AS PROMISED, here are the last of my Bumbershoot Ought-Three pix, at the big R.E.M./Wilco gig in High School Memorial Stadium. (No, the stadium’s not named in honor of dead high schools, even though Seattle’s got two or three of those.)

This year’s stadium “stage sponsor” was Comcast, the local-monopoly cable company (formerly AT&T, formerly TCI, formerly Group W, formerly TelePrompTer). Several of these successive companies have had logos that matched their business models.

TCI, you might recall, had a symbol of a sun (or satellite) beaming a signal to the Earth, exemplifying the old-media premise of everybody getting their entertainment/news/culture from one central source.

AT&T’s ringed circle visualized the company’s post-Bell System dream of wiring the world, back in the days before wireless-mania.

And Comcast has a stylized version of the circle-C copyright symbol, that icon of reverence to an increasingly concentrated (and increasingly vilified) intellectual-property industry.

The two acts on stage Monday night bridged one or two generation gaps, and cut across subcultural niche-appeal.

Wilco’s act, if described literally, would read like the description of an early-’70s “country rock” band. Wilco’s not like that. It’s simply a great, intelligent, inventive pop and rock group, which doesn’t “cross over” between categories so much as it defies easy categorization. (No wonder their record label dropped them just as they made their best record to date, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, as depicted in the documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart.)

Little new seems to be sayable about the livin’ legends of R.E.M., except that (1) they’re more or less a Seattle band these days, and (2) they still make beautiful-sad-upbeat-energetic-soft-hard-fast-slow-memorable music, even in the promlematic environment of a stadium show.

…of our local heritage disappears: Vitamilk Dairy is shutting its Green Lake plant after more than 60 years as the region’s biggest indie milk distributor. Its production fell in half since 1997, due to consolidation in the supermarket biz.

I’ll always remember the Vitamilk truck that showed up two mornings a week at the ol’ childhood home, with the quaintly obsolete milk-bottle logo and the script-lettered slogan “Quality Always.” To the end, Vitamilk was a savvy marketer that knew what Washingtonians wanted; jumping on the latter-day bandwagon to promise only “free farmed” moo juice.

…was even duller than the first. About 70 of us sat around at the Kent Regional Justice Center from 8:45 until 3:00, including a long lunch from 11:00 to 1:30. Finally we were informed no trials were ready for us to be picked for. Thus ended our obligation to the People of King County.

With time on my hands in a corner of Puget Sound country I never get to otherwise, I of course had to photograph what sights there were to be seen. And there were many.

The original downtown Kent is a beautifully sited and constructed little town. It’s compact, has great all-American architecture, and is bedecked with well-groomed shade trees.

The only problem with downtown Kent is you can’t shop there for life’s basics (aside from tires and mufflers). As in so many other U.S. towns, Kent’s food, drug, and clothing stores have all fled to the outer sprawl. Former supermarkets now house a carpet store and a discout outlet cutely named “Stupid Prices.”

Wes Browning responds to our recent rant about a Jack in the Box commercial:

“Remember when they blew up the old pre-Jack Jack in the Box clown? I
was driving a cab at the time. One day I got a bell to a Jack in the
Box somewhere and what I got was a car-load of Jack in the Box ad
execs. Done with a day of touring stores, they were ready to eat
dinner and weren’t about to eat at a Jack in the Box. I ended up
taking them to one of the considerably more expensive restaurants at
Shilshole.”Along the way they asked me what I thought of the clown being blown
up. I told them I thought it was great. I said it was long overdue; I
despised that clown. They thanked me and then they told me that the
whole campaign was being tested out here in Seattle before taking it
nation-wide. They said that — whereas Seattle-ites had such a
reputation (this was then) for being sensitive and kind-hearted — if
WE didn’t mind the clown being wasted nobody would.

“PS: I think the new ad is a hoot. I don’t think it insults the
Northwest because it’s so over the top it’s absurd. I don’t think it
insults the Southwest either, for the same reason. And, who knows,
maybe they’re planning to come out with clam burgers or something so
they can eventually bring Jack triumphantly back to our rain.

“So — lighten up, Dude!”

Housing activist John Fox wrote an insightful letter to the Seattle Times, chiding the paper’s tabloidesque scandal-mongering attacks on City Councilmember Judy Nicastro.

