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The scene: A clear, warm-enough Memorial Day evening in Fremont. Among those in attendance are families, old timers, and members of the Fremont retail community past and present. Some were close friends; others hadn’t seen one another in years.
There are also a middle-aged male clown, a male bagpiper, a female cellist, and several ladies dressed as “mourners” in black dresses complete with veils, ready to sob loudly on cue. (NOTE: This took place two days prior to the Cafe Racer shootings.)
It is a funeral/wake, a memorial to an institution that had already been all about the remembrance of things past.
Fremont’s “funky” reputation was already established by 1978, when David Marzullo opened Deluxe Junk. “Funky,” at that time, meant low incomes, low profiles, low foot traffic, low rents—and lowlife.
A Seattle Times feature story published around that time described Fremont as a blighted land of empty storefronts, as well as “littered vacant lots, weathered plywood with torn flyers flapping in the wind, peeling paint and a giant disposal-service complex.” Among its 12,000 residents were retirees, street people, and “a number of artists and remnants of the hippie culture.”
When Deluxe Junk opened, it was one of 10 antique, curio, and “vintage trash” stores in the then-rundown neighborhood. The only thing Fremont had more of at the time was taverns.
After a fire made the store’s first location uninhabitable, Marzullo moved into a former funeral parlor on the ground floor of the Doric Temple, a Masonic lodge right on the arterial cusp of Fremont Place, between Fremont Avenue and North 36th Street. (In later years, the block would become home to the kitschy Lenin statue.)
Some of the vintage sellers in the ’70s had dreams that were bigger than their business acumen.
But Marzullo had a knack for the trade.
He priced his goods low enough to move but high enough to pay the bills.
He built a base of customers not only from around Seattle but around the nation and beyond. (In the 1980s, Marzullo was one of the first local dealers to sell American vintage wear and furnishings to dealers in Japan.)
He developed a great sense of what his customers liked.
He maintained a broad inventory range. He stocked vintage fashions, badges, advertising signs, costume jewelry, magazines, board games, kitchen appliances, and household trinkets.
But perhaps Deluxe Junk’s most important speciality was home furnishings from the early to mid 20th century. That’s also the era when most of Seattle’s single-family homes were built. This was the furniture that most truly “belonged” in these homes.
Over the years, the surrounding neighborhood became gentrified. Industrial buildings gave way to tech-company offices. Storefront taverns gave way to brewpubs, soccer bars, and live-music clubs. “Cheap chic” shops gave way to fashionable boutiques.
Deluxe Junk persevered, long enough to itself become a relic of “a simpler time;” even as the collectibles business went online and global (and, in many ways, more mercenary).
In April, a lease dispute developed between the store and the Doric Temple’s leadership.
Supportes of the store claimed Doric leaders wanted to kick Deluxe Junk out, in favor of more potentially lucrative tenants.
The lodge insisted it was willing to negotiate a new lease, as long as Marzullo paid up several months’ worth of back rent.
(UPDATE 6/18/12: Marzullo publicly denied the claim that he’d owed back rent to his landlords.)
After several days of highly public disagreement, Marzullo announced he’d reached a settlement. Without going into details, he said the store would close and he would retire.
And the store would close three weeks before the Solstice Parade and Fremont Fair, Fremont’s busiest days of the year.
Deluxe Junk’s loyal customers and friends took full advantage of a massive closing sale. An online-auction seller bought the store’s whole inventory of 1950s Christmas decor.
Still, there was a lot of cool stuff left in the store’s main room on the evening of the wake.
Some of that was sold on the spot to friends of the store, who were seeking one last remembrance of Deluxe Junk—and of the Fremont that had been.
(Cross-posted with City Living.)
The locally owned Wave Broadband is taking over the dreadful and bankrupt BS Cable (Broadstripe). Yay!
The first part of the transition is the switching of “on demand” program suppliers, effective Wednesday.
This means I’m looking over my current “on demand” lineup while I still can.
I didn’t know I received something called The Karaoke Channel!
