The Woodlands no. 1

The Woodlands

no. 1 SPRING 2023

THE WOODLANDS MAGAZINE IS A CREATIVE WRITING AND REPORTED NON-FICTION PUBLICATION BASED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

Editors’ Letter

Dearest reader, A question we’ve gotten a lot since announcing the launch of this magazine: What is The Woodlands?

In a few words: serene, Austenian, green, alive, dead, real, not-at-all real, and fucking nuts.

What we knew when we started: (1) our magazine would be a space where reported journalism and creative writing didn’t have to be mutually exclusive, (2) writing and designing is hard work and should be paid—all writers and designers for this issue received compensation for their work, (3) we are committed to community care, treating our sources with the love that is woven into the fabric of our stories, not just as quotes that paper our work.

What we didn’t know: starting a magazine is hard as hell.

It began with The Green Couch, a literary journalism magazine run out of the Kelly Writers House in the early 2000s that stopped running in the early 2010s. Separately, we fell in love with the eponymous green couch nestled in an alcove framed by a window spilling over with plants, a wooden tea-shelf, and cushy armchairs in the living room. The Green Couch magazine wasn’t ours to revive, but perhaps in its ashes, we could recreate something new.

The Woodlands Magazine rose from the hardpacked ground of The Woodlands Cemetery, a historically-steeped refuge from the corporate bustle of Penn life. It rose from ten bodies huddled in a circle on the steps of Hamilton Mansion, talking about death; from three girls flailing mallets through a homemade croquet game, dressed (sort of) like Jane Austen characters; from first date walks and well-loved books and earth-shaking cries. This magazine is a textual version of our experiences: a haven for breakthroughs and respite, a chronicle of stories that are specific to place, but also true to life.

Our inaugural issue is a collection of narrative

and lyrical stories that urgently need to be told, even if they aren’t breaking news. Among them, tales of Penn After Midnight, a collection of vignettes of campus under the cover of darkness beyond frat parties and Wawa at 2 a.m.; reporting on the ghosts that besiege Locust Walk and the people they haunt; poetry from the People’s Townhomes. These pages are filled with smells, poetry, tattoos, music, dorm rooms, basements, graveyards, homes beloved and destroyed, places that have faded into memory, places that ask not to be seen, from the inside out, from the outside in.

It wouldn’t be an inaugural editors’ letter without a bouquet of thank yous. Firstly, to the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation for funding our dream and allowing us to compensate our writers and designers. Thank you to the Kelly Writers House for being our home, particularly Jessica Lowenthal, for following us from the earliest stages of this project and for remaining enthusiastic every step of the way. Thank you to our many writing professors at Penn, particularly Jay Kirk, for his ethos of experimental nonfiction which inspired our style of journalism. Our friends and family, who listened to us explain this magazine’s many iterations and met us with nothing but love. And of course, all of our written contributors, Alan, Armie, Deb, Gigi, Norah, Rowana, we are so happy you trusted us with your work, and our designers, Joanna and Tyler, for bringing these pieces to life.

We have crossed the gates into The Woodlands Cemetery many times; cross with us now the threshold to The Woodlands Magazine.

LOVE, MIRA + MEG

Table of Contents

IZA HU

“WHAT ARE YOU AFRAID OF?”

DEBORAH OLATUNJI

“THE MIDWEST LIVES” ARMIE CHARDIET

“PENN AFTER MIDNIGHT” ALAN JINICH

“THE GHOSTS OF LOCUST” ROWANA MILLER

“POETRY FROM THE PEOPLE’S TOWNHOMES”

GIGI VARLOTTA

“IZA IN THE FLESH” MIRA SYDOW

Thank you for your support.

We know that writing can be a solitary and -some times daunting task, but we are inspired by the way our contributors persevere and pour their hearts and souls into their work.

In this issue, you will find a range of pieces that reflect the diversity and complexity of life in The Woodlands. From personal essays to investigative journalism, our contributors have brought their unique perspectives and talents to bear on a wide variety of subjects. You will read about the challenges facing local businesses in the wake of the pandemic, the history of the neighborhood’s architecture, and the -experi ences of a new resident trying to find her place in the community. You will also find poetry, photography, and artwork that capture the beauty and vibrancy of this special place. We want to express our gratitude to the many contributors who have made this issue possible. We are constantly amazed by the talent and creativity of the writers and artists who submit their work to us.

As editors, we believe that storytelling is a powerful tool for building community and creating social change. We are dedicated to publishing pieces that are not only beautifully written but also -thought-pro voking and meaningful. We want to challenge our readers to think deeply about the world around them and to consider different perspectives.

4 6 8 14 19 24 28 34

The Woodlands is a neighborhood in West -Phil adelphia that has a rich history and a unique sense of community. We wanted to create a magazine that would reflect the diverse -voic es and experiences of the -peo ple who live and work in this neighborhood.

fiction and creative writing magazine based in -Phila delphia at the University of Pennsylvania.

We are thrilled to introduce you to the inaugural issue of The Woodlands Magazine, a longform -non

Dear Readers,

BASED AT THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA

“UNEARTHING THE UNDERGROUND”

MEG GLADIEUX

“SCENT OF TRUTH”

CHAT

CONTRIBUTORS

ARMIE CHARDIET

MEG GLADIEUX

ALAN JINICH

TYLER KLIEM

ROWANA MILLER

DEBORAH OLATUNJI

NORAH RAMI

JOANNA SHAN

MIRA SYDOW

GIGI VARLOTTA

i’m trying to allow space for the wide variety of stories, experiences, and people and feelings this—an open window pane engulfing possibilities of hope and unwilted love keeps the heart beating the breath shaking

by DEBORAH OLATUNJI designed by TYLER KLIEM

what are afraidyou of?

contact off kilter i hold it— the breath in this space reminding myself to

allowing for the new season to transform the lifescape to learn of

and make a necklace of her a garland to declare care and desire

rather than a bonfire of forbidden want ing to want is to live

it comes to me like night these days the day

and lays down in my mind illuminating it all so to respond means

l o o k i n g at the light where

all meaning l i e s both in the gleams of strangers and in the hopes of mothers for without fear, how can we know love? her gentle whisper dra w i n g u s o u t of s l e e p o p e ning

the nervous system to acknowledge how essential nerve endings are to anatomical b e g i n n i n g s

telling me that my joy and novelty can be fueled without dietary hierarchy

a full balanced meal of greenery, starch kindness and a glass of courage, un-curded

I’m saying

I don’t need to be full I just want to taste of this peace unceremoniously and instead mundanely

my breath settling into a c o m f o r t a b l e s i g h as I look up to you afraid and alive but heart-centered and hopeful of all that is to come

The Midwest Lives

Reconsidering our perceptions of the American Midwest from someone who has called it home.

Mass media stories about the Midwest tend to reify the perspective that the Midwest is America’s backwater, that it is a place for the old, the backward, and the poor. By virtue, average Americans will only hear about the Midwest in the negative. The train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio has the national eye wandering back to my one-time-home. The train, carrying toxic chemicals, including vinyl chloride, derailed, dumping its contents into the surrounding ecosystem, infecting the water and air with cancer-causing particulate matter that could affect the community for decades to come.

After the derailment, the Norfolk Southern Railway Company, the company responsible for the spill, could only muster a $1,000 dollar ‘inconvenience’ check for local residents. Of course, incidents like these are not uncommon—there are around 1,475 train derailments a year. To make matters worse, another Norfolk Southern derailment occurred after the East Palestine accident, killing the conductor.

When reading the news, we often forget the material reality that folks affected by the disaster are living; in

capitalist media, people very quickly become nothing more than numbers, disasters nothing more than expenditures.

We have national amnesia about the Midwest. Flint, Michigan was recently dropped from a corporate sponsorship for bottled water, despite its continued water crisis. It may have faded from headlines, but it’s still happening. Real people are turned into nothing more than abstractions when America’s metropolitan elite portray the Midwest as the backwoods swamp of the country. It would be irresponsible to consider the relationship between the Midwest and the rest of America as anything other than an issue of class relations.

“HER GREEN WATERS A TWISTED VISAGE OF THE FACTORY RIDDEN BEACHSIDE THAT WOULD ONLY BE ENGULFED BY HER GLUTTONY. HER MIST PUT US TO SLEEP WITH DREAMS OF POSSIBILITY AND ADVENTURE TO FAR OF LANDS.”

Growing up in Cleveland felt like snow flurries and snowball fights,

like summers that stretched into the orange of autumn, like cool air that kissed you enough to make your cheeks red. The popular belief that Cleveland is some dingy American backwater of abandoned houses and bullet shells is a falsehood constructed out of coastal metropolitan elitism. The factories were never ugly; in fact, their carcasses became a breeding ground for graffiti art, underground music, and photography for young people. When I moved from Cleveland to North Carolina at age fourteen, I was struck by everything I had taken for granted. Snowy winters were replaced with a lukewarm imitation that could never match the excitement of a first snow.

