Jenkintown, the borough (not town) where I grew up is a lot of things. It is small. It is quaint. It is historic, cute and family-friendly. One thing it’s not: Cutting edge.

And, while J-town’s charming lack of radical-ness might make the wee community a bit slower to embrace the sort of fast-paced lifestyle changes that are so quickly adopted in, say, metropolitan Cheltenham or high-tech Abington, my hometown (home-borough?) deserves extra credit for trying.

Take this Friday night, for example. When Sandi Young, owner of Old York Road’s Moderne Life Interiors, which stocks Italian sleek entertainment centers and French-Canadian orange sofas and Coloradoan metal tables, hangs 20 new ethereal encaustic photographs by Leah MacDonald, the shopowner won’t just be showing off all 3,400 square feet of her thoroughly contemporary wares, or, for that matter, won’t merely be encouraging one-on-one interaction with the area artist, who might speak to her works’ mythical femininity and occasional nudity, but Young will also be offering guests food and drink from the nearby West Avenue Grill, and, quite possibly, encouraging comparisons between sweet little Jenkintown and big, bold Old City — on a First Friday, to boot.

A daring move, if I do say so myself.

Friday, 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Moderne Life Interiors

This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 6:00 am and is filed under Events, Inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Posted by Lauren McCutcheon on 5/2/08 in Events, Inspiration