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A REAL ANGEL OUT THERE should consider investing in my dream travel book project, in which I’d go to all the places I’ve always wished to go–including America’s wildest museums.
MEANWHILE CLOSER TO HOME, execs at the company that built Fremont’s gargantuan waterfront office park defended it Friday, after an architect wrote in the P-I that the place was just too big for the neighborhood and too gentrifying to boot. The execs argued that Fremont’s a cleaner, upscalier, and more wholesome place with the offices:
“To appreciate Lake Union Center now, it is helpful to reflect back to 1986, the starting point for redevelopment efforts in Fremont:Â The Red Door Ale House was the Fremont Tavern, not a place for families….”
I dunno ’bout you, but to me the word “tavern” (or the phrase “ale house”) would imply “not a place for families.”
IN OTHER BOOZE NOOZE: Buried in an article about the fact that there’s at lest one winery in every state nowadays is the fact that Wash. state “has added a winery every 20 days since 1997,” and surpassed N.Y. state as the nation’s #2 wine producer and probably its biggest per capita. But can we scarf down enough brie and Breton crackers to go with it?
…Tuesday night in Pioneer Square. The police were out in their promised droves and operated under the prime directive of Fun Prevention. The thousand or so (almost all-white) Eminem-wannabe doodz who assembled from the suburbs, who hoped for a (less violent) repeat of last year’s unauthorized Mardi Gras street party were thwarted by arrests and citations for any untoward behavior, especially jaywalking. “Jaywalking,” as an arrestable offense, was interpreted to even include walking thru parking spaces. Thus, the doodz (and a very few doodettes) were crammed onto nearly impassible strips of sidewalk outside the Pio. Sq. bars (which, in keeping with city orders not to specially-promote Mardi Gras this year, mainly stuck to their regular fare of techno and white “blooze” attractions). Any dood who stood in one place on the sidewalk, even if the way in front of him was completely blocked, was “politely” ordered by the Fun Police to move along or else. The result: A lot of people out there, almost none of whom looked like they were enjoying the evening. (There were even almost no festive costumes; most doodz preferring to conform to the Abercrombie/Hilfiger uniform standard.)
Eight blocks north on First Avenue, several hundred other young folk were indeed having fun, at the Showbox’s all-ages Gwar show. The theatrcial-metal band’s durable formula of cartoon-gore spectacle was perfect for Fat Tuesday’s traditional meaning of one last debauch before the start of Lenten pentinence. Outside afterwards, the street was filled with sweaty, hard-of-hearing, happily-tired-out guys (and at least some gals) stumbling in blown-away, wide-eyed glee. Many were clad in T-shirts that had become permanently dyed pink-orange, from the band’s having drenched the front moshpit area with fake blood.
The lesson: Banning Mardi Gras isn’t good for anybody. Planning a safe, healthy mass release of pent-up emotions is much preferable.
RUPERT MURDOCH’S PUBLISHING HOUSE tried to get Michael Moore not to say bad things about George W. Bush in his new book. The question is therefore begged: What was Michael Moore doing at Rupert Murdoch’s publishing house in the first place?
OUR OL’ PAL Kathleen Wilson has written the greatest single piece of writing the Stranger’s ever published.
As promised a couple weeks back, here is my preliminary list of some of what I love about this nation of ours. Thanks for your emailed suggestions; more are quite welcome.)
(This article’s permanent link.)
IT’S A LONG ENTRY TODAY, and it starts with a question:
WHAT WILL BECOME of “alternative” culture? Until last Tuesday, the prospect of a recession seemed to mean we could all go back to being grumpy worrywarts, without all that new-economy exuberance getting in the way. But now along comes war-lust, and the potential revival of censorship and repression of dissent, not to mention changes in the whole social zietgeist.
Remember, WWII changed American culture even before the U.S. military got into it. In came the aggressive comedy of Abbott & Costello and Bugs Bunny. Out went the lighter antics of W.C. Fields, Laurel & Hardy, and the Marx Brothers.
Even before the hijackings, there’d been talk for a year or two among the culture pundits of a “new sincerity,” spread among (or at least corporately targeted at) a new generation grown weary of cynicism and distanced irony. Among the trend’s purported examples: Dawson’s Creek, Lilith Fair, the WTO protests, Martha Stewart, Oprah, bottled water (as an alternative to fizzy drinks), the new soft-R&B divas, and those achingly cloying boy bands. When Tablet launched, one year ago next week, it sold itself as the sincere, prosocial, community-supportive alternative to what its creators claimed was The Stranger’s arrogance and irrelevance.
