Some time last year, I had a discussion with a Pacific Publishing bigwig, over whether Capitol Hill is or isn’t a real “neighborhood” or was just a jumble of subcultures and “tribes” sharing the same patch of real estate.

This New Year’s Eve I was at a potluck party on the Hill. At events like this, Capitol Hill IS a neighborhood. Painters and schoolteachers and real estate agents and former City Peoples Mercantile clerks and musicians and small business owners and Microsofties and families and singles and gays and assorted races and generations, all coming together. Some no longer live on the Hill, but still identify with it. At occasions like this dinner party, the Hill really is a neighborhood.

Perhaps no one at the event was ever next-door neighbors to anyone else at the event. But they’re still a community.

Capitol Hill is a real community. It’s also a “virtual” community, a state of mind.

Until this past Nov. 7, many people in both the physical and virtual Capitol Hills thought of these places as backwaters, sites of exile from the rampant corporate conservatism that seemed to be overtaking the rest of the nation. In this mindset, the Hill was a retreat, a preserve where the old values of progress and free thought could be kept barely alive.

But the popular repudiation of the far right in the national midterm elections shows the country moving in a new direction, a new mindset. A mindset that values self-expression, inclusion, and real caring about people. A mindset closer to that of the Hill, and of Seattle in general.

At the potluck, I informally asked people their biggest hope for the new year. One woman said she hoped she’d be strong enough to pass the firefighter’s exam. One man said he hoped to finally get his big break in NYC. One guy said he couldn’t think of anything to hope for politically. But others did express a generalized wish that things would get better, that the jokers running things in DC these days would become irrelevant/outplaced, and that people would start to do something, anything, to repair the planet.

The respondents invariably asked the question back at me. I said I hoped people, particularly Capitol Hill people, would start to imagine even the possibility of hope, that the whole world does not necessarily totally suck, that change is indeed possible.

This is my request for you this year: Think of your neighborhood, your community, not as a relic of America’s progressive past but as a vanguard for America’s progressive future.

Yeah, I put out a photo book late last year about Seattle’s yesterdays, including some of Capitol Hill’s yesterdays.

I want readers to see the book as more than a trip down memory lane, a wistful look back at A Simpler Time. It’s meant to be a celebration of the old Seattle, and a call to recapture at least some of its spirit.

Hard to believe, but there was a time when almost every Seattle restaurant printed the prices of every item on its menu for all to see–and did so in dollars and cents, not simply two digits and a dot. Locally-owned (or at least locally-managed) stores set fashion trends that sometimes defied those dictated by the national magazines. Local DJs promoted local rock bands on commercial top-40 radio. Local TV newscasts dared to devote whole minutes to “talking heads” discussing politics and other nonviolent topics.

Other personality traits of Seattle’s past self are more subtle. There was a spirit, a feeling that Things Could Be Done. A real city, with all bells and whistles, could be carved out of recently-conquered wilderness. We could build our own businesses, make our own art, think up our own ideas. Later, the feminist and civil-rights movements added new dimensions to this can-do attitude.

This stance went hand-in-hand with a self-effacing sense of humor. The old Seattle had writers (Betty Anderson, Emmett Watson), cartoonists (Bob Cram, Lynda Barry), and broadcasters (Bob Hardwick, Stan Boreson) who blended unpretentious whimsey and clever wit.

The old Seattle was a place more interested in living a good life than in amassing ever-bigger piles of Stuff. It was a place with a working waterfront, not a “Harbour Pointe.”

It’s that spirit I want to help bring back. And, in the old Seattle mindset, I believe we can.

So think of your immediate surroundings as The Future.

And think of your self as having a Future, beyond grunt survival.

This will be quite difficult for some of you, who’ve spent the past two decades or more bemoaning the supposed creeping fascism of everybody in America outside of yourselves and your immediate friends.

But try it.

You just might be surprised at what happens.

…from some other burg? Lonesome for Seattle’s most vibrant streetscape? Thanks to Amazon.com’s A9 site, you can now take a virtual trip up Aurora Avenue!