I’m now listening to lead-vocal-less covers of the greatest hits of yesterday and today, accompanied by scrolling lyrics and generic stock footage of women twirling around on the beach.
Oh, why did I not discover this sooner?
(PS: I could list the songs from which I culled the above images, but I’m certain you know all of them, you pop-o-philes you.)
I’m still having trouble finding words to say about the Cafe Racer tragedy.
At least I can give you pictures of just a little bit of the near-citywide outpouring of grief, condolence, and mutual support.
The above images are from last Thursday afternoon.
The following are from Sunday evening, when the weekly jazz jam session went ahead as scheduled—in the alley between the cafe and the Trading Musician music store.
For up-to-date word about memorial and benefit shows for the victims’ families and the one shooting survivor (taking place all around town, just about every day), go to caferacerlove.org.
Owner Kurt Geissel (who was not on the premises at the time of the shootings) has said he will reopen. Just when, he hasn’t decided yet.
This is the Great Wheel, now taking shape at Pier 57 on the waterfront. It is already the greatest addition to Seattle public architecture since the Koohaas downtown library. The rest of the waterfront should be redeveloped around it.
The recession has claimed another victim, the Betsey Johnson boutique on Fifth Avenue.
I don’t think you do love America. At least, not as much as you hate everyone in America who isn’t exactly like you.
sobadsogood.com
Darn, this is gettin’ retro. And not in a good way.
Just like on N30, a serious mass protest against the rule of big money was the target of an attempted hijacking.
Yep, another “black bloc” of masked vandals claiming to be anarchists busted stuff up.
As if that was any more a “political” act than the busting up of stuff last June in Vancouver.
Meanwhile, many thousands more people participated in real May Day protests.
They made statements, made banners, spoke, sang, rapped, networked, and forged connections.
Their goal was not to feel powerful, nor to get their testosterone rocks off, nor to “live without dead time.”
It was, and is, to change the direction of the world.
Socially, politically, and especially economically.
That’s a mighty tall order.
But that’s what Occupy ____ is about.
No single demands.
No simple solutions.
No instant utopias.
No small dreams.
Nothing less than the end of greed, cronyism, and megabuck-influence-peddling; and the revival of democracy.
painting the needle for its big b-day party
Keith Seinfeld at KPLU recently asked, “Why does Seattle still care about the world’s fair?”
That’s an excellent question.
As international expos go, Seattle’s was relatively small.
And it took place a full half century ago.
Until Mad Men came along, that era was widely considered to have been a dullsville time, a time wtih nothing much worth remembering.
The “Space Age” predicted at the fair would seem would seem ridiculous just a few years later. It predicted domed cities and cheap nuclear power. It predicted computers in the home (in the form of fridge-sized consoles) and video conferencing (with a special “picturephone”), but it didn’t predict the Internet.
It sure didn’t predict the racial, sexual, musical, and social upheavals collectively known as “The Sixties.”
And a lot of the fair’s attractions were so utterly corny, you can wonder why they were taken seriously even then. Attractions such as the world’s largest fruitcake. Or the Bubbleator (essentially just a domed platform on a hydraulic lift). Or the adults-only risqué puppet show (by the future producers of H.R. Pufnstuf).
•
Yet a lot of us do care about all that. And not just us old-timers either.
And not just for the physical structures the fair left behind (the Space Needle, the Science Center, etc.).
The fair was the single most important thing that happened in Seattle between World War II and the rise of Microsoft. (The launch of the Boeing 707 was the next most important.)
The fair revved up the whole Northwest tourism industry, just as jet aircraft and Interstate highways were getting more Americans to explore other parts of their nation. This once-remote corner of the country became a top destination.
The fair was a coming-out party for a new Seattle.
A Seattle dominated not by timber and fishing but by tech. Specifically, by aerospace. Boeing had only a secondary role in equipping the U.S. space program, but its planes were already making Earth a seemingly smaller place.
The fair didn’t start the Seattle arts and performance scenes, but it gave them a new oomph.