Will the new social and economic shudders further this trend? Quite possibly. Even among the potential opponents of a potential new war, the schtick’s gonna have to be about working together and working hard.
And will the culture of individual excess (the rich person’s equivalent to hip irony) become seen as not merely wasteful but unpatriotic?
I’ll tell you what I don’t want to see, and that’s a “Return to the Spirit of the Sixties.” A lot of tactics simply didn’t work then and won’t work now. Counterculture separatism, square-bashing, drug-assisted pomposity, and general rudeness won’t do anything except make a few self-promoters famous.
Indeed: Separatism, the belief that one (and perhaps one’s close circle of compatriats) constitute some superior species, is one of the poisonous ideas terrorist leaders always exploit.
WHICH BRINGS US to our next sermon topic: Who do YOU hate?
No, I’m not talking about who those people out in bad old Mainstream America hate.
I’m not talking about who your parents hate.
I’m not talking about who the guy next to you hates.
I’m talking about you. Yes, you.
It’s easy for members of one or another “alternative” social niche to admit how wrong it is to hate ethnic minorities, gays, women, and the poor.
But what about your own attitudes toward those who are different from you?
Do you ever sneer with disdain at people who eat meat, or at people who don’t smoke pot?
Do you dehumanize heterosexuals, men, suburbanites, hippies, bimbos, southerners, mall shoppers, tourists, headbangers, lawyers, bureaucrats, business executives, polyester wearers, pina colada drinkers, people who listen to non-NPR radio stations, or people who shop at non-co-op grocery stores?
Then you’re just being human. You’re not a superior species to the rest of homo sapiens; nobody is. But a lot of people like to imagine they are. Some use religion, nationalism, ethnicity, or caste as their excuse. Others use fashion sense, arcane knowledge, or claims of higher “enlightenment.”
The real enlightened ones aren’t the ones who boast of their separateness from humanity, but the ones who realize their connection to humanity, to the web of life.
The illusion of separateness is especially prevalent in times of war-lust. Every warring nation propagandizes that it’s the real greatest nation on earth, and that those opposing nations are vermin needing to be eradicated or heathen needing to be “civilized.”
That’s why a Unabomber can callously take lives and then claim it’s all to make a better world. That’s why combatants in Belfast can aim guns on schoolgirls. That’s why a handful of true believers, who may or may not be connected to similar cells elsewhere in the world, can devote their lives toward a mega-scale suicide bombing.
We need no more of that.
What we need, now more than ever, is to reconnect, to touch.
Build movements. Get closer to your neighborhood, your community. Go see bands, concerts, plays—anything that’s live. Take a class. Go somewhere you’ve never been. Make love as often as possible (safely and consensually). If you’ve got kids, hug them early and often. Have a good meal, a good drink, and/or a good laugh. Get involved in something greater than mere money and power.
Call it the new sincerity if you wish. Or just call it the best way to keep our species going, by breaking down some of the barriers between people and between cultures.
Patricia Ryan, 56, who owned Belltown’s Two Bells Tavern from 1982 to 1999, died at the Swedish Cancer Institute on Aug. 4, after a seven-year bout with ovarian cancer. She turned the little tavern on a low-foot-traffic stretch of Fourth Avenue into the virtual living room for the then-burgeoning Denny Regrade arts community; it’s survived as a refuge for regular folk left behind by the neighborhood’s gentrification. Her survivors include artist and curator Rolon Bert Garner, who worked as a part-time bartender for Ryan in 1982 and married her two years later. Over the years, the Bells hosted several MISC live events and anniversary parties, as well as scores of the little meetings and confabs that have helped make this report-thang what it is. Further info is at HistoryLink.org.
The aforementioned National Peanut Tour van, spotted at Myrtle Edwards Park on the Fourth, is now parked outside the Stadium Exhibition Center as part of the hoopla surrounding the All-Star Fan Fest. Also parked outside the Ex Center, and thus free of charge this weekend:
As for the Fan Fest itself, it’s basically an exercise in letting area citizens imagine they’re a part of the All-Star Game experience, even though the game itself offerred only a few, mightily expensive, tickets on the local market.