It seems Nicastro and two other councilmembers got campaign funds from strip-club owner Frank Colacurcio Jr. (whose dad had been a big local political influence-peddler back in the “tolerance policy” days of the early ’70s).

Apparently in return, the three councilmembers voted yes on a minor zoning change, allowing Colacurcio to build a bigger parking lot outside his Lake City venue, Rick’s.

The Times and certain other local media are trying hard as heck to make this into a brouhaha of election-altering proportions. But, as Fox points out, there are many people who’d like Nicastro ousted, and many of those have bigger political connections than Colacurcio Jr. People such as the landlords and developers who’ve felt inconvenienced by Nicastro’s work as an advocate for affordable housing. Some of these people are putting big bux into the campaign coffers of Nicastro’s opponents, so they can get sweetheart deals that would make Colacurcio Jr.’s look paltry indeed.

My own take on this: I’m glad the council, or at least a piece of it, is willing to be seen doing something in favor of sexual expression (albeit the most commercialized form of sexual expression). Maybe now they’ll lift the city’s decade-old ban on new strip joints, and allow the kind of healthy thriving grownup-entertainment biz Portland’s got.

…about a third of the way down this linked page, that Bill Gates’s highly publicized anti-AIDS crusade’s really a prop-up for the big drug companies, and for the intellectual-property regulations that protect their monopoly (and his):

“Gates knows darn well that ‘intellectual property rights’ laws… are under attack by Nelson Mandela and front-line doctors trying to get cut-rate drugs to the 23 million Africans sick with the AIDS virus…. He’s spending an itsy-bitsy part of his monopoly profits (the $6 billion spent by Gates’s foundation is less than 2% of his net worth) to buy some drugs for a fraction of the dying. The bully billionaire’s ‘philanthropic’ organization is working paw-in-claw with the big pharmaceutical companies in support of the blockade on cheap drug shipments…”Gates says his plan is to reach one million people with medicine by the end of the decade.  Another way to read it: He’s locking in a trade system that will effectively block the delivery of medicine to over 20 million.”

The all-new lower Queen Anne Safeway just opened today on the site of what had been one of the chain’s smallest surviving Seattle outlets. That building, a classic ’60s box structure, had been razed for a big half-block condo complex with the unfortunate name of “Tribeca”–a moniker intended to conjure images of old iron Manhattan warehouses redone into nouveau-riche loft dwellings, not brand-new stick structures.

(BTW: Safeway, while once the world’s biggest food chain, has never had a store within 300 miles of NYC.)

The store, while twice the size of its precursor, is still a compact and urbane work of “retail theater.” It has narrow carts and aisles, tall shelves, and a slightly darker color scheme. Its internal layout’s also different from the standard grocery cube we’ve known all our lives. The single entrance is toward the building’s narrow south side. The checkouts are placed diagonally along the south side, leaving space near the entrance for special promotions. The produce coolers are in the middle, not along a wall, freeing more wall space for higher-profit-margin operations (pharmacy, deli, video rentals).

It’s a pleasant, even quasi-happy place. My only gripe: Just as with Safeway’s late-’90s rebuild on 15th Avenue East, the new lower Queen Anne store abuts the sidwalk instead of hiding behind a moat of parking–but doesn’t have an entrance at its peak foot-traffic spot (in this case, Mercer Street).

Oregon State U. prof Jon Lewis’s book Hollywood V. Hard Core, now out in paperback, claims the Hollywood studios aren’t and weren’t the free-speech crusaders they sometimes claimed to be. Lewis argues, according to the book’s back-cover blurb, that the studio-imposed ratings system and other industry manipulations served to crush the ’60s-’70s craze for sex films and art films, and thus “allowed Hollywood to consolidate its iron grip over what movies got made and where they were shown.”

When the Independent Film Channel runs its salute next month to “renegade” type filmmakers of the ’70s, you can compare and contrast IFC’s take on the era with that of Lewis. IFC, I suspect, may describe ’70s cinema as a freewheeling revolutionary era, whose rule-breakin’ bad boys took over the biz and are still among today’s big movers-n’-shakers.

I’d give an interpretation closer to Lewis’s. That’s because I essentially came of age at the height of ’70s cinemania. My early college years (including one year at OSU) coincided with the likes of Cousin Cousine, Swept Away, The Story of O, All the President’s Men, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, Dawn of the Dead, Days of Heaven, Manhattan, Being There, Rock n’ Roll High School, Emmanuelle 2, and countless other classics that forever shaped my worldview.