…the latest (sporty, streamlined, high-mileage) Oscar Meyer Wienermobile showed up, along with a video crew. Young attendees of the Center’s Children’s Festival were invited to have themselves taped extolling their love of packaged meat products in song.

And now there are Spanish-language lyrics to the “Wiener Song.” Let’s all sing along, shall we?

…Barry Bonds achieved the highly media-hyped feat of tying for second place in one of baseball’s most revered statistics, I watched our slowly-improving Seattle Mariners take on the once-mighty San Diego Padres.

I’d been given some prime seats in the heart of “Area 51,” three rows from the right field fence. If I were gay I’d have enjoyed the many opportunities to peruse Ichiro’s backside.

The game was great. Mariner hitters drove six runs home. Gil Meche pitched seven brilliant innings prior to fading in the eighth, followed by a two-batter disaster for Eddie Guardado, in turn followed by four outs in five batters for new closer J.J. Putz.

Eight seasons into the Safeco Field era, and I’m still unused to the whole “real grass, real sunshine, real baseball” thang. I can’t help but feeling that a major league baseball game ought to take place within a huge but sterile-looking indoor space, where no annoying distractions such as sunny skies, creeping dusk, light breezes, luxurious concessions, or colorful signage divert one’s attention from the purity of the game. (Of course, during the Kingdome era the game’s many purists denounced the tepid spectacle that was indoor baseball on AstroTurf.)

Another aspect of the Safeco experience that differentiates it from the Dome: E-Z egress. Within one minute of the last put-out, I was heading down an escalator and out on lovely First Avenue South. At the Dome, you’d have endured five to ten minutes wandering down the exterior ramps along with scattered dozens of other dejected but expecting-it fans after a quiet spectacle of opposing-team home runs.

Here are my shots of the big May Day march for, and by, Latino immigrants.

This upcoming Friday, white America will use a minor Mexican holiday as an excuse for one of the top five amateur drinking days of the year. But on Monday, Latinos and Latinas themselves did the celebrating. They honored themselves, and all the immigrant workers and their families from all over the world who came before them.

More thoughts on the local march below; as well as here, here and here.

…Canon’s little-publicized upgrade program for owners of busted digital cameras, I was able to replace my mechanically worn-out G5 with a newer model.

How better to break it in than with your basic cliche waterfront sunset shots?

These are from the vicinity of Pier 70, where I’d attended a media-folk schmoozefest Tuesday evening.

Here, for the apparent first time on the Seattle streets, is the legendary Smart Car. Ain’t it jus’ the teeniest, cutest thing?

…since before the war? Undoubtedly. It was exciting and dynamic, and totally free of the hip-cynical defeatism seen at so many Anglo-American-led protests. It was great to be in the middle of it all.

Make them be about what the old left used to call “the Workers.” Instead of ignoring race/class divisions, make them the focus. Put the people themselves in charge, instead of the retro-“radicals” of the goatee-and-ponytail set. Make them about saving lives, saving livelihoods, and respecting basic human dignity.

(In case you’re wondering, I managed to take these pix on my still-ill camera with the still-troublesome shutter button. More about this later.)

…the big Capitol Hill afterparty memorial service early Tuesday evening. It was large, it was (mostly) somber, it was sad.

But it was also a celebration of life, of the “peace, love, and unity” ethos oft proclaimed by the techno world these past dozen years or so (almost the entire lifetimes of two of the shooting victims).

You’d think that after all these years, the oft-justly-vilified “MSM” (that’s blog-talk for “mainstream media”) would’ve figured out that the dance-music scene ain’t no big bad den of iniquity, except by the standards of far-right prudes. But the ol’ temptation of easy stereotypes reared its ugly head again, as local papers and broadcasters this past week filled too many of their dispatches wtih easy-to-write, easy-to-understand inaccuracies.

The shooting is a one-time event that could have happened in a school, church, shopping mall, or freeway overpass. The music-dance scene in Seattle (particulalry the commercial and nonprofit events with pro security) is about as secure as any young-rebel-hedonist scene anywhere has ever been. And it’s a lot more tolerant and mutually supportive than a lot of the more officially-approved-of youth activities.

