For the third year, the Pioneer Square Mardi Gras was a low-key battle between the citizen proponents of fun and the official enforcers of no-fun. This year, an informal truce seemed to have been reached. Nobody I saw tried too hard to act high and/or rowdy; the police seemed more interested in traffic control than with forced attitude adjustment.

An accurate photo essay on the event would have nine pictures of cops and one of participants, instead of the other way around.

No wonder Polaroid’s in Chapter 11: An enterprising entrepreneuse sold digital pix of the low-key revelers, which she instantly churned out on a portable mini-printer.

IF TOMORROW, “Super Sunday,” is America’s biggest day for macho horseplay, last Friday night was Seattle’s night to celebrate beauty.

First, there was the lavish opening party for Spa Noir, a new posh pampering palace in the former Confounded Books space at Second and Bell. Above, owner Jessica Norton receives a bouquet of flowers and a socket wrench to celebrate having finally gotten the space ready.

Spa Noir offers all the favorite day spa services (facials, massages, manicures, etc.), but offers them until 10 p.m. Appointments can be made for even later at night, so bar and nightclub workers will have something to go to after closing time besides the suburban casinos.

Just a block away, the Rendezvous hosted the Nerd Rock Fashion Show A Go-Go, a sprightly little fashion show featuring local designers and benefitting the fledgling DIY arts orgalization Hometown Gravy.

Then, down by Terry and Mercer at Consolidated Works,, came the lavisher-than-lavish opening night gala for the second Seattle Erotic Arts Festival. You’ve got to get there this weekend. It fills Conworks’ cavernous exhibition space with hundreds upon hundreds of paintings, drawings, sculptures, Etch-A-Sketches, installation pieces, and more. They mostly are figure studies of lone females and males in provocative poses. There are also many fetish action scenes, some gay action and lesbian action scenes, and even three or four images of heterosexual coitus (the one category noticeably missing at last year’s festival in Town Hall).

It was often hard to see the beautiful art because of all the beautiful people in the way. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of flirty gals and dashing guys swarmed the joint, reveling in their fabulosity.

The festival organizers didn’t let me take pictures last night. (Hey, some of ’em are BDSM people, so you have to expect they’ll love to make rules.) I did, however, persuade a finely-coiffed party attendee named Alisha to pose outside the building. (Her outfit was designed by print MISC contributor Jen Velasco.)

As Seattle’s winter overcasts continue their reign of darkness, something like Beauty Night should be an annual ritual.

…to fashion photographer Helmut Newton, the king of opulant sleaze, and to Bob “Captain Kangaroo” Keeshan, the king of wholesome salesmanship.

During Keeshan’s heyday, some Seattle-area viewers occasinally wrote in to the daily papers complaining that KIRO-TV showed only the second half-hour of Kangaroo so it could run the more local, and more light-entertainment oriented, J.P. Patches (see the right-hand side of this page). I’m personally glad both hosts got to be seen, because each had his own set of messages and each cared about us young’uns in his different way.

“Clinic,” the weekly live-music showcase at Re-bar, is still going on, despite the decline and fall of its co-sponsor Tablet.

Tuesday night’s edition went like they all did. Three bands played (pictured below: the unabashed loudness that is The Octabites). An improv troupe of “naughty nurses” told a few jokes and mingled among the crowd, passing out promotional tchotchkes for Tablet and Toys in Babeland.

After three years and change, the last fortnightly Tablet tabloid is out. Officially, the soft ad market did it in, along with its also-ran status in the local “alt” media universe and its confusing every-other-week schedule. But I’d add that the paper’s concept was contradictory from the get-go.

It never paid its writers a cent; expecting them to work just for the privilege of getting their statements made.

But, aside from a few political conspiracy-corner columns (which never challenged the orthodox-“radical” views of the paper’s target audience), its content was almost uniformly perky and light. The rag acted as if it was daring and rebellious by printing only positive reviews and by running lotsa puff pieces for advertisers.

In the end, Tablet had become a thin publicity sheet, not a true “alternative” at all. Its instigators plan to resurface later this spring in a monthly “magazine” format (no, I don’t know what that means) selling ads to both Seattle and Portland youth-culture businesses. I wish them success, and hope they’ll use the opportunity to reformulate their approach.

THE ‘IN FOR ’04’ LOOK in interior design: Aluminum foil, everywhere!