But that was, to quote a film of the era, “before the dark time. Before the Empire.”

Lucas and Spielberg, those clever studio-system players who let themselves be marketed as mavericks, re-taught the studios how to make commercial formula movies. Before long, they and their imitators became the new kings of the jungle. Francis Coppola, Alan Rudolph, Richard Rush, Terrence Malick, and other medium-expanders were shunted to the sidelines of the biz.

The sorry results can be surveyed on any episode of Entertainment Tonight.

In related news, an alliance of Net-radio entrepreneurs is planning to sue the record industry, claiming the major labels have set royalty rates so high only big corporate stations can afford to legally exist….

…And Jeff Chester of TomPaine.com interprets Comcast’s lastest cable-contract wrangling in Calif. as a scheme to kill public access channels. I don’t think Chester’s allegation’s fully supported by the evidence he gives, but the situation’s still one to watch with concern.

IF YOU SAW the movie Ghost World, you’ll remember a shot of the astoundingly racist logo for an old restaurant, the Coon Chicken Inn. A few of you might not know that was a real chain, which until the ’50s had a large outlet on Lake City Way, just beyond the old Seattle city limits–and just a half mile north of the offices of Fantagraphics Books, which published the original Ghost World comic. (Ying’s Drive-In now stands on the ex-Coon Chicken site.)

What’s more bizarre than the old Coon Chicken logo is the fact that modern-day folks are making counterfeit logo souvenirs!

Recent articles in the NY Times, the Wall St. Journal, and elsewhere have noticed the apparently sudden resurgence of Pabst Blue Ribbon in the national beer marketplace. The articles all credit PBR’s comeback to an apparently instantaneous spike in the product’s young-adult hipness factor, or to a stealth-marketing campaign to create such a hipness factor. None of the articles tells the real story:

In the ’80s, both Pabst and Stroh bought up dozens of second-tier mass market beers across the country. They included Heilman’s, Lone Star, Iron City, Hamm’s, Schmidt, former national powerhouse Schlitz, and all of the Northwest’s onetime Big Five (Olympia, Rainier, Heidelberg, Lucky Lager, and Blitz-Weinhard). Pabst bought Stroh in 1998 and decided to retire or de-emphasize all these legendary names. The plan was to use the strong distribution networks of these local beers to relaunch Pabst Blue Ribbon as a national major. Bars and taverns were given deep discounts and promotional incentives to switch from Pabst-acquired local brands and make PBR their principal swill on tap.

With the former Olympia brewery, the last of the Big Five, having closed last week, it’s clear at least around here that PBR’s comeback has little to do with street cred and nothing to do with the movie Blue Velvet. It has everything to do with the familiar themes of corporate consolidation and the homogenization of regional cultural landmarks.

HERE’S HOW Fark summarized this KOMO-TV report about Boeing’s latest job-blackmail shenanigans: “Washington State approves $3 billion tax cut for Boeing. Boeing responds by laying off more workers.”

Need more be said?

Actually, at least a little more.

The company that, as much as any, made modern global business possible insists upon re-imaging itself as a global-age enterprise, no matter how costly or inefficient the move may turn out to be. Management is out to permanently eliminate as much of the old Boeing culture of middle-class American working-stiff stability as possible. The 7E7 assembly line, for which Washington’s politicians would sell all our souls, would only employ as few as 800 people. Big components and subassemblies, even the all-important wing work, will be parceled out to subcontractors, non-union states, sweatshop countries, and nations whose government-owned airlines might consider buying a couple of the finished planes.

There comes a point when a state’s just gotta say it won’t play the coddle-the-CEO game over such low payoffs. Let’s hope in this state it’s soon.

…to the economic wreck.

You already read about the impending demise, sometime later this year or early next, of the historic and sumptuous Cloud Room in the quaint but affordable Camlin Hotel. It’s been one of Seattle’s oldest surviving piano bars, along with (but a lot more cozy n’ elegant than) the also-closing Sorry Charlie’s on lower Queen Anne.

Slightly less publicized is the folding of Orpheum Records on Broadway, one of the town’s finest indie-rock and techno CD stores. It was a great supporter of local bands for over a decade and a half, and hosted innumerable memorable in-store gigs by local and national faves.

