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It’s the 12th-anniv.Misc., the column that wonders if Vancouver essayist Brian Fawcett was right when he said malls and subdivisions are typically named after the real places they replaced, whether a corollary might be made about car commercials promoting further traffic-jamming steel tonnage with images of the wide open road, or (even better) SUV ads using nature footage to sell landscape-ruining gas-guzzlers.
OUR FAR-FLUNG CORRESPONDENTS: Loyal readers have been sending junk food samples from far and near. Scott McGrath, though, takes the no-prize for the biggest cache of snax from the furthest-away place. The centerpiece of his shipment: a hamburger (made with chicken) he found at a Beijing convenience store, in a sealed envelope complete with bun, lettuce, and “salted sauce.” The English half of the envelope’s back warns of a two-to-three-day shelf life for the product, depending on the time of year. The bun got squished in transit, but it’s otherwise a normal looking way-past-pull-date meat food. The rest of his box contained Japanese, Filipino, and Taiwanese products he found in Guam: Banana catsup, dried squid and cuttle fish, soybean and herbal-jelly soft drinks, and Marine World Biscuits (shrimp-flavored animal crackers in fish shapes labeled, in English, “Tuna,” “Dolphin,” and even “Sea Lawyer!”). Many of these are more conveniently available at Uwajimaya and other local Asian-food emporia, but it’s the thought behind the gift that counts.
ANOTHER YEAR OLDER: I’ve traditionally used this, the anniversary week of Misc. (begun in the old ArtsFocus tabloid in June 1986), to take a look back at the column, the changes in Seattle, or my journeys. This time, I want to look ahead. This li’l corner-O-newsprint ain’t my sole ambition in life. There’s plenty of other things I’ve always wanted:
UPDATE: Erika Langley’s Lusty Lady peep-show photos will get a display in Seattle after all. After the Seattle Art Museum said it’d show tamer images from Langley’s photo book, then chickened out, the Linda Cannon Gallery announced an uncensored Langley exhibit, opening June 4. Speaking of images and misunderstandings…
INK SLINGIN’: The Newspaper Association of America’s running ads on MTV, pleading for the kids to “Read a Newspaper Every Day.” Not that the publishers are gonna make papers any less parochial or conservative or bland; nor are they gonna stop stereotyping teenagers as dumb thugs and young adults as soulless slackers. Speaking of media and attitude problems…
ONE LAST `SEINFELD’ ITEM: The Variety Club held a “Sein-Off” benefit party at the Paramount last Thursday. You could support kids’ charities by showing your admiration for a show about total selfishness, that ’90s too-hip-to-care attitude-schmattitude so big in today’s Global Business zeitgeist. Speaking of corporate aggression…
THOTS ON THE VIDEO RELEASE OF `ANASTASIA’: Why hadn’t I realized it before? The total symmetry of a movie made under the auspices of that would-be emporer Murdoch, at a studio he built in Phoenix for anti-union purposes (AZ’s a “right-to-work” state), depicting the world of the Russian czars as a lost Golden Age–an age depicted as having been destroyed not due to a workers’ revolt, or even due to military conquerors who exploited a workers’ revolt, but by an individual villain within the aristocracy. Speaking of modern-day empires…
THE MERGE LANE: So Chrysler’s gonna let itself be bought out by Daimler-Benz, makers of Mercedes snobmobiles (and of the infinitely cooler Freightliner trucks). This means the Germans will now own the Jeep trademark, originally coined to describe the U.S. Army’s “general purpose” vehicles in WWII. However, we ought to think of this as an opportunity to wring some favors out of the company during the antitrust and SEC approval hearings. Let ’em merge, I say, if they promise to (a) bring that ultracool tiny Mercedes/Swatch Smart Car to America; (b) fire the Dodge commercial spokesdork and bring back Ricardo Montalban; (c) re-introduce some Chrysler Chlassics like the Dart Swinger and the Plymouth Duster (not to mention some of those old American Motors cars Chrysler now owns the rights to, like the AMX and the Pacer!); and (d) pay to track down, buy up, and melt down all K Cars still on the road. Speaking of the romance of industrial design…
JUNK FOODS OF THE WEEK: Two companies are selling candies in containers that look exactly like computer mice. Candy Mouse tarts, made in Mexico by a Wrigley subsidiary, taste like SweeTarts but are shaped like pet-mouse food pellets. Web Fuel mints (“Cool Mints! Cool Sites!”), made in Holland for NYC-based World Packaging, are triangular faux-Altoids; the paper wrapping inside the aluminum box is printed with addresses of “cool” websites, including that of local kids’-computer-game firm Headbone. The Candy Mouse container looks like a two-button PC mouse and costs less than the Web Fuel box, which looks like a one-button Macintosh mouse and holds a tastier, more powerful product. (Both are at Walgreen’s.) Speaking of the march of modernity…
BIG STADIUM FALL DOWN AND GO BOOM: It’s more or less official. The homely yet homey home of Griffey and the Big Unit, of the Sonics’ 1979 championship, of Promise Keeper rallies and U2 shows and monster trucks and Boeing strike votes, will go away, almost certainly in one spectacular implosion. But when? If our area politicians had succeeded in attracting the 2000 Democratic National Convention, the Kingdome would probably have had to stay up until that August. But now that the Dems have removed Seattle from their list of convention hopefuls, the Dome can go boom whenever the exhibition facility in the south lot, between the Dome and the new baseball field, is done. Work on the exhibition hall can’t really start until the adjacent new baseball stadium’s complete, sometime around July 1999. Likely, that won’t allow for an implosion party on the big Millennial New Year’s, alas.
FROM `THE PESTO OF CITIES’: You’re probably either anxiously awaiting tonight’s final episode of Seinfeld, or you’re bored to tears by all the press the show’s gotten and you’re glad it’ll all be done soon. Both camps might be interested in the Seinfeld create-a-plot guides on the Internet. Fill in the blanks and you’ve got your own wacky li’l Mad Libs-esque story, little more implausible than those the show’s actually used. I’ve used some of the categories on that list, and made up some of my own, to organize my own riff on the show’s familiar formulae:
Discussion/argument about a topic of profound unimportance: If Carly Simon wrote about somebody and wanted to get at him by saying “You probably think this song is about you,” but it really was about him, what’s the deal here?
Slightly unsightly sight gag: Sticking quarters onto your forehead.
Sexual euphemism: A soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend is derided behind his back for spending too much time “mountaineering” and not enough time “spelunking.”
Kiddie snack-food product, still remembered and/or consumed by the lead characters: Fizzies–the tablets that, when dropped in water, are supposed to create instant soda pop but actually create a vaguely cherry-flavored, non-medicinal version of Alka-Seltzer.