THE INVENTOR of the Chupa Chup lollipop, source of half the caloric intake of some fashion models, has passed on.

AN ACQUAINTANCE NAMED RUSSELL held a “Loud Jacket Party” last Saturday night. The loudest jacket I currently own is a double-breasted navy blue number with silver pinstripes, but nobody seemed to mind.

My favorite new local band, Lushy (more about them on a future date, I promise) played two sets of ultracool jazz-pop. Delicately tasty cocktails were served up by trained professionals. Party guests read aloud from Russian history books when they couldn’t think of anything witty to say, which wasn’t often.

The center and right faces in this pic belong to the extraordinary party goddess DJ Superjew and cool-and-strange-music connisseur Otis F. Odder.

I didn’t dress up. But I went where I’d find other people who’d dressed up, and asked if I could take their pictures. Almost everyone agreed. Herewith, some samples.

This barista is wearing an authentic 1950s UW cheerleader uniform from the Red Light.

• “Silver is the New Black.”
• “Orange is the New Black.”
• “Grey is the New Black.”
• “Why green is the new black.”
• “Is Brown the New Black?”
• “A World Where Aubergine is the New Black.”
• “Black is the New Black.”
• “Blacker is the new black.”
• “Black is not the New Black.”
• “Business Casual is the New Black.”
• “Iridescence: It’s the New Black.”
• “Brilliant Colour is the New Black.”
• “Multi-Colored Tyres are the New Black.”
• “Bobby Pins are the New Black.”
• “Dachshunds are the New Black.”
• “Blood is the New Black.”
• “Scar tissue is the new black.”
• “Undesign–The New Black?”
• “Bland is the New Black.”
• “Mono is the New Black.”
• “Gay is the New Black.”
• “Pirates are the New Black.”
• “Anti-Semitism: The New Black.”
• “Xenophobia, the New Black?”
• “Buddhism is the New Black.”
• “Death is the New Black.”

OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS, you’ll all be treated to the sights of the most recent Western Washington Fair (aka “The Puyallup”)

In its 102nd year (not counting the WWII years when its site was used as a Japanese-American internment camp), the fair was its ever-lovin’ boot-stompin’ best, an entertainment and people-watchin’ spectacle at least equal to anything staged at Seattle Center.

(I suspect it’d even be a superior fun-time to that certain tres-overhyped googah in the desert Southwest if said googah didn’t have any nekkid people.)

My date for the afternoon was a devout vegan who, for some reason, didn’t know beforehand that the cows on display at the fair were likely to become next month’s filet mignon–until she ran into a Beef Marketing Board counter in the beef-cattle barn, offering free samples from some of the same breeds lolling about in the stalls.

On a more immediately practical level, my companion found nothing that met her strict dietary standards at the fair’s dozens of fast-food stands (all non-chain; many run by third-generation families that have become cozy insiders with fair management). If just a few of these ol’ standbys were asked to give up some of their multiple stands around the fairgrounds, other folk could join ’em with a wider variety of meal/snack offerings.

One could easily imagine an allegedly “healthy” food concessionaire who could hype their wares as part of the fair’s original mission of promoting agriculture in Washington. They could promote their entrees, salads, desserts, energy drinks, etc. as products from higher-profit-margin crops that could fiscally save some family farms.

Why heck, such a food stand could even cross-promote its wheatgrass shakes and veggie platters with the guys who hawk blenders and choppers in the Modern Living barns.

…old-time department stores, even whilst some of them are still with us. (He seems to particularly miss the stores’ old mission as definers of a downtown-centric social culture.)

…independent artists hawked their wares in Occidental Mall on First Thursday. And once again, the bigshot corporate gallery owners made bluster in the daily papers about wanting the non-represented riffraff out of Pioneer Square for good. One gallery boss was quoted smearing the indies’ works as mere “flea market trinkets” that don’t deserve to exist in the same neighborhood with, say, expensive glass bowls. Thus, defenders of the li’l guyz sported T-shirts scoffing at the scoffers.

FUN WITH ELECTRICITY: When first we heard of the Calif. megastore chain Fry’s Electronics coming to Renton, we scoffed. We’d heard so many times of Northern Calif. institutions whose reputations turned out to have been due to little more than being from Northern Calif., that hubris-capital of North America.