The Fan Fest is a disappointing $15 extravaganza of baseball-card sales booths, apparel and merchandise sales, kids’ games, autograph line-ups, and sponsor-logo banners. The only really good parts are three historical displays: One on the Negro Leagues, one on 100 years of minor-league baseball, and one on Seattle baseball history. The latter, curated by local baseball historian extraordinaire Dave Eskanazi, is almost worth the price of admission alone.
Seattle’s annual Gay Pride Parade (officially, the “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Parade, March, and Freedom Rally”) long ago ceased to be a niche-subculture celebration.
Today it has only slightly more specifically-gay meaning than the modern St. Patrick’s Day has specifically-Irish meaning.
It’s become the day when everybody claims or pretends to be, if not a proud queer, at least a proud friend of proud queers.
The floats, performance troups, and marching units of actual lesbians and gays (and their support groups) are heavily interspersed with those of officially gay-friendly corporations (Microsoft), marketers (KUBE-FM, Starbucks, lots of beer companies), and politicians major and minor.
Why, even petty-tyrant-wannabe mayoral candidate Mark Sidran showed up to aggressively shake everyone’s hands, whether folks wanted their hands shook or not. (Sidran was accompanied by a small entourage holding up yard signs, whose logo bore a loud rightward-pointing arrow).
Some gays might consider this mainstreaming as a sign that gays and gay rights are increasingly accepted in American society, yea even among the power brokers of business and politics.
But other gay activists, who’d dreamed their liberation movement would lead to a larger public questioning of the so-called “dominant culture,” have branded such mainstreamed celebrations with such terms as “assimilationist.”
They allege that the organizers of rituals such as Seattle’s Pride Parade are helping destroy not just the larger queer-lib political agenda but the distinct GLBT subculture.
I can leave such distinctions to those within the community.
But I can say that the overall trend in this country is for more subcultures and social niches, not fewer. Even within LGBT there are subgroups (gay men, lesbians, bis, M2F trannies, F2M trannies, cross-dressers, etc.) and sub-subgroups (bears, leather, butch, femme, etc.) and sub-sub-subgroups (too numerous to even sample).
That’s one of the aspects of the Pride Parade’s smiling, family-friendly homosexuality that helps make it so appealing to so many straights.
Thousands of Americans who’ve never been erotically attracted to someone of the same gender wish they could belong to a subculture like GLBT; though preferably without the job-discrimination and general bigotries so many real GLBTs face.
And I don’t just mean those urban-hipster straight women who think it’s cool to pretend to be bi, or those college-town straight men who wish they could be as sanctimonious as radical lesbians.
We’re all “queer” in one way or another, in the older and larger definition of the term. We’re all different, from one another and from any dictated vision of “normality.”
And we all have a sexuality; and many of us wish (at least secretly) that we could be part of a culture in which we could proudly proclaim our sexual selves, without fear of being branded as sluts or chauvanist pigs or unfit parents.
Postscript: The night before the parade, Showtime ran Sex With Strangers, a documentary by Joe and Harry Gantz about three couples (two from Olympia), and the bi-female “friend” of one of them, who are all in the swingers’ lifestyle. The closing “where are they now” titles revealed that three of the seven individual protagonists had lost their jobs after their nonmonogamies became known. (The other four were either self-employed or were now on “extended vacations.”) The lesson: You don’t have to be gay to need the more progressive social attitudes gay-lib promotes.
Post-postscript: The loneliest-looking entry in the Pride Parade was the car sponsored by the Capitol Hill Alano Club, with its plain signage, few passengers, and fewer attending marchers. The 12-Step group was almost directly followed by a succession of beer-company vans and trucks (even a delivery semi rig).
Should First (actually, second-born) Twin Daughter Jenna Bush really get a three-strikes mandatory jail stint for underage drinking in Austin, I’ll be the first to sign up for her defense fund. I can see the slogans now:
She’s the first member of that sorry family I’ve liked since Barbara the Elder (Barbara the Younger is Jenna’s sis). The public knows little about her except her in-the-face-of-adversity smile (and the relatively understated portrayal of her on Comedy Central’s That’s My Bush!); yet much can be inferred or at least imagined from what little we’ve seen.