“WE’D EXHALE CHIMNEY SMOKE BETWEEN OUR BLUE LIPS THAT PRAYED FOR SOMEONE TO WAKE UP AND HOLD US IN THEIR ARMS. OUTSIDE THE WINDOW GREAT LAKE ERIE LOOMED OVER US LIKE A TITAN WAITING TO SWALLOW US WHOLE WITH ITS PREVAILING NOVEMBER WINDS.”

Many of us live in the belief that if you don’t reside in one of the United State’s metropolitan centers, you’re missing out on everything; it’s a society-wide FOMO felt by many Midwesterners, including myself. With a nickname like “mistake by the lake” it’s hard not to feel the bias against the Midwest. It’s no surprise that even positive media, like the LA Times’ article that claims Cleveland is “now on the cusp of cool,” patronizes the Midwest into a subaltern status.

It is the expectation that Midwest cities like Cleveland will ‘transform’ into a New York or Los Angeles—even when that might not be a good thing. I’m here to say that most opinions about the Midwest are based in mass media bourgeois propaganda and classicism.

When speaking about my childhood in Cleveland, crime, natural disasters, or the ‘deathly’ mundanity naturally come up. Most folks are shocked when I tell them that my experience, and the experiences of many others, are overwhelmingly positive. Their surprised looks never fail to amuse.

For us to understand the regional

discrepancies between the Midwest compared to the East and West coasts, we need look no further than Antonio Gramsci’s writing on the concept of cultural hegemony. Gramsci, a socialist intellectual from Fascist Italy, wrote about his own country’s developmental stagnation when comparing the North of Italy to the South in his essay The Southern Question. He not only finds issue with the economic exploitation of the South but also the ideology the North propagates about the South; an ideology that “disseminate[s]... among the masses…by the propagandists of the bourgeoisie” that “the south…prevents the social development of Italy.” For Gramsci, the ideology of cultural hegemony allows for the easier subjugation and exploitation of a region due to the perceived subaltern status of that region.

In the United States, we spread similar propaganda about the ‘backwardness’ of the Midwest. Midwesterners become the butt of a joke to make a point about how these states—generally Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Indiana—are places to escape from. Yet I have never felt more trapped than I do

on the East Coast. I’m reminded often of the fast pace of life, of an expectation to drag yourself along with everyone else lest you be left behind. It was a culture shock for me to move to the Northeast after living in the Midwest and the South; I find myself standing, never sitting down. The ‘fast life’ is captivating, I can’t deny the allure of Northeastern cities, their breadbasket full and ripe for the taking—at least so it seems. Even having sex is faster on the East Coast; when having sex in the Midwest, long johns and layers force you into a meticulously awkward ritual of pre-sex undressing.

So how do we undo the years of indoctrination into an ideology of dissonance, of division? How do we prevent the gap of solidarity between workers of the coasts and Midwest from widening? When will we hold corporations, mostly headquartered in major U.S metropolitan areas, accountable for disasters like East Palestine? I’d like to suggest an ointment—a topical solution for this issue of classist regionalism—include the Midwest in the project of changing this country.

by ARMIE CHARDIET designed by JOANNA SHAN

Penn After Midnight

Snapshots of the campus in the dead of night, in the corners of campus that never sleep.

Penn After Midnight is a series of vignettes—late night tales—strung together in the winter and spring of 2022. In the early morning, I used to ride my bike around campus in search of the people who kept campus breathing: Amber, a highrise security guard; Nasir, the West and Down nightclub bouncer; and many more in places like McDonald’s, the police station, neuro ICU, and even my first-year dorm room. All of these places have changed from what they were one year ago. McDonald’s, once a late night haven, is now demolished. West and Down shut down. Amber is no longer a security guard. We’ve all been replaced through the cycles of university life and I’m no exception. But the shoes that we filled are still there, fossilized in our city that doesn’t sleep.

by ALAN JINICH

designed by JOANNA SHAN

photos by ALAN JINICH

COMPUTER BEEPS AND HAPPY MEALS

The only letters still lit are the “L and the “S.” There’s no glow in the rest. A-O-K by Tai Verdes plays in the background, but no one seems to hear it. Trinkety beeping noises scream at us all. It’s those automated grills and fryers behind the counter. Their sounds fill the space, which is already tapered off with caution tape and crammed with big puffy jackets. What’s going on?

“There was a fire here a couple weeks ago,” says Zayd as he stacks happy meal boxes into lengthy towers. He’s 20 years old and still has a pubescent mustache.

“The fryer caught on fire and burned a hole through the…through the roof. It was bad. That’s the old fryer over there. We gotta get a new one.”

He pauses the music in his airpods and tilts his chin towards the other

end of the restaurant at an ambiguous black tarp sectioned off with caution tape. That area is usually full of people: hungry and satiated, drunk and sober, rich and homeless.

“I don’t see anything too crazy, just regular stuff like homeless people and all that: crack heads, fighting. Ain’t nothin too crazy to everyone round here.”

He digs into a big cardboard box with happy meal toys.

“Here, you want one?” he asks.

I smile at the green box and put it in my pocket. Zayd’s coworker walks by looking bored like a ten year old in an art museum. He slouches in one of the chairs and chuckles at us.

“Have you ever met a Penn student?” I ask.

“I don’t know no Penn students,” he says. “They be coming here though… It

ain’t no different from any other college. It’s a bunch of people from everywhere.”

He attended the Indiana University of Pennsylvania for a semester before dropping out.

“It was kind of weird cus everybody act different. Everybody was so friendly it made me uncomfortable.”

The computer beeps screech again. I wonder if the sounds bother him at all as he folds happy meal boxes or takes orders at the registers.

“Do you like it here?” I ask.

He looks down at the floor.

“Nobody wants to work here for life. If I had the freedom I wouldn’t work at all.”

His shift runs 7 p.m. to 4 a.m., six days a week. During the day he works at a retirement home.

“I don’t sleep a lot.”

Idon’t even know what to say. I’ve been here since Sunday. And I could tell you, nothing seems different.”

The whites of Amber’s eyes start to glisten, then water. Amber is a pseudonym.

“It’s bad out here. I lost someone to suicide and I would have never thought.”

She sits up in her swivel chair and wipes the tears with her scarf. She’s in her mid-twenties, wrapped up head to toe in black Allied Universal gear. Not an inch of her light brown skin shows except for her freckled cheeks.

Five security guards declined to speak with me before I approached Amber at the wrap-around desk in Harrison, a highrise dorm built in 1970. She had arrived two hours earlier for her midnight shift and stood out with her sparkly headband warmer. A plastic barrier put up as a COVID precaution shields us from each other.

“I like the barrier,” she says. “I don’t really feel threatened by students here. But in the bar, people can become drunk and aggressive.”

She used to bartend early morning shifts before becoming a security guard. It was an underground job she took at the height of COVID restrictions.

“I couldn’t be a bottle service girl or server because there are no boundaries. Having that bar between me and the guest gives me more confidence… The kind of confidence you would get if you were in a fish tank in Times Square, you know?” I don’t really know.

“There are times where I look good and I feel good. I’m in the middle of the dance floor and well aware that everyone is looking at me. Throwing your hands in the air, losing yourself in a moment, the music. I love it,” she

laughs. “Maybe it’s just liquid courage.”

But behind this barrier she’s invisible. From midnight to 8 a.m., she pays bills, watches movies, writes goals, manifestations, to-dos, lists of people she would invite to her future wedding and people she would break money to if she ever won the lottery.

“This shift is really dead so they don’t mind it.”

Normally she brings a journal, but tonight she’s using her phone. She hands it to me and scrolls rapidly through her notes app.

“Let’s see: redo bedroom, grocery lists, restaurant idea, Instagram palettes, summer goals 2023, karaoke ideas.”

“Karaoke?” I sit up and fold my legs.

“Yeah I wanna open up a karaoke bar and hookah lounge: Four rooms, $250 each, 8-10 people, charge $10 per extra hookah. This was made at 3:26 in the morning... On Halloween!”

She continues scrolling through her notes: Apartment ads, a new Range Rover, a Facebook post that says “I will be the first millionaire in my family.” Not too different from what I’d expect to see on a Penn student’s phone.

“Do you feel like you could be the first millionaire in your family?” I ask.

“That girl that is so confident on the dance floor could. This one that’s sitting here the whole fucking night? I don’t know.”

She starts playing with the ends of her hair, which used to be dyed red a few weeks ago. She redyed it black after her employers called it “unprofessional” and “loud.”

“Nobody can be their authentic self here,” she says.

