Remember: Monorail vote #4 is one of those “no-means-yes” dealies.

APPARENTLY, MOST OF THE BIG Halloween shidigs were on Saturday.

I, of course, went out on Sunday.

But I still found some nattily-dressed creatures who graciously allowed me to show to you.

This week, Capitol Hill’s food-shopping routines changed forever.

First stop: The new Safeway at 21st and Madison. It’s part of a “mixed use” retail-apartment megaplex, urged on by city officials eager to gentrify (i.e., white-ify) one of the last blocks of minority-owned retail north of Yesler Way. It’s across from Oscar’s II, the Af-Am restaurant/lounge that was infamously targeted for closure by former City Attorney Mark Sidran.

The new Safeway itself is large, of course, and designed to be a true “urban” shopping target. The ramp for the underground parking’s in the back. The building’s main corner entails a grand pedestrian entrance. In keeping with the L-shaped block it’s built on, the store’s been designed with alcoves and corners, breaking from the seven-decade tradition of the supermarket interior as a plain rectangle.

Even more un-square: The new Broadway Market QFC, which opened Sunday after a four-month remodel of the former urban mini-mall.

Because it was built from what had been several different retail spaces (Fred Meyer, Gap, Gravity Bar, Zebraclub, African Imports) and the central mall corridor, the new Q couldn’t help but pick up some of the old Nordstrom, collection-of-boutiques vibe. (Crossed, of course, with that Whole Foods luxury-nutrition vibe.)

The big surprise: The former downstairs Fred Meyer variety-store section was retained, as “QFC Home.” It’s better organized than it had been under Freddy’s, and retains most of the merchandise lines Freddy’s had had. (Among the missing: Paint, toys, TV/video, family apparel, underwear.)

The old Broadway QFC (above), and the old Broadway Safeway (below), along with the old Bartell Drugs next to the old QFC, stand vacant and awaiting redevelopment. There are enough people in this neighborhood with money and retail experience. Let’s put something together.

The old QFC/Bartell’s buildings add up to almost a full half block. Let’s start up a home/hardware/variety store there, along the lines of the old City People’s Mercantile with home electronics added.

At the old Safeway site, let’s have a no-frills apparel shop for ladies, gents, and kids. Jeans, tops, dresses, undies, casual shoes, hats, handbags, some local-designer consignments.

AS A BREAK from the potentially-tedious rites of politics, enjoy these images from the Seattle Storm’s victory rally last Friday in Westlake Park.

Here’s a sign of hope for the future—boys rooting for girls!

The Northwest Film Forum opened its spacious new digs Thursday night with a surrealistic, nearly Fellini-esque party.

Outside, there were big searchlights, a small red carpet, and a dozen beauty-queen hostesses. Each wore a sash reading “Welcome to NWFF” in a different language. Inside, the smaller of the two auditoria displayed short, strange film clips played at half-speed. In the tall-ceilinged but somehow claustrophobic lobby, big-bucks donors hobnobbed with scruffy artist types.

Among the live performers: Drag-queen rock band Cross Dress for Less (above), and our current fave Japanese-inspired pop combo the Buttersprites.

The new space is a big achievement for NWFF, whose operations had been split among two or three smaller storefronts. It originally began as WigglyWorld Studios, which took over the film production and editing equipment of 911 Media Arts when that longstanding cultural-empowerment group decided to phase out that side of its operation.

The 911 folks chose to concentrate on video production, particularly digital video. Their choice seems to have been wise, from the standpoint of supporting DIY creativity. Across North America, digital video has become the overwhelming format of choice for documentaries, no-budget shorts, and at least a few indie feature films, such as Thirteen.

The new NWFF’s theaters are equipped for both film and video projection. But its production/editing facilities, classes, grant program, and forthcoming distribution entity (The Film Company) are religiously devoted to celluloid.

Even here in Software City USA, communities of artisans continue to preserve older ways of making things, such as letterpress printing and analog music recording. Motion-picture film is another technology that’s more cumbersome than its modern successors, but which offers its own distinct qualities.

Film’s lighting and exposure settings are more persnickety than those of digital video, but can produce more stunning results. Film’s slower frame rate gives it a less realistic, more fantastical quality. Most pairs of eyes can tell the difference between film and video, and most still associate the look of film with the look of “a real movie.” Shooting on film, when it’s done right, can give an indie director more credibility, both among audiences and within the marketplace.

