Initial Stirrings : Boston, The Projects of Roxbury Mass, and Handshouse Studio :
in 2oo9 as a student of the pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland Oregon, I attended Massachusetts College of Art on the AICAD Mobility Program, which enabled me to study at Massart with no variations to the tuition I was already paying.
I'm afraid I am not known to be the most prepared person, and battling seasonal depression I hobbled into Boston (riding Amtrak across the country) with barely any money left. Compounded by the managers of the Fairmount Hotel Apartments of Portland Oregon scamming me out of the $9oo deposit that would have enabled me to secure housing ...
well...that is a long story. but there were times in Boston, after I could no longer afford to stay in the hostel (which is wonderful by the way), that I literally slept in South Street station, sitting at a chair by the book stand...anyways, eventually the school realized my condition and helped me tremendously ---
The first apartment i Stayed at, was the brand spanking new visiting artist's suite in the dormitory complex on the edge of Roxbury, Mass - which is its own city, but is more or less incorporated into the structure of Boston for some time.
I wandered into Roxbury , at night to collect some money my mom and gramma sent me western union from a corner bodega, and quickly gathered what a seedy area it is.
A few months passed, and after couch surfing with Massart Students, and numerous visits to apartments and rooms via craigslist ads, one lady called me back from Forest Hills, Boston - on the edge of Jamaica Plain. So i found myself elevated to an incredibly peaceful, quiet black neighborhood living on the middle floor of a triple decker. it was amazing!
I am mostly a walker - so I would walk through Jamaica Plain to the School on Mass Ave, often - whether i had money for the orange line or not - which stopped a block away from my home, and passed through the great Jamaica plains projects into downtown.
The projects, seedy bodegas, abandoned 19th century prussian breweries, gilded standpipes on every hill illiciting thoughts of Derry, and other factories, great beaux art churches completely abandoned. and the wonderful park that extended from Mission hill to my home more or less on a trail.
I am from the left coast, a town called Bellingham and the projects were a new thing to me. By then, I had already been practically been adopted by a group of black workers from the food court at Massart, was living in neighborhood that was 99% black and just soaking it all in !
Later, I come to learn of Roxbury Puddingstone - an amazing conglomerate quarried in what was once a great industry for Roxbury, a beautiful stone not found anywhere on earth, and from which many 19th and early 2oth century buildings of Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and greater Boston were / are fashioned.
Not yet having discovered Ralph Waldo Emerson, a planet in my cosmology at this point - I did learn that he preached at the Unitarian Church in Roxbury before he left for Concord.
~~~
in 2oo9 as a student of the pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland Oregon, I attended Massachusetts College of Art on the AICAD Mobility Program, which enabled me to study at Massart with no variations to the tuition I was already paying.
I'm afraid I am not known to be the most prepared person, and battling seasonal depression I hobbled into Boston (riding Amtrak across the country) with barely any money left. Compounded by the managers of the Fairmount Hotel Apartments of Portland Oregon scamming me out of the $9oo deposit that would have enabled me to secure housing ...
well...that is a long story. but there were times in Boston, after I could no longer afford to stay in the hostel (which is wonderful by the way), that I literally slept in South Street station, sitting at a chair by the book stand...anyways, eventually the school realized my condition and helped me tremendously ---
The first apartment i Stayed at, was the brand spanking new visiting artist's suite in the dormitory complex on the edge of Roxbury, Mass - which is its own city, but is more or less incorporated into the structure of Boston for some time.
I wandered into Roxbury , at night to collect some money my mom and gramma sent me western union from a corner bodega, and quickly gathered what a seedy area it is.
A few months passed, and after couch surfing with Massart Students, and numerous visits to apartments and rooms via craigslist ads, one lady called me back from Forest Hills, Boston - on the edge of Jamaica Plain. So i found myself elevated to an incredibly peaceful, quiet black neighborhood living on the middle floor of a triple decker. it was amazing!
I am mostly a walker - so I would walk through Jamaica Plain to the School on Mass Ave, often - whether i had money for the orange line or not - which stopped a block away from my home, and passed through the great Jamaica plains projects into downtown.
