seen outside the capitol hill block party

• The Norwegian mass murder suspect allegedly claims he did it to publicize a manifesto, which (besides pasting in big parts from the Unabomber’s manifesto) exhorts his countrymen toward further violence in support of racism, nationalism, and general jingoism. Look: Slaughtering innocents is not what any truly “superior” person ever does.
• Meanwhile locally, the Nordic Heritage Museum will host a vigil for the shooting victims this Tuesday evening.
• Dan Bertolet’s got a nice roundup of anti-waterfront tunnel arguments. And there’s going to be an anti-tunnel rally next Monday (Aug. 1).
• A poll shows 71 percent of Americans dislike the Republicans’ creation and bungling of the made-up “debt crisis.” Of course, polls like this one don’t matter, since today’s Republicans don’t give a hoot about anybody except the billionaires and lobbyists who own them.

There sure were a lot of people at the West Seattle Street Fair on an early Friday evening.

The ol’ Junction particularly teemed with kids. At times you couldn’t make your way down California Ave. without scrambling between traffic jams of double-wide plastic strollers.

Chris Ballew’s “Casper Babypants” act had a perfect captive audience.

On the main stage, Leslie Beattie, Kurt Bloch, and Mike Musburger (with the unseen-here Jim Sangster) in Thee Sgt. Major III warmed up an already warm audience with a rousing set. But the highlight of the night was yet to come.

Yes. For the first time in more than a decade, Bloch, Kim Warnick, Lulu Gargiulo, and Musburger were to perform a full set of their intense, brutally joyous (or is it joyously brutal?) power pop.

The street and the adjoining fenced-off beer garden were crammed with geezers like me who remembered the Fastbacks’ 1979-2001 reign. The street also had dozens who had not been yet born during that time. All were treated to one of the most electrifying, frenetic, and all-out rockin’ hours seen anywhere, at any time, by anyone.

If you ever saw the Fastbacks before, you know what I’m talking about. Even if you only heard them on record, you can imagine how great they were this night. All the great Bloch riffs. All the tomboyish Warnick/Gargiulo vocals, singing with gleeful passion about stuff you might not imagine could be portrayed that way (loneliness, depression, frustration).

Started at the new Idea Odyssey Gallery, at the lovely address of 666 S. Jackson St. It’s one of the beneficiaries of the city’s Storefronts program, placing arts and culture related activities in vacant retail spaces. You can see this large painting by Laura Castellanos better at this link.

This “Ice Queen” was one of several (actual) ladies in extreme hoop skirts surrounding the Tashiro Kaplan Building, promoting an art auction at the 110 Gallery within.

A little bit of found art. What, I wondered, was this dog doing strapped to a mobile hand truck at a bus stop? I turned around and realized it was a doll, which did not answer my question but rather rendered it moot.

The Occidental Park art bazaar was decorated by some truly lovely yarn “tree muffs” (I’m sure there’s an actual term for them).

This gallery/boutique has some of Charles Krafft’s chinaware weaponry on display with the theme “Peace Is Fragile,” a slogan which may or may not reflect Krafft’s actual mindset behind his works.

What I did this holiday weekend:

Walked half way around Lake Union. (Fun fact: Lake Union Park is a great space when there’s an event in it; otherwise, it’s a big empty spot.)

Briefly attended an alley party with live bands (some good) and the usual snacks and beverages. Neglected to drink any alcohol.

Saw the fireworks in person, which I hadn’t done last year. Attempted to shoot pictures; none really turned out.

Only spent an hour on the bus during the post-fireworks traffic. Got home. Crashed.

Was up promptly this morning to witness Seattle’s “the biggest parade ever,” part of the huge Lions Club convention in town. The event was officially titled The International Parade of Nations. (What other kind of parade of nations could there be?)

This event, I did get decent pictures of.

Caught part of the parade from Top Pot Doughnuts, which was an especially fun place from which to see the following float.

…but somewhere on the first page of Flickr’s “Seattle Invitationals 2011 Pool” you can find a shot of me in my best oversize thrift store stage suit.

As a lifelong Seattle World’s Fair nerd, you know I love geeky pictorial presentations about the wonderful world that awaited us in the 21st Century. Today I have some thing different. The nostalgia site SquareAmerica.com has slides from an IBM business-to-business promo presentation about the near future of business computing, in 1975.

Note the date. This is the exact final year in which big mainframe computer complexes, and the companies that sold and maintained them, could realistically see themselves as the center of the data processing universe. The first true home computers came along the next year. By 1980, IBM was had authorized a fast-track project to develop the first IBM PC, midwifing MS-DOS along the way.

But in 1975, Big Iron still ruled. And the folk behind that Big Iron knew where the future lay. It lay with connecting mainframes and networking compatible databases.

In a word: ONLINE.

Hey, they were at least right about that part.

There was a bizarre little bake sale in Belltown this past Wednesday. It takes a little explaining.

Real estate mogul Bruce Lorig fired his only African American female employee after eleven years on the job. She sued, claiming racial discrimination and harassment. She joined up with the Seattle Solidarity Network, a local activist group, to publicize her cause.

Lorig countersued her, and sued Seattle Solidarity to prevent the group from publicly criticizing him.

In response, Seattle Solidarity put up flyers claiming Lorig had to really be in bad fiscal shape if he has to go around trying to drum up cash from his own ex-worker. Hence, the snarky “Lorig Aid.”

It was held in front of Lorig’s First Avenue offices. Seattle Solidarity members “sold” donuts and cupcakes and sang a little folk ditty:

So won’t you please help Bruce Lorig

He has fallen on hard times

He has to sue his former secretary

So won’t you spare a dime

An unannounced, unadvertised, spectacular fireworks show took place on the Seattle central waterfront Saturday night. SeattleTimes.com claims the pyrotechnics commemorated Farmers Insurance Group’s 100th anniversary.

If they’d only been able to wait four months, Farmers could have paid for Seattle’s July 4th fireworks, which apparently still don’t have a principal sponsor.

HugeAssCity has posted this lovely image of a construction crew digging a hole near First Avenue South, not far from where the new viaduct-replacing deep bore tunnel’s supposed to go: “It consists of leftover debris from the historic sawmills, along with the remains of the piles that once supported the piers and overwater railroad tracks that were built when the area was still a tidal flat.”

The fireworks show at the Space Needle must have been programmed by a woman this year. Instead of a dramatic countdown leading up to one big bang, we had seven minutes of slow buildup, punctuated by minor climaxes, leading to a long satisfying final spectacle.

Afterwards, walking back, I saw a well dressed woman outside the Fourth and Battery Building with a big carry-on suitcase, changing out of white high heels into black high heels.

Someone placed simple holiday trappings on the unofficial Cobain memorial bench in Viretta Park.

While we all would’ve preferred the Major League Soccer title game to include Sounders FC, the fact that the game took place here anyway (it’s a “neutral site” affair, like the NFL Super Bowl) was still a great cap to a great maiden season for bigtime soccer (or as bigtime as it gets in the US) in Seattle.

The afternoon before the big game, fans played a pickup game of street ball at First and Pike. This was literal street ball, 30-second dash plays in the middle of the intersection during its four-way WALK lights.

And if the Sounders couldn’t get to the MLS Cup, at least it was won by the non-LA, non-superstar squad.