Amber has a dozen tattoos hidden under her black uniform jacket. Some are meant to tap into her androgynous side like the one on her left arm:

A woman with a boxing helmet and David Bowie stripe slashed across her face, cigarette in mouth. She tries to roll up her sleeves to show me, but it’s too long.

“I feel like it describes me; I’m just a beautiful badass.” If she ever made it big on TikTok, she knows that the world would see something of themselves in that glamor.

“My family knows I have it in me to be so confident. But I’m not sometimes.”

Two white couples walk into the lobby wearing slim black suits and colorful dresses. They look like they’ve come home from a Hollywood gala and mumble in Spanish. Amber turns around in her swivel chair to give them instructions on how to register guests into the building. One of the girls asks for a mask while the other wraps her arms around her date, swaying drunkenly with her eyes closed. They seem desperate to reach the elevators and as soon as they do, Amber swivels back to me rolling her eyes:

“Like I said, my family sees me as a super-uber overconfident person to the point that they can see me becoming a millionaire; they can see me doing things as wild or free as a playboy. They think that highly of me, but the students that come through here don’t see me. I’m invisible. I’m not worth the hi. Like in the situation you just witnessed, it could be so demeaning because they’re like ‘Come on, just sign us in, do your job.’ I’m like, you don’t even know my situation. I’m simply here to pay my bills. This is not my end all be all, so don’t treat me like I’m just some worker. I try to be nice, I try to say hi. But just imagine 20 students walking by. You say hi 20 times, and you don’t get a single one back.”

HARRISON COLLEGE HOUSE LOBBY, 1AM

WEST & DOWN

There’s a line on 39th. It’s not crooked or straight, but sways with the pulse of music and breaks as bodies cut in. Heads doused in perfume turn toward each other blowing nicotine vapor and smoke. Fingers scramble through purses and wallets in search of driver’s licenses, foreign passports, spare cash. When Nasir raises his voice, the line stands on its tiptoes and turns to the front like a pack of meerkats. Nasir says, “straighten up”, and they straighten up. He folds fake IDs like cardboard and the line moves on. The 23-year-old bouncer of the West & Down nightclub is vigilant and assertive. No one gets in unless they comply.

“Basically, all that being a host requires is demanding money from people at a high level. I’m pretty good at it… Because I’m an asshole. I can be a nice guy, but for the most part I’m not. And here’s the other part. This life thing we got, it’s about balance, right? I would say that out of the 12ish security guards we have on the roster, I’m the least crazy in the entire room. Like these guys are fighters ready to jump off in a pack. It’s a gang mentality. And

I’m the guy who has to tell people to relax. I bring that balance.”

On a cold afternoon, I meet up with Nasir and he shows me the main entrance to the club, which is hidden inside of a popular Korean restaurant called Bonchon. If you were to walk in for lunch, you would be greeted by a host before even noticing the underground doors shrouded in grates and fluorescent lights. At night, those lights shine blue in the restaurant lobby, but are nearly impossible to see from the street with the line packed around Nasir. Regulars dap him up from left and right. Stacks of cash bulge out of his pockets and strobe white from iPhone flashes. Inside the club there’s chest-pulsing hip-hop music, neon lights, dancers huddled in sweaty circles and pairs. Bartenders fling their arms from vodka to soda gun, plastic cup to soggy bills. Euphoria airs above the dance floor. Some sing at the top of their lungs, their out-of-tune voices drowned out by the speakers, while others stand in the back waiting desperately to pee. Anything could be happening in those stalls.

“When I first started a few months

ago, I pretty much just watched the bathroom. I had to keep an eye out for drug use, make sure there was no intersexual stuff. Then over time, my role shifted to working the register; being a host.”

Nasir only started this job in August, but he’s moved quickly through the ranks and now oversees security from inside and out.

“There’s a lot of dumb shit that occurs at this door, bro.”

Fights, fake IDs, fake promotion flyers. He’s mostly dealing with Penn, Drexel, and Temple students; some even come from Villanova.

“It’s interesting. I’m only 23, so technically student aged. But I’ve always been kind of mature for my age too. So a lot of the things that I see happening in the club, I’m just like bro…what? [Shakes his head]. I’m just lost when I see random fights for no reason; excessive drinking. It’s all so silly to me.”

“How do you normally calm people down?” I ask.

“We don’t have guns. And putting our hands on people is not the go-to. So my role is to defuse situations. But I’m good at that anyway, it’s my life.”

Nasir’s role as a mediator at the club is really an extension of his life at home.

“My mom has issues that she hasn’t dealt with. And so the way she deals with anger and sadness, bitterness and resentment, it…” He rubs his fingers together. “Caused a lot of friction between us.”

They used to fight about little things like washing dishes and leaving their back door unlocked. Nasir moved into the basement to remove himself, but he could still hear it all.

“Upstairs, the fights between my sister and my mom were ten times worse than anything I went through. It’s just taxing. I tried to be a mediator but kind of realized that this shit is deeper than anything that I can really handle. They need to go see help.”

During the pandemic, Nasir’s best friend moved in, and the arguments shifted towards COVID rules and having friends over. Nasir previously worked at a nursing facility where he saw 60% of the residents pass away within two months, yet he remained skeptical of COVID’s transmissibility. Nasir’s mother didn’t feel the same. Their relationship reached a breaking point after a physical fight erupted, and he was left alone to take care of his sister.

“I had to make sure she took care of herself, bathed, kept her room straight. I tried to play the parent, but then I quit. Because that’s not my job, and there was still work to be done on myself. Mentally, I was fucked up.”

After midnight, Nasir works the door to another underground where humid air pulses the walls. Moving inside and out, it seems under control. But like a dream, it could fold any second. The room swells with pop beats, catharsis, moshing crowds.

“I’ve been having ‘meaning of life’

thoughts since I was seven years old. Like why are we here? What’s the purpose? Why does it matter? And every time I come to the conclusion that it don’t fucking matter. People wanna fight about whatever – These Russians and Ukrainian n****. All of that shit does not matter at its core. Nothing does. So if you wake up every day with that thought process, life is taxing as fuck like it’s hard to want to do things on a consistent basis. You know what I mean? You don’t wanna do anything but survive. So that’s what I have to release from: Knowing that shit don’t really matter so what are we really doing?”

“As I’ve grown older, I started to realize that not everybody has those opportunities to be able to process what they’ve gone through and then release it. So I come to a club with a whole bunch of college kids who are fresh outta their parents’ cribs, have had zero time to rectify all the trauma that they’ve been through, and they’re trying to figure out how to be an adult, pay for college. And now they gotta learn some shit. So when they come outside they just wanna let go of all that. I get it.”

I met Nasir on a Wednesday night. That Saturday, the club shut down for good.

“It’s NDA stuff” he says, so I don’t push for more.

“What was that last night like? What are you gonna miss the most?” I ask instead.

Nasir pulls out his phone and scrolls through his camera roll.

“Prior to getting this job, security guards were just security guards doing security things. And then I got this job with my main homie and we became the security guards that actually dance.”

He clicks play on a video and the mu-

sic drops: Ice Melts by Drake. Dressed all black with 76ers sweatpants, he puts on a cold face. A friend watches close by.

“My energy is infectious,” he says.

His shoulders jerk, one arm in the air.

“I’m never the only one dancing”

His foot moves are airy, sneakers glowing. He points to himself..

“You see me, and you just have to dance.”

“Damn!” shouts the cameraman. His friend gets involved and they break into laughter.

“Ey, don’t stop!” shouts Nasir on the screen.

“Now 75% of the security guards have at least tried to dance at some point. And that was a beautiful thing.”

The video ends.

“Damn, I’m gonna miss this place” he says, smiling at his phone.

“I didn’t realize how good I was at dancing until I came to the club and saw the reactions of people. It made me so much more confident.”

He recounts one night where his favorite DJ played trap music for the first time.

“I couldn’t stop dancing the entire night. He kept playing banger after banger after banger to the point where I had to go in the bathroom and take my work shirt off and bring it out to put under the dryer.”

He takes out his airpods as if the conversation is about to begin.

“There was another night when DJ Bry pulled up with the Philadelphia 76ers dunk squad! Now all of these guys are athletes but they can also dance cus that’s part of their job. You thought I was good, those guys are fucking different bro.”

His coworker challenged him to dance-battle the dunk squad, and he did.

“I won. 1000%.”

Ireturn to Harrison a few weeks later. The fireplace is turned off tonight. I ask Amber if she’s ever left Philly.

“I went to St. Thomas once. It had the most amazing weather. Waking up in that type of environment I thought how could you ever be sad? But it’s not home. Like I can’t get a cheesesteak around the corner. I can’t just pull up on my cousin’s.” Her smile widens.