This was proven as the memorial service ended and the sun went down. A group of ravers broke up the mass sadness by opening the doors of a parked car, cranking up the car’s stereo, and inviting all to dance the tears away.

Over the years, some music critics have scorned the techno genre for its alleged emotionless monotony. If any of these critics had seen this act of spontaneous defiance/celebration, they’d be singing the proverbial different tune.

Craigslist.org founder Craig Newmark isn’t known as an audio-visual content creator, but he still got to speak (via webcam) during the Podcast Hotel conference at the Triple Door. His topic: Why he believes bloggers and podcasters can help subvert the corporate news media, by bringing “citizen journalism” to large audiences. To his right, NPR Online worker Robert Spier explained that the NPR.org web site isn’t streaming All Things Considered (it’s in deference to the local affiliates).

Also in attendance at the confab: The legendary former KJR/KUBE DJ Charlie Brown, now in the business of selling PC sound-editing software.

I didn’t learn a whole heckuva lot at the event that I didn’t already know. And I still haven’t committed to creating a MISCcast yet (I’m doing too many under- and un-paid gigs these days). But I met some cool people, and began to fantasize about what any audio adventure of mine might contain.

THE FIRST sign of spring in Belltown–cherry blossoms on First and Second Avenues. Yes, brighter days are ahead.

Windstorm 2006 has died down. The PacNW, or at least those parts of it that didn’t lose electricity this morning, rests impatiently awaiting the big game tomorrow afternoon.

As our gift of hope to you, enjoy these pictures from this past week’s Seahawks rallies, last Sunday at Qwest Field and Friday at Westlake Center.

Go Hawks.

I’d watched the NFC championship game at the Two Bells, which brought in a TV solely for the occasion. I was there with my Belltown Messenger colleagues Alex Mayer and Ronald Holden.

(I’d already stopped by Sport, Seattle’s poshest and Belltown’s only sports bar, for some pregame fan pix.)

After the Seahawks’ lopsided triumph, Alex suggested we all walk down to Pioneer Square to see the after-game celebrations. I’m glad I did. It was a festive, yet family-friendly, all-night party. It eventually extended all the way up First Avenue into Belltown, though by then my camera batteries were shot (memo to self: get fresh battery).

The next game, the game for all the proverbial marbles, will be held, as it is every year, on neutral turf. Even without a home-field stadium audience to spark the party, expect an even bigger celebration with a Hawks victory.

Also expect a huge party outside Sport, where KOMO-TV will stage a postgame show.

Herewith, some screen snaps of highlights (as if you’ve not already seen them) from the Seahawks’ incredible demolition of the Carolina Panthers on Sunday, winning the team its first-ever trip to the Sooper Bowl.

It was easily the most important single sporting event ever held in Seattle. (The Sonics’ 1979 championship was won on the road. So, of course, were all the UW football team’s bowl-game victories. The Mariners’ 1995 and 2001 triumphs were really the accumulations of many single-game victories.)

And, of course, it led to the biggest outdoor party Seattle’s seen since the riotous Fat Tuesday of 2001. This time, though, all went apparently smoothly in the ol’ P-Square. Good raucous fun was had by all. (More on this in my next post.)

P-I sportswriter Art Thiel claims this year’s Hawks, and particularly Sunday’s victory, represent a new era in Seattle history. Thiel posits the city’s onetime reputation for “the Scandahoovian trait of reticence,” modest casual fashion, tree-hugging, grunge’s ironic self-deprecation, and rain jokes has now and forever been superceded by a new confidence, an assertive new swagger, an instinct for unhinged joy.

I, as you might expect, am not so sure.

Seattle’s always been defined by great dreams and big schemes. That’s why it became the PNW’s dominant city, even though Portland had a head start and Tacoma had the railroad barons’ blessing. Boeing and Microsoft established their respective world dominations through slick deal-making and aggressive business tactics. Seattle’s infamous “politeness” is, at its best, a quiet businesslike confidence. And that’s exactly what the Seahawks have shown on the field this season.

