RYAN AVERY
  • Blog
  • Visual Art
    • Album Artwork
    • Bug Buttons
    • Collage
    • Disposable Photos
    • Show Posters
    • Tie Ball
    • Waynes
    • Wheat Paste
  • Hi My Name Is Ryan
    • Artist
    • 2008 Documentary
  • Past Music
    • Bald and Pissed
    • The Boys
    • The Cullens
    • Drunk & Horny
    • Fathers Day >
      • Douglas Patton Experience
    • Soft Shoulder
  • Past Performance
    • The Best Friends >
      • The Best Friends Podcast
    • Catorce (Improv)
    • Grand Ave. Tonight
  • Past Noise
    • DJ Sense
    • Magilicuddy

'A shining light': How Phoenix arts scene helped two kids start over after their mom died

8/19/2020

Comments

 
Written by Ed Masley for the Arizona Republic
Picture
It was 2017 when two brothers started charming their way into all-ages shows at the Trunk Space, a nonprofit avant-garde arts venue housed in Grace Lutheran Church on North Third Street in Phoenix.

"They were 10 and 11 at the time," recalled Steph Carrico, who cofounded the Trunk Space in 2004. "They just kind of showed up and were asking a bunch of questions. We were like 'Where did these kids come from?'"

The boys managed to work out a deal where if they helped take out the trash or clean up afterward, they were allowed to watch the bands.

"So then they started showing up almost every night and we learned that they were homeless," Carrico recalled. "They were living with their mother, staying nearby. And it was something for them to do in the evenings."

The kids' bad situation got much worse​

The Trunk Space has been temporarily closed since March because of COVID-19, but the boys stopped coming around before that.

When Carrico heard in late June that their mother had died, she couldn't stop thinking about them, wondering if they were safe.

"I was able to get a hold of someone who was in contact with them," she said, "and found out they were living in a motel with their guardian, who's 21."

​After reaching out to other members of the Trunk Space board, Carrico started a GoFundMe page in late July, hoping to raise at least $500.

As she wrote in that initial post, "At the least, we'd like to be able to help them buy some new clothes, though it would be pretty fantastic if we were able to raise enough money to help them get established in more permanent housing."

They raised $1,000 in the first half hour.

"So I bumped the amount up to $5,000 and hit that in two days," she says. 
​
By the time she shut off new donations, Carrico's GoFundMe page had raised $6,587, allowing the boys and the cousin who took them in, to get established in a new apartment.

The Trunk Space community stepped up to help

"It's really been a kind of shining light in this whole scenario," said Robbie Pfeffer, of Playboy Manbaby, a Trunk Space board member who often headlines show there.

"It kind of blew past anything that any one of us expected. It's just really cool to see a community gather around to help out people who legitimately need that help immediately. It's like wow, one thing that isn't awful news."

​Carrico said the donations allowed them to pay rent in advance for a few months on the apartment, which the Trunk Space is helping them furnish. And their cousin has a job now.

"So hopefully, this will be sustainable for them," Carrico said. 

She hasn't seen the boys since finding out their mother died, but she has been in contact with their cousin.

​"She's just so relieved," Carrico said. "She's emailed and told me how grateful they are. I don't think the boys can really grasp quite how life-changing this hopefully is, but she definitely can."

The church has a history of helping homeless people

One thing that appealed to the Trunk Space board about moving to Grace Lutheran Church after leaving its longtime home on Grand Avenue in 2016 was the work the church does with people experiencing homelessness.

"Folks we knew from things like Food Not Bombs spoke really highly of the church's relationship with the unhoused community," said Connor Descheemaker, a former Trunk Space board member who now lives in Seattle. 

"Housing Heat Respite for years, having breakfast service frequently and just being really good neighbors to folks who were unhoused."
To Pfeffer, the church "legitimately" does God's work. 

"As a pretty avidly nonreligious person," Pfeffer said, "they've kind of given me a new perspective on what that entails. They're really there for that community, putting their money where their mouth is."

As a result of the church's commitment to serving that community, the Trunk Space volunteers were used to homeless people checking out the scene there by the time the brothers started showing up.

What wasn't quite so common was the level of enthusiasm for the music that these brothers displayed with such obvious joy. 

And that enthusiasm was contagious.

Kids enjoyed the music most nights

"Whatever show was happening, they were just so excited to be involved and soak it up," Pfeffer said. "And getting to see the shows through their eyes gave me a new perspective on a process that I had been a part of for years."

​Of course, the honest, unfiltered reaction of kids that age isn't always a five-star review. 

