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We start a new month, and with it one year to save America from its ‘saviors’. Other topics today: making local history less white; Olympia’s ‘old boys’ club’ and its discontents; big kudos for the local lit scene.
On this “spooktacular” day, we offer a ‘Harry Potter’ Halloween; a reform agreement with (some) police; a Microsoft discrimination suit that might grow; and the off-again Sprint/T-Mobile merger.
For your Thursday perusal: Seattle’s not out of Amazon’s HQ2 running after all; Naomi Klein among the BC wildfires; earthquake safety vs. affordable rent; Bob Ferguson vs. Travel Ban 3.0.
At 11 a.m., Ed Murray was about to hold a public announcement at KeyArena. A little more than two hours later, he sent word he was resigning. We’ve got glimpses of the whirlwind from assorted angles in today’s extra-long e-missive. We’ve also got Nordstrom’s latest plan to stay un-acquired; Durkan and Moon’s very different housing-crisis solutions; and potential new ways to make a border run.
Another week of MISCmedia MAIL begins with Nordstrom bringing back the concept of the old Sears “catalog store.” We’ve also got still more cities that want to pimp themselves out for Amazon’s “HQ2”; Rep. Jayapal’s respectful answer to a wingnut C-SPAN caller; and a comix legend worrying that young people these days aren’t bored enough.
The temperature cooled significantly. The outdoor light looked like a movie “day for night” shot. And people glimpsed the realms beyond our own world. Now it’s back to the dog daze o’ summer, when MISCmedia MAIL mentions a call for a “centrist” political movement (as if we don’t already have one); a national media article claiming some Seattleites like to live in their cars (?); prison time for a local Ponzi-schemer; and a big trans convention coming to town.
Seattle’s big, annual arts-travaganzas have come and gone, with subjects of identity and resistance scattered throughout. We touch upon that in Monday’s missive, as well as the sad decline of the hydros; alleged “shaming” harassment at an officially “inclusive” fandom convention; a phony Starbucks “meme” graphic; and how much Nikkita Oliver may have already changed local politics.
The Boeing-built lunar rovers are still on the moon; should we move to legally protect them from anyone who might show up to trash them? We also view local reactions to the trans-soldier ban; two new attacks against Evergreen State (one more absurd than the other); a venerable used-book palace going away; and the demise of a cartoon-voice legend.
As the first “official” female Doctor Who lead is announced, MISCmedia MAIL remembers the local woman who starred in several DW fan films. Also: Past allegations against Ed Murray revealed; a war hero facing deportation; the miracle of cross-laminated timber; and a neighbor’s dispute gets taken to Google Earth.
Your midweek missive notes how our allegedly pinko-socialist state has the top “environment for business,” and how that’s partly due to our regressive tax system. Plus: more city-sales-tax fallout; airport robots (not as pilots, yet); stopping tech-sexism from the boardroom on down; and a certain Mariners player who made a certain big play at a certain big game.
The big-big-big Pride Parade couldn’t be stopped by heat, but was briefly paused by an unofficial “entrant,” a Charleena Lyles remembrance. In other MISCmedia MAIL subjects: Another needless shooting death, this time in the suburbs; the days still tick down toward a state-budget crisis; and 70 years since the first “flying saucer” sighting, right here in Wash. State.
The Pride Parade and rally have a different mission this year, as you probably expect. Your big weekend MISCmedia MAIL briefly mentions this, and also touches on still more Charleena Lyles fallout; local reactions to the deliberate disaster that is the health-care repeal plan; the men from our state who helped the CIA craft its torture techniques; and who a Seattle mini-park near a “dump” should be named after (one guess).
The Fremont Solstice Parade, even more than last year, was essentially an anticlimactic epilogue to the hundreds of body-paint bicyclists.
Even the arrival this year of “The Resistance,” a single overriding topic of protest in all its branches and aspects and sub-topics, as the right wing sleaze machine takes near complete control and rushes out an all-fronts attack against literally every good thing in our society (from government aid programs to social civility itself), failed to bring out more volunteer street-theater performers, marchers, musicians, etc.
Last year, there was talk that parade organizers would crack down on the nudes in hopes of attracting more participants in the parade itself, participants who might not want to be part of the same spectacle as all the poons and peens on public pubic display.
That didn’t happen. But the underlying issue remains.
The parade could fade out and die along with the original hippie generation out from which its aesthetic was formed.
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Oh, and the parade got “trolled†by an entrant who showed up with a seven-foot costume puppet of a stereotype black “mammy†figure in a rasta hat.
According to some social-media commenters, the (apparently white) guy who performed in the costume was asked to leave the parade’s Friday-evening prep session. He then crashed the Saturday-afternoon event after it had already started, before again being shooed away.
Still, the Solstice Parade’s organizers have managed for almost three decades to keep motor vehicles, corporations, politicians, and even written signs out of the spectacle. But this thing looked just enough like a regular Solstice giant mascot costume that the guy got to strut it down a large segment of the parade route.
(After all, hippie graphic aesthetics used to include plenty of one-dimensional “ethnic characterizations.”)
Also troublesome for the parade’s future, it can’t store its floats and costumes in a city-owned warehouse space any more. (Slog) (PI.com)
Friday’s MISCmedia MAIL ponders the Fremont Solstice Parade’s meaning in a year when just about every public act has political import. Also: a beloved fabric-arts store closes; the co-owner of Seattle’s coolest hardware store dies; alt-right dorks come to Evergreen; and a strange floating mega-balloon appears on the Tacoma waterfront.
The Mariners’ stadium’s getting a new name. We can’t choose it, but we can sure think up fun suggestions. Other topics at MISCmedia MAIL today: an exhibit on third-world women’s progress; racial disparities in health care; widely differing views on the homeless-voucher plan; and a key downtown building’s finally getting redone.