Feb 6, 2015

R.I.P. Golden Tea House


This is the old Golden Tea House. They say the ghost of Perry Shall still roams the halls, that you can still hear the whine of singer/songwriter Alex G in each squeak of the floorboards. It's an empty vessel, a fine structure devoid of life, but it wasn't always this way. This house was once a monument to the DIY scene of Philadelphia. It was home to countless bands and humans of all ages, colors, and creeds for a fleeting moment, but in that moment the whole experience was so big and so beautiful that it became everything. It was a house that hadn't booked a good show since Mean Jeans played 3 years ago, when (some of us) were still young enough to think Mean Jeans was cool. It was a house that was often barely worth peering into even if you trespassed through the shitty makeshift wall atop the mud-hill in the backyard on which everyone would urinate. It was a house that was, at times, impossible to stomach if you still had a pulse. By a large margin, I've seen more people reading books at Golden Tea House shows than at any other venue, and I think that speaks volumes on the level of interest held here. I'd rather be in Meryton.

R.I.P.