Ryan Avery, a board member who often works the door, recalls the time they told the boys to go check out the band performing upstairs at a Trunk Space festival with stages on two levels,

"They came downstairs again after a few minutes and they were like, 'That was boring,'" Avery said with a laugh.

On another occasion, they said, "They were writing sentences down and asking me to read them out loud. They'd write 'I'm stupid' and hand me the paper and be like, 'Can you read this? What does this say?'"

That kind of goofy juvenile behavior helped endear them to the Trunk Space volunteers.

And it didn't hurt that, as Carrico said, "They were both really sweet."

The boys still had to follow rules

That doesn't mean they didn't sometimes need some parenting by proxy.

"We had to put in a lot of guidelines and make some rules," Carrico said. "And they didn't seem to just intuitively understand a lot of the rules but once we put them in place, they were really good about following them."

One rule was that they couldn't get into a show for free without running it past the promoter. 

As Avery recalls, with a laugh, "It was always adorable to see these kids go up to whoever's booking the show and be like, 'Hey, can we see this rock 'n' roll show?' The look was always like 'Who are these kids? And why are they here?'"

​It didn't take long for the brothers to build a rapport with the Trunk Space volunteers.

"It was just really cool to just have them coming in the space most nights," Descheemaker said.

"Sometimes they'd stick around. But sometimes they would just pop in and sort of go away like kids their age would just because they were like 'OK, this is weird.' But they were excited. They had tons of questions and just really made themselves at home."

On the rare occasion that the Trunk Space volunteers felt they needed a break, they knew exactly how to handle it. 

"We would just tell them it was an acoustic show and they would leave," Carrico said, with a laugh.

To Descheemaker, the brothers were "every bit as much a part of the community at Trunk Space as any of the volunteers or performers or audience members during that time, in 2017, 2018."

How has Trunk Space been doing?

Despite not being able to host shows since March, the Trunk Space has been hanging in there, thanks in large part to Grace Lutheran Church.

"We're basically just covering our utilities while we're closed," Carrico said.

They also got a DIY Grant from Meow Wolf, an arts and entertainment group in Sante Fe, New Mexico. And Valley Bar hosted a Party with a Purpose to raise money for the Trunk Space right before everything closed.

That's allowed them to donate the money they've made on a series of Trunk Space Tuesdays livestreams to local artists that have been affected by COVID-19.

"Basically," Carrico said, "because of the generosity of the church, we've been able to pay it forward in a lot of ways, which has been great."
Comments

    Categories

    All
    Best Friends
    Best Of
    Collage
    Cullens
    Disposable
    Drunk & Horny
    Fathers Day
    Grand Ave. Tonight
    Hi My Name Is Ryan
    Improv
    Locking Your Car Doors
    Magilicuddy
    Night Wolf
    Noise
    Photobooths
    Press
    Real Coachella
    Related Records
    Show Posters
    Soft Shoulder
    Uncle Sku's Clubhouse
    Wheat Paste

    Archives

    May 2022
    March 2022
    January 2022
    September 2021
    October 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    September 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    October 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    October 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    November 2010
    October 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    June 2009
    April 2009
    March 2009
    February 2009
    January 2009
    December 2008
    November 2008
    October 2008
    September 2008
    August 2008
    June 2008
    September 2007
    April 2007
    December 2006
    November 2006
    September 2006
    August 2006
    July 2006
    June 2006
    May 2006
    April 2006
    March 2006
    February 2006
    January 2006
    December 2005
    November 2005
    October 2005
    September 2005
    August 2005
    July 2005
    June 2005
    May 2005
    April 2005
    March 2005
    February 2005
    January 2005
    December 2004
    November 2004
    October 2004
    September 2004
    August 2004
    July 2004
    June 2004
    May 2004
    April 2004
    March 2004
    February 2004
    January 2004
    November 2003
    October 2003
    August 2003
    July 2003
    May 2003
    March 2003
    January 2003
    May 2002

    RSS Feed

  • Blog
  • Visual Art
    • Album Artwork
    • Bug Buttons
    • Collage
    • Disposable Photos
    • Show Posters
    • Tie Ball
    • Waynes
    • Wheat Paste
  • Hi My Name Is Ryan
    • Artist
    • 2008 Documentary
  • Past Music
    • Bald and Pissed
    • The Boys
    • The Cullens
    • Drunk & Horny
    • Fathers Day >
      • Douglas Patton Experience
    • Soft Shoulder
  • Past Performance
    • The Best Friends >
      • The Best Friends Podcast
    • Catorce (Improv)
    • Grand Ave. Tonight
  • Past Noise
    • DJ Sense
    • Magilicuddy