It’s easy to see her as the classic Evil Twin, the one raised seething with (perhaps self-denied) resentment over the “prettier” first-born fraternal twin getting all the praise and attention, just waiting semi-subconsciously for the first chance to put the ol’ patrician family into disgrace.
None of that, of course, is a reason for collegiate drinking, for which one needs no reason whatsoever. Why, even more college kids (of all genders, races, etc., both above and below the magic 21-year mark) drink booze than smoke pot. Jenna’s done nothing tens of thousands of other dudes-‘n’-dudettes do daily. She just had the misfortune, or ineptness, to get caught twice trying to buy the stuff with fake ID. (As if she weren’t one of the most recognizable faces in town.) (And also as if she were in some rich-kids’ college town where the authorities are regularly, unofficially told to look the other way at celeb minors’ minor offenses.; instead of the mass-market U. of Texas where campus and municipal authorities have been known to behave like, well, like Texas cops.)
So let’s form a We Love Jenna movement. And let’s turn it into a call for a more rational, less punitive attitude toward 19 year olds who behave like, well, like 19 year olds.
THE APPARENTLY GOOD NEWS: Belltown’s historic Rendezvous diner, bar, and mini-theater will probably be saved from the wrecking ball.
The potenally bad news: It could get ruined anyway, by the longtime practice of taking a great honest space and “restoring” it to a frou-frou “elegance” it was never meant to have.
The current operators’ lease ends this next Halloween. Supposedly (and nothing’s being officially announced yet), certain folk with certain “hip” credentials will take it over, give the interior a tasteful makeover, and make it a cool hangout spot with cool hangout music.
True, the ol’ Rendezvous and its Jewel Box Theater are in disrepair; and the joint’s current revenue stream probably isn’t enough to pay for the needed fixings.
But I (and lotsa other folk) want it to not become just another outpost of the upscale Monoculture, a glitzy martini bar or the like.
And we certainly don’t want the old-age pensioners, Alaska fishermen, and world-weary types who populate its crowded front bar to get kicked out or made to feel unwelcome.
We want the Rendezvous to become a well-kept version of what it is now–a comfy, quietly classy joint, where the artsy types and the salt-O-the-earth of all races and gender-types coexist under the watchful eye and beehive hair of goddess barmaid Dodi.
This all comes as the Belltown Business Association is trying to give the neighborhood a marketable identity. It held a meeting this week on “Branding Belltown.” The concept is to use cutesy public art and street signs, according to the group’s newsletter, “to maintain the top-of-mind status that Belltown has deservedly acquired over the last few years as the premiere neighborhood in which to live, work, and play. We want tolks to be able to find us and help describe us in a way that we help define.”
Of course, when I think of “branding,” I think of sloganeering. (I also think of the branding-iron fetish, but that’s off-topic.)
And I’m sure you could come up with some slogans for the former artists’ haven that are much better than these samples of mine:
NEXT: Another entry in “Every Home I’ve Ever Lived In.”
ELSEWHERE:
ANOTHER OF MY FAVORITE HAUNTS closed last week.
The Ditto Tavern was one of the tiny joints where, in the mid-to-late ’80s, you could see the likes of Green River, Soundgarden, Andrew Wood, and the other unsung heroes of what was still a very underground local alterna-rock scene. The place was willing to book this stuff because it was a tiny spot, well off of Belltown’s foot-traffic patterns, and hence needed to attract a “destination” clientele.
But as the Seattle scene actually got popular, the little out-of-the-way Ditto could no longer compete for acts with any real following. The place’s old owner seemed unable or unwilling to do anything to improve its situation.
It closed in early ’98 and reopened that fall, under new management and with a very handsome orange-and-black paint scheme. I was in a fairly decent drinking mode that fall, having been hired from a longtime post, and enjoyed having another regular hangout.
It had good pub meals and 21 (count ’em!) micros and imports on tap. It was clean and bright and had good rotating art exhibits. It did a good lunch business and had a modest but loyal regular evening crowd.
But the location problem remained a problem; and without the capital to hire enough relief staff, Lydia the new owner went on a slow-n’-steady road to burnout.
So when the building’s owner announced plans to raze the whole half-block for yet another office-retail midrise, she was, as she told me later, only too happy to get the heck outta Belltown.
Besides, she said, the type of people she wanted as customers seemed to have all moved away from the neighborhood. The affluent new condo dwellers, furthermore, don’t walk around in the neighborhood, preferring to drive to and from their secured garages.