Celebrity name-drop: Charlene Tilton.
Humorous situation in which this celebrity appears: Fighting with one of the lead characters over an object of pathetic obsession.
Object of pathetic obsession: A M@xRack movie-ad postcard with Gwyneth Paltrow’s name misspelled, and hence potentially collectible.
Urban-etiquette peeve: People who make too many consecutive transactions at an ATM while others are in line.
Proposed solution to this peeve: Start a petition drive outside bank branches, demanding banks to set a two-transactions-at-a-time limit at ATMs during peak hours, punishable by “eating” the violator’s ATM card.
Ethnic guest character: An Italian-American mother who works at the clothing-catalog company.
Ethnic-slur aspect of that character: Demands accordion music at her daughter’s wedding reception.
Reason to start dating someone: She appreciates really good Dr Pepper, and makes special buying trips to New Mexico where the local bottler makes an especially strong version. She even knows to never spell Dr Pepper with a period, and publicly corrects anyone who tries.
Reason to stop dating someone: Goes into a hissy-fit at any restaurant (or wedding reception) that even deigns to offer Mr. Pibb as a substitute for Dr Pepper, and in fact screams to the whole world that she would rather drink cherry-flavor Fizzies.
`Wacky’ money-making scheme: The last known cache of big-E Levi’s jeans not yet sold to Japan; a cache discovered at the rural New Mexico general store that also has the world’s best Dr Pepper.
Why this money-making scheme’s doomed: Nobody bothers to figure out that, with the Asian recession, the bottom’s fallen out of the Japanese big-E Levi’s mania.
How the characters learn this lesson too late: At the wedding reception, the clothing-catalog owner is overheard casually mentioning this during a discussion about a new unusual garment concept.
Uunusual garment concept: Garanimals for grownup men.
Potential benefit of this new garment concept: You’d never look like an ill-dressed, color-conceptless dork in public.
Potential liability: If you’re a single man and you don’t look like a color-conceptless dork, women will presume you’re either gay or married.
Potential benefit from that potential liability: Attracting a woman who’s specifically after married men, because she’s turned on by the transgressiveness.
Potential liability from that potential asset: You’re now living an elaborate lie in order to keep this woman from leaving you, which she undoubtedly will do if she finds out you’re not really married.
Non-sequitur catch phrase: “Do I even look like your caseworker?”
Now go make up your own answers to these categories, or categories like them; then stick them into a standard four-subplot Seinfeld story arc. The result will probably be funnier than whatever’s gonna be on tonight’s finale. Submit your entries to clark@speakeasy.org. The best entries will be posted online, for all to share in the being and nothingness.
IT’S A POST-MAY-DAY MISC., the column that had almost gotten used to the idea of the Mariners re-becoming the hapless team of old. Then they got better again. In the next few weeks: Who knows?
SIGN OF THE APOCALYPSE #15: Gus Van Sant’s directed a music video for Hanson.
RIDIN’: After the item last month about the Mercedes/Swatch Smart car (a mini-minicar to be sold only in Europe), a local outfit called Electric Vehicles Northwest wrote in to plug its new Twike machine, designed in Switzerland and to be assembled here from imported components. The sleek, three-wheeled two-seater has an 8.7-foot-long aluminum/glass bubble body, an AC motor capable of 25-40 miles between charges (at up to 52 m.p.h.), and even supplemental bike-pedal propulsion. What’s not mini is the price–$16,500.
JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: Ole is a line of fruit flavored, sweetened milk beverages; sort of an Asian style (made in Calif.) version of Strawberry Quik, but better-tasting (and in a wider variety of flavors). Just don’t mix Ole and Oly. (Though an Ole might help soothe your stomach after one too many Olys.) Available at Rite Aid and at ALFI, the convenience store across from GameWorks (for the time being).
STRAIT OUTTA COMPTON: Local TV news in Seattle, while increasingly obsesssed with “team coverage” of mayhem and disaster stories, is still slightly better here than it’s become in some other cities. One reason was KING’s Compton Report, a one-host, one-topic-per-show weekly half hour that combined intelligent reporting with slick videography and editing (while avoiding the PB-esque pomposity that’s helped make “documentary” a four-letter word among TV execs). Jim Compton himself was totally squaresville, but that was his charm. Now, though, the program’s on its way out. Compton accepted an early-retirement offer from the station. He’s not commenting on the split, but does say he’ll try to get another gig in town (acqaintances say he’s looked into starting a magazine). KING promises to replace his Sunday-evening show with another news-magazine format (look for something devised as a lead-in to Dateline NBC).
IT’S NOT JUST HERE: USA Today reported late last month on the gentrification of Chicago, with mayor Richard Daley fils presiding over the closing down of a popular sidewalk flea market and most downtown newsstands, all in the name of an upscale/bland vision of “beautification.” Daley’s next scheme: Establishing a sidewalk-restaurant row along the once-toxic Chicago River (for those few weeks a year it’s neither too cold nor too hot to spend an appreciable amount of time outside). Of course, Chi-town’s been at the upscaling game for over a decade now, replacing artists’ lofts (particularly along the aforementioned river) with condos and goofy theme restaurants, then putting up street banners proclaiming the former artists’ streets as “The Artistic Neighborhood.” Speaking of which…
EN `GARDE’: A kindly reader spotted the following graffito on a recent trip to Montreal: “Artists are the shock troops of gentrification.” Actually, it’s not as cynical a notion as it might first sound. Remember, the term “avant-garde” originally meant the the vanguard of an advancing army (i.e., the shock troops). The notion, which goes counter to the more currently fashionable image of the permanently underground art world, was that the cutting-edge artists led where the rest of us followed. So it’d only be natural to extend that metaphor into formerly industrial urban neighborhoods as well as urbane aesthetic styles.
PASSAGE (German director Ulli Lommel, interviewed in Ian Grey’s Hollywood-expose book Sex, Stupidity, and Greed): “Americans are caught up in this American Dream, yet at the same time, in order to service that dream, they have to constantly deny what people are really like, what they really want…. You really like to do something but you don’t tell anybody because you hate yourself so much for doing it so you have to persecute everybody for doing what you are doing.”
MISC. IS PLEASED AS PUNCH, well at least pleased as non-alcoholic punch, that US West’s directory-assistance service has adopted the classic information number 411. Now, even the most clueless white mall gangsta-wannabe will get it when hip-hoppers they rap about being “down with the 411 boyyieee.”
UPDATES: KCPQ now has the made-to-be-rerun-forever Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine after its 10 p.m. news weeknights, an improvement over the tired M*A*S*H repeats previously at that time…. King County will probably ask voters to approve a 2012 Seattle Olympics bid, if the idea gets that far. I still wanna learn what quaint “local color” TV segments you’d be willing to appear in should the games come here; send suggestions to clark@speakeasy.org clark@speakeasy.org.
JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: We’ll be kind and say the two new Joey Cora chocolate bars are for baseball-stuff collectors, not for candy lovers. Lovely label, though. ($2 at Safeway.)
LOCAL PUBLICATIONS OF THE WEEK: With seemingly everybody today caught up in the mad dash for bux, it’s not surprising a zine like Space for Rent would show up. In fact, I’ve seen publications like it before, wherein everything’s really a paid ad, including the text articles. This thing’s so cheaply produced, though, it’s hard to see why any would-be pay-to-play writer or illustrator wouldn’t just put out their own photocopied pamphlet. (Available from P.O. Box 3234, Seattle 98114.)… like ex-Rocket Veronika Kalmar, who’s put together her own modestly-sized newsprint zine, The Iconoclast. The first li’l issue’s got Kalmar dissing celebrity journalism (perhaps a disguised potshot at her ex-employer), fellow sometime Rocketeer Dawn Anderson trashing “post-feminist” reactionaries, and assorted show and record reviews. (Free at the usual spots or $1.50 from 117 E. Louisa St., #283, Seattle 98102).
THE HOLE STORY: The Seattle bagel craze has apparently gone day-old. The Brugger’s Bagels chain has turned into a “Breads & Cafe” chain, Zi Pani (a name as meaningless as Håagen-Dazs). We could be in for a rerun of the mid-’80s retreat when all those cookie shops tried to reposition themselves as “treats” shops. Elsewhere in changing-storefront land…
THE DESTRUCTION CONTINUES: Rumor has it that the next hip outfit to be evicted later this year by the Samis Foundation (that alleged nonprofit that acts more money-grubbing mercenary than some for-profit companies) just might be Colourbox, for some five-plus years the odd duck of 1st Ave. S. niteclubs (i.e., the one place on that “Blooze”-bound street where you could actually hear tunes composed since 1970). No word yet on just when it’ll get kicked out, or what its operators might plan to do in the future. Elsewhere in clubland…
SQUARELY GAY: ARO.Space, the new mostly-gay dance club in the old Moe building, is as clean looking a night spot as any I’ve seen. With its muted pastels and recessed lighting, and retro-modern furnishings, it could easily pass for a set in a ’60s sci-fi film or in the future world fantasized at the Seattle World’s Fair. It might also be seen as a desperate attempt to be fake-London, or as something too damn institutional looking to be really fun, or as an expression of gay designers too enraptured by Ralph Lauren colors or by that new interiors magazine Wall.Paper. Under this theory, the space evokes gay men trying to prove they’re just as respectable as anybody else by being bland in a Zurich airport terminal kind of way. But I prefer to see it as a “neutral” gallery-type space, only with the dancers and clientele as the “art” on display. It enhances its clientele’s outrageousness by not competing with it.
CRASS? WELL…: Ex-GOP gubenatorial candidate Ellen Craswell has quit the Republican Party to start her own political movement, one where the purity of her authoritarian right-wing ideology wouldn’t be compromised by those success-obsessed corporate Republicans. She plans to call her movement the American Heritage Party. She apparently hadn’t realized the name “American Heritage” is already trademarked, by a magazine and book line owned by that quintessential corporate Republican Steve Forbes, who’s currently on a personal crusade to keep Religious Right followers within the Republican fold. Will Steve object, or even care? Time will tell, or rather Forbes will.
As of this writing, Misc. can’t see what the big deal is about a president who’s (allegedly) continued to behave like good-ole-boy politicians from all regions have been known to behave. At least, even if the worst current allegations hold up, it only means he’s conducted his affairs more discreetly than Wilbur Mills, more consensually than Bob Packwood, and with less potential damage to the republic than JFK (who, it’s largely acknowledged, carried on a long-term fling with a Mafiosa). Of course, JFK and even FDR didn’t have to deal with an out-for-blood industry of talk-radio goons, “Christian” TV demagogues, and rabid GOP hypocrites out to personally smash anyone who, like Clinton, even vaguely threatens their drive for unquestioned total domination. Hard to believe there was once a time when bigtime politicians were largely criticized over policy and job performance.
JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: If you’ve always wondered where the term “having Moxie” originated, or remember the word popping up in old MAD magazines, it happens to be the oldest brand name in the soft-drink biz. It started as a patent medicine, or “nerve food,” in Massachusetts back in 1884. When the 1907 Pure Food and Drug Act restricted the beverage maker’s claims that it could cure almost any ill (including loss of manhood, “paralysis, and softening of the brain”), Moxie was reformulated as a carbonated recreational drink. It continued to be advertised with images of vigorous health, leading the name to be associated with spunk and audaciousness. It was sold nationally, and at one point was bigger than Coke. But by the 1960s it had retreated back into a minor New England regional brand.
Now, the Redmond-based Orca Beverage Co. is locally distributing drinks under the Moxie name. There’s a cherry cola and a creme soda now, with an orange-creme flavor soon to follow. They’re tasty drinks, with strong flavors and light carbonation–but none of these is the original Moxie flavor, a root-beer-like concoction described (by some ex-Bostonians I’ve met) as an acquired taste. That one’s not being brought out west, at least not now.
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: The slick Oly-based rockzine Axis just keeps getting better. The January issue includes brisk reports about Mudhoney, Nomeansno, Engine 54, Sky Cries Mary, an alternative-scene barter system, a recent Oly spoken-word fest starring Lydia Lunch, the Swiss suicide cult Solar Temple, and the cannibal-movie classic Motel Hell; plus kissable b/w photos and a raunchy-yet-innocent comic by Tatiana Gill. (Free at the usual dropoff spots, or $2 from 120 State Ave. NE #181, Olympia 98501.)
VISIONS: Another Super Sunday’s come and gone. While watching the game in a friendly neighborhood bar, I started wishing for more public video-viewing opportunities. Almost all bars and restaurants with TVs will only let you watch sports on them, with only the scattered X-Files or Melrose Place viewing parties for exceptions. I’d like to see a room with a satellite dish and different monitors in different corners, showing all kinds of fare in a convivial party atmosphere. People could join in to hiss at soap villains, cringe at awful music videos, see who can get the most obscure Simpsons gags, take umbrage at Sam Donaldson, and view shows unavailable in parts of town (Comedy Central’s South Park, the International Channel’s foreign music shows) or on any local cable (the Game Show Channel’s Gong Show reruns). The only fare you couldn’t legally show in such a place would be movies from home videocassettes, most of which aren’t licensed for public screening.
