One of Capitol Hill’s last unreformed dive bars is still awaiting all the permits to reopen on Olive Way, but might finally be speeding up from stopped to slow.

…in Snohomish County thought the best way to pick up underage girls was to pretend to be an underage boy, live an elaborate made-up existence, and gain the unsuspecting girls’ confidence.

This sad case of exploitation and deceit flies against one of “alternative” culture’s longest-standing tenets, that women in general, and lesbians in particular, are the most righteous, morally purest creatures on Earth. I’ve long argued that women are perfectly capable of doing all the things men can do–including the bad things.

…(which officially has a name almost as long as the parade itself) won’t be ending with a rally at Seattle Center this year. Last year’s parade-rally, moved to downtown and the Center from Capitol Hill, gave the event greater “mainstream” visibility but lost $100,000. So it’s probably back to the (relatively) low rent district, away from the retail core and Belltown as well as the International Fountain.

…here in the Upper Left of America, in a week when the forces of expedient bigotry have, for now, been routed.

…and the only devil I saw was a certain ex-boss of mine, who showed up for the weekly session of Drinking Liberally. Mr. Savage sported a custom tee with the slogan CAN’T WE HAVE CRAIG KILLED?, in reference to the founder of a certain free-want-ads web site that’s put a wrench into print-media busines models across the country.

It’s been a decade and a half since Mr. Savage and co. were the new kids on the local-media block, with a surefire business plan that took ’em to the top. Now, newer outfits with newer surefire business plans are causing both “mainstream” and “alternative” newsprint publishers to run scared. Ah, the more things, well, you know…

We can only sympathize with the editors of the regional gay magazine 99, who stuck a fluffy li’l travel article about New Orleans (“At Play in the Big Easy”) into their current issue, then watched from afar as the awful stuff happened to the town while the issue was at the printer.

Until there’s a new TV contract, there won’t be a pageant. Gay guys will have to snicker at America’s Next Top Model instead.

Now we know why Spokane’s called “the lilac city.” The Spokesman-Review newspaper has forcibly outed Mayor Jim West, a onetime right-wingnut in the State Legislature, as a public homophobe but a closeted gay and, allegedly, as a long-ago child molestor. West denies the last part, but has admitted to having sex with men in the past.

It’d be sooooo easy to simply dis West as another dangeorus hypocrite, but I see something more poignant, more sad. Like most homosexuals in most of Euro/American society in most of modern history, West had to conceal his true self from the public world around him. As someone who chose the profession of politician representing conservative monied interests, he apparently felt he had to “double-closet” himself by outspokenly supporting the suppression of people such as himself.

One particularly ironic part: Spokane’s traditionally been an oasis of progressive-populist politics amid the reactionary-dominant deserts of eastern Washington and northern Idaho. It’s one of those places where gays gather to escape the bigoted attitudes once expressed in public by West. Last year, Spokane civic promoters floated the idea of creating a specific gay-nightlife district, expressly to create the lucrative urban image of a “creative hub.”

L’affaire West is a personal tragedy, irregardless of whether or not the boy-abuse part is true. I don’t go as far as the Seattle Times, which insists West resign. But I do believe he ought to pubilcly atone for his past public stances. He’s blundered himself (or rather, been shoved) into the opportunity of a lifetime. He can call, from deep inside the Republican Party’s street level, for an end to the GOP’s cynical hatemongering.

…news items about the right-wing preacher whose threats persuaded Microsoft to wimp out on supporting gay rights weren’t enough, now there’s a right-wing preacher in North Carolina who’s kicked all Democrats out of his church.

…the probable reasoning behind the Bushies’ made-up anger over Kerry’s innocuous reference to Mary Cheney’s lesbianism:

“…The ensuing fake controversy is the GOP’s 2004 campaign in nutshell: Don’t let’s talk about Bush’s dismal record. Let’s talk well-spun trivia — or flat-out smears — instead.And when it comes to sensitive treatment of gays and families of gays, no one can match the record of Republicans — for wallowing so deep in the gutter of bigotry that they definitively make life quantifiably worse for gays, lesbians, and their families.”

