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…of the first moi-edited issue of the Belltown Messenger, here are some pix I took last Thursday at the second annual Fashion 1st Boutique Fashion Show. Some 100 models showed off the wares of 16 area boutiques, most of them in Belltown.
Tom Douglas’s Palace Ballroom banquet facility was packed to the walls with an almost all-female audience. The event’s advertised hours were 6 to 9. The first two of those hours were devoted to drinking and schmoozing, before the runway saw any action.
Once the models started a-struttin’, they continued at a brisk, businesslike pace.
This model is selling Ottica eyewear. (What else?)
And here’s the organizer of this year’s event, Joan Kelly, with a spokesman from the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, which got a percentage of the $40 ticket price and the $120 “trash belts” being sold in the lobby. The event was dedicated to its first-year organizer, Jared Seegmiller, who’d died earlier this year after a brief bout with a rare form of heart cancer.
…since we’ve posted pix here. To atone, here are some acquaintances who held a li’l conceptual-art spectacle called The Brides of March last Saturday, in front of what you must still call “The Bon Marche,” or at least “The Store Formerly Known as the Bon Marche.”
Yes, I’m absolutely certain the Moore Theatre management knew what it was doing by this juxtaposition of posters in its box-office window.
This mullet obsession is annoying enough in places, such as Seattle, where it’s a retro-ironic fad. But in other places, such as this warehouse near the Everett commuter-train station, the metalhead hairstyle never went away.
Just a couple of guys in miniskirts and deliberately torn stockings, dancing to the Fame soundtrack on Broadway last week.
And to conclude for today, something we ran years ago, in a reader-submitted photo. Now we have our own visual document of the mighty MISC shipping line. This stoic cargo ship was seen docked at the Interbay grain terminal, wihch is now operated by the Louis-Dreyfus Corp., commodity merchants and traders since the 1850s. (You might have heard of a certain heiress to that family fortune.)
…faux leopard print vinyl jackets and your go-go boots, recharge your revolution-now attitude, and explore “The Women of 1970’s Punk.”
…and possibly future professional crossword puzzle constructor, I’ve just found truly turn-on lingerie. Sorta brings new meaning to “going down.”
APPARENTLY, MOST OF THE BIG Halloween shidigs were on Saturday.
I, of course, went out on Sunday.
But I still found some nattily-dressed creatures who graciously allowed me to show to you.
I want to receive party/costume reports from as many of you as feasible. I particularly want reports and/or digipix of anyone costumed as:
You should know by now where to send the stuff.
…the current Stranger cover story, depicting “2004’s Scariest Halloween Costumes” modeled by real children, is getting linked to from approximately coast to coast.
…was first sold, P-I cartoonist David Horsey depicted a rude businessman walking into a store and asking if there was a “WonderJock.” Well, now there is. (Viewer discretion advised.)
WE SHOT A LOTTA PIX this past weekend. Today, the Capitol Hill Block Party. Tomorrow, other scenes.
If there was an unofficial theme to this year’s heat-drenched Block Party, it was woman-power, in the retro-burlesque and other interpretations. Between the Rat City Rollergirls, the naughty T-shirts for sale, some righteous lady slam poets, and some slammin’ rock bands, the party offered a cornucopia of saucy, sassy femme-empowerment visions.
The party’s chief expression of masculine energy was the closing set by those 20-year veterans of slow metal, the Melvins. I didn’t get any good pictures of their set, partly because these three young aggressive stoners kept stalking me. (Note to our older readers: “Aggressive stoner” ceased to be an oxymoron several years ago.) They insisted that I’d taken pictures of them, which I hadn’t. They semi-incoherently threatened violence, even after I showed them I had no pictures of them.
Bodies have always been with us; so have body-revealing clothes, such as the 17th-century fad for breast-baring by prominent women— even queens.
ON THURS. NITE, we spent some pleasant, albeit quite warm, hours at the glorious Lower Level performance space on Capitol Hill.
There, the enterprising Francophile DJs known as La Boum! (one of whom’s also involved in the Cicada fashion boutique) presented a quite sprightly, defiantly girlie, and ultimately playful fashion show, featuring both vintage and new ensembles.