IN A STEW: Seattle magazine’s looking for “The Martha Stewart of Seattle.” The mag seeks a super-cook or super-decorator, but I think the title should go to somebody who, like Stewart, has forged a highly lucrative self-made-woman career by ironically promoting a fetishized version of old-fashioned stay-home-hausfrau values. Hmm, who do we know in this state who might qualify? Linda Smith perhaps, or maybe Ellen Craswell? If you can think of someone similar who lives a little closer to town, report it at clark@speakeasy.org.
OFFAL-LY STRANGE: Your day-earlier-than-normal pre-Thanksgiving Misc. begins with feast-related news from London. In that town where darn near every non-chain restaurant has a veggie page on the menu, where mad-cow disease is still a recent memory, and where vegan activists used to pass out anti-meat flyers outside McDonald’s outlets until the chain sued them for slander (the vegans won), the latest food fad is a return to a UK tradition, delicacies made from offal–organs and other animal parts not normally consumed by modern Western humans. An AP dispatch claims “more than one-quarter of London’s 600 biggest eateries” now serve such items as pig’s-head salad, bloodcake with fried egg, goose neck (stuffed with gizzards), and veal-kidney risotto with crispy pig’s-ears. Many of these meat-byproduct dishes are illegal to commercially serve in the U.S. (you can’t even get a genuine haggis, the national dish of Scotland, ’round these parts); but hey, there’s another air-fare war going on now. In other food news…
BIG STOREWIDE SALE!: Why, you ask, would Fred Meyer (the regional everything-for-everybody chain) want to buy up QFC (the fancy-pants grocery specialists)? Besides the normal drives for consolidation in today’s chew-’em-up, spit-’em-out corporate world, QFC was threatening to infiltrate Freddy’s Oregon stronghold, and QFC’s role in the Pike & Broadway urban-strip-mall complex (with its food-drug-variety-banking combo) is too close to Freddy’s under-one-roof hypermarket concept for Freddy’s to afford to ignore.
Media coverage, natch, emphasized the merger’s potential impact on the Q’s upscale core clientele. The Q responded to this press-generated nonissue by running full page ads promising the Q will remain the Q. Tellingly, there’ve been no ads promising Freddy’s would remain Freddy’s; just a brief reassuring statement from Meyer management. But with seemingly everything else getting gentrified these days, I know I’d be afraid of such possible consequences as Ralph Lauren goods taking over the Pant Kingdom department, Smith & Hawken on the hardware shelves, Aveda at the cosmetics racks, Bang & Olufson replacing the Panasonic boom boxes in the Photo & Sound section, or even a wine shelf with F. G. Meyer’s Choice Beaujolais Nouveau.
MEANWHILE, Freddy’s won an appeal earlier this month in its plan to build a big store at the former Leary Way steel-mill site. The neighborhood advocacy group SOIL (Save Our Industrial Land), which seeks to stop the plan, sez it’ll continue appealing in higher courts. It’s not against a Freddy’s in their part of town, just against it at that particular location. Its latest flyer reiterates a suggestion made in an old Misc., that Freddy’s instead take over the ex-Ernst block up the street. (SOIL’s hotline: 789-1010, fax 789-7109.) In other retail-space news…
WATCH THIS SPACE: The former Kid Mohair on Pine will reopen (maybe as soon as this week) as the Baltic Room, a piano bar (with just beer & wine). While a lot of remodeling work has been done, the space still looks largely like its elegant former self. Why’d Mohair go the way of 80 percent of U.S. small businesses? Maybe the “cigar bar” fad passed its peak; maybe the gentlemanly surroundings clashed too much with the loud, uptempo DJ music. Why might the Baltic Room fare better? For one thing, it’s phase three of the Linda’s Tavern/ Capitol Club cartel, forming a veritable market-segmented lineup of not-specifically-gay watering holes on Pine. Imagine Linda’s as the Chevy of the chain, the Capitol as the Caddy, and the Baltic as the lush-yet-comfy Buick. In other entertainment news…
WET & WILD: Scientists in Quebec City have announced an “invisible condom” they hope to market after a couple years of further testing. According to Reuters, it’s a “polymer-based liquid that solidifies into a gel at body temperature,” forming a waterproof film that blocks STD transmission. Inventors say “it can be used without telling the partner who doesn’t want to use a latex condom.” I’m sure even before the thing gets gov’t. approval, test users will quickly find additional fun uses for the stuff, some of which might even involve sex.
CLASS WARS: Amid the controversy regarding Ballard High’s students and staff being shunted from their reconstruction-impaired regular digs to the quite dilapidated Wallingford carcass of the closed-in-’81 Lincoln High, Showtime’s been running Class of 1999, a truly bad B-thriller filmed at Lincoln in 1989. Exec-produced by onetime SIFF co-boss Dan Ireland, this RoboCop ripoff starts with that #1 cliche of bad sci-fi, the present-day trend exaggerated into the future. Teen-gang violence gets so bad by ’99, the opening narration states, that high schools have become total-security compounds with armed robots disguised as teachers. Only some of the robots go schizo and start killing teens, causing the all-white gangstas to retaliate in a predictable orgy of blood and steel limbs. Anybody who saw it (or worked on the crew) could tell Lincoln was perfect as a fictional bombed-out shell of a school, hence a lousy site for a real school.
JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: A kind reader, visiting a local dollar store, found and sent in a package of Smack Ramen, an Asian-style meal in a packet (as made in Costa Mesa, CA). While the name obviously derives from a Japanglish attempt to invoke lip-smackin’ goodness, there is (as is oft the case with Japanglish) an unfortunate double meaning. Is this also the cheapo-meal of choice for those who’ve spent all their money on a certain poppy-derived non-nutritive substance (also Asian-derived)?
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: The second “more-or-less quarterly” issue of Platform, Morgain Cole and Bret Fetzer’s ambitious local theater zine, is now at Seattle theaters and other free drop-off spots. It’s got timely ideas about the organization and financing of local drama troupes, plus a 1983 Richard Nelson essay about the precarious state of “Nonprofit Theater in America.” He said the theater movement was “nearing disaster,” ‘cuz it was “without an adequate sense of tradition or a sense of social responsibility.” The fact that most of Nelson’s arguments could be made today (and are being made today, as in a recent NEA staff report) proves (1) the theater movement’s done a good job of not dying, and (2) how little further than that it’s gotten. (No subscriptions, but info can be had from 313 10th Ave. E, #1, Seattle 98102.)
WORKIN’ IT: The Discover U catalog offered a course two weeks ago on the “Secrets for Making Love Work.” For those of you who couldn’t attend that day or didn’t have the $29 class fee, we hereby offer a few of our own secrets:
I WANNA KNOW: Last month, we asked who you thought had more powers, Sabrina the Teenage Witch or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It wasn’t one of our most popular surveys, but all four respondents agreed: Sabrina. Our next survey: What will ’90s nostalgia look like? Which sights, looks, sounds, and consumer goods will future movies and collectors deem as evoking those silly days of now as A Simpler Time? Submit your suggestions at our new email address, clark@speakeasy.org.