“As a young Black girl, there is like a certain culture. Meek Mill has a song called ‘Oodles O’ Noodles Babies’. It’s the pack of ramen noodles you get for like 25 cents at the store. And it’s just a

staple for growing up in Philly. Like, if you were a young Black kid you grew up on that stuff. There’s a certain culture with being raised here. Like you’re gonna pass somebody that might not talk like you, look like you, dress like you. But somehow, someway, something links y’all because y’all from here. “Do you think Penn feels like Philly?” I ask.

“I mean, Phil-a-del-ph-ia, the City of Brotherly Love, the Independence Hall, the book—the textbook Philly, sure. But the one I’m used to, the culture, no. Definitely not.”

HARRISON LOBBY, 2AM

The Ghosts of Locust

There’s a graveyard underneath Locust Walk.

The bodies lie silent below the footfalls of University of Pennsylvania students, below the children playing inside the statue of the broken button, below the aged limestone buildings where professors lecture on physics and astronomy. Centuries ago, there was an asylum for unmarried women perched upon the hill where David Rittenhouse Laboratory now squats. When the women died, those who managed the asylum buried the bodies to the west.

This campus, I believe, lies in the shadows of ghosts.

It’s not just because of the graveyard. It’s because Penn was the first academic institution, in 1883, to study the existence of ghosts. It’s because, according to the night guards, the Penn Museum transforms into an entirely different place after dark. It’s because it seems like almost every Penn student can tell you about a ghostly encounter they’ve had—if not something they personally experienced, then something that happened to someone close to them.

AYAKA SHIMADA, C’21 AYAKA LEFT BEHIND A GOLDFISH WHEN SHE MOVED FROM JAPAN TO THE UNITED

by ROWANA MILLER designed by TYLER KLIEM

STATES. SHE WAS SIX YEARS OLD, AND WHEN HER FAMILY EMIGRATED, SHE GAVE THE GOLDFISH TO HER GRANDFATHER AND ASKED HIM TO TAKE CARE OF IT. THE GOLDFISH AND HER GRANDFATHER FORMED A BOND, SHE SAID. “ONCE IT GOT SICK, AND MY GRANDFATHER SAVED IT.”

TWO YEARS LATER, HER GRANDFATHER HAD A HEART ATTACK. HE SURVIVED. BUT THAT DAY, THE FAMILY FOUND THE GOLDFISH BOBBING, LIFELESS, ON THE SURFACE OF THE WATER IN ITS TANK.

“IN JAPANESE MYTHS, GOLDFISH ARE SACRED AND SPIRITUAL,” SAID AYAKA. “MY NEIGHBOR THOUGHT THAT THE GOLDFISH TOOK THE DEATH FOR ITS OWNER.”

It might appear odd that a campus like Penn’s would have ties to the paranormal. It’s a world-renowned research university with Nobel Prize-winning physicists and a history of engineering breakthroughs. What place do ghosts have in a university that built the world’s first digital computer?

A significant place, it turns out. Spirits and science aren’t necessarily at

odds with each other. “I’ve talked to Harvard physicists and engineers who are convinced that it’s a real possibility,” says Dr. Marjorie Muecke, a former Penn Nursing professor. “For anyone who’s in academia, we have to take confidence in what lead scientists are saying. And they’re saying that there’s something out there.”

Science has always been linked to the spirit world, according to Penn professor Dr. Projit Mukharji. He specializes in the history and sociology of science, and his specific focus is the history of medicine across the 19th century British Empire. But he found that he couldn’t study medicine without also studying ghosts. “Most physicists of the time were interested in energy,” says Mukharji. “And they thought that spirits were basically energy.”

During the late 1800s, Philadelphia became a hub of that strange science-spirit push-and-pull. It was the age of industry, locomotives, manufacturing. And Philadelphia thrived. The city bustled with oil and coal—and with Spiritualism, the not-quite-religion, not-quite-cult whose goal was to facilitate communication with those on the other side of the veil.

“The entire city was engaged in the study of the paranormal,” says Dr. Justin McDaniel, founder of the modern

The University of Pennsylvania is entwined with ghosts, its inhabitants haunted, a legacy of spiritualism and paranormal research woven into its wayward history.

Penn research group, The Penn Ghost Project. Mediums clogged Rittenhouse Square, promising reunions with long-dead lovers and messages from departed parents who had left something unfinished. Spiritualist believers flocked to their doors to hear the spirits rapping on the roof, or watch them guide mediums’ hands to write notes, or feel the brush of a chilly fingertip on their necks.

Penn, naturally, found itself at the center of the boom. When Spiritualist and philanthropist William Seybert died in 1883, he left $60,000—$1.5 million in today’s dollars—to Penn. The purpose? To fund “an impartial investigation of modern Spiritualism.”

Rephrased, the Seybert Commission—as it came to be known—dug for evidence to prove or disprove the existence of ghosts.

They visited mediums along the East Coast to discern whether they were truly gifted with second sight or whether they were charlatans, starting with one of Rittenhouse’s own: a Mrs. Patterson. She went into a trance and wrote note after note in different handwritings, signing each one with the name of someone who had passed away: Elias Hicks, Lucretia Mott, H.S., E.H.

They visited others who specialized in slate-writing—the practice of screwing together two slates and holding them under the table until writing appeared inside them, supposedly sent from the spirits. One medium, New Yorker Dr. Henry Slade, fascinated the Commission’s secretary, George Fullerton.

“[Slade’s] face would, I think, attract notice anywhere for its uncommon beauty,” wrote Fullerton in the Commission’s report on its findings. “His eyes are dark, and the circles around them very dark, but their expression is painful. I could not divest myself of the feeling that it was that of a hunted animal or of a haunted man.”

Despite the medium’s alluring dark-

ness, the Commission found holes in Slade’s performance.

When one of the academics held the slates under the table with no immediate result, Slade snatched them away, deeming the academic’s energy “injurious.” It was only when Slade held the slates himself that a sloppily-written message appeared. (Yes, the Commission noticed his hand bobbing under the table).

The Commission disproved the other mediums in similar ways. The academics caught every sleight of hand, every surreptitious trading of a blank slate for one with a pre-written message, every flicker of a medium’s eyelids when he or she was supposedly in a trace.

In 1887, the academics released their report. Three years of research and eighty boxes of evidence, distilled into a nine-page-long evaluation of whether Spiritualism was real.

Their official findings, in McDaniel’s words: “The Seybert Commission concluded that we can’t prove anything about the existence of ghosts.”

These particular mediums weren’t really talking to spirits. But that didn’t rule out the possibility of spirits entirely. It just meant that this wasn’t where to look for them.

ALEKSO MILLER, C’22 ONCE WHEN ALEKSO VISITED HIS GRANDMOTHER’S HOUSE AS A TODDLER, SHE FOUND HIM STARING AT A BLANK SPACE IN HER KITCHEN AND REPEATING THE NAME OF HER DECEASED MOTHER— HIS GREAT-GRANDMOTHER. HE DOESN’T REMEMBER THIS MOMENT HIMSELF, BUT HIS GRANDMOTHER IS “CERTAIN” THAT HE WAS SPEAKING TO A GHOST.

WHY? “I HAD NEVER MET MY GREAT-GRANDMA,” SAID ALEKSO. “SHE LIVED IN MACEDONIA HER WHOLE LIFE.”

AND, STRANGEST OF ALL, ALEKSO HAD NEVER HEARD HER NAME BEFORE.

Beyond the Seybert Commission, those eighty boxes of evidence continued to grow. Penn built up a sizable archive of ghost studies: notes, letters, written material supposedly sent from spirits. And it’s still there. Penn stores the boxes in the Kislak Center on the sixth floor of the Van Pelt Library. “The level of stuff they’ve preserved is truly incredible,” says Mukharji, the Penn specialist in the history and sociology of science.

Today, that collection is open to Penn’s researchers. A document in these boxes jump started one of Muecke’s projects: an investigation of Arthur Conan Doyle. When she looked through the evidence, she found a letter from the king of mystery himself, claiming that he was absolutely certain that spirits were real.

“When I saw it, I thought, ‘Arthur Conan Doyle? That’s crazy,’” says Muecke. She could barely believe that she was reading the writing of the man behind the logic-obsessed Sherlock Holmes.

But as it turned out, according to Muecke’s research, Doyle had always believed in the paranormal. She attributed the start of his interest to “all the Spiritualism going on in the 1890s.”

After the 1890s though, Spiritualism started to die down among the general public. According to Mukharji, the new technology of the turn of the century—the telephone, radio broadcasting —claimed the public’s interest instead. But not for Doyle.

The author’s interest in Spiritualism spiked during World War I. He lost four people he loved, including his son Kingsley. “He became depressed,” says Muecke. And he turned to Spiritualism for comfort.

By the end of the war, he was completely devoted.