The Northwest Film Forum opened its spacious new digs Thursday night with a surrealistic, nearly Fellini-esque party.

Outside, there were big searchlights, a small red carpet, and a dozen beauty-queen hostesses. Each wore a sash reading “Welcome to NWFF” in a different language. Inside, the smaller of the two auditoria displayed short, strange film clips played at half-speed. In the tall-ceilinged but somehow claustrophobic lobby, big-bucks donors hobnobbed with scruffy artist types.

Among the live performers: Drag-queen rock band Cross Dress for Less (above), and our current fave Japanese-inspired pop combo the Buttersprites.

The new space is a big achievement for NWFF, whose operations had been split among two or three smaller storefronts. It originally began as WigglyWorld Studios, which took over the film production and editing equipment of 911 Media Arts when that longstanding cultural-empowerment group decided to phase out that side of its operation.

The 911 folks chose to concentrate on video production, particularly digital video. Their choice seems to have been wise, from the standpoint of supporting DIY creativity. Across North America, digital video has become the overwhelming format of choice for documentaries, no-budget shorts, and at least a few indie feature films, such as Thirteen.

The new NWFF’s theaters are equipped for both film and video projection. But its production/editing facilities, classes, grant program, and forthcoming distribution entity (The Film Company) are religiously devoted to celluloid.

Even here in Software City USA, communities of artisans continue to preserve older ways of making things, such as letterpress printing and analog music recording. Motion-picture film is another technology that’s more cumbersome than its modern successors, but which offers its own distinct qualities.

Film’s lighting and exposure settings are more persnickety than those of digital video, but can produce more stunning results. Film’s slower frame rate gives it a less realistic, more fantastical quality. Most pairs of eyes can tell the difference between film and video, and most still associate the look of film with the look of “a real movie.” Shooting on film, when it’s done right, can give an indie director more credibility, both among audiences and within the marketplace.

Film remains a viable option for moviemakers. But it’s among the most complex art forms around, with many different skills and disciplines to be learned. So it needs places where its secrets can be passed on, where its aesthetics can be learned. Places like the Northwest Film Forum.

As a sidebar, the new NWFF is an anchor for an emerging “arts strip” along Twelfth Avenue on Capitol Hill. Indeed, the Buttersprites followed their NWFF opening-night gig by performing the same set an hour later, a block away, at the Capitol Hill Arts Center. The Photographic Center Northwest and Aftermath Gallery are a few blocks south of NWFF; the offices of Artist Trust are two blocks north. Richard Hugo House holds its literary events and programs a block away on Eleventh. Several storefront galleries have opened nearby on Pike and Pine streets.

Capitol Hill may have lost Cornish College and Fred Meyer this past year, but at least it’s still the heart of Seattle’s arts infrastructure.

…at least in Europe, need to start paying attention to the actions of neo-fascistic gay men:

“With the exception of Jean-Marie Le Pen, all the most high-profile fascists in Europe in the past thirty years have been gay. It’s time to admit something. Fascism isn’t something that happens out there, a nasty habit acquired by the straight boys. It is – in part, at least – a gay thing, and it’s time for non-fascist gay people to wake up and face the marching music.”

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.

Over the next two or three days, we’ll look back at the massive affirmation of corporate- and local-government-approved taboo-bustin’ that is the Gay Pride Parade. (The event’s actual name is almost as long as the event itself, so we won’t bother with it.)

We’ll let somebody else (Mr. Dan Savage, perhaps?) discuss whether there’s an intrinsically transgressive aspect to homosexuality and other “alt” sexualities, and hence whether a pride fest that welcomes banks, beer companies, city-council members, etc. contradicts said transgressive aspect, drawing “gender outlaws” into everyday mainstream society.

This year, as you might imagine, there was a renewed spirit of political activism at the parade, and it centered around lesbians and gay men demanding a certain ordinary mark of acceptance into everyday mainstream society, a marriage license.

Other messages were also conveyed by marchers, dancers, and others. Some messages called for religious tolerance. Others called for intolerance toward abusive relationships (a boy carried a sign that read “Abusive Priests Suck”).

And some messages expressed the one paramount lesson we all must heed this year.