PASSAGE (from Topper author Thorne Smith): “Like life itself, my stories have no point and get absolutly nowhere. And, like life, they are a little mad and purposeless. They resemble those people who watch with placid concentration a steam shovel digging a large hole in the ground. They are almost as purposeless as a dignified commuter shaking an impotent fist after a train he has just missed. They are like the man who dashes madly through traffic only to linger aimlessly on the opposite corner watching a fountain pen being demonatrated in a shop window.”
WELCOME BACK to a return-of-standard-time edition of Misc., the pop-culture column that will miss traded-away Sonics benchwarmer Steve Scheffler. The lovable, lanky Scheffler was an inspiration to everyone who toiled just outside the three-point-arc of fame. He was basketball’s version of St. Bartholemew (the guy in the 12 Apostles who had nothing written about him in the Gospels except his name).
ON THE BUS: Ever feel cramped inside an airplane fuselage? Boeing’s arch rivals at Airbus Industrie have a potential answer, though they’re only promoting it right now as a freight plane. The Airbus Super Transporter, which recently touched town for a promotional event at Boeing Field, is this huge bulbous thing, like a giant Playmobil toy plane; perhaps the most unairworthy-looking thing big engines can push off of the ground. I couldn’t get hold of a picture of it, but it looks almost exactly like the “Thunderbird 2” equipment-transport plane on the classic UK puppet show Thunderbirds. Imagine the kind of interiors you could have built in the thing: Multi-tiered seating, or better yet a multi-level party yacht in the sky, with potential amenities (saunas, beds, live bands) limited only by total weight and power consumption. Just the thing for flying over the International Date Line at the turn of the millennium!
JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: Alien Pops not only come in great flavors like “Watermelon Slice” and “Strawberry Shake,” they’re shaped like your classic bald, bug-eyed, UFO-abduction-story alien heads. Even better, they come from the saucer-sighting capital, Roswell, N.M. Available at Dan & Ray’s in Belltown or by calling (800) 522-5534.
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: XX (Where the Girls Are!), the latest addition to the growing subgenre of local zines proudly billed as “By Women,” is a concise four-tabloid-page monthly newsletter edited by Sandra Faucett and Cresentia Jenkins, focusing on event listings of interest to third-wave (or is it third-and-a-half wave?) feminists of varying sorts. Issue #1focuses on women’s basketball with Seattle Reign game dates and trivia. There’s also a review of ex-local writer Natalie Jacobsen‘s book No Forwarding Address and breast-cancer-info Web links. At the usual drop-off spots, by mail (at P.O. Box 20834, Seattle 98102), or online (www.yin.org). In a somewhat different vision of feminine “empowerment”…
THE POLITICAL SPECTACLE: I’d long wondered when the three not-all-that-compatible branches of Republican ideology (unfettered capitalism; moral prudery; anti-governmental ranting) would stumble apart on an issue. It might be happening in the newly-incorporated suburb of Shoreline, directly north of Seattle. There, managers and staff of the Sugar’s strip club are circulating petitions on an initiative that, if it makes the ballot and passes, would change the new town’s set-up to add an additional layer of bureaucracy. Sugar’s management openly says it wants a government less capable of restricting operations at the club (known as among the raunchiest table-dance joints in the state), and believes a more cumbersome municipal organization would be more likely to leave the place alone. In other words, less governance via more government. (But then again, the exotic-dance biz has always known about less equalling more.)
Anyhow, the initiative’s chances of success are questionable. The Sugar’s people (most of whom, along with most of the club’s clientele, live outside Shoreline) have done a good job of publicizing their effort, but have done a poor job of communicating how their proposed governmental change would benefit the suburb’s 5,000 residents. Still, it’s interesting to see the sex industry reaching out for public support, instead of just lobbying politicians and suing in courts to defend its right to exist. Club managers are betting that commercial pseudo-sex has become mainstream enough that Shoreline voters will actively agree to help the club stay in business. After all, it’s not like they’re a sports team demanding a subsidized arena or a department store demanding a pedestrian park be sliced in two.
WORD-O-THE-WEEK: “Abulia.”
(This week’s reader question: Who has more powers, Sabrina the Teenage Witch or Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Respond at clark@speakeasy.org, our new email home. Thanx.)
BILL OF `RIGHTS’: It’s official. The catch phrase of mid-1997 is “right on.” But not the assertive, exclaimatory ’70s “Right On Brother!” like you might have heard from Richard Pryor or Bill Cosby in Uptown Saturday Night. No, this contemporary version’s a quick, perfunctory expression, dropping and then suddenly rising in tone to make the two syllables sound like three. It’s less of a commanding statement, almost like a question: “Right o-on?” I’ve heard it all over town in the last month: on buses, in clubs, at street fairs, in theaters, in convenience stores. People who claim to be in the know tell me it started either with the snowboard crowd or the young-adult backpacking crowd, then spread to the general bar-and-coffeehouse populace, until it finally reached local ubiquity this season. Speaking of the neo-jock crowd…
JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK #1: That chocolate-goo candy in a modified toothpaste tube I reported on a year or so ago has been reincarnated with a supposedly practical purpose. Clif Chocolate Peanut Shot (“The Natural Energy Burst”) is apparently popular among bicycle marathoners and “X-treme” sports enthusiasts. It’s billed on its tube as “an easy to digest, high-energy food” for folks on the run (literally; the tube’s front shows a sprinter crouching at the starting blocks). It’s made with rice syrup, peanut flour, cocoa powder, ginseng, and salt. As for the taste, imagine a combo of Nestlé’s Quik powder, creamy peanut butter, and a touch of Vegemite (that Aussie yeast-extract sandwich spread). Speaking of odd edibles…
JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK #2: Burger King’s Land before Time “Dino Tenders” are chicken patties formed in vaguely dinosaur-esque shapes. There’s something odd (yet not as disconcerting as one might expect) about meat pieces flaked apart to the point that they don’t look anymore like pieces from an animal, then re-shaped to look like another (albeit guilt-free-because-extinct) animal. Speaking of species whose time has gone…
BOXING DAY: It’s been nearly four years since the last CD “long boxes” were in stores; surprisingly, I still haven’t seen a significant collector/ speculator market for them (maybe there is one and I’ve just missed it). Anyhow, let’s next see if we can dump the CD jewel box. It’s always a bother trying to take the insert out of those plastic tabs; and those hinge thingies never, ever last. For years, many European record labels have used cardboard CD sleeves with plastic disc holders and paper booklets glued on inside. American labels have traditionally balked at this format, not so much because of cost as because of production flexibility. It’s quick ‘n’ easy to run off those paper front sheets and cardboard back sheets, in any quantity desired, to be stuck into pre-made jewel boxes; while the Euro system (sometimes known by the trademark “Digipak”) adds a few extra steps of assembly work at the time of duplication.