Film remains a viable option for moviemakers. But it’s among the most complex art forms around, with many different skills and disciplines to be learned. So it needs places where its secrets can be passed on, where its aesthetics can be learned. Places like the Northwest Film Forum.

As a sidebar, the new NWFF is an anchor for an emerging “arts strip” along Twelfth Avenue on Capitol Hill. Indeed, the Buttersprites followed their NWFF opening-night gig by performing the same set an hour later, a block away, at the Capitol Hill Arts Center. The Photographic Center Northwest and Aftermath Gallery are a few blocks south of NWFF; the offices of Artist Trust are two blocks north. Richard Hugo House holds its literary events and programs a block away on Eleventh. Several storefront galleries have opened nearby on Pike and Pine streets.

Capitol Hill may have lost Cornish College and Fred Meyer this past year, but at least it’s still the heart of Seattle’s arts infrastructure.

A PLEASANTLY STIMULATING AFTERNOON was had last Sunday by the several hundred attendees of the first Pony Boy Records Jazz Picnic at Magnuson Park. It was no substitute for Northwest Bookfest, now disappeared from the site, but it stirred minds in its own way.

The musicians and volunteers enjoyed a green-room snack table including the balanced diet of apples, carrots, and Hostess Zingers.

Greg Williamson, founder of the local record label, emceed the six-hour concert, and sat in on drums during most of the acts, including his own Big Bad Groove Society (below).

My personal favorite moment of the day: Singer H.B. Radke. He’s sassy, saucy, and satirical, and a totally “on” performer to boot.

Other acts included the Hans Brehmer Trio (above), Carolyn Graye (below),…

Randy Halberstadt (above), and Chris Stover’s Mini Narcissism (below).

…is finally at hand, thankfully. It can be a mighty tiring time, as this gent and his plastic horses would agree.

Seattle’s very own all-you-can-eat culture buffet began in 1970. It was originally a free festival, devised to employ baby-boomer artist types and their favorite bar-blues bands. It was also designed to utilize the whole of the Seattle Center grounds for one big thang, for the first time since the 1962 World’s Fair.

Over the years, its organizers realized the drawing power of current big-name rock bands. These “mainstage” gigs became the metaphoric tail wagging the “dog” of the festival’s local-artists’ exposure.

The fees for major rock stars escalated in the ’80s, and skyrocketed in the ’90s. (The additional income went not to the musicians, but to assorted parasitic middlemen). To pay these higher costs, Bumbershoot started charging admission fees; first modest, then a little less modest.

To draw a Center full of patrons at these prices, organizers had to keep bidding on the top touring bands, driving the costs up further. Ticket prices rose from $0 for all four days to $20 per day.

Eventually this cycle will have to slow down. Already there are signs that the mega-concert industry’s teetering on the fiscal brink, due to the greed of monopolistic promoters pushing prices beyond what the market will bear.

And Bumbershoot learned in the past two years that it can get along just fine with alterna-rock reunion acts—who just might be among the first touring giants to attempt to break off from the likes of Clear Channel.

Fortunately, the original Bumbershoot spirit of mass play has survived, with tens of thousands gathering to share one last summer blast.

…occurred Thursday night at Westlake Center. ‘Twas a quiet, somber affair, befitting the event it commemorated—the 1,000th US death in Iraq.

We’ll have a fourth installment of Bumbershoot ’04 pix after this one.

Captions today will be short, partly because many of today’s pix speak for themselves.

This sign, mounted on two film-projector spools, reads: “Support the Washington State Independent Film Industry, Manufacturers of Motion Pictures.” I heartily agree with the sentiment.

Today’s batch starts with the big alterna-comix emphasis at this year’s festival, which culminated in a rather rambling panel discussion among our ol’ pals Harvey Pekar, Peter Bagge, Gary Groth, Jessica Abel, and Gilbert Hernandez.

Back when I was a grunt laborer for Groth, I quickly learned that cartoonists seldom speak in the taut word-balloon language in which they write. They ramble. sometimes they get to their intended point; sometimes (particularly in the case of the beloved Mr. Pekar) they end up somewhere else entirely.