The projects, seedy bodegas, abandoned 19th century prussian breweries, gilded standpipes on every hill illiciting thoughts of Derry, and other factories, great beaux art churches completely abandoned. and the wonderful park that extended from Mission hill to my home more or less on a trail.
I am from the left coast, a town called Bellingham and the projects were a new thing to me. By then, I had already been practically been adopted by a group of black workers from the food court at Massart, was living in neighborhood that was 99% black and just soaking it all in !
Later, I come to learn of Roxbury Puddingstone - an amazing conglomerate quarried in what was once a great industry for Roxbury, a beautiful stone not found anywhere on earth, and from which many 19th and early 2oth century buildings of Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, and greater Boston were / are fashioned.
Not yet having discovered Ralph Waldo Emerson, a planet in my cosmology at this point - I did learn that he preached at the Unitarian Church in Roxbury before he left for Concord.
~~~
Just past a great palace of an abandoned brewery, on the back side of Mission Hill, where the orange line parkway began - on the edge of a generic project, predominantly housing poor black folks, was a basketball court that was night, and day crowded with locals playing basketball, listening to music, dancing, putting on makeup, flirting, sitting for a rest, etc etc - it was a great ebony ocean and I stood out like a white bowling pin. I always thought it was amazing that even though people were living in such wretched conditions, in these deplorable soul-less buildings that they still had this tight knit community.
The Generic institution buildings, reading all over as an after thought - were punctuated by one drab building being right next to one or two of the same building with boarded up graffitied windows, evil clematis and kudzu vines and gaping black fenestrations like eyeless sockets or toothless mouths -
More or less disenfranchised from the American Dream, they somehow transcended it - after their own fashion.
After a couple months of walking past that basketball court and sometimes smiling and waving, but mostly keeping to myself and letting the locals do their thing - i came upon the court one night to find a police line, and flashing lights, wailing locals, I knew something absolutely terrible had happened. and I made a wide berth as I knew that there was nothing i could do at the time, and I would check back later.
I knew that the gang activity coincided with the community activities, and I saw that especially the young black men straddling this tightrope between falling in with the gangs and making their own way in the world.
It was horrifying and deeply painful (even now) to find that what had happened on the basketball court was a young man of 9 years old was murdered in gun violence.
After that, the court became a shrine to yet another martyred black man, with flowers, pictures, forlorn cards, photographs and private eulogies full of yearning.
But the community was gone. the rest of the time i was in Boston. even though I still walked through that court at least twice every day (after a little bit of time of wariness) - no more was the community. I was the only one who now walked the court where only a moment previous was a thriving community in this little square or park.
~~~
The Generic institution buildings, reading all over as an after thought - were punctuated by one drab building being right next to one or two of the same building with boarded up graffitied windows, evil clematis and kudzu vines and gaping black fenestrations like eyeless sockets or toothless mouths -
More or less disenfranchised from the American Dream, they somehow transcended it - after their own fashion.
After a couple months of walking past that basketball court and sometimes smiling and waving, but mostly keeping to myself and letting the locals do their thing - i came upon the court one night to find a police line, and flashing lights, wailing locals, I knew something absolutely terrible had happened. and I made a wide berth as I knew that there was nothing i could do at the time, and I would check back later.
I knew that the gang activity coincided with the community activities, and I saw that especially the young black men straddling this tightrope between falling in with the gangs and making their own way in the world.
It was horrifying and deeply painful (even now) to find that what had happened on the basketball court was a young man of 9 years old was murdered in gun violence.
After that, the court became a shrine to yet another martyred black man, with flowers, pictures, forlorn cards, photographs and private eulogies full of yearning.
But the community was gone. the rest of the time i was in Boston. even though I still walked through that court at least twice every day (after a little bit of time of wariness) - no more was the community. I was the only one who now walked the court where only a moment previous was a thriving community in this little square or park.
~~~
2o1o : The outside of prospectus Roxbury Annex I - or "The Apiary" in downtown Hillsboro, less than 1 block from the Max Station! It was zoned live work, and would have been leased for about $12oo a month ! I was negotiating with the realtors who were the best friends and patrons who artists could have - to have a shower installed, and a stainless steels ink with 3 tubs, along with a janitors sink as part of negotiations, before the train station back in Custer, Washington became available now, rather than a few more months down the road...