But now there’s really no more excuse.
Several recent releases (from the major-label Minus Five disc to the very indie compilation Big Choice) have proven that even without the plastic disc holder, the ol’ miniature LP-style cardboard sleeve’s snazzier and more convenient. These plasticless sleeves are simple die-cut and glued jobs, as efficient to make as the sleeves for those freebie America Online CD-ROMs attached to computer magazines. Sure they bend, fold, and mutilate under the right level of mishandling, but that only means the package’s no longer in “mint” condition; the disc itself’s still fine. Asking record labels to make more plasticless CD sleeves might not save that much petrochemical product in the long run, but it’d certainly make CD buying a lot cooler and CD handling a lot easier. Speaking of enhancing one’s media experiences…
BOOK ‘EM: I know summer’s already way underway (at least according to the calendar), but it’s never too late to start getting literized. In that spirit, the first Misc. (mid)summer reading list will appear here in two weeks. Send your nominated titles now (remember, only specific individual selections, not “anything by so-and-so”) to clark@speakeasy.org. Hey, if Oprah can do it…
I KNOW IT’S PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE, but here’s my fantasy: We move the now-surplused Kingdome to the Interbay landfill, then turn it into a community of tomorrow. In the stands: moderately priced housing, artists’ studios, offices, and light-industrial work spaces. In the corridors: tasty brewpubs and burger stands, charter schools, and convenient shops. On the playing field: a combo park, playfield, bazaar, and art/ performance space. At least let’s dismantle and rebuild the Dome’s prefab pavilion annex for a year-round street fair, complete with food and merchandise booths, exhibits, and an all-ages music club. The gracefully-curved pavilion looks too neat (like an inner hallway in some giant space station) to just trash.
UPDATE: The bike-messenger zine Iron Lung, mentioned here in May, has a new address: c/o Stephanie Ehlinger, 1719 E. Spring St. #104, Seattle 98122.
JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: PMS Crunch, from a Scarsdale, NY outfit called “Time of the Month Inc.,” claims in food-trade magazine ads to be “the perfect combination of salty and sweet–the taste and the gift that’s always in season.” The can promises “Chocolate, Nuts, and More Chocolate.” Its primary slogan: “The Best Snack… Period!” (Wholesale orders can be obtained at 1-800-PMS-44ME.)
NEWS YOU CAN ABUSE: I got some decidedly mixed messages from those huge newspaper ads for the Fox News Channel. I couldn’t tell whether the ads’ incessant insistance on fair, unbiased reporting on the channel is meant to trash CNN (which Fox proprietor Rupert Murdoch has previously, and falsely, accused of liberal bias) or to appease viewers apprehensive about the conservative bias of other Murdoch properties (most infamously, the New York Post and London Sun).
In any event, I’m intrigued by the notion of a news source with more nuts-‘n’-bolts info and less mealy-mouthed “analysis.” Of course, that’s not what Fox News gives you. That’d require more people and money than a startup cable channel’s gonna have (even one with Murdoch’s dough). Instead, you get hour upon hour of talking-head interviews and pontification, officially “unbiased” ‘cuz the opinionating’s done by the guests, not the hosts. This is augmented during daytime hours by functional but unremarkable top-of-the-hour news briefs.
FRAG-MENTATION: The other day I was talking with a musician who said her all-time favorite childhood memories included Fraggle Rock, Jim Henson’s Canadian-produced ’80s puppet series. The more she triggered my own memories, the more the show seemed a metaphor for the precarious existence of the would-be “alternative” artist or intellectual in our day and age. If you stay where you are, you can be safe and happy, working and playing and having funny misadventures with your own kind, but at the cost of ireversibly depleting the one resource that sustains you (the rock/ the safety of your subculture). Leave in one direction, and you end up in a smotheringly bourgeois purgatory (the handyman’s shop/ middle-class satiety). Leave in another direction, and you risk more directly hostile forces (the Fraggle-eating monster boy/ censorious conservatives). In the show’s final episode, the Fraggles found a solution to their dilemma by tunnelling to a new home. Perhaps we all need to (at least metaphorically) find our way toward a new premise for our lives and work.
THE INSANITY CONTINUES: I don’t care how the Camlin Hotel’s new owners redevelop the rest of the hotel’s block (now just parking and a motor-hotel annex). And if they must upscalize the hotel rooms, the rest of us will just have to find another site for our wedding receptions and/or just-divorced parties. But the plan to replace the venerable Cloud Room with luxury penthouse suites simply must be stopped. I don’t know how, but it must.
At a time when prefab retro-cocktail hangouts and stinky “cigar bars” are sprouting all over, we mustn’t lose one of the last real, un-“restored” martini emporia. I’m sure the Camlin-block development will still be plenty profitable with an intact Cloud Room. I suggest you go there at every opportunity in the coming weeks, and let it be known (both in the lounge and at the front desk) you love the joint and seek the chance to keep going there in the future.
HERE AT MISC., we continue to view with bemusement the twists of fate regarding our allegedly post-print-media era. Blockbuster Music on Lower Queen Anne now has huge window posters announcing “We Now Sell Books!” Amazon.Com Books’ stock sale is a big hit, despite the outfit’s lack of profits to date. Book superstore chains haven’t yet led to increased overall book sales (certainly not compared to all the increased retail square footage now devoted to books), but they’ve shaken up a hidebound industry and just might lead to the end of the bestseller mentality (it’s already happening in the record biz, with the same sales dollars now spread among many more releases).
And by the end of this month, local TV newscasts (not counting Northwest Cable News) will drop from a total of 13 hours per weekday (including two hours of 7 Live) down to 8.5, due to the second realignment of station ownership in two years and the return of CBS shows to KIRO. The decimation of the KSTW news operation (and smaller cutbacks at KIRO) leave some 58 station employees on the unemployment rolls. I can see it now: Blow-dried reporters on the sidewalk, in trenchcoats with white spots where station-logo patches used to be, holding up signs (printed on the backs of old cue cards) reading WILL COVER CAR CRASHES FOR FOOD.
UPDATE #1: Virtual i-O, local makers of the Virtual i-Glasses video headsets discussed here a few months back, has gone under. The headsets were cute and offered an intimate viewer-image experience, but (according to a Puget Sound Biz Journal piece) the company couldn’t get the quality and reliability up and the price down before it ran out of funds. TCI, the company’s leading investor/creditor, now owns the rights to the technology.