He was so devoted, in fact, that he

destroyed his friendship with famed magician Harry Houdini by insisting that a medium had conjured Houdini’s late wife. He also renounced any future of continuing to write the Sherlock Holmes series. He’d tried to stop once before, in 1893, but demand from the publisher and the public forced him to take up the pen again ten years later. But this time, Doyle was steadfast. He authored only major Spiritualist texts until his death in 1930.

ANASTASIA “TASHA”

HUTNICK, C’20

TASHA’S GRANDFATHER WAS IN THE HOSPITAL IN CENTRAL PENNSYLVANIA, JUST SICK ENOUGH THAT HER FATHER WAS CONTEMPLATING MAKING THE DRIVE FROM THE SUBURBS OF PHILADELPHIA. WHILE HER FATHER PACED IN THE KITCHEN OF THEIR HOME, HE HAPPENED TO GLANCE OUT THE WINDOW AND SEE A FIGURE OPPOSITE HIM, IN THE WINDOW OF HIS NEIGHBOR’S HOUSE.

IT WAS TASHA’S GRANDFATHER—HIS FATHER.

THEY MADE EYE CONTACT FOR A MOMENT, AND TASHA’S GRANDFATHER NODDED. THEN HE VANISHED. THE PHONE RANG, AND TASHA’S FATHER PICKED IT UP. IT WAS HIS SISTER.

BEFORE SHE COULD SAY ANYTHING, TASHA’S FATHER SPOKE. “DAD’S DEAD, ISN’T HE?”

“YES.”

As Muecke described her research, it struck me that Doyle didn’t view ghosts as something to fear. He viewed them as something to embrace, especially in times of sadness.

That seems to be a common thread among those who study the paranormal on Penn’s campus. McDaniel, who

teaches the Religious Studies class God’s Ghosts and Monsters, grew up around graveyards. By the time he started approaching ghosts from an academic lens, he’d spent enough time exploring darkness on his own that he felt comfortable within it.

“When I was a teenager, I was in a punk rock band,” he says, laughing. “And when you were in a punk rock band, you were either a skateboarder or into goth shit.”

He wanted to date goth girls, so he chose the goth shit.

“We would hang out in cemeteries and read bad poetry and try to be deep,” he says. “And we’d tell ghost stories.”

His first job was in a lockdown unit of a psychiatric hospital, working with schizophrenic patients. “My wing was all violent. I had no training, but it was a state institution, and there was no funding. The patients would see a psychiatrist fifteen minutes per month. It was a tough, tough place to work.”

But as he spoke with the patients, he became fascinated by how they described their visions. “Yes, they’re probably all the products of trauma and brain chemistry, but you look through religious history and people saw monsters and wrote beautifully about them,” says McDaniel. “Today, would they be called crazy?”

Eventually, McDaniel moved to Southeast Asia—Thailand, then Laos. He became a Buddhist monk. And he started to see the overlap between the visions of the schizophrenic patients and the lore of the region. When religious figures told him about the monks who used to glow while meditating, he didn’t challenge them; he decided to simply believe.

When Muecke traveled to Thailand to do her own medical anthropology research, she found similar phenomena. She met healers who claimed to channel ghosts—who said they could look at a photo of someone’s wounded arm or leg and call on a spiritual pres-

ence to draw out the pain.

Even Muecke personally witnessed events she couldn’t explain. “I’d seen [the mediums] walk across nails,” she says. “One made an egg jump across the floor without touching it. It didn’t crack. I couldn’t figure it out—I held the egg before, and it wasn’t rubber, and I made an excuse to look under the house to make sure that there wasn’t a trick. Nothing.”

EMMA, C’22

WHEN EMMA WAS YOUNG, HER BEST FRIEND’S DAD DIED VERY SUDDENLY. HE HAD A BRAIN TUMOR. HIS FAMILY WASN’T PREPARED, AND NEITHER WAS EMMA’S. THE TWO FAMILIES WERE CLOSE.

EMMA’S MOTHER’S WATCH STOPPED EXACTLY AT THE MOMENT OF HIS DEATH. “THAT WAS ONE SIGN,” SAID EMMA.

EVERY NIGHT AFTER THAT, EMMA’S MOTHER DREAMED OF HIM. UNTIL ONE NIGHT, HE SAID, “IT’S GOING TO BE OKAY. I’M READY TO GO NOW.” AND HE GOT INTO A CAR AND DROVE AWAY.

EMMA’S MOTHER THOUGHT THAT BECAUSE THE DEATH WAS SO SUDDEN, HE HAD TO STAY AROUND FOR A WHILE. HE WASN’T FINISHED. EMMA, A PSYCHOLOGY MAJOR, ISN’T SURE. “I DON’T KNOW. IS THIS A COPING THING, OR IS THIS AN ACTUAL THING?”

McDaniel, Muecke, and Mukharji are all members of the Penn Ghost Project. The Project formed in the early 2010s, when a group of Penn academics who all studied spirits in some capacity decided to come together. Each one approached the subject from a different angle, but the consensus was that, unlike the Seybert Commission, they weren’t trying to figure out whether ghosts were real. They were simply

trying to understand the impact of people’s belief in ghosts.

“We’re interested in ghosts as a sociological reality,” says founder McDaniel. People’s suspicions of paranormal activity impact real estate prices, the heirlooms that they donate (and don’t donate) to charity, how they think about mortality. The Penn Ghost Project wanted to know why.

The group went on a number of expeditions to investigate various paranormal phenomena in and around Penn. They visited the Penn Museum at night and spoke to the guards, many of whom had been there for decades, many of whom had stories of ghostly encounters. They traveled to the Betsy Ross Bridge on the Delaware River to investigate the rumor that tombstones from the nearby Monument Cemetery had been built into the bridge’s foundation. They did find tombstones at the foot of the bridge. The Project visited the cemetery, too. The tombstones matched.

“One October, on the night of a full moon, we went to the cemetery just off campus,” says Muecke. That cemetery, The Woodlands, offers a peaceful respite from the hustle of Penn. Students sometimes go there to jog or study with only the rustling of the trees as company. “It was late at night, and we went with ghost hunters.”

McDaniel warns that those hunters shouldn’t be dismissed by skeptics. “These are not crazy people. At all. Almost all of them have had a really traumatizing experience with a ghost.”

The hunters identified certain spiritual presences in the cemetery. “I didn’t see anything, but they pointed out a tree where they could see children— ghost children—romping around on the grass,” says Muecke. “They talked about a white glow [in other parts of the cemetery]. I did see a white glow. Maybe I felt a tap on my shoulder.”

Students on and around campus have reported similar experiences, even without ghost hunters to point

them out.

Lucy Curtis, C’21, says that after her roommates fiddled around with a Ouija board, odd things started happening in her Harrison College House suite. “Lights flicker a lot. Doors and windows close and open. My roommate says she saw a figure standing over her,” says Curtis. “Apparently, it woke her up. I think it was a dream, but she says it was tall, dark, and shadowy.”

Sophie Germ, C’19, lives a few blocks off campus. She thinks that there’s a connection between the gravestone with the two blurred-out names in her backyard and the mysterious noises she hears in her basement—“almost like chickens clucking, but not.”

Allison Ricks, C’22, thinks that there’s a ghostly presence in the Kelly Writers House, where she works. The Writers House was built in the mid1800s, and it served as the university chaplain’s house and then as a fraternity house before it became the hub for writers and artists at Penn. “One night we were closing [the house], and we were in the front atrium in front of the door and we heard a knocking on the back door,” says Ricks. “But when we checked, there was nothing.”

SOPHIA DUROSE, C’21 SOPHIA AND HER SISTER WERE SITTING AT THE KITCHEN TABLE ONE FRIDAY AFTERNOON, DOING HOMEWORK, WHEN SHE HEARD THE GARAGE DOOR CREAK OPEN. “I DIDN’T FIND IT STRANGE,” SOPHIA SAID. “ON FRIDAYS MY STEPFATHER WOULD DRIVE DOWN FROM GAINESVILLE TO SPEND THE WEEKEND IN ORLANDO WITH US.”

SOPHIA LOOKED UP AND SAID HELLO “AS THIS BLUR OF A PERSON ENTERED THE NEXT ROOM.”

HER MOTHER AND SISTER ASKED HER WHO SHE WAS

TALKING TO, AND SHE TOLD THEM THAT IT WAS THEIR STEPFATHER.

“THEY TOLD ME THEY HADN’T SEEN ANYONE,” SOPHIA SAID.

A CHILD HAD DIED IN THE FAMILY THAT HAD LIVED IN THE HOUSE BEFORE SOPHIA’S. THE FAMILY MOVED OUT. THE SAME THING HAPPENED TO THE FAMILY THAT LIVED THERE BEFORE THEM. BY THE TIME THAT THE HOUSE BELONGED TO SOPHIA’S FAMILY, SHE “SWEARS” THAT THERE WERE TWO GHOSTS WHO REMAINED IN THE HOME.

