Taiwanese, Cantonese and Fujianese flavors are still dominant, Sichuan and northern China cuisines have become real hits in Chinatown.

Hong Kong Wonton Soup, Beef Chow Fun and Roast Pork Congee, which are common Cantonese dishes,  have disappeared on the menus of some new restaurants. Instead, trendier eateries offer Shanghai Crabmeat and Pork Juicy Buns, Dan-dan Noodles and Ma La Hot Pot at acceptable prices.

The Shanghai Xiao Long Bao sold at the Dim Sum Garden has a wondrous taste. Topped with tiny spots of yellow crab powder, the eight flour-made buns form an exquisite circle in a bamboo container. Every bite is a delight, for the buns contain a lot of meat soup inside. And customers can drink soup while eating the yummy pork stuffed inside the buns. Another restaurant, Sakura Mandarin, just steps away from Dim Sum Garden, also sells authentic Shanghai food.

The boom of Chinese regional foods in Philadelphia’s Chinatown began more than a decade ago. Most notably, the number of Sichuan restaurants has increased significantly and Sichuan food has been in vogue in the neigborhood.

But the popularization of Sichuan food has been gradual. Most people in Philadelphia came to know Sichuan food through a restaurant called Han Dynasty, owned by Han Chiang.

“Almost everyone becomes familiar with Sichuan food through Han Dynasty. The restaurant opens a door for people to know about this type of food,” said Craig LaBan, restaurant critic and columnist of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

LaBan said the wide popularity and success of the Han Dynasty restaurant may have “created a ripple effect in the region of Chinatown”, inspiring people there to open their own Sichuan food restaurants.

Szechuan Tasty House and the Four Rivers are among the oldest Sichuan restaurants in Chinatown. But newer restaurants have also been opened over the past few years. E Mei Restaurant, located at 915 Arch Street, is one of the largest Sichuan restaurants in the area. It was opened three years ago and occupies the original site of a Chongqing restaurant.

The restaurant is jointly owned by two immigrant families. One of the owners comes from Sichuan Province.

E Mei sells classic types of Sichuan food. Famous appetizers on the menu include Sliced Chicken in Hot Sauce, Sliced Beef and Tripe with Chili Sauce, Sliced Pork with Garlic Soy Sauce and Hot and Spicy Shredded Pork. For entrees, the restaurant offers Dan-dan Noodles, Cold Noodles, dumplings and wontons, or Chaoshou in Sichuan dialect. Fried dishes like Ma Lai Fragrant Pot and Piao Xiang Tripe are also extremely popular. The restaurant’s menu is dotted with small red dried chili symbols, which denote “hot and spicy” for specific dishes.

The chief chef of the restaurant comes from Chongqing, according to the staff at E Mei Restaurant, according to Xuejian Yang, the manager. “The chef has previously worked in a five-star restaurant in China and makes sauces for the dishes by himself,” Xuejian said.

E Mei has a main lobby with 18 tables and one private room with two tables. It has hired four chefs, an appetizer preparer and several waiters. There are six to seven people in total on their staff list.

Business gets a lot busier on weekends. “Most customers come on Friday, Saturday or Sunday, and we close later on Friday and Saturday nights at 11 p.m.,” Xuejian said.

E Mei Restaurant has created several new dishes for the winter season, including a braised lamb stew dish, which is made from special soup stock. Xuejian especially recommended the hotpots in his restaurant, which have spicy flavors and are said to be popular among students and tourists.

E Mei has been successful in advertising the spicy Sichuan food in Chinatown. And many new restaurants followed its path. Tango, another restaurant on Arch Street, now has a chef from E Mei to cook the spicy Sichuan dishes for its customers.

Lan Zhou Noodles, a famous dish in the northwest region of China, has also found its way to Philadelphia’s Chinatown. There are at least two noodle houses open in the neighborhood, one on North 10^th Street, the other on Race Street. Jenny Zhang, 36, works at the Nan Zhou Hand Drawn Noodle House on 1022 Race Street. She said the restaurant opened almost 11 years ago and sells mostly noodle dishes, which are very different from Cantonese food. Another noodle house, called the Yummy Lan Zhou Hand Drawn Noodle House opened in 2009, at a date much later than the first one but seems to be equally popular. Continue reading →

Heidi Jacob has carved out an interesting life as a mother, teacher and musician

By Shreepriya Poudel

It is seven p.m. and the sound of violins and cellos fills the Goodhart Theater’s music room. Members of a string quintet, one of the several chamber music groups at BrynMawrCollege, are rehearsing their final piece. The students stare at the sheet music before them and then occasionally at each other, communicating non-verbally, musically.

