AS LONGTIME MISC. READERS know, I love snow in Seattle. That pre-Thanksgivin’ white surprise we had was a perfect example. It kept Eastsiders out of town while blessing urban denizens with a two-day-duration Wonderland of brightly altered vistas. Its glistening blanket offered a temporary respite from our normal Seasonal Affective Disorder-inducing grayout conditions. It created an instant holiday, a Jubilee interrupting the routines of work and school and shopping. It turned everyday life into an adventure, from Counterbalance snowboarding to parking-lot snowball fights. Yes, I know it was a horror for the homeless, but we oughta be taking better care of our brethern year-round anyway.
CATHODE CORNER: As you assuredly all know, Frasier contains enough Seattle inaccuracies to make a drinking game. (“Finish your glass if Niles pronounces Oregon “arra-gone.”) But even that didn’t prepare me for seeing John Mahoney, who plays Dad on the show, miss the following answer on Jeopardy!: “This Seattle-based coffee chain takes its name from the first mate in Moby Dick.” Speaking of local landmarks…
WHAT’S REALLY WRONG WITH THE AVE: No merchant-sponsored rent-a-thugs harassing the street kids will improve the currently sorry state of U District retail. The District’s problems go back a decade, to when Ave landlords decided to jack up rents in one big hike. Longtime indie businesses were replaced by chains. Some of those, like Crown Books and Godfather’s Pizza, then bugged out of their leases at first opportunity). Other stores spent so much on rent, they cut back on interior improvements, merchandise, personnel, etc. Meanwhile, the long-slumbering U Village blossomed into a shopping theme park for the Volvo set. The Ave has risen and fallen several times before. It can rise again. But strong-arm tactics won’t do it; indeed, they’d just make the street’s young-adult target market feel unwelcome. Speaking of questionable neighborhood “renewals”…
WANTON-DESTRUCTION DEPT.: The end of Belltown’s 11-year artist-housing experiment SCUD (Subterranean Cooperative of Urban Dreamers, named years before the Gulf War) and its downstairs eatery neighbor Cyclops had been rumored for over a year. Now it’s official, with MUP boards announcing plans to raze the lo-rise for condos. Cyclops’ owners are already looking for a new restaurant site, perhaps in Fremont. As for the much-photographed golden Jell-O molds gracing the SCUD exterior these past five years, no fate has been announced. I’d have ’em auctioned off to benefit new artist housing (and I mean real artist housing, not the millionaire penthouses sometimes promoted under that term). Speaking of goodbyes…
`PANDEMONIUM,’ 1992-96: Most of what I’ll miss about the idiosyncratic music monthly had already disappeared from its pages in recent months: The schmooze-free gossip column, the Tacoma-centric features, the odd columns like “Town of the Month.” ‘Twas sad to see the tabloid’s “Final Print Issue” carry a Seattle instead of a Tacoma mailing address. Seattle Square, a budding commercial Web company, has bought the Pandemonium name and will now use it for music review and interview pages on its site. Speaking of what’s-in-a-name…
INTO THE DRINK: In the spirit of Husky Cola (that early-’90s fundraising soda for UW athletics) comes Keiko Draft Root Beer, from Newport, OR. Every can bears the image of America’s most famous killer whale, who starred in the two Free Willy films and now lives in a rehab tank at Newport’s Oregon Coast Aquarium. An unspecified “portion of the proceeds” from the pop has been pledged to the foundation paying for Keiko’s veterinary treatment. I’ve only seen the stuff in regular, not diet, so if you consume too much you could become, you know… There’s also Keiko Brand coffee, but I’m still holding to my no-coffee-jokes policy.
ANSWER TO LAST WEEK’S RIDDLE: Because he’s just a commontator.
YOU KNOW WHAT I WANT FOR XMAS: Your suggestions for the year-end Misc. In/Out list. Send ’em to clark@speakeasy.org. ‘Til then, consider these words by ex-Philly restaurant critic Jim Quinn: “Never eat in a restaurant where the menu is larger than the table, the pepper mill larger than your date, and the baked potato larger than your steak.”