About that time, or some time later - I spent a weekend in Norwell Massachusetts, with the architecture and sculpture departments of Massart, along with Bellingham Timber Framer's Guild - constructing a replica of the belltower from the Gwozdziec Synagogue in Poland - destroyed during the nazi genocide in Poland, along with most other wooden synagogues -
We built the belltower, from hewing the logs, to casting the bell in iron from a 2oo year old century bell mold - in just less than a weekend! we sat under poplar trees at shingle horses hewing cedar shakes into finished shingles for the belltower, there was a swing on a branch over the tree next to an ancient new england stone wall. this was at the now world renown Handshouse Studio - which folds into Massart.
We ate great meals, I slept below the table saw in the studio building, amazing conversations, jumping blind mostly naked into the river at dawn with friends, chasing each other through the woods in the dark scaling the stone walls and laughing till we almost burst, all the models from past Handshouse projects - including the actual Turtle Submarine and miniature models of the medieval cathedral cranes -
That weekend was one of the most profound, ecstatic, fulfilling, exciting, rewarding, passionate weekends of my life ! - - -
And when I got back to Boston, I was so High on the whole thing I started thinking about how to take tragic things and make them into something new. breathe new life, transposition - upcycling if you will -
I knew I wanted to create something like Handshouse Studio, a community of makers working and playing hard - head, hands, and heart !
The idea, since then has been my all consuming obsession. I thought of the Pogroms in Poland and the disenfranchisement of black america, I thought of my own struggles with Homelessness -
~~~
Well, everyone knows what happened next was I got sick with Lyme's and nearly died - spending 3 days in Brigham and Women's hospital on cardiac monitoring, with spinal meningitis, athritis, damage to the pacemaker nerve of my heart, and covered with the Erythema migrans (target) rash over my entire body even to the whites of my eyes and under my finger nails!
so, I survived - barely, and quickly packed up my room in Forest Hills in order to catch a plane from Newark back to Seattle and then to recuperate with my family for the summer - what began then is about a decade or so with the 2 steps forward 1 step back process of learning to live (and transcend!) an autoimmune disease.
The first thing you think of when you almost die 3ooo miles away from home , alone and surrounded by doctors is that all you want to do is be with your family. so when I survived, I canceled my plans to travel to Provincetown and New York City and went straight back Home to Whatcom County, Washington State -
We built the belltower, from hewing the logs, to casting the bell in iron from a 2oo year old century bell mold - in just less than a weekend! we sat under poplar trees at shingle horses hewing cedar shakes into finished shingles for the belltower, there was a swing on a branch over the tree next to an ancient new england stone wall. this was at the now world renown Handshouse Studio - which folds into Massart.
We ate great meals, I slept below the table saw in the studio building, amazing conversations, jumping blind mostly naked into the river at dawn with friends, chasing each other through the woods in the dark scaling the stone walls and laughing till we almost burst, all the models from past Handshouse projects - including the actual Turtle Submarine and miniature models of the medieval cathedral cranes -
That weekend was one of the most profound, ecstatic, fulfilling, exciting, rewarding, passionate weekends of my life ! - - -
And when I got back to Boston, I was so High on the whole thing I started thinking about how to take tragic things and make them into something new. breathe new life, transposition - upcycling if you will -
I knew I wanted to create something like Handshouse Studio, a community of makers working and playing hard - head, hands, and heart !
The idea, since then has been my all consuming obsession. I thought of the Pogroms in Poland and the disenfranchisement of black america, I thought of my own struggles with Homelessness -
~~~
Well, everyone knows what happened next was I got sick with Lyme's and nearly died - spending 3 days in Brigham and Women's hospital on cardiac monitoring, with spinal meningitis, athritis, damage to the pacemaker nerve of my heart, and covered with the Erythema migrans (target) rash over my entire body even to the whites of my eyes and under my finger nails!
so, I survived - barely, and quickly packed up my room in Forest Hills in order to catch a plane from Newark back to Seattle and then to recuperate with my family for the summer - what began then is about a decade or so with the 2 steps forward 1 step back process of learning to live (and transcend!) an autoimmune disease.