IT WASN’T HER STEPFATHER WHO HAD ENTERED. “YET THE GARAGE DOOR WAS STANDING OPEN,” SAID SOPHIA. “I GOT UP OUT OF MY CHAIR AND SEARCHED THE ENTIRE HOUSE.” NO ONE WAS THERE.

There’s a graveyard underneath Locust Walk. But the ghosts aren’t just beneath our footfalls.

Any old building has stories stuck in its mortar; any old field has memories strewn among the blades of grass; any old pathway has ghosts lingering between cobblestones. This campus is enveloped by the history of everyone who has ever inhabited it, both over and under Locust.

But that’s not something to fear. Almost everyone who told me a ghost story felt that the ghost provided comfort in a time when someone needed it. Usually, the ghosts were loved ones, or had some significance as bearers of peace. These ghosts weren’t invaders. They were protectors.

Maybe this campus doesn’t lie in the shadow of ghosts. Maybe ghosts watch over this campus.

Poetry from the People’s Townhomes

These poems are an ode to “the lovely hour” when the sun is setting after a 100 degree day. These poem are an ode to 40th street, to the magic of the urban playground, to the time between then and now. An ode to our never ending summer.

by GIGI VARLOTTA designed by MIRA SYDOW

photos by GIGI VARLOTTA

The UC Townhomes are a 70 unit housing complex on 40th street, tucked between Ludlow and Market. Tall trees hug the sidewalk and grassy yards line the houses. Families (predominantly Black, low-income) have been living at the townhouses for decades. Located walking distance to public transportation, doctors, schools, and grocery stores, it’s a safe haven, providing safe and secure housing to low-income families in the quickly gentrifying neighborhood.

In 1982 private developer Altman bought the property, and agreed to keep the development as Section 8

housing for forty years, until 2022. In Fall 2021 Altman announced he was selling the townhouses, demolishing the homes, and evicting all the families who lived there. Residents formed a coalition and have been protesting to save their homes ever since. Their demands: stop the demolition, extend the contract, make immediate repairs, and provide just compensation. Now, a year and a half later, residents (primarily elderly, disabled, and single moms) are still fighting. They have been successful in extending the contract from its original end date of July 9, 2022 until August 2023. Now, there are 13 families still living at the townhomes,

fighting for the right to stay, and fighting for families who were forced to move, the right to return.

Last summer as a protest tactic residents launched an encampment at the Townhomes that lasted 31 days. From July 9 to August 8, I was there every single day and night. Alongside the resident council and all the kids who live there, we spent our days talking, skating, rapping, singing, slipping-and-sliding, painting, eating, crying, laughing, camping, planning, dancing, and dreaming (& sweating a lot).

SUNNY WENT 2 SLEEP

Everyone gearin up for whats on the up, the wicked crisp finally fried and died (for the night) and layed themself down to rest. Cars light up while Night get up. The Mosquitos got they hours in too and now they chillin. buenas noches, good anyway to give the humans time to scratch, and itch, and twitch. N now the Sticky sweat from the day can crystalize, harden lik that old Gum that been stepped on by all the giants over and over. Faded pink, goey and stubborn, proud but mostly loud. way too hyped bout how he can still get em stuck. Parking lot pavement smooth lik butter beneath the fresh smack of the skateboard wheels. She glad tho, to be appreciated. Do she ever get tired? Of holdin it all up? Do Her hands ever slip? Maybe she need it too much to get Tired. Like the wind. Wind even older than dirt, remind us nothin is for sure. Street Lamps buzz, cracklin the news and updates from the day. Who broke up wit who and what new bevs Dope Stop got. They always got the most to say. Thinkin cuz they stand so tall that they know it all. but we listen lik Bees on honey. Like fried on rice. The children run and scream and laugh and cry, weaving between the Trees as the Trees smile down. casting a web, a bridge made up of leaves that link the children and the clouds, flowin to the beat of 40th street. They remind us to breathe deep, to dance in our boots, and shimmy down to the roots. They remind us why we love the Sun, burning and all. N what keep us going is El, chugging along, burping and yawning,

the bass of our urban jungle song.

PIGS ON 40TH

Sweating already at nine in the morning, scumbag LANDLORD trynna send us a warning. The JUDGE sayin shit gotta come down protecting PRIVATE PROPERTY ‘cross the town, Fuck ur pledge to them clowns.

And come they did, rolling militant deep, stripping and ripping the tents to heaps. PIGS upon PIGS tramp in formation, shutting down 40th st station. & the REPUBLIC for which it stands… #notmynation.

The whole city was there for this violent affair. Beware! Beware! We aint goin nowhere; Miss Dar lay down the beat. Encampment or not, we still got the heat. This is AMERIKKKA, took the fight right to the street.

But really the most tragic part that rocked me straight to the heart, was feeling powerless against the STATE; thinkin bout my friends facing that EVICTION DATE. I pledge allegiance to reversing that fate.

On that hot summer morning when the tents did fall, where was the LIBERTY and JUSTICE for all?

MOVING

he was twelve been there his whole life til one rainy saturday he didnt live there no more

been there his whole life cross from mod nd dris summers spent cookin it on the court jump shots n lay ups n 2v2s nd goin down the hill running thru the grass and between the trees the shade soft and bright a safe haven on 40th street

since forever the kids play together while parents watch from their porches people who look out for eachother people who told they needa move

summers spent cookin it on the court Kistackz, Money Mod, n Lil Dris ! but now he didnt live there no more from 40th st to wilmington delaware

maybe Dris n Mod can visit one weekend? if they able to get a ride … delaware far… summers spent cookin it on the court til one rainy saturday when he didnt live there no more.

DISS TRACK ON ALTMAN WRITTEN/PERFORMED BY KISTACKZ, MONEY MOD, LIL DRIS, GIHONIE, & KASHKIDKEN

[Everyone]

KiStackz

Yo Money Mod

KashKidKen

gihonie

Lil Dris

Fuck ya family if you gon fuck wit mines Save the peoples townhomes you already know 40th street, 40th street and market, parkside ave

[KiStackz]

Peoples townhomes on 40th street

This our diss track lets kill this beat

[Money Mod]

Yo Altman you a bitch

why you selling us when you rich We won’t let you touch our shit Me and gigi is the shit

Why you always on our dick

[KashKidKen]

City council funded by real estate

Dont want us together want to separate Altmans waiting for the eviction date Sell the property watch his worth inflate People over profit that’s no debate

This resilience you can’t penetrate Communities lets elevate Gentrifiers want to immigrate Developers want to displace

Fuck drexel, Fuck penn, Fuck their zero tax rate Fund our public schools that be great Fuck the sherriff, Fuck the police, Fuck the state, We gon win it won’t be no stalemate

[gihonie]

Gigi on the beat

With them fast ass feet

You already know Had to bring the heat

Fuck you Altman you a bitch

Youre lame as fuck you belong in a ditch

Trynna sell the homes, Leave us alone, This our spot bro you got me hot!

Housing is a human right this be the peoples fight Philly be on our side Go head you can’t hide

Fuck you altman youse a bitch

You aint finna win cuz we never gonna quit

[Lil Dris]

Fuck ya hoe she ass tell that nigga that I’m back I just chill and smoke my gas Already know i got my strap Tell that nigga dont do that Altman finna make me snap Pussy

Kick us out yeah thats not cool

Tell that nigga he a fool

Fuck ya wife she in the pool

Fucking ya hoe tonight, fuck ya hoe all night

[KiStackz, Money Mod, Lil Dris]

Fucking ya hoe tonight, fuck ya hoe all night

Lets get it!

Fuck you Altman!

za in the Flesh

Iza Hu is more than the sum of her parts—student, illustrator, activist, tattoo artist, friend.

by MIRA SYDOW

designed by TYLER KLIEM

photos by IZA HU

Iza Hu doesn’t wear shoes when she tattoos. I tell her this, perched on a black folding chair in the corner of her makeshift bedroom-studio, watching her black fuzzy socks pace the hardwood floors. She laughs—“I’ve never thought about that. Like, most people in the world probably wear shoes when they tattoo.” If it weren’t

already apparent, Iza isn’t like most people. She isn’t even like most twenty-something, starving-artist, scrappy-student, tattoo-covered people. She’s something else entirely.

Iza’s body is an experiment. A figure plucked from the pages of a YA novel where the mystical protagonists carve spells into their skin, or the lyrics of

a small, Brooklyn-based rock group’s top hit about their elusive dream girl (she’s aloof but sensitive, and very, very cool). More concretely, she’s a senior at Penn studying design and a self-taught tattoo artist who works out of her makeshift bedroom-studio. Iza took up inking during the summer of 2021, practicing on a few fruits, her

IZA COVERED IN REAL TATTOOS AND HER OWN STENCILS

(very trusting) friends, and herself, eventually working her way up to a semi-professional setup in the corner of her room. Iza isn’t the kind of person you forget meeting. Even if her name slips your mind, her dark hair, dark eyes, and the even darker marks etched into her skin burn into your memory.