But Fry’s turns out to be worth the hype, I must say.

It’s not just another Circuit City/Best Buy clone grown to Goliath size. It’s been designed from step one as Techno-Geek Heaven. Acres of hardware, software, parts and pieces (yep, even that Torx-6 screwdriver I’ve been looking for). Prices aren’t all that great, except for a few loss leader specials. It’s the selection that makes it different, that and the whole vastness of the joint, and the staff that speaks Geekspeak like natives.

While it’s not in an established strip-mall zone, it’s easy to get to by public transport because it’s reasonably close to the main Boeing Renton bus stop. (Not that Fry’s is all that keen on non-drivers shopping there; its delivery fees are tremendous, and staffers write down the serial numbers of anything customers bring in in backpacks that’s even close to merchandise Fry’s sells.)

Between Boeing and the also-nearby Kenworth truck plant, it’s right in the heart of our industrial heritage. But the fourth big institution in the neighborhood, the giant Cirque du Soleil tent complex, heralds a postmodern, postindustrial, upscaled culture built from the forms of populist working-class entertainments of olden days.

Fry’s is intended for “knowledge workers,” for engineers and designers and coders, not for assembly-line grunts. You can find U.S.-built products in the store, but they’re more readily found in cheaper categories (DVD discs) than in expensive ones (DVD players). No, Fry’s is a store for an America that, to quote an old Doonesbury line, “doesn’t have to make anything anymore—except SUCCESS.”

…will be posted in two installments. Watch this space later this week for some quaint human-interest studies at the R.E.M. gig.

But for today, some of Labor Day’s other Seattle Center sights.

THE VAIN ALTERNA-HAIR SALON had a booth selling, among other products and services, this retro Joan Jett purse. I attracted the awe and respect of everyone working the booth when I told ’em I’d seen Joan Jett perform at Wrex, the old new-wave bar where Vain is now.

THE EMP SKY CHURCH SPACE, wide and very tall yet relatively shallow, remains one of the wonders of the rock world. No wonder VH1’s shooting an entire concert series there. Here, Lesli Wood of the loud-fast combo Ms. Led.

In the where-be-they-now corner, Mary Lou Lord (once the darling of KNDD’s old Loudspeaker show) continues to patiently ply her trade, major-label offers or no major-label offers.

My fave act of the day, though, was the harmonic driving pop of the New Pornographers, featuring several Vancouverites and ex-Tacoman Neko Case (center). I could spend a lifetime in the universe of their happy/skeptical tuneage.

I’M STILL FEELING ERRATIC ACHES and dizzy spells at varying times of the day following my recent panic-type episode. (I’m still waiting for at least one reader to email their sympathies.)

But I did get to spend most of Friday at Bumbershoot.

Firstly, I spotted this loving pair on the way to what band’s set? (C’mon, it’s an E-Z guess.) (OK, the answer’s at the bottom of this post.)

Prior to that, however, I got to see plenty-O-rockin’-action at the Exhibition Hall, starting with the wonderful Visqueen.

Later, during The Divorce’s set in the same space, I finally got my very own Charles Peterson moment.

Beer gardens are everywhere on the B-shoot grounds, in keeping with the festival’s ongoing capitulation to the national mania for revenue enhancement. The Ex Hall’s beer garden is festooned with lovely Lava Lites and similar products.

Jessica Lurie performed a typical mind-blastin’ set with her ensemble at the Northwest Court stage.

The Bumbrella Stage’s banners include plugs for two sponsors I’d never expected to see on the same piece of screen-printed fabric.

One big change this year: The Small Press Book Fair was turned into the Ink Spot. Its aesthetic premise was also changed, from circa 1973 (Port Townsend-esque nature poetry) to circa 1983 (punk zines). Above, local zine vet Gregory Hischack (Farm Pulp).

(Answer: Modest Mouse, of course.)

…I’d even do what this guy’s doing.

ONE OF THE TEMPORARILY-REVEALED old advertising signs on the north face of the Commodore Hotel on Second Avenue, during the construction of the condo tower where Bethel Temple had been.

SOMETIME NEXT MONTH, Belltown’s first worthy cyber-cafe successor to the burnt-down Speakeasy Cafe will come in the form of the new Zeitgeist/Top Pot branch on Fifth Avenue. Coffee, donuts, free Wi-Fi, art, and a large meeting space.