The first thing you think of when you almost die 3ooo miles away from home , alone and surrounded by doctors is that all you want to do is be with your family. so when I survived, I canceled my plans to travel to Provincetown and New York City and went straight back Home to Whatcom County, Washington State -
So that acorn of an idea - for a community, of makers in collaborative efforts to make things to make the world a better place, gestated in the fertile soil of my mind for some time, after a summer in Whatcom County I was back in Oregon - moved around a bit.
Steph Gorkii, Elbert Hubbard, The Notebook, and Roycroft
Once back in Orygon, i would wax poetic about this vision endlessly, to all my friends and loved ones whether they liked it or not. hanging out with My friend Stephen Gorkii (with whom i had started a shop called "General Store of Thae Arts" in Edison washington in 2oo5 with another business partner) - in Gresham , he thought that my idea sounded similar to a man named Elbert Hubbard, and the Roycroft Arts and Crafts Community of Aurora New York - he lent me an old green tome called "The Notebook of Elbert Hubbard." Boom! it was like the scales fell from my eyes! I have read the book since dozens of times and it still continues to profoundly change my life and widen my horizons. with the idea of Roxbury in Mind, and the Name Roycroft - Roxbury seemed a perfect fit to the community. But how to generate the capital to build the community ?
Well, having been raised on a farm with my maternal grandparents, in Custer Washington where my gramma has sold antiques for 5o years from her business called, "Dakota Creek Collectibles." - and having had a shop of my own with Stephen and Joey in Edison, and being a merchant something I am extremely good at and at least find infinitely pleasurable and rewarding - that's when the idea of The Roxbury Home Store was hatched ! - as the "Finishing Rooms" of "Roxbury Live Work Research Community for the Advancement of Thae Living arts and Sciences for the Betterment of World kind."
Living in Forest Grove, and in artistic foment with my adventures with Stephen, i found a space in Hillsboro, right on the max line for lease - and what's more it was zoned live work ! WOW!
so I was gunning for that at some time, oscillating wildly in my lyme's and bipolar symptoms - but negotiations were on - not only for a space to lease, but an old gas station (From the 192os) with an attached residence in Banks, Oregon to buy! - (no picture to be found at the moment! i wonder if the building survived the wrecking ball, it was a perfect little place!)
then...
On a routine twice yearly visit back to Whatcom county to see family, I discovered that the old train station in my hometown of Custer, a couple of miles from the family farme - was for lease, and not just that - but for $6oo a month for the whole thing as compared to $15oo a month or so just for rent for the hillsboro space (To be called, "The Apiary," Roxbury Annex I) -
my living conditions in Forest Grove unstable, and faced with the possibility of getting into bricks and mortar space for a few hundred dollars today rather than a few thousand dollars a few months down the road - I jumped at the chance and decided to move back to my Home State of Washington.
The Custer Home Store at Roxbury Annex I was Born!
Steph Gorkii, Elbert Hubbard, The Notebook, and Roycroft
Once back in Orygon, i would wax poetic about this vision endlessly, to all my friends and loved ones whether they liked it or not. hanging out with My friend Stephen Gorkii (with whom i had started a shop called "General Store of Thae Arts" in Edison washington in 2oo5 with another business partner) - in Gresham , he thought that my idea sounded similar to a man named Elbert Hubbard, and the Roycroft Arts and Crafts Community of Aurora New York - he lent me an old green tome called "The Notebook of Elbert Hubbard." Boom! it was like the scales fell from my eyes! I have read the book since dozens of times and it still continues to profoundly change my life and widen my horizons. with the idea of Roxbury in Mind, and the Name Roycroft - Roxbury seemed a perfect fit to the community. But how to generate the capital to build the community ?
Well, having been raised on a farm with my maternal grandparents, in Custer Washington where my gramma has sold antiques for 5o years from her business called, "Dakota Creek Collectibles." - and having had a shop of my own with Stephen and Joey in Edison, and being a merchant something I am extremely good at and at least find infinitely pleasurable and rewarding - that's when the idea of The Roxbury Home Store was hatched ! - as the "Finishing Rooms" of "Roxbury Live Work Research Community for the Advancement of Thae Living arts and Sciences for the Betterment of World kind."
