[Mural creation of local artist Evan Cairo.]

 It looks like the new developers’ preference for calling the area “Callowhill” may catch on, if only because it doesn’t evoke images of squalling mutant babies. But PhilaMOCA, a few blocks away from Lynch’s former digs, is reacting to the seeming inevitability of neighborhood rebranding with a new Eraserhood mural, Jack Nance’s hair poking proudly over the top of the building. The party for its unveiling involves more art, live music from Void Vision and Full Blown Cherry and curiosity-piquing sets of Lynch-themed sketch comedy and burlesque. 

Fri., July 13, 8:30 p.m., $10, PhilaMOCA, 531 N. 12th St., 267-519-9651, philamoca.org.

(via Welcome to the Eraserhood | Philadelphia City Paper | 07/12/2012)

The Church of the Assumption, a building on the city’s Historic Register that had been the focus of court fights over its possible demolition, was sold on July 5 to a real-estate developer.

The new owner is John Wei, of JI Investments LLC, said Cathy McGuire, executive director of Siloam, a nonprofit that provides counseling for people HIV/AIDS and other services. The organization had won permission to demolish the church from the Philadelphia Historical Commission but stiff community opposition scuttled that plan.

(via Assumption church is sold, may be saved from demolition – Philly.com)

There’s a long tradition of Eraserhead-inspired art.

Poet and author Charles Bukowski referenced the film when interviewed on the subject of cable television. Bukowski said, “We got cable TV here, and the first thing we switched on happened to be Eraserhead. I said, ‘What’s this?’ I didn’t know what it was. It was so great. I said, ‘Oh, this cable TV has opened up a whole new world. We’re gonna be sitting in front of this thing for centuries. What next? So starting with Eraserhead we sit here, click, click, click — nothing.”[25]

A number of rock bands take their name from the film: the 1980s London punk rock group Erazerhead; the Northern California band Eraserhead, and The Eraserheads, a rock band from the Philippines.[26] The band Henry Spencer take their name from the main character.

Apartment 26 are named after Henry’s address and they feature a sample from the Lady in the Radiator’s In Heaven at the end of their song, Heaven. The 1980s London indie rock band Henry’s Final Dream also owe their name to this film.

Bruce McCulloch, from Canadian sketch group The Kids in the Hall, has recorded a song titled (and about) Eraserhead on his albumShame Based Man.

In Heaven, the song sung by the Lady in the Radiator, has been covered by, Bauhaus, Devo, Miranda Sex Garden, Tuxedomoon, The Danse Society, Pankow, Pixies, Desolation Yes, Bang Gang, Zola Jesus and Forgotten Sunrise. Indie rockers Modest Mouse borrowed lines from In Heaven for Workin’ on Leavin’ the Livin’, as did the anarcho-punk band Rubella Ballet for their song Slant and Slide. TheDead Kennedys reference the film in the song Too Drunk to Fuck in the line “You bawl like the baby in Eraserhead”. An Eraserhead T-shirt was available from the band’s label Alternative Tentacles for some years, and even the official soundtrack.

The Chris J. Miller film Ironhorse, was heavily influenced by Eraserhead. [27].

Eraserhead, along with five other low-budget films from the 1960s and 1970s (The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Pink Flamingos, El Topo, The Harder They Come and Night of the Living Dead), was the subject of a 2005 documentary, Midnight Movies: From the Margin to the Mainstream.[28] Lynch was interviewed for the documentary.

(via Eraserhead – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Roughly bordered east-to-west by Eighth and Broad streets and north-to-south by Spring Garden and Vine streets, the area bears many names: Callowhill, the Loft District, Chinatown North, West Poplar. In 2010, it was officially designated the Callowhill Industrial Historic District by the U.S. National Park Service. But to a subset of Philly’s artsy, imaginative types, to those attracted to the grittier side of urban living, it’s long been the Eraserhood—a nod to Eraserhead, the surreal, nightmarish 1977 head-scramble of a film by David Lynch, the acclaimed director of the some of the most influential films and television of the past 30 years: The Elephant Man, Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks. Lynch lived in the neighborhood for a time in the mid-’60s, and the area, which scared the bejeezus out of him, sparked the first flames of his singular, bizarre creative vision.

(via There Goes the Eraserhood: Why Local Artists Are Hoping to Preserve the Callowhill District’s Gritty Past | Arts and Culture | Philadelphia Weekly)