(NOTE: Today’s previously-announced contents have been delayed to a later date, for obvious reasons.)
EARTHQUAKE IRONY #1: It happened just as Mayor Schell was going to announce plans to re-ban outdoor Mardi Gras celebrations, after Pioneer Square got taken over the previous night by non-laid-back, non-mellow, non-baby-boomer-generation people (some of whom, admittedly, got really stupid and started moshpit-like fights against one another, but who probably could’ve been disuaded from such dumbness with saner civic and poice policies). (More about this in tomorrow’s installment.)
Schell was probably going to bemoan the couple of broken windows and bashed cars from the previous night, when Nature provided its own show of rowdiness.
Earthquake Irony #2: One of the most damaged buildings was the Fenix Underground, Ground Zero of the Mardi Gras raucousness.
Earthquake Irony #3: Just about all the big local institutions hated by local lefties got visibly caught up in the Ash Wednesday Quake:
- The second really big damage spot was the former Sears catalog warehouse, now Starbucks’ HQ. (Lotsa bricks fell from the 1906-vintage building, but recent structural retrofitting worked and the thing stayed up.)
- The third big damage spot was one of the buildings on 1st Ave. S. Paul Allen’s bought as part of his big football-stadium project.
- And Bill Gates was shaken at the Westin Hotel, during a big presentation trying to sell software to schools.
My Own Story: I was in a high-rise when things started shaking all over. I immediately took to protect the computer I was working on. The coffee cup and other objects on the desk were less lucky. It took about five minutes just to clear my way through the fallen books and shelving to get to the elevators, which were shut down, and from there to schlepping my way down a dozen flights of stairs.
Once outside and among the teeming masses of temporarily displaced downtown office workers (such as the city employees at Key Tower photographed on this page), I shot a few pics of stray bricks and abandoned, broken home belongings such as the TV set depicted here.
Returned home to find a cheap but fondly-remembered little piece of statuary broken. Otherwise, things had been knocked about and tossed to the floor but remained intact.
As I’m writing this, my nervous system is still giving me a little shellshock. I can’t say it was fun, but at least there was only one death (that we know of at this point), lots of kids are getting a day off from school today, most of the seismic-reconstruction work around here has proven sound, and I (and, I hope, you) survived shaken but not stirred.
(OK, OK, I’m understating the emotional/visceral dislocation I experienced, not at the time but starting about 15 minutes later and continuing for several hours afterward. If I’d been a dog I’ve been yelping and jumping and annoying my owner all day.)
IN OTHER NEWS: The next MISCmedia print mag will be a combo March-April, out in a couple of weeks.
NEXT: Pioneer Square Mardi Gras–WTO without the politics?
ELSEWHERE:
