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The new broadsheet MISC magazine was the official last publication produced at the Belltown facility of Pacific Publishing (formerly Murray Publishing, formerly News Publishing). It was pasted up there this morning, following a frustrating weekend during which at least five oh-so-kind Kinko’s employees futilely attempted to push my QuarkXPress pages through their oversize laser printer. Finally, the pages had to be “tiled” on a regular size laser printer and manually pasted together. But it’s all done now, and the mags should be at an outlet near you this week. And for those of you in Seattle, it’s a freebie again.
MUCH MERCH: A new MISC logo merchandise page will appear on this site later this week. First to be offered: The usual T-shirts, tank tops, mouse pads, and mugs. Coming soon thereafter: Postcards and a 2002 calendar based on our photojournalistic works. Watch this space for further particulars.
The new MISC magazine goes to the printer today. And it’s a beaut, if I do say so myself. Just gorgeous. You gotta get one. Seriously.
There’s a release party for it Sat., Aug. 11, 5-8 p.m. at the Belltown Underground Art Gallery, 2211 1st Ave. (where our photo exhibit is still up by popular demand). Be there or be… well, you know.
LESS ARTIFICE, MORE INTELLIGENCE: Here’s the haunting original short-short story behind the bloated blockbuster movie A.I.
The luscious new MISC print publication is progressing amazingly. (Except for ad sales–if you’ve got a small business or just something to sell, email for the pertinent particulars on the investment opportunity of a lifetime or at least of a half-life). We’re getting 11 great pieces of writing and art from some of Seattle’s wryest writers, in addition to a score of my own little pieces. Art director Sean Hurley is finishing up some smashing illos. It should all be ready on 8/1; to be followed by the second issue the third week of Oct. Subscribe now to make sure you get yours.
BUMPER STICKER OF THE MONTH: “Re-elect Gore 2004.”
For a freelance project, I’m after tales of wild living and financial/business excess during those wacky, never-to-be-forgotten days of the late ’90s. Insane real estate deals; folks blowing stock-option money they never tangibly had on cars, trips, or plastic surgery; bizarre tech-company office pranks and perks; cyber-libertarians and cyber-libertines. Send ’em all to clark@speakeasy.org.
‘PRESS’ CLIPPED: The North Seattle Press, “Seattle’s Bi-Weekly Urban Journal,” ran out of money and ceased publication after 16 years and at least three sets of owners. It was a feisty little rag that crammed its small editorial holes (as few as five non-ad tabloid pages) with personality and spunk.
ELSEWHERE:
Somebody who took that 1997 “bosom for a pillow” song lyric literally.
“Experts: Birds are imitating cell phones…”
Over the past six months, I’ve shot pictures for our upcoming book City Light all over Our Formerly-Fair City, from Rainier Beach to Carkeek Park and from White Center to Lake City. Almost everybody I’ve talked to on my rounds loves the book idea.
Only a few, mild, expressions of disapproval have been given–a mall cop perturbed when I started snapping inside Northgate’s parking lot, a couple of guys walking out of a tavern who thought I was a private eye hired by their wives, stuff like that.
OK, there was the day at Lake View Cemetery when I did the requisite gravesite tour (Bruce Lee, Doc Maynard, the Blethens, etc.) when a tall man with rasta hair boomed at me in a revival-preacher’s voice: “Your pictures will never develop, because your heart is not pure!”
But a more direct verbal attack came yesterday. I was shooting away on the sunny shores of Lake Washington, at Mt. Baker beach, when a 40-ish lady strode up defiantly and sternly yelled, “You shouldn’t ever do that!”
She’d decided that I wasn’t taking scenic shots with comparatively small, faceless figures in them, but was really doing secret close-ups of young children, and refused to believe my denials.
“Don’t you know,” she scowled, “that the classic profile of a pedophile is a man, alone, taking pictures of other people’s kids? Should I call the P.D. right now or what?”
I offered to show her the digital images I’d captured thus far, images with nothing more than tiny, shadowy silhouettes of kid and adult sunbathers against the bright vastness of lake and sky. She refused. I offered to hit the delete button on everything I’d taken at that site. She just repeated her “classic profile” speech. She stormed off to join two other women; I walked off toward my next shooting site of the afternoon, the Colman Park P-Patch.
She was right to care about children. She was wrong about me. And she’s wrong to imagine the worst in other people. I could have told her that she, as a black woman, might have a little more sympathy for folks being unfairly “profiled,” but I didn’t. I could have also told her of at least two other still photographers who were in the vicinity of the beach whom I hadn’t seen her go after, but I didn’t.