Belltown really lost its “artist neighborhood” status back in ’97 or so; with the demolition of the SCUD studios (a.k.a. “the Jell-O mold building”) as the signature event of this loss. Developers of condo tower in the neighborhood continue to advertise their luxury homes with hype-words about the “lively urban creativity” their projects have already kicked out–or which the new condo dwellers immediately attempt to kick out, via lobbying for enhanced zoning and anti-noise regulations.
(And no, I don’t consider architects’ offices to be “art studios” or $100-a-plate restaurants to be “avant-hip nightspots.”)
Just don’t count on any potential ’01 economic recession to change this trend. All it might mean is a few projects could take a little longer to get off the ground, and the resulting new abodes could be merely ridiculously expensive instead of obscenely expensive.
So with the situation unlikely to change on its own, perhaps an urban-preservation movement is in order. But I don’t mean that old kind of urban preservation, in which ancient meat-packing plants, brothels, and horse stables were “restored to their original elegance.”
I mean a preservation of usages, not just of structures.
Other activists and thinkers have already suggested officially designating certain buildings (or spaces within buildings) for below-market-rent artist use. I’d go further, and designate certain parts of certain “urban village” neighborhoods for affordable housing (artist and otherwise), non-luxury retail, and entertainment (including bars and live-music clubs). Folks who move into a block that a live-music club is on will be told as they move in that they can’t just kick the music people out.
None of this would’ve saved the Ditto, whose problems were endemic from its first opening. But maybe they’ll save what’s left of the ol’ Belltown scene on First through Fourth Avenues.
And, just maybe, if there does turn out to be an oversupply of luxury home units in Belltown this year, the purveyors of those units might be willing to participate in a scheme that would limit or even cut back these units’ inventory, thus keeping the prices of the remaining units from falling too far.
NEXT: The bad old days of energy crises–they’re baaaaaaaack.
NOW LET US PRAISE the greatest Northwest pop-cult book ever written (other than Loser, of course.)
I speak of Wet and Wired: A Pop Culture Encyclopedia of the Pacific Northwest, by Randy Hodgins and Steve McLellan.
The two Olympians have previously written a history of Seattle-set movies, published a short-lived print and web zine called True Northwest, and produced a comedy radio show. This modestly-produced, large-size trade paperback is their masterwork.
Its 226 pages cover over 500 of the most famous and/or influential people, places, and things in the Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver metro areas (plus a few side trips to Tacoma and Spokane). Mixing and matching the region’s three big cities means even the best expert about any one town won’t already know everything in the book (though I, natch, was familiar with at least most of the topics).
In short, easily digestible tidbits of prose (curiously laid out at odd angles), you get–
…and lots, lots more.
The book’s only sins, aside from a handful of misspelled names, are those of omission:
But these are relatively minor quibbles that can (and, I hope, will) be rectified in a second edition. What Wet and Wired does have is well-written, accurate (as far as I’m able to tell), and a great mosaic of glimpes into our rather peculiar section of the planet.
TOMORROW: Cirque du Soleil pitches its tent in Renton’s Lazy B country.
HEADLINE OF THE WEEK (Tacoma News Tribune, 8/21): “Giant Salmon a Scary Prospect.” I can see the horror movie ad campaigns now….
IN OTHER NEWS: Sometimes justice does occur!
PIONEER SQUARE, most agree, has been lost as an art neighborhood.
The machinations of the Samis Foundation, the old neighborhood’s most influential landlord, have resulted in building after building being transformed from artist housing and little galleries into nouveau-riche condos and dot-com offices. Rock clubs have died off (even some of the Square’s trademark bad baby-boomer-blues venues have disappeared).
The artists, musicians, et al. can scatter (and are scattering) their residences to the new hipster-diaspora neighborhoods in the near suburbs. But they still need a place to gather, to hold the all-important par-tay thang that regularly celebrates folks’ emerging from their studio drudgeries and showing off their wares.
The most recent candidate: Ballard Avenue.
The diagonal, partly-cobblestoned street of paint factories, fishing-industry offices and residential hotels has long been a favorite of hipster types who adored its old-world charm and its reasonable rents. A music scene developed there in the mid-’80s with the club now known as the Tractor (headquarters of the local alt-country community). Other venues with similar musical fare followed. In the early ’90s, Hattie’s Hat (a beautiful old working-class eatery and bar) was rescued and “restored” by new owners associated with the Tractor crowd.