She sticks out, even in an art history class populated by Penn’s most curtain-banged, vintage-clothed individuals. Her longboard—tall and stiff, with loose wheels—bobs above her head when she twists through rows of seats to find her spot in the back. She’s short, unassuming. Dark curtain bangs curl over her face, and the sleeves of a baggy t-shirt droop nearly to her elbows. We know of each other through mutual friends. She asks me to sign the attendance sheet for her when she skips class a few times, and I practice her signature on a scrap sheet of paper. Iza Hu, with pointed, jagged lines. Not Isabel. Iza. Sharp like a knife, or like a needle.

Sitting in Iza’s room feels like being swallowed by her, a shot of clairvoyant liquor chased with a splash of Soju. Bright photos paper the walls, a constellation of her own illustrations, favorite albums, and wispy Tumblr-core printouts, framing a low bed shoved into a corner, a crowded desk, and a full-length mirror. In the corner, her makeshift studio: a low faux-leather massage bed set against a wall plastered with illustrations, dark ink burning through the wafer-thin pages. It’s almost medical—a smooth plastic printer, clear tins of thick, opaque liquid, a needle-thin tattooing pen perched on a sterile rolling cart.

Iza hunches over the massage bed, watching Alyssa’s fingers carefully steady thick, tan-colored rubber. Alyssa Chandler is a junior, a year behind Iza, and she carves ruby-red stencils out of foam blocks for the Year of the Rabbit and the Save Chinatown Co-

alition. Alyssa and Iza feel like sister creations of the same artist who exclusively doodles cool Asian girls in the margins of their notebook. Alyssa has dyed-red hair, delicate hands, and wide, emphatic eyes. She speaks softly, almost imperceptibly, and a silver ring glistens from her septum. Iza sits broadly, smiles with the edges of her

mouth, and shoves back thick, black hair. They first met on Hinge. Then at a party, then in a figure-painting class. Then now, on purpose, in Iza’s bedroom-studio.

Iza lays down her tattooing commandments: always shave the area beforehand. Hair is a complicating factor. Ensure your workspace is clean

ALYSSA CHANDLER, PICTURED WITH A TATTOO FROM IZA

and well-lit. Atmosphere and visibility is key. Coat the skin with a thin layer of Vaseline. Gently spread the surface taut with your fingers, creating a path for your hand. Start slowly.

She gestures to Alyssa’s linework on the faux skin. “Look at the way you’re holding the pen. If you hold the pen this way, the ink will shoot that way. Make sure that you’re holding the pen in the direction that the ink is flowing.” Alyssa gently corrects her hands, following the curve of a small stencil Iza imprinted on the fleshy slab.

It’s her first time teaching someone else how to tattoo. Really, it’s her first time experiencing tattoo instruction— Iza is totally self-taught.

“I bought my first machine on AliExpress for 50 bucks,” she tells me. It’s a small, plastic red thing relegated to the corner of her desk that looks like a

toy compared to her new instrument, a sleek black pen that softly vibrates in Alyssa’s hand. Shouldering her amalgamation of DIY tattooing Youtube videos and years as an illustrator, Iza started on substitute surfaces, taking trips to Chinatown to buy oranges and pig ears—she heard they were similar to real, human skin.

“Didn’t ever do that again,” she laughs. “[The pig ears] were so smelly, I was like, ‘I should just practice on myself.’ So I did.”

Her first self-ink is a small mark in the middle of her thigh. She shows me how it looks like an exclamation point if you’re facing her, but it looks like an “i” for “Iza” from her perspective. Her second is a cat on her ankle—she pulls up the cuff of her pants to show me. The lines are thick and a little blotchy, drawn with a shaky and gleeful hand.

Iza’s eyes flicker back to Alyssa, who draws whisker-thin parallel lines into the rubber. “Needle depth is something you have to kind of learn for yourself … don’t go too deep, and don’t go too light, because then you’ll only scratch the surface of your skin. You want to get right in the dermal part.”

It’s something that’s hard to emulate on the faux skin. Iza flips her arm to show a flowering tattoo that twists around the joint. Her fingers trace a clean line until they encounter a dark blotch that blooms from the intersection of two lines. “See? The artist went too deep and there’s a blowout here.”

Her method depends on where on the body she’s tattooing. “Your ass has more fat, so you would have to go deeper, versus your ankles, where the skin is so thin that you have to be really careful not to blow out. Like with

A STENCIL OF ONE OF IZA’S DESIGNS

yours,” she says, gesturing to my ribcage.

On a foggy weekend in February, I sprawl on Iza’s massage table with her bent over my side. The table was built for more Iza-sized people than Mira-sized people—my feet hang over the bottom edge, and I bend my knees, back, shoulders into a compact, tattoo-able body. My face presses into the corner of Iza’s room, below translucent sheets of flash stencils and full-back drafts. When I exhale sharply at the pain in my side, the pages flutter ever so slightly.

The vibrations of Iza’s tattoo pen, my first time, shake my skull behind closed eyelids, occasionally overlapping with the sound of her voice. “Does it hurt?” It does, sort of, but not the kind of excruciating pain I expected from a four-inch rib tattoo. The worst part is shading, the quick, back-andforth pressure of stippling along my side that pinches and burns, raises the hairs on my spine, makes me grind my teeth together.

There’s hardly a more intimate act than coloring underneath someone’s skin. And Iza does it at least once every weekend. She flows through conversations like a well-practiced artist, first our art history class, then that bad date story we’re somehow both privy to, then that text from the guy I’ve just started seeing, then her design thesis, an homage to the art of tattooing and the conservative Chinese culture that raised her.

It only takes a few hours—dropping my backpack in the corner of her room, sinking into the comforter on the edge of her bed, looking over her shoulder as she sketches out a design on her iPad, printing the stencil on a small, black machine propped up next to the massage table, pulling up the hem of my shirt, pressing the stencil into my skin, and darkening my side with ink. And the saran-wrapped, blackened design eternally resides at the bend of

my side.

A few weeks later, I shimmy my sweatshirt up above the imposing ink on my ribs in the kitchen of my childhood home. Glance expectantly at my mother peering at me through tortoiseshell reading glasses. Her response: “It’s big.”

I never really pinpointed when she shifted—when I was in middle school, she circled a spot on her wrist with her thumb and told my dad and I that she’d like to get a tattoo someday. Maybe a little tree. But some force within my parents, the remnant of boys’/ girls’ Catholic schools, a general Gen-X conservative-ness, or a Southern-suburban paradoxical aversion to both change and permanence, pushed the possibility of tatted-up bodies from their minds.

A few weeks before Iza bore into my side, my younger sister went to a Friday the 13th flash tattoo event and left with the number “13” in an infinity sign stamped on her upper thigh. But of course, she never told our parents. So I shouldered my oldest-child duty and flashed my ribcage at the dinner table. When my mom texted our dad, “Mira got a tattoo,” he begrudgingly wrote back, “Ugh. Ok.”

Above Alyssa’s head and scattered about my feet are purple stenciled designs that span two or three pages, cut and pasted together to form large arcs of ink. They’re the tattoos of Iza’s friends’ “wildest dreams,” part of her design thesis that focuses on body reclamation and the stigma surrounding tattoos in Chinese culture.

“I’m designing tattoos for them with no limit, whatever they want, stenciling it on them, and photographing them in a space that they feel most comfortable, most intimate, most private. Most of them are in their bedrooms.”

She rifles through a stack of papers on the floor next to the cutout stencils, spreading a set of saturated scenes:

blacks and reds and satins and lace and violet ink silhouetted against pale skin and bone. Iza’s thesis is an ode to her identity, her history, her hands.

In the last photograph, Iza and Alyssa fix their eyes on their reflections in a mirror. Twin tigers consume their calf and bicep.

When Alyssa finishes dotting an untouched area of faux skin, she flexes her grip on the pen and turns to me. “Would you like to try?”

The pen is somehow bulky and light at once—the large grip tapers into a nearly invisible point. I dip the pen into the ink cap, watching the tip guzzle dark solution. Alyssa dabs some Vaseline from the side of her gloved hand onto the rubber skin. I press a button at the corner of Iza’s desk to turn the machine on, and it quivers in my hand like a heartbeat. Stretch skin with fingers, mark in strong, straight lines pointing towards myself. Quicker and more shallow to shade. It’s not unlike writing with a pen, but my output is glistening black and utterly volatile— my strokes collide and blur together.