Instead, I went along my rounds worried about what might happen if I were somehow arrested on suspicion and had my images searched for material someone could misinterpret to determine what sex-and-power kinks I might have. Would pictures of tunnels and underpasses mean I was straight? Would images of construction cranes mean I was gay? Would images from Woodland Park Zoo mean I was into bestiality? Would a scene of the Safeco Field roof sliding open mean I was a flasher? Would those gravesite shots imply necrophilia?
And what would a law-enforcement profiler think of my shot of the “golf ball” radar tower at Discovery Park in a rainstorm?
AFTER WEEKS, nay months, of threatening to do this, I’ve finally moved the main page of yr. luscious online column to that increasingly popular “weblog” format. This should liven things up a bit, by reviving the hodgepodge of topics and item lengths that characterized the original MISC. print column in its various incarnations.
Since the beginning of this year, the online column had become more of a chore to write every day. While I’d once kept two or even three weeks ahead of my self-imposed deadlines, lately I found myself staying up late trying to find something to say that night that would fit my self-imposed format of 300-800 words a day on one topic.
And I knew if it was less fun for me to write, it would (at least gradually) become less fun for you to read.
I don’t know how it’ll evolve from here, but I know it should be an exciting ride.
AS FOR THE OTHER HALF of this site, the MISCmedia print mag, the last photocopy-zine issue will be out in two weeks. Some design consultants and I are toying with three possibilities for the new print format–a slick magazine, a paperback “literary joural” thang, and a giant broadsheet (i.e., daily-newspaper size) paper. More info will appear in time.
If you’ve any suggestions of your own, email me. When you do, lemme know if it’s OK to quote your message on the site. We’re discontinuing the separare discussion-board pages, which have seriously ebbed and flowed in activity.
AND THE BIG ART OPENING Saturday night was a blast. Folks loved my pix, drank wine, snacked on Tostitos and Belgian gourmet cookies, and had many enjoyable chats with one another.
My exhibition of vivid color photos is still up through July 5 at the Belltown Underground Art Gallery, 2211 1st Ave. in Seattle (just north of the Frontier Room), 10 am-4 pm Mon.-Sat.
A MONTH AGO, we began a countdown to the gigantic MISCmedia 15th Anniversary celebratory fete on June 2 (details at the left side of this virtual page), with a glimpse of the art show that’ll be part of the festivity–randomly-ordered pix of every home yr. web-pal had lived in. Today, some more.
#14: 4533 9th Avenue NE. A small, cruddy room in the basement of a small, cruddy house in the U District. Occupied March-April 1982.
Following my winter’s exile in Ballard, I returned to the local Ground Zero of ultra-cheap ex-student housing. My room was the one with the window seen in the bottom left corner of this picture. It was the room’s only window. I shared the kitchen and bathroom with the owner and his sons, who lived in the rest of the basement. The main floor was rented out to four lesbians who played Frank Sinatra records at full blast.
The week after I moved in, a “For Sale” sign appeared on the front lawn. The owner assured me that day that I wouldn’t have to leave. The lesbians and I were evicted three weeks later.
After I moved (to a commercial rooming house), I learned that author Thomas Pynchon may have lived there while working as a Boeing technical writer and starting his first novel V.
NEXT: Another entry in this series.
“WORDS: WHO NEEDS ‘EM?”
Says Word Culture “Passe;” Excited by Switch to Images
SEATTLE (May 3): Declaring the written word “a passe institution,” longtime Seattle writer Clark Humphrey has announced he’s changing careers to become a documentary photographer.
He’s holding a coming-out party for his vivid color images, titled Words: Who Needs ‘Em?, on Saturday, June 2, 7-9 p.m. at the Belltown Underground Gallery, 2211 First Avenue in Seattle (north of the Frontier Room).
The event will be held on the 15th anniversary of Humphrey’s original “MISC.” column in the old Belltown-based monthly Arts Focus (it later appeared for seven years in The Stranger). The exhibit will remain on display through July 5.
A professional writer for nearly 20 years, Humphrey wrote Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story, still the most complete account ever written about the early-’90s “Seattle Music Scene” hoopla. In addition to his Stranger tenure, his material has appeared in The Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, Seattle magazine, Washington Law & Politics, The Comics Journal, Tower Records Pulse!, Penthouse Hot Talk, and The Washington Post Book World.
He continues to contribute a biweekly column and crossword puzzle to Tablet, a new alternative arts tabloid. He also maintains an ongoing “online column” at www.miscmedia.com; and for the past year and a half has published MISCmedia magazine, a print version of the website.
But his future projects (books, exhibitions, and a revised print magazine), several of which will be previewed at Words: Who Needs ‘Em?, will all involve original photographs and art in one form or another.
Why the switch? After losing a dot-com crossword-writing gig, Humphrey trolled around for writing assignments and found the trough crowded by laid-off web writers. Realizing the online fad (email, chat rooms, personal web sites, etc. etc.) had reinvigorated written-word culture to the point of decimating it as a career profession, he turned to the not yet totally demystified world of visual images.
“Everybody’s writing these days,” Humphrey said. “Or, rather, everybody thinks they can write.”
At the show, Humphrey will offer previews of one upcoming book and two larger-scale exhibitions:
In addition to the Belltown Underground Gallery, the Belltown Underground space also houses the Ola Wyola Boutique, the Belltown Ballet and Conditioning Studio, and Internet radio station Belltunes.com.
Exhibit of new color photographs by Clark Humphrey
OPENING: Saturday, June 2, 2001, 7-9 p.m. (free admission, all ages)
ON DISPLAY UNTIL: July 5, 2001
AT: Belltown Underground Art Gallery, 2211 First Avenue, Seattle WA 98121
INFO: (206) 448-3325
NEXT: How I noted the seventh anniversary of the Cobain tragedy.
YOU SIMPLY MUST GET Some People Can’t Surf: The Graphic Design of Art Chantry.
This handsome full-color volume, curated and narrated by Julie Lasky, gathers the best posters, album covers, ads, logos, magazine covers, and other assorted graphic creations produced from 1978 to 2000 by Chantry, the king of Seattle designers (until he followed a girlfriend’s career move to St. Louis).
Lasky thoroughly chronicles Chantry’s various “periods” or subgenres of retro design–Sub Pop, Estrus, the Rocket, theatrical work, slick posters, cheap posters, copies of sleazy-mag back-cover ads, copies of tool catalogs, copies of circus posters, copies of retro-smut, and, oh yeah, the four or five books he designed, including mine. No amount of thanks I can ever give will be enough for the work he did on Loser (which gets its due as a piece of Chantry’s oevure in Lasky’s book).
When Chantry held his leaving-town bash at the new Cyclops back in March 2000, he gave me the usual rant people were giving in those pre-NASDAQ-crash weeks about the dot-com invasion having finally sealed the ultimate triumph of the gentrifiers over the humble, funky li’l Seattle we’d known and loved (even though he’d complained as much as anybody about the town’s supposed lack of opportunities and urban sophistication back in the old days).
But it wasn’t just the destruction of artist housing and funky spaces, or the increase in arrogant cell-phone yappers, that he hated about the alleged Internet Revolution.
He was a lo-tech guy, in both his aesthetic styles and his working techniques. The text of Loser was desktop-published, but the 1,000-or-so images and the chapter headings were all pasted-up by hand, and all the photos were screened on a real stat camera. He despised the soulless perfection and numbing slickness he saw in digital graphics.
Nowadays, with KCMU in Paul Allen’s clutches and The Rocket and Moe and the OK Hotel gone, but also with clubs slowly getting back to booking more live bands instead of soundalike techno nights, and with retro-industrialism so beloved in PoMo architecture (plate glass, thin wires, exposed duct work), I have one thing to say to Art:
It’s OK now. Really. Things are getting better; that is to say, Seattle’s feeling comfortably depressed again. The dot-comers are on the run. Everybody’s sick of virtual reality. Real objects, real passions, and real life are back in vogue.
You can come back now.
NEXT: George W. Bush and Don De Lillo.
ALL WEEK LONG, we’ve been preparing for the huge MISCmedia 15th Anniversary gala (June 2, mark your calendars now), with pieces of the art show that’ll be part of it–randomly-ordered pix of every home yr. web-mate’s ever lived in. Today, the last such installment for now.
#20: Ellis Court, 2510 Western Ave. A clean, decent, well-maintained studio apartment in a building protected from excess rent inflation. Occupied September 1991-August 2000.
It was a moderate-income building, originally built so the developer could get permission to condo-convert some other existing building. It had been a druggie haven before I’d moved in; but within weeks of my arrival, half the units on my floor were sporting door-posted eviction notices. That didn’t stop guys from buzzing my door buzzer all night long, looking for whoever had preceded me.
Other things that happened in September 1991: Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten were released, KNDD went on the air, and the first Stranger came out. I saw all of these as vindications of my long-held aesthetic convictions.
Months after I moved in, the building was taken over by the semi-subsidized Housing Resources Group. This meant in the nine years I lived in Belltown, my rent rose 20 percent while that of the tenants in most nearby buildings at least doubled.
Things that left Belltown in those years: The Dog House and (original) Cyclops restaurants, the SCUD and 66 Bell art studios, The Rocket, the Belltown Dispatch.
Things that showed up in Belltown in those years: The Crocodile, Sit & Spin, the (new) Cyclops, the Speakeasy, the Lava Lounge, Shorty’s, dozens of restaurants I couldn’t afford, hundreds of condos I couldn’t afford (including new buildings on both sides of Ellis Court).
Things that showed up in Belltown and later left: The Weathered Wall, the Center on Contemporary Art, assorted dot-com and day-trading offices.
Weeks after I left, Ellis Court was subjected to a thorough structural reworking, including the removal of all exterior surfaces for replacement with less-leaky materials. The project is still underway at the time I write this. (Yes, I still didn’t get my cleaning deposit back.)
NEXT: Tulipomania redux.
>MONDAY, TUESDAY, AND YESTERDAY, we’ve been counting down to the huge MISCmedia 15th Anniversary gala (June 2, mark your calendars now), with a glimpse of the art show that’ll be part of the festivity–randomly-ordered pix of every home yr. web-pal had lived in. Today, another.
#17: The Towne Apartments, 1414 12th Ave. A cheap, spacious studio in a dingy, crime-ridden building. Occupied January-May 1984.
After an apartment-sitting gig ended prematurely (the guy I was sitting for decided not to finish his year-long exploration of G.I. Gurdjieff’s philosophies), I had to find a place quickly. As was usual for me at the time, the place had to be cheap. The Towne appeared to fit the bill, on the basis of a quick tour escorted by the building manager. Yes, I’d have to use a bathroom down the hall, but I’d get a huge space and free basic cable.
The day I moved in, said manager was nowhere to be found; neither were the promised window shades. What I did find were filthy hallway bathrooms (all except the one first-floor example I’d previously been showed), gazillions of cockroaches, several loud arguments/fights clearly audible through the thin walls, and central-heating pipes that loudly banged and clanged all night long.
Several shabbily-dressed residents came up to me over the next few days with complaints about the bathrooms, the heat, etc. I had to patiently tell each of them, “I’m not the manager. I just live here.” Their unanimous response: “You live here?” (Implying I was too clean-cut or too clean-and-sober for such a creepy building.)
It turned out the real manager had been fired hours before I moved in. The management company offered to discuss the firing with any tenants who could make it to an evening meeting at the company’s offices in outer Lynnwood, a difficult trick for these mostly-carless tenants.
Over the following twenty weeks, all but four of the other units in the building would be vacated, some by eviction orders. I was regularly panhandled, saw at least one attempted break-in, and had to vacate the place twice when sleeping bums inadvertantly set mattress fires in the basement. And the cable was no longer free after the first month.
A woman who helped me move out of there told me she’d never seen a building that gross when she lived in inner-city Cleveland.
The end of my residence at the Towne (which looks a lot nicer in this modern-day image, at least from the outside) marked the end of 32 months in which I’d had six addresses. From now on it was only real jobs and real apartments.
NEXT: The last of this for now.
IN OTHER NEWS: Kozmo.com is closing. We now may never know whether there was really a market for the home delivery of ice cream sandwiches and Pauly Shore videos.
MONDAY AND YESTERDAY, we began a countdown to the gigantic MISCmedia 15th Anniversary celebratory fete (June 2, all ages, mark your calendars now), with a glimpse of the art show that’ll be part of the festivity–randomly-ordered pix of every home yr. web-pal had lived in. Today, some more.
#13: NW 57th Street and 28th Ave. NW. A small, cruddy, windowless room built into the basement of a small, cruddy house in Ballard. Occupied November 1981-March 1982.
Following my Wallingford misadventure with hardcore punk-rock housemates (a story I’ll have to get into later), I needed a cheap and immediately available place.
It belonged to a single mom of a character type very familiar to me at the time, the square baby boomer. She wore large glasses and a dour disposition, liked Coors, and hated any music that was too “weird” (i.e., not boomer-blues or the Eagles). Her six-year-old son was smart and spunky, but was instructed by mom not to talk to me more than necessary.