The Hawks played like a smooth, well-choreographed troupe. And at its greatest moment of triumph to date, the team merely responded with the joy of boyish innocence. That’s what makes these guys so loveable.

More on this later.

Even many jaded Seattle bohemians, the kind of guys who snootily disdain all pro team sports in America (especially football), are tonight expressing joyous anticipation over the Seahawks’ potential Super Bowl-qualifying game Sunday afternoon. Bars that never show sports are bringing in TVs to show this game.

In the larger scheme of things, a pro sports championship doesn’t mean much. The Hawks’ success thus far has meant an upturn in ratings for KCPQ and KIRO-AM, and an upturn in revenue for many of the local bars that had been facing uncertain post-smoking futures.

But there’s something less tangible at work here.

Amid a miserably wet winter, in a city that’s been battered by economic stagnation, in a nation still withering under the iron thumb of a frat-bully junta, the Hawks’ spectacular game play and (with a few exceptions) great sportsmanship have brought at least symbolic hope to thousands. Yes: We can succeed, even triumph, against all odds and despite all the naysayers. With talent and teamwork and attitude, we can get it done.

• 1. Thank goodness for Saturday banking.For various reasons I won’t elaborate here, I was out of cash on NYE afternoon and didn’t have a debit card. But the Washington Mutual branch in the Harvard Market complex was open until 4. Hence, I was able to attain my required potluck-dinner contributions.
• 2. Be careful what you wish for.With a little time to kill between the bank’s closing and the potluck’s start, I found myself at one of the Pike/Pine Corridor’s newly smokeless bars. Among the few patrons was a local guy who’d moved to New York three years ago to pursue an acting career. He admitted to having been one of those Capitol Hillers who’d snootily despised everything about Seattle that wasn’t sufficiently New York-esque. “I used to hate the way Seattle drivers were so timid and cautious when I lived here. Then on my first day back, I was walking across the street and almost got sideswiped… Something’s definitely different about Seattle these days.”
• 3. Am I getting old or what?The potluck took place in a beautifully restored duplex on east Capitol Hill overlooking the Arboretum. The other guests included musicians, painters, arts promoters, grad students, and public-school teachers.

  In prior years, this gang’s range of conversation topics would have included aesthetic theory, global politics, unfair state budget cuts, and whether the local economy would become any less pathetic in the coming year.

  This time, the group (including myself) was pretty much obsessed with such more mundane subject matter as real estate investment, career schmoozing, and the best private schools to ship their own kids to.

  When I was a young adult in the 1980s, I’d scoffed at the characters in the movie The Big Chill as examples of what I would never, ever become. Am I becoming more like that anyway?

• 4. New Year’s resolution number one: Don’t become a Big Chill person.
• 5. New Year’s resolution number two: Be kind to Big Chill people.The coming year might, just might mind you, bring a long-overdue opportunity for political change in this nation. If it’s to occur, it’ll have to be from the ground up, not from the politicians down. That means we’ve got to build an all-inclusive popular movement. And that means we left-O-center types have got to reach out to the widest possible swath of potential compatriots. And THAT means sacrificing one’s own sense of subcultural superiority.

  In other words, treat people who are different from you as your equals. Yes, I mean “those” people too.

  Even people who watch television, drive cars, and eat meat.

  Even straight white males.

  Even football fans.

  Even people who live in less funky neighborhoods.

  Even people who don’t want to have sex with you.

  Even your co-workers.

  Even timid drivers.

  Even people who like to talk about real estate at New Year’s parties.

  I don’t say it’ll be easy, just necessary.

• 6. Expect a lot of strangeness in the coming year.The path of history isn’t always linear. There are reverses, backlashes, and unexpected developments out of nowhere. Twenty-ought-six might be one of those turning-point times. This nation’s long march toward censorship, bigotry, war, greed, and inequality could get at least partly turned around.

  But even if that happens, it might not be pretty.

  Many innocent people could be caught up in political and corporate scandals. More soldiers and civilians will die in meaningless wars. Whole sectors of the economy could get wrenched, particularly if oil prices go back up or if the so-called housing “bubble” goes boom.

  But you know the old curse, “May you live in interesting times.”