This good.

Does it?

Are we still rolling?

Are we still rolling?

Yes, I think we're still rolling.

If eyes are the windows to the soul.

Are windows the eyes to the soul?

In my first film, I didn't include my own voice.

So this will be the first time.

I'm a little nervous, but I know at this moment the world needs my voice and my art.

Growing up, I was always the quiet kid.

I felt like I didn't fit in, so I locked myself away.

Not realizing, that yes, I'm weird.

But weird is cool.

Now I'm 22 and I'm learning how it feels to take up space.

The past three years in this city have shown me.

I pay attention to the world around me.

I see so much absence, so much waste, so much loss, so much that drives me to create.

So we need a really big question from the audience that we can get answers to.

We can rap about it.

What's your least favorite word in the English language?

Beautiful.

Okay.

Your least favorite words.

So we're going to do a little bit of shadow work here tonight.

Okay.

So what is your least favorite word.

Yeah.

Gentrification.

I've always loved cities and buildings.

This film takes place in one and it's my film.

So I'm going to say what I want in my own voice.

I took you right now.

And you ain't building your buildings and pushing my people out the city.

This is why I'm blessed for the nation.

We aint around with that gentrification.

You want to buy some education?

This is the Strand Theater building, built in 1898.

Since then, it's been a movie theater, a bathhouse, bowling alley, and a multi floor club called Club Larga.

The upstage and the attic.

Hosting performances by Erica Badu.

Fugazi.

Blink 182, Wu-Tang clan, and The Allman Brothers, to name a few.

All three clubs closed in the early 2000, and the building is now a Supercuts, a Chinese restaurant, University of Pittsburgh Research Lab, and the Exchange.

While the windows upstairs are dark and empty.

This is the King's Court building.

Built in the 1890s.

Since then, it's been a jail, police station, a movie theater, and an eclectic local coffeehouse, The Beehive.

After The Beehive closed, the building became a Noodles and Company and a T-Mobile, which is now a taco place.

The upstairs has been for rent as long as I've lived here.

This is the Syria Mosque, built in 1911.

It was originally a Shriner building, then a venue for music and speeches, hosting Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, The Cure, and Malcolm X, to name a few.

This historic building was demolished in 1991 and is now a parking lot for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

This was the decade.

I don't know what year the building was built, but for 20 of them, it was Pittsburgh's birthplace of rock and roll.

Hosting live music seven nights a week with bands and artists like Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bruce Springsteen, U2, The Police, and local house band The Iron City House rockers.

Today, half is a pizza place and the other half an empty bar condemned by the health department.

Neighborhoods change and so do buildings.

This church on Atwood long fascinated me because it was a microcosm.

It has been a methodist church, a Byzantine Catholic church empty, a restaurant, angels Corner, empty again, a hookah bar.

The Sphinx empty again.

Before Oakland was a student neighborhood.

It was Irish, Polish, Italian, Greek, Syrian.

Immigrant steelworkers and their families.

As a temporary resident of this neighborhood, I found myself asking the questions.

Who built this church and what was this neighborhood before my time?

That's when I posted in Memories of Oakland.

Sugar, honey?

Ill have some honey.

Well, you know your saucer.

Oh, this is so nice.

Thank you so much for feeding me.

Like the world's greatest hostess.

Oh, there you go.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

But I went to CMU, Carnegie Tech, and after that, I moved away for three years, and then we came back.

So I've been in Pittsburgh all but three years of my life.

Well, when I was in school, it was definitely a family neighborhood.

There were, there was a really good Jewish restaurant, Cantors.

And then there were Italian restaurants.

Cicero's and Napolitano's.

And, There was there were two movie theaters.

There's the King's Court Theater, and then down two blocks was the Strand, and it had a movie theater on the first or second floor, and above it was a bowling alley.

So when you went to the movies, you got the sound of bowling overhead.

I don't know if that church was operating when we first moved in here or not.

It was empty.

Most of the past 50 years.

There is the this family, the Schwartz's.

Judge Schwartz and his children, and they own their Oakland real estate, I think is their.

And they own a whole lot of the real estate on Forbes Street.

The church belonged to them ever since the church moved out.

It was the Schwartz's, and it had been.

I don't even know what it was until until some maybe in the late 70s, it became a restaurant called Angels Corner, and that was a nice restaurant.

And but it was in business, I don't know, 4 or 5 years maybe, but then it closed and then the place was empty for 15 or 20 years.

Yeah.

And then it was a hookah bar for a little.

It hurts me how such a beautiful building had sat empty for such a long time.

One day I got a voicemail from a person named Michael Yeah.

Okay.

Should I introduce myself?

Yes, yes.

Oh, thank you for reminding me.

Yeah, yeah.

This is not just.

Yeah.

Say your name.

Well, hello.

Hi.