The winter of ’81-’82 was one of my life’s nadir moments. I was too depressed to look even for temp jobs. I wrote nothing, created nothing. I had no amenities in that damp room but my TV, a percolator (which I used to make hot water for tea), and a tiny space heater. I’d stay up with KING-TV’s overnight movies, then half-sleep until noonish. I had only limited privileges in the house’s main floor–the bathroom, the kitchen (when mom wasn’t cooking), and the phone (brief calls only).
Finally, I found another cheap room in another basement to move into. That’s another story I’ll try to get to eventually.
NEXT: Still more of this.
YESTERDAY, we began a countdown to the gigantic MISCmedia 15th Anniversary celebratory fete (June 2, all ages, mark your calendars now), with a glimpse of the art show that’ll be part of the festivity–digital pix (presented out of order) of every home yr. web-corresp’n’d’t had lived in. Today, another installment.
#18: The Consulate Apartments, 1619 Belmont Ave. A small but well-preserved studio apartment, with a former Murphy Bed closet.
I lived there from ’84 to ’87, during which I dumped a horrible job, was dreadfully unemployed, reluctantly went back to the horrible job, and finally found a better job. I also got my first Macintosh, ran a short-lived mondo-film screening series, and began the original Misc. print column.
Entering and leaving the building often involved charging through the phalanxes of bums and panhandlers who hung out at Glynn’s Cove tavern down the street (which later became Squid Row, then Tugs Belmont, and is now Kincora).
A Dymo Labelmaker note was stuck inside the Consulate’s back door: “Don’t let strange people in. We have plenty.”
The live-in building manager was a flamboyantly out gay man who loved to go to Chinese restaurants very late at night, a task which involved the ten-minute revving of a motorcycle parked directly beneath my unit. By the time I moved out, he had become very thin, pale and weak, and it wasn’t because of Chinese food.
NEXT: Some more of this.
TODAY’S MISCmedia is dedicated to Ed “Big Daddy” Roth, the car customizer, model-kit designer and inventor of the printed T-shirt industry, whose Rat Fink characters will live forever among preteen boys of all ages.
AS A COUNTDOWN to the gigantic MISCmedia 15th Anniversary celebratory fete (June 2, all ages, mark your calendars now), we’ll be running some occasional glimpses of the art show that’ll be part of the festivity.
It’s a public coming-out of sorts for my new digital-photography thang. It’s not the big Seattle coffee-table book (that’s still without form or void), but a much smaller documentation project–every home yr. loyal web-corresp’n’d’t had lived in.
(Because they haven’t all been photographed yet, they’ll be presented here out of order.)
#5: 4052 Woodlawn Ave. N. My first home in Seattle. An unlicensed mother-in-law apartment on the second floor of a home owned and occupied by a sweet Italian-American couple with five sons, ages 8-16. They ran a furnace-cleaning business out of the home, and kept a small but exquisite painted-statuary shrine to Mary in their front yard. In 1976, they were the first people I knew to acquire a VCR–and a selection of hardcore porn tapes (the Swedish Erotica series).
LOOKING FOR WORK, which I happen to be doing nowadays, takes a lot more time than working.
Between that and the new book project, and I just haven’t the time to continue maintaining the MISCmedia website at its past-two-years level of a full-length essay or fiction piece every darned weekday.
(Besides, I’ve looked back at recent months’ entries and found an embarrassingly large number of mediocre-by-my-own-standards “filler pieces” and abstract media-critique essays that weren’t sufficiently thought out.)
So here’s what I’m thinking of doing. (I know, I’ve pondered changes to the site before, but this time I mean it.)
Option #1: The same fabulousness as you’re accustomed to reading, but replaced with new material less often and/or supplemented with more frequent guest-written columns and stories.
Option #2: Switch the site’s main page to that increasingly popular “weblog” format, allowing a juxtaposition of small items similar to the original Misc. print-column format. I’ve talked about this before but never bothered to pursue it. Now I might. I’d still run full-length pieces and guest writers within this format, and archive these as separate files.
The print mag may change as well.
Right now, it basically collects the online pieces, with layout and pictures added, on inexpensive paper, and thrusts this material out into the world with little marketing or promotion.
To make it work as a stand-alone, potentially profitable venture means treating it as one. And that means putting more effort into creating a package of stories and art that will sell, or at least attract investors who think it will sell. And at my current schedule (see above), that means something bigger but less frequent.
I don’t know what that will exactly be. But you’ll be the first to be told.
NEXT: The roles played by role-players.