Seattle Opera and the Seattle Repertory Theatre were immediately established in the fair’s wake.
ACT Theatre came soon after. Visual art here was already becoming famous, thanks to the “Northwest School” painters; the fair’s legacy led to increased local exposure to both local and national artists.
The fair established a foothold for modern architecture here.
Before the fair, there hadn’t been a major change to Seattle’s skyline since the Smith Tower in 1914. (The few new downtown buildings were relatively short, such as the 19-story Norton Building.)
The Space Needle became the city’s defining icon, instantly and forever.
The U.S. Science Pavilion (now Pacific Science Center) established the career of Seattle-born architect Minoru Uamasaki, who later designed the former World Trade Center.
Speaking of tragedy and turmoil, some commentators have described the fair’s era as “a simpler time.”
It wasn’t.
The Cuban missile crisis, revealed just after the fair ended, threatened to turn the cold war hot.
The whole Vietnam debacle was getting underway.
The civil rights and black power movements were quickly gaining traction.
The birth control pill was just entering widespread use.
Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, which helped launch the U.S. environmental movement, came out while the fair was on.
So yes, there were big issues and conflicts in 1962.
But there was also something else.
There was optimism.
In every exhibit and display at the fair, there was the notion that humans could work together to solve things.
And, at least at the fair, most everything was considered solveable.
I wrote in 1997, at the fair’s 35th anniversary, that its creators sincerely felt Americas would strive “to ensure mass prosperity (without socialism), strengthen science, popularize education, advance minority rights, and promote artistic excellence.”
It’s that forward-looking confidence that got lost along the road from the Century 21 Exposition to the 21st century.
It’s something many of us would like to see more of these days.
And that, more than Belgian waffles or an Elvis movie, is why Seattle still cares about the World’s Fair.
And why you should too.
(Cross posted with City Living.)
souvenir display at the world's fair anniversary exhibition
The renovation (read: upscaling) of the old Food Circus in Seattle Center’s Center House had one sad, unpublicized aspect.
The project pushed out the last Pizza Haven.
It was an unsung end to a company founded in 1958 by Ron Bean (son of Pay n’ Save Drug/Lamonts Apparel mogul Lamont Bean).
It started with a single dine-in location on University Way and a home delivery operation (the first of its kind around here). Instead of baking pies to order, Pizza Haven’s trucks originally cruised around with pre-made inventory in warming ovens, ready to go wherever radio dispatch operators sent them.
At its peak the chain had 42 outlets down as far as northern California, and even franchises in Russia and the Middle East. It had a cute cartoon “Mr. Pizza” mascot, and fun TV commercials with angels welcoming you to “Haven—Pizza Haven, the place all good pizza eaters go when they’re hungry.”
Then Domino’s came to town, and Pizza Hut added delivery-only stores.
Pizza Haven repositioned itself into slice stands in mall food courts. But fiscal troubles continued.
The chain declared bankruptcy in 1997. The following year, every branch except Center House closed.
Bean tried to relaunch Pizza Haven in 2001, but it didn’t get off the ground.
The Center House slice stand continued for another decade, feeding the tourists and the local old-timers who’d grown up with the brand.
Until now.
Seventy degrees on Easter. It felt like the whole outdoors had come back to life.
casey mcnerthney, seattlepi.com
…In the long term today’s affordable housing comes from yesterday’s luxury flats, and cutting off the supply of the latter will deny our children the former in the absence of massive, unsustainable public subsidy.
The cherry blossoms agree with the calendar that spring has arrived. Why does the weather argue?
The parking garage on Second Avenue between Stewart and Virginia was completely demolished in two days.
In order to minimize traffic disruption, the whole job was scheduled for a single weekend. Even then, at least one lane of Second was open to traffic at all times.
Four jackhammer and shovel rigs converged on the site; first knocking down the front walls, then moving in for the rest.
By late Sunday afternoon, all that was left was rubble and some old painted signage revealed on the side of the building next door.