Iza says the first step of being a good tattoo artist is being a good artist. The rest comes later. It’s easy for her to say—Iza’s a talented artist, but she’s also a risk-taker, a conversationalist, a skater, an unabashed fan of Lana del Rey. She’s in with the group of grad students who keep returning to sit around her room for new ink. The residents of the University City Townhomes come to her for matching tattoos to commemorate their shared struggle. An English major in her art history class asks her to engrave a caryatid, a column form they learned about in the first week together, into her ribcage, then asks if she can write about it. And with a sharp eye and steady hand, Iza stitches together the hundreds of bodies that go to work, class, the library, Trader Joe’s, church, Clark Park, and their homes with her art living and breathing underneath their skin.

Unearthing the Underground

Trying—and failing—to piece together Philly’s elusive DIY music scene.

by MEG GLADIEUX

designed by TYLER KLIEM

photos by MEG GLADIEUX

The concert roars at full force in the basement of Lucky Aide. Well, really, it’s a laundry room, fit with a washer-dryer in the back where the bands have their guitar cases and extra amps sprawled out. It’s a glorified half-finished bunker of sorts that doubles as a catch-all storage and supply space adorned with fairy lights.

The stage is marked by amps at the far side of the room, an area rug, and Christmas lights fastened around the ceiling pipes.

You stand among 20 other people crowded in the open space amid the sticky clutter. It’s just one of the many “house shows” going on across the city, a scene that is rebuilding itself

after years of live music being unsafe during the pandemic.

Lucky Aide—a “multipurpose art empowerment space” according to their Instagram bio—belongs to James and Jon, roommates, bandmates, best friends. You’ve seen them around at shows, but the first time you speak,

by norah rami

designed by TYLER KLIEM

Scent of Truth

1.

The black sweatshirt I brought home from Goodwill smells like someone’s bedroom. I don’t know whose face or body, but I know this smell— vague enough to be remembered but specific enough to remain unnamed. In all reverence to modern hygienic practices, I recognize I should wash this, yet it feels blasphemous to erase its past. And yes, in time it will slowly fade out of existence to be replaced by my own unholiness. But for now, I can imagine a dark bedroom, carpeted with clothes on the floor. And I can wear another skin for a moment.

2. There is an in-between where this sweatshirt will be both mine and its forefather. Neither of us have any inkling of the other, yet we have come together to create something new. I do not know who I am melding with. And they do not know their child.

3. I hope this faceless lover is kind. This sweater is an embrace she never knew she gave but I cherish it nonetheless. Perhaps she would love her child if she knew of her.

4. I often give my friends the clothes off my back. Once I slept at Mango Sunrise’s house when the power went out and it was too cold to stay at home. The next morning, I gave

her the hockey jersey I wore to sleep, the only thing I brought in my hurry. I had a second one just like it at home and this was my token of thanks. She’s leaving next year and won’t bring it with her.

5. Do they smell me in the fabric of these gifts? Is there a part of me living in those seams?

6. The idea of love is based on pheromones. It’s less love at first sight, more love at first smell. In a 1998 study, 44 men wore a cotton t-shirt for two days, then left those t-shirts in a room for 49 women to choose. They found that the women were attracted to the shirts of men with the strongest genetic immunity. By scent. Their noses looking for a mate with whom they could create the strongest child, least susceptible to disease. It’s less about who they are, more what they can create. I wonder if the women ever met their shirt-wearers. Did they fall in love?

7. I am hoping for both yes and no. There is a certain callousness if that is all that’s left in love. That we marry a $2.99 cotton shirt before we meet the wearer. If our own noses can betray us, what can we trust in love?

8. I don’t know what I would do in this experiment. Perhaps I would circle the room lost, following my sisters to their cotton treasure. Per-

haps there is a part of me that is the daughter my mother wanted. Perhaps there is an instinct that knows her duty even when her heart betrays her lineage.

9. My mother hates her nose. Says she’s wanted a nose job since she was ten, but forty years later she still holds disgusted claim to her original. I find it beautiful. She inherited it from her mother, and curse or not, I’d still rather share their lineage.

I am told my nose is like my father’s but softer, lacking the definition of his features yet retaining the same form beneath. I never noticed my nose much. I draw my finger down my dorsum in a clouded restroom mirror. It is plain, neither a point of pride nor hatred. I have much else left to disdain.

10. A 2005 study at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm found that while the majority of women react to the pheromone androstadienone (AND), a select number of women react to estratetraenol (EST), the same hormone reacted to by most heterosexual men. to. A 2017 study by the University of Western Australia disproved the role of AND and EST in attraction. Science often fails me, but I still wonder which I would react to, if it even matters.

11. In 8th grade English class, a boy comes up to tell me his

friend thinks I smell bad. I want to tell him my scent is not made for him.

12. Chamomile just got a nose job. The first two nights she tells me she was haunted by death, waking in the night, unable to breathe. She says she was happy she did this, waltzing on the precipice of life for love of her new nose. We sit on opposite ends of my couch as she says this, watching a movie whose summary I’d later read because I missed everything except a couple of stolen kisses. I don’t point out that her new nose is not in fact new but the same nose with a different aesthetic value because I don’t think of this until two days later, when I’m waiting for her to text back.

13. I once had a dream that smelled so strong I woke up. There was a woman in a dark saloon who swore she loved me. But as I turned to face her there, I found no one, instead alone, bathing in the stench of liquor. I sat in my bed trying to remember what that love smelled like before it disappeared.

14.I sat in Mahogany’s car while she complained about the price of perfume. Her AC spun a sickly storm of weed and Febreeze, fighting for who would stay, who would go. Neither wins. A child of disorder, translucent skin and a sewn mouth, sinks behind our ears and into our hair.

At that moment I was still in love with her, even though I knew she would never love me back. She knew it too, which is why she spoke about perfume and birthdays. She was born a day before me. She was always in a rush, working more jobs than she could remember. Maybe that’s why it would never work. She told me she’d think about love when she quit her next job. But she always found another one. She never had enough time to breathe. I wonder what she would smell if she stopped for a moment and

inhaled. Maybe, that’s what she’s running from.

15. I am sitting on Chamomile’s couch petting her dog when she tells me they used to break the bone in rhinoplasties. Now they split the skin and shave it down. Progress is not disfigurement, but the slow scraping away of those parts best hidden away.

20. I have been told I smell like Michael’s in the fall, honey and orange juice, vanilla and peaches, good and bad.

21. I think I smell like the sea spray of an ocean storm, the sweat of held palms, summer nights when the air is heavy enough to force you to slouch, the earth re-awoken after a heavy rain.

16.

For all of middle school I used a peach-scented Bath and Body Works body spray. I kept it in my gym locker with a gray top and black shorts that hadn’t been washed since basketball season began. I really believed dousing myself in perfume would hide all my dirty laundry.

17. For Mahogany’s going away party I bought her a candle. We had gone shopping at Target a month before to satisfy her sudden need to set something on fire. That day, we couldn’t agree on a scent; I gravitated towards the sweet, her towards the woody. The day of her party, I spent an hour at Bath and Body Works trying to distance myself from my own body, to get closer to hers. To smell as she might smell, to be closer for a moment to a space I could not inhabit. I ended up buying a scent I could not stand. She loved it.

18. Ice hockey practice always ended in sweat. I would suffocate in my stench in that echo chamber of a pink-painted closet because there weren’t enough girls to warrant a real locker room. There was something comforting in those moments of isolation. I would sit a little longer in the stink, not daring to borrow perfume or AXE to cover it.

19. We can’t smell ourselves unless we really try. We smell our own bodies so much, they become undetectable. But in those nauseating moments, I knew I existed.

22. Three years after quitting hockey, I found my old bag. I opened it to memories of a sickly pink closet and the girl who sat within, yearning to find herself. I found solace in the memories until I had to douse them in bleach and sell the bag to some kid in Ohio. The scent must still linger, even if it’s no longer mine. I wonder if they found beauty in it too. Perhaps they think of me.

23. I kept the jerseys. They’re all I have left of me.

24. I go for runs in the morning and suck in breaths of sweat just to remember. Some days, I fall asleep under the sun and awake to find my ghost resurrected by the hot summer air.

25. On rainy days, I wrap my hair in a towel and step outside to smell our magnolia trees. I go alone, dancing in the puddles until my reflection becomes a work of art. I find sweet and earth in this ritual. I worship the magnificence I do not notice until I focus on the inhale, stick my nose deep into the petals stained white with pollen, and breathe.

26. There is something special in finding a smell alone. Here it is pure, only tainted by the remnant of me. It’s less a stain, rather the creation of birth. All there is to find is myself and the beauty in the world.

27. In these moments, I breathe as I breathe and hold for a moment an undefinable scent that only I can name as my own.

ALYSSA CHANDLER