Living in Forest Grove, and in artistic foment with my adventures with Stephen, i found a space in Hillsboro, right on the max line for lease - and what's more it was zoned live work ! WOW!
so I was gunning for that at some time, oscillating wildly in my lyme's and bipolar symptoms - but negotiations were on - not only for a space to lease, but an old gas station (From the 192os) with an attached residence in Banks, Oregon to buy! - (no picture to be found at the moment! i wonder if the building survived the wrecking ball, it was a perfect little place!)
then...
On a routine twice yearly visit back to Whatcom county to see family, I discovered that the old train station in my hometown of Custer, a couple of miles from the family farme - was for lease, and not just that - but for $6oo a month for the whole thing as compared to $15oo a month or so just for rent for the hillsboro space (To be called, "The Apiary," Roxbury Annex I) -
my living conditions in Forest Grove unstable, and faced with the possibility of getting into bricks and mortar space for a few hundred dollars today rather than a few thousand dollars a few months down the road - I jumped at the chance and decided to move back to my Home State of Washington.
The Custer Home Store at Roxbury Annex I was Born!
2o13 : Roxbury Annex I - in Custer Washington, we leased 3/4 of the building which had a built in greenhouse, parking, huge store, art-design-invention studio, my own private apartment and offices, all for $6oo a month ! - adjacent to us was a video rental, thrift shop, and electronic repair shop and electronic recyclery. which was pretty cool !
for the first year, my maternal gramma and I were business partners on the shop. as she has sold antiques and thrift items for 5o years , through her business Dakota Creek Collectibles - Sagittarians and Pisces (me) are a volatile team - but it was a beautiful time in our lives. and also proved the viability of the Custer / Roxbury Home Store as a business model - we were making $$$ in the last few months ! -
Lots has been said about The Custer Home Store, and Roxbury Annex I - thankfully, we were not faced with the initial daunting problems of high overhead (real estate) - what we did have was druggie neighbors, hostile shop owners who rented in the same building, and obstinate landlords who would not make the improvements to the infrastructure necessary to disentangle utility cost disagreements (installing 3 separate meters for essentially 3 different groups of tenants rather than trying to get stingy unreasonable people to be reasonable when faced with a collective $8oo a month power bill)
I held out as long as I could - unfortunately that was just past the point where were making good money and selling everything we had - for whatever we asked (See also : Critical Mass) - but the problems of break ins, local druggies, irate neighbors and difficult landlords, conspired to break my health to the point where i knew I had to let it go - as it would kill me if I tried to hang onto it any longer.
What followed was a disillusioned period where I unloaded all my possession, other than what could fit into a backpack (The MLU or Mobile LIving Unit) and set out to travel across the country by train, bus, walking, and hitch-hiking - urban kamping, couch surfing, and staying in hostels to do what I thought to be "Taking the temperature of the Union." - armed with a camera I saw myself as a self styled photo journalist on the "Mahayana Love Boat Tour Quest" - which lasted about a year - taking me from bellingham, to portland, ashland, san francisco, marin county, back to molson and then back to Bellingham where the "Xanadu" chapter of my life began ...
Much of the mahayana love boat tour quest is documented on our domain for Atlas Design Co, the Rx~Press blog section - as that was my primary creative outlet during that period.
I held out as long as I could - unfortunately that was just past the point where were making good money and selling everything we had - for whatever we asked (See also : Critical Mass) - but the problems of break ins, local druggies, irate neighbors and difficult landlords, conspired to break my health to the point where i knew I had to let it go - as it would kill me if I tried to hang onto it any longer.
What followed was a disillusioned period where I unloaded all my possession, other than what could fit into a backpack (The MLU or Mobile LIving Unit) and set out to travel across the country by train, bus, walking, and hitch-hiking - urban kamping, couch surfing, and staying in hostels to do what I thought to be "Taking the temperature of the Union." - armed with a camera I saw myself as a self styled photo journalist on the "Mahayana Love Boat Tour Quest" - which lasted about a year - taking me from bellingham, to portland, ashland, san francisco, marin county, back to molson and then back to Bellingham where the "Xanadu" chapter of my life began ...
Much of the mahayana love boat tour quest is documented on our domain for Atlas Design Co, the Rx~Press blog section - as that was my primary creative outlet during that period.