In the years since then, art studios and small galleries have popped up along the street. A tattoo parlor followed. Most recently, the old Sunset Tavern was gussied up into a not-too-slick rock club.
The street had a coming-out party of sorts on July 1. In the galleries, wine and Costco pretzels flowed freely. In the Sunset, a DJ played the Young Canadians’ “(Let’s Go to Fucking) Hawaii” in honor of Canada Day; a neo-burlesque troupe stripped (incompletely but with great skill and spirit); and four bands played. In back of the tattoo parlor, a neo-folk-rock band played tunes reminiscent of the neighborhood’s Nordic heritage. Around the corner at Mr. Spott’s Chai House, an all-female singer-songwriter bill warbled and crooned.
Great times were had by all. There will be further gallery evenings the first Saturday of each month. I can’t promise they’ll be as carefree and wild as this was, but it’s a hopeful start to what might be a renaissance of boho spirits and creative community.
But it’s already changing in the creeping-gentrification manner that often accompanies a neighborhood’s “arrival.” The working-stiff hotels and the industrial storefronts that had coexisted with the hipster joints are being decimated. Already, there’s a trendy day spa and hair salon in the area. And developers have announced plans to demolish the Wilson Ford lot on nearby Leary Way for, you guessed it, luxury condos–complete with a “neo-urban” pedestrian corridor to Ballard Ave.
So enjoy the parties, and the music and art, while you can.
TOMORROW: More de-subbing the suburbs.
LAST FRIDAY, I began to discuss my recent move from a Belltown apartment to a Pike-Pine Corridor condo.
I’d first moved into the Ellis Court building in September 1991. As you may recall, several other things happened in Seattle that month. Nirvana released Nevermind, Pearl Jam released Ten, KNDD brought commercial “alternative” radio back to Seattle airwaves for the first time in three years, and a certain tabloid newspaper, for which I would end up devoting seven years of my life, began publication.
When I first moved in, Ellis Court was a regular commercial apartment building. I hadn’t known that it had been a favorite of drug dealers. The first clue of that came on my first night as a resident, when the intercom would BUZZZZ loudly all through the wee hours, by men who invariably gave, as their only name, “It’s Me, Lemme In.” Fortunately, the owners had just begun to clear the building of crooks; by my second month there, nearly a third of the apartment doors bore foreclosure notices.
By 1993, the building was being managed by Housing Resource Group Seattle, a nonprofit agency doing what it can to meet the ever-escalating need for “below market rate” (i.e., for non-millionaires) housing in our formerly-fair city.
Belltown was a happenin’ place at the time I moved in. While several artist spaces and studios had folded due to already-rising rents, there were still many (including Galleria Potatohead and the 66 Bell lofts). The Crocodile Cafe nightclub had just opened. The Vogue was in the middle of its 17-year reign as Seattle’s longest-running music club. The Frontier Room, the Two Bells, the Rendezvous, My Suzie’s, the original Cyclops, and the venerable Dog House were serving up affordable foods and/or drinks; to be soon joined by World Pizza.
By early 1995, the Speakeasy Cafe and the Crocodile had become the anchor-ends of a virtual hipster strip mall along Second Avenue, which also included Mama’s Mexican Kitchen, World Pizza, Shorty’s, the Lava Lounge, the Wall of Sound and Singles Going Steady record stores, the Vain hair salon, the Rendezvous, Black Dog Forge, and Tula’s jazz club.
But the place got a far pricier rep soon after that. In block after block, six-story condo complexes replaced the used-vacuum stores, recording studios, band-practice spaces, old-sailor hotels, and old-sailor bars. About the only spaces not turned into condos were turned into either (1) offices for the architects who designed the condos, and (2) fancy-shmancy $100-a-plate restaurants (the kind with valet parking, executive chefs, and menu items designated as “Market Price”).
The demolition of the SCUD building (home of the original Cyclops) in ’97, followed in ’99 by the condo-conversion of the 66 Bell art studios, provided more than enough confirmation that Belltown just wasn’t my kinda scene no more.
Moving on time was well due.
Maybe past due–aside from people in the same apartment building, by this spring I only knew five people who still lived in Belltown. Everyone else had either gone to other established boho ‘hoods in town or had joined Seattle’s new Hipster Diaspora, scattered to Ballard, Columbia City, Aurora, or White Center.
