Looking out for a multi-purpose warehouse
If you think about the best times you have had with friends, where have they mostly been? In pubs, clubs, concerts, parks or in the home?
Just the other day I had a wonderful night at a friend’s home, drinking and eating and enjoying good music. It was the most memorable night. I met many of her friends and by the time I was saying goodbye, I felt I had known them all for years.
It made me begin to think about entertaining guests from the home. I currently live in a very small apartment, sharing with a good friend. Despite the rent being very cheap, and enjoying the positioning right in the centre of all the best small bars and cafes, I am feeling restless. I am feeling like I need to move somewhere so I am able to invite friends over after work, feeling free with them inviting their friends and it perhaps growing into a sizable gathering.
Fairly new to a big city, I feel it is my duty to begin to entertain guests, pulling together people I have met from different parts of the city, beginning to form a stronger and more diverse social circle. While introducing networks I also feel it is for a selfish reason: to essentially cure my homesickness, matching experiences of entertaining at home with new ones in a new city.
And I ask myself how I will be able to do this in such a tiny apartment.
After much frustration I have devised a plan. To begin the search for a new place. A place with many rooms, in a warehouse type building, sharing with one or two others to share the load of the rent. This place will be big enough for a hundred if need be, but intimate enough for four. It will be warm yet minimalist. It will be known for sloe gin and tonic, earl grey tea (with soy and honey of course) and the best range of boozy hot drinks the city offers. It will be a place where anything goes, where I will live and others will join, in the search for creative collaboration and a warm bed.
So what began as the need to entertain friends, has moved into a much bigger expedition. One that will see me buying a house full of furniture and opening up a venue.
To begin, I will forge networks with others who might know of spaces available. Then I will buy some furniture including futon beds, chairs, tables and this beautiful modern sofa I have had my eye on for some time now. Then I will lock in the deal, find one other housemate and move in just before winter. The space will be inhabited by artists for performing arts collaborations over the winter and by next summer will have had a couple productions. By the winter after this, I hope for my new space for entertaining will be used every night for something, even if it is just for after work drinks.
Funny where ideas come from and how they progress. Tell us stories of how your biggest projects were created.