:::On The Road Less Taken More, past where the Sidewalk Ends :The Mahayana Love Boat Tour Quest, our Real Estate Overlords, The Great Housing Crisis and the Birth of The Roxbury Home Store Aethernet Storefront::: ~~~
While still in Molson, in the summer of 2o14 i began using weebly to build a version of The Roxbury Home Store online - which is the site where you are gladly visiting today. It wasn't till about spring of 2o15 where the site finally launched. along with some of my friend's chocolates, and items for another friend who is a Nikken Distributor, and even items from consignment of the Spark Museum of Electricity ~~~
For about 5 years I worked on the store intermittently, with alacrity and burdened by excruciating pain of wondering if the store would ever make a sale, and haunted by my past successes of being able to practically sell ice to people in Iceland
-!-
Finally last February, after 6 years of grueling labor - the Roxbury Home Store Aethernet Store front made its first sale of an antique japanese vase ~~~
And that brings us to the present, where we are today !
I hope that you enjoyed this origin story of one of my businesses. I have been in Oroville, Washington State for the past two years now - forced out of Bellingham due to housing costs inflating out of control, intersecting with the Opioid epidemic and third world conditions of living in American Cities.
My life has never been this secure, stable, comfortable - I intent to keep it that way and build on that ! my base kamp is finally good, and the Roxbury Home Store is taking wing! FINALLY! - my life may not be the community of 5oo - 1ooo makers on 5ooo acres of land I once envisioned - but We are doing Good, for our part - with 1o% of our gross profits (From all 3 of my businesses) going to seed fund philanthropy and all that -
In some ways, I think I am much more useful as a free agent than as some Elbert Hubbard Industrialist-Cult Leader (I do not think of ElBert hubbard, my greatest hero in these terms) -
I am free in My Architecture Cult of One - free to surf my own Inner Cosmic Ocean, without any artificial or arbitrary limits placed upon who I am - and that is pretty cool place to be ! Just to make shit that makes the world a better place, and sell a little bit to help raise the tides that raise all boats !
I hope you enjoyed this account, origin story of Rx~Home as much as I enjoyed Living it.
Yours For The Revolution,
~Kody J. Bosch
The Roxbury Home Store
The Atlas Group
Oroville, Washington State. USoNIA
While still in Molson, in the summer of 2o14 i began using weebly to build a version of The Roxbury Home Store online - which is the site where you are gladly visiting today. It wasn't till about spring of 2o15 where the site finally launched. along with some of my friend's chocolates, and items for another friend who is a Nikken Distributor, and even items from consignment of the Spark Museum of Electricity ~~~
For about 5 years I worked on the store intermittently, with alacrity and burdened by excruciating pain of wondering if the store would ever make a sale, and haunted by my past successes of being able to practically sell ice to people in Iceland
-!-
Finally last February, after 6 years of grueling labor - the Roxbury Home Store Aethernet Store front made its first sale of an antique japanese vase ~~~
And that brings us to the present, where we are today !
I hope that you enjoyed this origin story of one of my businesses. I have been in Oroville, Washington State for the past two years now - forced out of Bellingham due to housing costs inflating out of control, intersecting with the Opioid epidemic and third world conditions of living in American Cities.
My life has never been this secure, stable, comfortable - I intent to keep it that way and build on that ! my base kamp is finally good, and the Roxbury Home Store is taking wing! FINALLY! - my life may not be the community of 5oo - 1ooo makers on 5ooo acres of land I once envisioned - but We are doing Good, for our part - with 1o% of our gross profits (From all 3 of my businesses) going to seed fund philanthropy and all that -
In some ways, I think I am much more useful as a free agent than as some Elbert Hubbard Industrialist-Cult Leader (I do not think of ElBert hubbard, my greatest hero in these terms) -
I am free in My Architecture Cult of One - free to surf my own Inner Cosmic Ocean, without any artificial or arbitrary limits placed upon who I am - and that is pretty cool place to be ! Just to make shit that makes the world a better place, and sell a little bit to help raise the tides that raise all boats !
I hope you enjoyed this account, origin story of Rx~Home as much as I enjoyed Living it.
Yours For The Revolution,
~Kody J. Bosch
The Roxbury Home Store
The Atlas Group
Oroville, Washington State. USoNIA