Their instructor, Heidi Jacob, an associate professor of music at Haverford college, stands at a distance. She watches over them practicing like a protective mother, ready to correct mistakes and come to the rescue, if needed. After a lifetime of listening to, playing and performing music, her ears are sensitive to every note.

“No, pause. Let us do this again. This part right here”, she says signaling a bar in the notation.

The students turn their pages back and play it again. Still is does not sound right. Heidi signals them to try again. Then one more time. This time the violins stop at the right beat. Finally, the dramatic pause that the composer

Heidi Jacob conducting

was aiming for is achieved. Jacob smiles a wide smile.

“I remember sight reading this piece many years ago, when I was 15,” she says later. “I played it with my brother. It was one of those revelatory pieces.”

The nearly 60-year-old Jacob has played the cello for more than five decades. She started playing the when she was eight and completed her dissertation in composition in 2011. At age 17, her performances in California and Germany won critical acclaim. She has toured as a part of a trio and as a solo artist. She has composed, conducted, performed and recorded. Hers is the life of the everyday musician — not a rock star or a celebrated musical genius — but the teacher who coaches our kids, the volunteer who conducts community orchestras or the neighbor who is always playing classical music.

A Childhood in music

“I just wanted to play the cello when I was eight because I loved it. I loved the Cello”.

With a father who loved classical music and a mother who was an amateur cellist, Jacob was quickly introduced to the cello.  She had started doing ballet when she was young and took up cello when she was eight. By the time she was 12, she had decided that she wanted to take cello a lot more seriously and quit ballet.  When she was 14, she decided that she really did not care about academics either. What she y wanted to do was become a musician. Her parents were not too keen on the idea. They had to be convinced with the help of her teachers.

After graduating early from high school, she joined the University of Indiana at Bloomington, taking lessons at the conservatory there. Deciding that she did not like her cello teacher, she auditioned for a place in the prestigious Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She was accepted at the highly competitive school that offers free tuition, room and board to all accepted. Graduating in 1977 with a Bachelor’s in Music, she later joined the equally selective JulliardSchool in New York to gain a Master’s degree in Cello Performance.

Recalling her time in Curtis, she relates how it was a small school with around 100 students. Most wanted to be solo performers and were supportive of each other. From her time as a student to her life as a teacher and conductor, the Jacob has been on a musical journey that has had many intermediate destinations, with her playing different roles.

Chamber music

“In a smaller group, you have to listen more and work better”

Jacob started playing for chamber music groups when she was in high school and also played with youth orchestras. During her time at the Curtis institute, she gained more experience with chamber music groups. She fondly remembers being taught by member of the Budapest String Quartet. She was a part of a chamber music trio with her husband and a violinist for 10 years and the group toured the United States together. For a while, she thought it was what she wanted to do.

Making a living out of being a musician is easy. Jacob notes that even though most students at Curtis wanted to become solo artists or perform as a part of Chamber music groups, it has now become harder and harder to make it as a musician. When she decided to start a family, she wanted to look for different jobs that would be more stable.

For the same reason, she found it hard to have a solo career, although she did tour with her husband, a pianist, for a few concerts. When it comes to making a solo career, cellists have a harder time than violinists or pianists. Orchestras are more likely to hire violins or violas rather than cellos.

She still believes that it is important for a musician to learn to play in small ensembles. She likes being able to make her own musical decisions and lets her students do the same.

When she is teaching, it is interesting to see her life in chamber music come full circle. She challenges herself by trying to find new repertoire for interesting combinations for instruments, such as a bassoon, oboe and piano playing together. Coordinating a dozen chamber music groups each semester, coaching them, seeing them through to the last performance can be a taxing job. Yet she starts speaking with a rush of energy and passion as she begins to recount all the different kinds of music that the different groups are playing this semester. Continue reading →

A food diary kept by college students reveals their eating habits

By Alyssa Kaden                                                                                                                     

College students will eat whatever you put in front of them.

College students eat five meals a day.

College students work out like crazy to combat the “freshman fifteen” or the “sophomore slump”.

College students are too lazy to go to class, much less to the gym.

