I don’t know what it is, but I've always loved and been captivated by the Radke building. I’ve walked around it a million times. Pondered from every angle, in rain, sunshine, and snow. I even had a chance to go inside, courtesy of one of its previous owners. Graffiti scrawled onto its weathered walls. Painted over. Only for new art to appear. Fires. Trash. Abandoned shopping carts. I’ve watched it slowly be gobbled up by inevitability. It’s like observing a caterpillar in a cocoon and hypothesizing about what kind of butterfly it will bloom into. When will its wings break through the chrysalis? That has been the juxtaposition with my relationship to Radke. I’ve enjoyed its quiet perch on the corner of North Columbia and Fessenden, and known that eventually it will come down. An abandoned building, just in front of the jowls of gentrification, on the corner of Black and Brown meets white and affluent, I knew it would eventually be torn down How it would come down, when it would come down, and what it would fascinate me. One thing I knew for sure, when Radke’s did take its last bow, it would be the end of the old neighborhood. The lot it sits on is so big, so consequential, that whatever comes next will define the direction of the community. Claim Your Hood is my eulogy to a dear friend. An ode to the feeling of when the day in question finally arrives and you realize it’s not exactly what you wanted. Long live the North.

Claim Your Hood is the opening salvo to my latest project, 503.