The Capitol Hill Times recently ran a checklist-type piece about the comings and goings of the Hill’s CD stands. A partial list:

Coming: Sonic Boom, Wall of Sound (moved from Belltown), Music Werks, Down Low Music, Half Price Books and Music.

Going: Wherehouse Music, Fallout, Beats International, and now Orpheum.

Morphing: Cellophane Square into Everyday Music (the budget chain of Cellophane’s Portland-based parent company, Django).

Staying put: Fred Meyer Music Market.

MEANWHILE…: My former bosses at Fantagraphics Books have publicly pleaded for customers to buy more of its graphic albums and comics, to help the company survive the current econo-turmoil (which in this company’s case included the bankruptcy of a big wholesaler). Fantagraphics has gone thru plenty of ups n’ downs in its past 27 years, and I’m sure it will survive this setback as well. But it’s still a great opportunity for you to grab some of the best visual storytelling this and several other nations have ever produced.

The Bon Marche, which hasn’t really been locally owned since the previous Great Depression but is still thought of as a Northwest institution, is having the “Macy’s” brand stuck onto its name by the parent company. Some think it’s a first step into merging the whole Bon operation into the Macy’s bureaucracy; eliminating local buyers, local ad designers, etc. That would be a stupid business move, but it also wouldn’t be a surprising move in today’s consolidation-mania.

DUMBER NEWS: The current Great Depression II is taking its toll on another Seattle favorite. Sorry Charlie’s restaurant and piano bar on lower Queen Anne just might close next month. Truly great cities are not merely made of penne pollo and baba gnoush, but on slippery omelets and 6-9 a.m. happy hours and sad-faced crooners leading besotted adults in one more round of “Volare.”

…to Raymond “Ras Bongo” Lindsay, the Lake City music-store owner and longtime staple of the local roots-music circuit, who was slain in an apparent domestic dispute. I’d only met Bongo offstage once, at his store (see above), but instantly sensed him as a gentle man of a centered sensibility.

TO AVE AND AVE NOT DEPT.: Last weekend’s University District Street Fair was supposed to have been the coming-out party for the completely rebuilt University Way. But, in traditional best-laid-plans fashion, the Ave’s northernmost big block (47th to 50th) remained closed and unpaved.

Ergo, the fair was shrunk to about 70 percent of its normal size. The audience’s size, and energy level, seemed even further reduced, despite decent weather. This may have befitted a neighborhood that was already stuck in the retail doldrums even before the totally traffic-closing construction scheme made it worse.

Some UW design students had a big display in the former Tower Records storefront, full of schemes to redo the Ave’s storefronts so they’d look all fresh and Euro-modern, not the funky/rundown amalgamation of low-rise architectures we all know and love.

Still, there’s something to be said for a reinvent-the-Ave campaign that comes out of a sense of creativity, that asks young adults (rather than corporate consulting firms) what a young-adult shopping street should look like, and that imagines plenty of spaces for independent businesses instead of the same ol’ dorky chains.

Among the seminar speeches and dry-research releases put forth at the recent newspaper-biz convention in Seattle was one study that claimed the elusive youth market started reading daily papers more often during the Iraq war, but didn’t stick with the habit. The trade mag Editor & Publisher quoted the survey company’s boss John Lavine as saying:

“Coffee in a can is a dead ringer for where newspapers were: It was a mature product, it was dying, everybody said its time was over — and then Starbucks came along.”

We’ve already written that the current push by the Seattle Times to kill its joint operating agreement with the Post-Intelligencer, and by extension to kill the P-I itself, could instead be an opportunity to reinvigorate the P-I as a truly independent paper, and by extension to revive the newspaper biz.

I’m convinced it can be done. Yes, a JOA-less P-I would need to get its own ad sellers and delivery vans, and either buy or hire printing presses. Getting the financing for such a venture just might be easier if it were for a new paper for a new era, something this country hasn’t really seen since USA Today first targeted the everywhere/nowhere of shopping malls and airports 21 years ago.

A post-JOA P-I, or an all-new paper that could be launched in the wake of the current JOA mess, could be a paper devised from scratch to meet the ink-on-paper needs of the Internet age. It could be neither old-American-journalism boredom nor Murdoch sleaze, but something lively and forward-looking and written to be read.