UPDATE #2: The coffeehouse cereal fad quietly faded like a soggy bowl of Total. The espresso corner in the U District’s Red Light clothing store’s dropped its cereal selections; the downtown Gee Whiz cafe’s cut its own golden-bowl offerings down to a few top-rated brands.
ON THE RACKS #1: We’re still trying to make sense of People magazine’s “Sexy Moms” cover last month. They’re surprised moms can have sex appeal? The mag’s editors, like many Americans, must not realize that most people who have children have had sex first. And many of them even liked it.
ON THE RACKS #2: It’s been a quasi-frustratin’ year for this lover of obscure magazines, with the demise of the YNOT and ALFI stapled-goodie emporia. At least there’s the U-Village Barnes & Noble, where you can still get British Cosmopolitan, perhaps the sluttiest mainstream commercial women’s magazine published in the English language. Sample articles include “Why Bitches Get All the Best Men” and “The Single Woman’s Guide to the Men of Europe” (the latter complete with jokes about Bratwurst and “Nor-Dicks”). But the articles are just warm-ups for the little ads in the back of the book: phone astrology lines, phone sex lines for women, and more before-and-after implant photographs than you’d ever ever expect in the same mag with workplace-equality and anti-harassment essays in the front.
JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: Want more proof computer geeks are the new idols? Just examine the new Think! brand “Proactive Energy” bar, using the old IBM slogan for its name and a Mac screen window on its label. Makers “Ph.D–Personal Health Development,” list a website (www.thinkproducts.com) but give no FDA-required city-state address (the website lists it as in Ventura, CA). It’s your basic exercise/ diet energy-bar thang, a fudgy-mediciny goo with a thin chocolaty coating. Mixed up in there are ginkgo biloba, choline, “complex peanut protein,” vitamins, herbs, and amino acids. It claims to “enhance the performance of your mind by promoting concentration, calmness, and stamina” if you eat one with water “30 minutes before using your brain.” But you ask, does it work? This column was written on one. Can you tell any difference?
THE MAILBAG: Reader Larry Gilbert has additional info about our all-time favorite soft drink ingredient, glycerol ester of wood rosin: “When I last read up on it, I learned it’s added to citrus-juice-based sodas as an emulsifier, to keep the citrus oils from separating. Most soda makers think it’s undesirable to have a carbonated drink that has to be shaken up. (Orangina is a notable exception. Track it down at QFC sometime, and note the `gently shake’ direction on the can.)”
BETTING AGAINST THE HOUSE: This guy in the north end has this home he’s willing to sell for a mere $1,000 or so. All you have to do to qualify, according to the large print on the forms you get when you follow signs to the place on weekends, is write a winning essay about the American court system. But then you read the fine print on the form and it turns out there’s also a $99 “credit check” fee required from all entrants, refundable only if fewer than 2,700 entries are received (in which case the essay-contest shtick will be dropped and the house will be offered to regular brokers). While it may be within the letter of the law distinguishing legal contests from illegal private lotteries (one area where the state doesn’t want private competition), you can still experience the warm thrill of helping someone else achieve his or her dream home, for far less than one month’s payment on the place you’re living in now.
LO-DEFINITION TV: TCI Cable, still in its long-delayed replacement of low-capacity cable lines in Seattle (promised “next year” for the past few years and required by its city contract to be done by 1/99), will at least get new digital transmission equipment and new home cable boxes soon. No word yet when we’ll get it; national TCI HQ sez “most” of its local systems will switch within the year. Finally, after being stuck all these years with a mere 40 channels, you might get something close to the 500 channels promised long ago by TCI bossman John Malone.
There’s a catch, of course. As anybody who’s worked with computer graphics knows, digital images can be compressed and transmitted at a vast range of levels, from the super-hi-res rates sometimes called “high definition TV” to the super-lo-res rates of Internet movie clips. According to an NY Times story, TCI plans to squeeze 12 digital channels onto the bandwidth it now uses for one old-style analog TV channel. Each of these new channels will have half the image detail of a current analog broadcast or cable channel. (If you’re squinting to follow a baseball game on a big-screen TV now, just wait!) TCI insists most viewers won’t notice the difference. But if they’re smart, they’ll equip these new cable boxes for variable compression-rate reception. That way, they can get away with videocassette-quality images for, say, BioDome reruns on Showtime, but still provide the ultra-sharpness for High Noon on AMC.
ONE-POINT-FIVE CHEERS: It took a bit, but I decided I support the Paul Allen football stadium scheme. It’s not just to infuriate all my conformist-nonconformist pals on Capitol Hill, who seem to hate pro football even more than they hate TV or the popular religions. (Maybe they’re still in rebellion against the jocks who were mean to ’em in high school.) Here are my reasons: 1) If Allen’s gonna spend his middle age commissioning monuments to himself and his relatives (a UW gallery and library, the Experience Music Project, the twice-aborted Seattle Commons, a big Renton office park, that private home in the San Juans where a summer camp used to be), one of these monuments might as well be one where soccer games and the Boat Show can happen. 2) The financing scheme’s less onerous than it could’ve been, and less than the baseball stadium’s tax plan is. The existing hotel-motel tax will run a few more years, and stadium contractors won’t have to pay sales tax on their concrete. 3) I happen to like watching football, if the price is right and if it’s at least a team of lovable losers like the Hawks. So there.
MISC., YOUR LOCAL non-hiking column, is downright disappointed Washington won’t impose a sports logo tax to help pay for one of Paul Allen’s construction megaprojects. It would’ve been so neat to see people “vote with their pocketbook” and not pay the extra 50 cents or so for the right symbol on their shirts, jackets, duffel bags, etc. Judges would have had to somberly decide whether a cap with Mariner-like colors and the initial “S” really was a Mariners cap. Niketown would have sold T-shirts promoting Michael Jordan only as a cartoon movie star.
THE DESTRUCTION CONTINUES: Little-noticed amid the end of Cyclops was the simultaneous demise of another Belltown eatery, the somewhat more working-class My Suzie’s (successor to the legendary Trade Winds). Its ambience could go from rough-‘n’-tumble to retro-lounge to soul-revival on successive nights. Its closure, allegedly at the pushing of the ex-Sailors Union of the Pacific building’s new owners, makes non-hoity-toity downtown gathering places an even more endangered species. How long will the remaining five or six spots of this type hold on?
JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: Darn, I hope us Americans can soon get to taste Wacky Vegi brand vegetables. The latest thing in England, these are bags of frozen corn, baby carrots, peas, cauliflower, specially coated with chocolate, pizza, baked-bean, and cheese & onion flavors! Their manufacturer was convinced to launch them by an anti-cancer awareness group, willing to try desperate measures to get more Brit kids to eat their veggies. (Hey, anything would be more appealing than traditional English overboiled food, right?) Speaking of grocery wonders…
IN THE BAG: By the time this comes out, QFC should’ve opened its big new store on Capitol Hill and finished branding its own identity on Wallingford’s once-feisty Food Giant. The new Capitol Hill store was originally to have been a Larry’s Market, but QFC outbid Larry’s at the last minute. (If the retail development had gone as originally planned, we would’ve had Larry just a block away from Moe!) Meanwhile, a strip-mall QFC’s under construction in the formerly rural Snohomish County environs of my childhood, bringing 24-hour, full shopping convenience to a place where a kid used to have to go two miles just to reach a gas station that sold candy bars on the side.
These openings represent small steps in a chain that’s gone in 40 years from a single store on Roosevelt in ’58 (still open) to 15 stores in the mid-’70s (including five taken over when A&P retreated from its last Pacific stores) to 142 stores in Washington and California today. It’s rapidly expanded in the past decade, even as many larger chains retreated from neighborhoods and whole regions. (The once-mighty A&P name now stands over only 675 stores, down from 5,000 in the early ’60s.)
While the new store isn’t QFC’s biggest (that’s the Kmart-sized U Village behemoth), it’s still a useful 45,000-square-foot object lesson in the economics of the foodbiz. The first real supermarkets, in the ’30s, were as small as the First Hill Shop-Rite. New supermarkets kept getting built bigger and bigger ever since, in stages. QFC was relatively late at building ’em huge; in the early ’80s, it proudly advertised how convenient and easy-to-navigate its 15,000-square-foot stores were compared to the big ‘uns Safeway and Albertsons were then building in the suburbs.
Grocery retailing’s a notoriously small-profit-margin business. The profits come from volume, from higher-margin side businesses (wine, deli, in-store bakery), and from gaining the resources to muscle in on wholesaling and processing. QFC started as a Thriftway franchise, part of the Associated Grocers consortium. AG’s one reason indie supermarkets can survive in Washington; it gives individual-store owners and small chains a share in the wholesaler’s piece of the grocery dollar.
What QFC pioneered, and others like Larry’s and the Queen Anne Thriftway have since further exploited, is a “quality” store image. The idea’s that if your store’s known for “better” items and service, you can retreat a little from cutthroat price competition (i.e., charge more). From the Husky-color signs to the old Q-head cartoon mascot (designed by ex-KING weatherman Bob Cram) to the “QFC-Thru” plastic meat trays, every visible aspect of the store’s designed to say “Hey this ain’t no everyday corn-flake emporium.”
Of course, now with everybody in the biz trying to similarly fancy themselves, QFC still has to keep prices in line with the other guys, at least on the advertised staple goods. But it remains a leader in the game of wholesome-yet-upscale brand identity, a shtick most of the now-famous chain retailers from Seattle have adopted; indeed, an image the city itself has tried to impose upon us all.
WELCOME TO A MAY-DAY MISC., the pop-culture column that believes if the Seahawks had been even half as incessant on the field as their pseudo-grassroots fan group has been in the political arena, the team would never have gotten into its current mess.
THE FINE PRINT (on separate sides of a King Edward Cigar box): “These cigars are predominantly natural tobacco with non-tobacco ingredients added”; “This Product contains/ produces chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, and birth defects or other reproductive harm”; “A Great American Custom: Ask for King Edward Birth Announcement Cigars.”
JUNK FOOD OF THE WEEK: They’re billed as “Seattle’s Original,” despite actually coming from Darkest Bothell. Despite this labeling inaccuracy, Frutta Italian Sodas do have a certain bite all their own, combining assorted fruit and “cream” (vanilla) flavors with my personal all-time favorite soda ingredient, glycerol ester of wood rosin (it’s a thickening agent that gives fruit-flavored pop a “mouthfeel” more like that of real juice). At hipper convenience stores near you.
LOCAL PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK: Iron Lung is Stephanie Ehlinger’s conversation and information zine for the bike-messenger community. Issue #2 includes a historical account of the Critical Mass rides, first-person stories of weirder-than-normal messenging runs, and an ad for a bicycle-injury attorney. Free at Linda’s and other outlets, or pay-what-you-can to 924 16th Ave., #204, Seattle 98122,
LIKE SWEEPS WEEKS ON THE SOAPS, real life often brings short fits of big changes in between long stretches of stasis. This might be one of those times, at least locally. First, Rice sez he won’t run for mayor again, opening up at least the possibility of a City Hall not completely owned by megaproject developers. Second, the Weekly, 21-year voice of the insider clique that gave us Rice, gets sold.
Third and least publicized of the trends, Nordstrom announces a flattening of its previously rapid sales-growth trend. Since the ’70s, Nordy’s has personified the philosophy of upscale-boomer consumerism and the aesthetic of obsessive blandness cultivated by the Rice administration, the Weekly, and other insider institutions. It’s the centerpiece of Rice’s whole downtown plan, as this paper has previously documented. Nordy’s troubles are partly due to national shopping trends away from the mainstreamed wares of department stores and mall shops, toward specialty boutiques and discounters. But I’d like to think this was also affected by changing customer tastes, away from the tired retrowear pushed lately by Nordy’s (and by corporate fashion in general). But industry trend-proclaimers insist retro’s still the way to go. For this fall, they’re planning to succeed the ugly-but-spirited ’70s revival with an ’80s power-suit revival. Everything you hated about Reagan-era dressing is slated to come back, from Dress for Success pomposity to women’s “menswear” with shoulder pads almost suitable for playing football in. I’m confident this won’t be nearly as popular as its pushers want it to be. What remains to be seen is how far down this gap between sellers’ and buyers’ tastes will drag Nordy’s and other companies.
It’s easy to tell why the industry loves the looks of the ’70s and early ’80s. They represent a time before DIY culture really took off, a time when a fashion industry at its peak of power felt it could dictate trends which the nation’s shoppers would ecstatically obey, no matter how homely or depersonalized. Similarly, Nordstrom’s business strategy has been heavily predicated on wringing sweetheart deals from cities and mall landlords. But with neighborhood and strip-mall shops now drawing business away from big malls, and online shopping arriving any year now, high-profile locations aren’t going to be as important. Nordy’s collection-of-shops store layout might help it weather this sea change into a post-mass-market era, if it doesn’t get caught up in trying to preserve a passing status quo.
‘TIL NEXT TIME, stock up on dented cans of marischino cherries at the Liquidator’s Outlet store in the old Sears basement, check out the new Tube Top record (splendiforously fresh!), and ponder these words attributed to Lilian Helman: “If I had to give young writers advice, I’d say don’t listen to writers talking about writing.”