More about that in a few days.
TOMORROW: A few moving misadventures.
IN OTHER NEWS: The icon of many a blank-generation boy’s dreams is alive and well and living in Kelso!
Further Confessions of a Boss Chick
by guest columnist Debra Bouchegnies
(LAST FRIDAY, our guest columnist began her reminiscence of being a lonely teenager in Philadephia during the Bicentennial summer of 1976. She’d befriended Kathy, a party-in’ girl who had few girlfreinds but many guy friends. They’d gotten summer jobs together at Philly’s legendary top-40 station WFIL. After one day in the back offices, Kathy had been promoted to a Boss Chick–a public promo person for the station, not unlike the KNDD jobs held by the Real World: Seattle cast.)
ONE NIGHT, at about 7 o’clock or so, that guy who hired me and Kathy, who I really pretty much hardly ever saw again, found me in the Addressograph room. “What time do you have to be home?” he asked.
I wasn’t even sure he was speaking to me until he threw me a “uniform” and offered me double my salary to fill in for a Boss Chick who was out sick. “Be in front of the station in a half hour”, he said.
I was about to spend the evening asking grown men to dance at WFIL Night at the Windjammer Room in the Marriott on City Line Avenue.
For a shy 16-year-old girl with braces, a night from hell.
There’s nothing like putting on hot pants in a bathroom stall while thinking up a lie to tell your mom to make you feel like an authentic red-blooded American teenage girl.
I fit my pack of Marlboros perfectly in the pocket of my handbag, slid my lighter into my boot, and boarded the bus filled with veteran Boss Chicks. They were all blonde and beautiful. Mostly between 18 and 20. None with braces. They were having so much fun being them. No sign of Kathy; I figured she must be the one I was filling in for.
I thought she was ill; but I later found out that she was keeping a low profile while healing from a shiner, which she occasionally got from Mommy’s boyfriend.
The gals tumbled off the bus together like a spinning pinwheel. I watched them bounce through the lobby of the Marriott in front of me while I strolled behind them. As we passed the restaurant I caught a glimpse of where, not long ago, me and my mom sat eating sundaes at our favorite window table, looking out onto the pool in the summer and the ice rink in the winter.
I entered the Windjammer Room to the classic “sounds of Philadelphia”. Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes featuring Teddy Pendergrass “Bad Luck”–an ominous sign.
The other “chicks” began dancing as soon as they entered the room. One by one, they grabbed one of the guys at the bar, which was filled with traveling salesmen and lecherous locals who came out that night to dance with hot-panted-bell-heel-booted girls.
The guy that hired me came up to me and said, “Debra, you have to go ask one of those guys to dance with you–that’s why you’re here.”
I was horrified. I looked up and down the bar trying to find the loser who least disgusted me. They were all equally creepy.
The first guy I asked was slobbering drunk and kept falling into me during “Soul City Walkin’.” The next guy groped me all the way through “Me and Mrs. Jones” and proceeded to call me “Mrs. Jones” the rest of the night.
Finally, I found one guy who seemed just to be interested in dancing and having fun. He had lots of energy. And lots of coke, which he proudly snorted in front of everyone from a vile and spoon around his neck (which kept getting tangled up in his Italian Stallion medallion).
Suddenly he went nuts during “I Love Music” and shook his Pabst Blue Ribbon and sprayed it all over my T-shirt, screaming like a pig. I went to the bathroom and didn’t come back out ’til it was time to board the bus back to the station.
Needless to say, they never asked me to do the “Boss Chick” thing again. I resumed my survey and Addressograph work, which I liked a lot better, even if it was only half the pay.
Soon they asked me to assist a university student named Mark Goodman with telephone research. He and I became great friends. In my senior year of high school, he helped me obtain an internship at the leading FM rock station in Philly. Mark went on to become one of MTV’s very first VJs. WFIL went on to become a Christian talk station.
The summer ended and I returned to school with a new feeling of confidence. I quickly made a new set of friends.
One early fall night I was out with Flufffy, my evening ciggarette and my WFIL handbag. Kathy was on her steps in her Catholic school uniform, and a plaid waisted coat with a fur collar.
She was kissing Raymond, the boy I had a crush on.
TOMORROW: The magazine glut.