All of these generalizations are made about college students by college students and their parents. The freedom experienced at college does not only just expand to what classes you can take but also to an all-you-can-eat buffet three times a day.  Dessert flows at every meal with at least two options — not including the ice cream, the soft-serve ice cream, and the different ice cream bars are staples of the HaverfordCollegeDiningCenter — more affectionately known as the DC.

Bit these stereotypes true? To put them to a the test, I did an admittedly random and small sample of students (three of my friends) and asked them to keep a food diary for a week.  The rules were: they would eat as they normally do, then at the end of each day, they texted me with what they ate, how much they ate, and when they ate. As an add-on, I compiled a list of my eating habits for the same period.  This story is about the results of this experiment in observed eating.

Students can eat whatever they want during meal times.  However, most the college students I tested did not stuff themselves.  While they may eat a slice of pizza and two breadsticks, they don’t often eat nine cookies at every meal.

Take Amanda Lee, for example.  Lee is a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania.  A possible biology major, she also plays for the Women’s Club Ice Hockey Team at Penn.

“The myth of the college-15 is real,” says Lee, “Now I’m really careful about what I eat.”  And she is.  Over the course of a week, Lee did not eat more than 1,200 calories a day.  She also worked out every day.

Lee’s diet consisted of mostly egg white omelets and Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast and lunch.  In her room, she has a flow chart with the title “What Do You Want to Eat?”  The first question of the flow chart is “Are you really hungry?”

On Penn’s campus, they have an Insomnia Cookies (a late-night cookie delivery store), a burrito place, a pizza place, and a Chinese buffet in their dining center.  Lee avoided these except for crunch times.

“I have Insomnia Cookies when I want Insomnia Cookies,” Lee says, “But I also know that I should save when I want them for when I really need them.”  Lee has admitted to eating four cookies one night.  “It was a tough night,” she said.

Lee does not usually have desserts.  She reserves those for special occasions.

Lee does not look at the food offered to her on campus as everyday food, which most people would agree with.  Would you let your kid have pizza every day?  Or even sometimes twice a day?

Is Lee an exception to the rule?  Or does she represent the new age of college students?  Are college students more aware than ever about the dangers of unhealthy foods?  Or does Lee simply know what her body needs and respects it?

Which brings us to subject No. 2.

Emily Berlin is a sophomore philosophy major.  As a math minor and a member of the Haverford College Women’s Squash team, Berlin spends much of her time either studying or playing squash.  However, she lives in the apartments at Haverford and is not on the full meal plan.  She often has to make her own dinners, even when she doesn’t have the time.  In addition, Berlin is a vegetarian which limits the food she can prepare herself.

For breakfast, Berlin ate yogurt or toast daily.  A quick and easy meal (not to mention cheap) for a college student.  Also very healthy.  For lunch, she varied from salads to sandwiches to pizza.  It is really dinner where she tries to spend her time, but doesn’t always get around to it.  Over the course of seven days, she skipped dinner once and had toast for dinner another time.

“When I’m not busy,” Berlin says, “It’s much better.”  When she has the time to cook, she stir fries tofu with some fried rice or makes vegan tofurkey, though she is not a vegan.

“I love being off the meal plans,” Berlin says, “I can make my own meals and am not forced to eat whatever the DC offers.  They don’t have a lot of good vegetarian options.”

Berlin classifies herself as a healthy eater.  She takes great notice of her diet and how it affects her body and her mood.  She walks into the squash locker rooms one day and declares, “I eat too much sugar.  Twenty-two grams a day is too much.”

Berlin does not skip dessert, but instead has fruit for dessert often.  Half a grapefruit, apples, and strawberries are often eaten after dinner as a sweet ending.  She also tries not to eat after dinner.

Berlin goes to bed at 10 p.m. every night and wakes up at 7 a.m.  She sticks to this schedule religiously,often going to bed with more homework to do and finishing it in the morning.  However on days that she does stay up past 10 p.m. she admits to snacking on candy.

“I love candy,” Berlin says, “I eat way too much of it.”

Berlin tries to take good care of herself.  She focuses on what she eats and what she puts in her body.  It is important to her to work out daily and monitor the amount of food, but more importantly what is in the food that goes into her body.

“It’s not really about the amount,” Berlin says, “But it is more what the food is.”

Both Berlin and Lee are careful about the food they consume, but admit to eating more unhealthy food at night.  They also are religious about working out and often run in addition to their respective sports.  Is this an athlete mentality?  Is this normal for college students?  Or is this a female mentality?

Enter Subject No. 3 Continue reading →