My name is Michael.

My last name, Kahlil.

And we are at the Frick Fine Arts Building in the University of Pittsburgh.

A wonderful place, very inspirational.

We're here to interview.

I guess you're going to interview with questions and about Oakland and, aspects of life and so forth.

And the church and I grew up coincidentally, on the very same block, just a couple hundred feet away.

Growing up in Oakland was not just a great family neighborhood.

It was magical.

I really mean that.

It was really a heavenly spiritual experience.

Oakland could have been Bedford Falls in the movie It's a Wonderful Life To go on the lake, and ice skate on the lake in the moonlight along the train tracks.

It's amazing.

That's so classic.

Right from Mont Bedford Falls kind of thing.

You know?

It was just amazing.

It.

I'm very glad to have met you.

And I commend you, you know, spitting in the right way and doing, you know, especially that just now.

I'm talking I know your career, but I had, you know, that, you know, you didn't take corporate law and defending the DuPont.

You're going to take your camera and you're going to go around interviewing people like me and so many people and such aspects of life and how to convey that to other people, to get a message through, to help them perceive, oh, there's more than just what we see and what you know to do that that's been going, you know, the right way.

Oakland is full of ghosts.

You can see them in the crumbling staircases, the old bricks, the empty shrines, the brightly painted fence posts, the church on Atwood Street.

About two years ago, I started meeting some people.

I had something in common with.

We all saw a void in our neighborhood.

A few of us had already been hosting shows in backyards, basements, and parking lots.

Marc, Adam, and Eli started to host larger street festivals in the neighborhood and even shows in an empty office space.

in stock.

And I know, I know where you are.

In late 2024, they were finally able to sign a lease on that old church on Atwood Street, and in January of 2025, Haven was born.

Allow me to introduce a part of myself and the reason for making this film.

This is Haven.

Okay, so we just stared right at the camera and looked.

I'm holding a poster originally from the decade of the Iron City House rockers, which was the house band.

This is actually gifted to us from Dom, the owners grandson.

He's actually gifted us a lot of other cool stuff that we've been able to put in here, but just being able to have this in here, I mean, means a lot to me, as well as a lot of other people on the team.

It's pulling from the legacy that they they had to at least keep live music in Oakland and make it something that will stay for as long as possible.

Last night, for example, there was like this father and his daughter, and like they both loved it.

Like she was so into the band.

I was like, this little kid, just like having the time of her life and all these college students as well, people my age.

And it's like, you know, that that that feeling, that energy is the most rewarding part, the whole thing.

Just like being able to say that I'm a part of this machine, that is part of this energy.

We were told that we could only sign the lease if we had some type of secondary source of income in here, because live shows wouldn't be enough.

So our genius plan was to become baristas, and it was at that time that the partner that I had on the project was like, dude, no, I, I don't want to become a barista.

And I was like, well, I really want this to happen.

So I guess I'm just going to become a barista.

And that was my, my, million dollar plan until one of my close friends, he was driving me home and I was telling him how excited I was, you know, just like, well, Eli, like, if you're a barista operating a coffee shop on your own, when are you going to practice your instrument?

And I was like, oh, yeah, that's a good point.

I'm probably not going to be able to play music that much.

So music this whole time has been like the guiding force.

So that's when I had to tell the landlords, hey, partner left the project.

I don't think I can take all this on by myself.

I feel it is important to point out that every one of us is a volunteer.

We're all in school or working full time elsewhere.

It's exhausting, like working two full time jobs.

None of us are sure how long this thing can survive.

If I'm being honest, I think we're all a little bit shocked that it has lasted this long, but we're all deeply determined to be there until the bitter end.

Even though each day brings new stress and new doubts, we all keep showing up because we know we need this, and we know that this is something bigger than us.

What do you see happening in this building?

Like after post Haven?

Post Haven?

I hope somebody uses it for something interesting.

I hope it just doesn't sit here.

If like 100 years from now, when we're all gone, like maybe there will be a plaque like there is on the decade that says Almost World Famous or something like that, like that would be cool.

Yeah.

Maybe one day we'll have a plaque like we do.

Yeah.

Almost famous.

Almost, almost.

What do they call it?

Almost a landmark.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Almost a landmark.

What will this space look like in five, ten, 100 years from now?

I can't say, but maybe some future weird kid, a kid who cares, will see a plaque on this building and wonder.

The past, the future It all exists in the now.

And when I'm at Haven in the now, I feel the past and I feel the future.

Pressing in on these stained glass windows.

This film is a love letter to the old buildings of Oakland.

To know you is to love you.

Even as you get eaten up by bulldozers and glass.

Thank you for being an ever present reminder of this city's struggles and its passions to myself, for letting down my own, to myself, for letting down my own walls.

To you watching this go out and create something new.

Thank you for letting me take up space.