…and those of us who simply love old pop ephemera, can view entire issues of pre-1970 skin books (even the articles!) at Vintage Girlie Mags.
IT’S THE THIRD AND LAST PART of our look at the LGBT Pride rally/parade. Yesterday we saw the gents; today it’s the ladies.
The Pride festival’s officially all about forthrightly declaring one’s sexuality, no matter what people say.
So I’ll forthrightly declare: I mainly go to Pride to enjoy the presence of the women.
The fact that the women are mostly lesbians (with a few bis and post-op trannies mixed in) matters not one atom.
In my long life, I’ve viewed and adored thousands of women who didn’t want to have sex with me. From this point-O-view, lesbians are merely one subset.
Like a Medieval troubadour toward a lady of the court, my attraction to the Pride Parade lesbians is both defined and enhanced by knowing my desire probably won’t be physically consummated.
Rather, I can only express my admiration and my yearning as artistically as I can, and trust that, at least on some level, these strong women can gratefully accept my highest regard for their faces, their bodies, and their courageous hearts.
Of course, should any one of these women turn out to be bi (or het-curious), and find herself reading this, I would love the chance to channel this high adoration toward a lower plane.
IT’S PART 2 OF 3 of our documentin’ last Sunday’s LGBT Pride Parade.
Today, we separate the boys from the girls, since that’s what gaydom essentially does.
The prime contradiction of the “gender diversity” and gay-rights movements is that they (rightfully) demand society welcome a broader range of gender-types and relationship-types, yet the most common of these uncommon sexualities is that of men who prefer to smooch it up with their fellow men. William Burroughs and other commentators have noted over the years that male-gaydom isn’t a weaker or sissier masculinity but a more exclusive masculinity. It’s manhood uncompromised by the need to live with, or satisfy, women.
Given that, of course, there are still many, many types of man-loving men and man-and-man relationships. I predict that even when (not if) gay-tolerance finally spreads out to the vast suburban and rural stretches of this country, gays will still choose to congregate in the major cities, because only in a large population base (or via net-dating) will a pseudo-Eurotrash fashion victim in search of a leather-bondage cowboy be likely to discover his soulmate.
But then again, bifurcating and bisecting’s what U.S. society seems to be all about these days. We’re (including my own het-self) spinning out into ever-narrower subcultural niches. In this regard, it’s commendable that the Pride people have kept so many queer-culture subsectors involved all these years.
Among these subsectors: Drag afficianados. If we’re to believe the papers, drag-queen performance, on both pro and amateur levels, is significantly less popular than it had been in the ’90s. Still, for those who truly care for the art form, it’s never mattered whether it was considered “in” or “out.”
On his net-radio talk show Sex Life, local “sexpert” Dane Ballard recently discussed why the Pride Parade seems to have become passe to many local gays. You can hear it all here, once the archive file’s been placed online (which should be as early as today).
By the way, ’twas nice that the Seafair Pirates showed up. For some fifty years, the Pirates have represented a just slightly more acceptable image of rowdy male bonding, in a town that’s spent the past century trying to distance itself from its rough-hewn frontier past.
THIS WEEK, highlights from our sunburn-inducin’ trip to the Fremont Solstice Parade and street fair. Today, the beautiful costumery and skinosity. On Tuesday or Wednesday, the rest of the spectacle.
The “World Naked Bike Ride” the previous weekend was billed as a participant event, but seemed more like a spectator event. The unofficial bicycle nudes at the Fremont parade are often judged as a spectator event, but seemed this year more like a participant event.
By this, I mean the naked ladies & gents walking and biking, and the more or less clothed audience members standing and sitting, all behaved as if they were of one joyful whole. There was no public making-out, but there didn’t have to be.
Fremont Parade nudity isn’t about the mechanical or hydraulic aspects of sexuality. It’s about showing off yourself, seeing and being seen, just as you are. It’s about freedom and comfort, and togetherness. It’s about having your physical, mental, and emotional beings united. It’s about taking appropriate pride in the gifts with which we were created, and with which we may help create others. It’s about demystifying the female body, and un-demonizing the male body.
And, with or without paint, the nudity is ultimately just another costume choice. You can parade as a human, or as a flower or a bat, or as part of a team uniformly dressed for group unity.