So I wasn’t surprised when the conversation wandered off topic often. Still, the panel made several cogent statements. It concluded that after many years of bitter struggle, “graphic novels” (whatever the heck that term means) have gained a foothold in the mainstream book biz. Of course, that just means there are more of those titles out there, which means a lot more chaff (repackaged superhero crap, comics written to be sold to the movies) as well as a little more wheat.

Artis the Spoonman is now also Artis the Slam Poet, ranting about five centuries of oppression against the true human spirit.

I didn’t get to a lot of the great bands that played over the four days, including Aveo, the Killers, the Girls, and Drive By Truckers. But I did enjoy the thoroughly rockin’ sets by the Witness (above) and the Turn-Ons.

My sometime alterna-journalism colleagues in Harvey Danger have re-formed, and played their first all-ages gig in five years. Sean Nelson, bless him, still looks like a journalist, but his singing voice is stronger than ever.

From the above image, I won’t have to tell you that wristbands for the nighttime stadium rock show were gone within an hour and a half on Monday. Built to Spill singer-songwriter Doug Martsch (below) sounded more Michael Stipe-like than ever.

The reunited Pixies, however, sounded just the same (marvelous) as they ever did. They played all their should-have-been-hits and then some, in a tight hour-and-a-half show. Few singers can make me so happy, singing about such bleak topics, as Mr. Black and Ms. Deal can.

One more set of these pix to come.

WE ONLY GOT TO GO to two days’ worth of Bumbershoot this year, but will stretch our pix of the weekend out to three days, just to extend the joy.

We begin with Mass Productions, who turned the Space Needle into a giant harp last year. This year’s production was somewhat more modest.

Also back this year: Flatstock, the art show and sale by rock poster designers from across North America.

Claudia Mauro, who runs the local indie publisher Whit Press, introduced contributors from her poetry anthology In Praise of Fertile Land.

I love fertile land. I’m just not all that fond of nature poetry, particularly in the ’70s Port Townsend/La Conner style, which Mauro’s book includes much of. All that sanctimonious worship of a selectively-described “nature” in which farms never smell like manure and in which human beings other than the poet are never mentioned.

I used to dislike nature poetry because its sensibility was at odds with my young-adult cantankerousness. Now, I dislike it because it posits a Rousseau-esque romantic longing for a “simpler time” that never was.

In the real world, farmers have always been out to make a buck, have always been pressured by corporate and/or governmental powers, and have always bent and shaped the land to suit their ambitions. Rural life has always been frustrating and/or lonely. Young adults have longed to get the heck outta there since the age of Playboy of the Western World, and likely before.

I won’t even get into the PoMo philosophical construct that “nature,” as nature poets imagine it, doesn’t even exist except as a theoretical opposite to “civilization,” whatever that is.

Liz Phair, as you may have heard, has reinvented her look, from indie-rock bad girl into blonde quasi-waif. As long as she still plays and sings great, I don’t care.

In other apparel topics, fashion shows were held at regular intervals next to the “Fashion Alley” concession booths.

At one such show, we finally learned what’s worn underneath a Utilikilt—another Utilikilt.

The Bumbrella Stage, again this year, held a pair of strange banner-fellows on its sponsor flags. Last year, America’s most widely read lefty magazine shared the stage with Captain Morgan rum. This year, its logo appeared beneath that of Miller Beer, which was recently sold from Philip Morris to South African Breweries.

On the left, James Brown-esque vocalist Bobby Rush. I’ve seen James Brown impersonators on stage before, but they were always white.

LAST THURSDAY NIGHT saw the opening of the long-in-progress Tashiro Kaplan Artist Lofts, 50 live-work spaces and four ground-level gallery storefronts.

The project, four years in the making, involved the city, King County, national nonprofit developers Artspace Projects, the Pioneer Square Community Association, and other assorted characters. It included rehabbing two existing buildings (the Tashiro and the Kaplan) and adding three new floors to the combined structure.

The result: Some wonderful views, from rent-controlled spaces rented only to folk who can prove (1) they’re artists (architects and interior designers don’t count), and (2) earning less than a certain income level.

The city, for its effort, gets 50 new households, all of a more or less “respectable” type, in one of the downtown core’s last down-n’-out pockets. (Remember the old line about how “artists are the shock troops of gentrification”?)

The rest of us got to see the oft-amazing works by the artists in residence.

And we get to keep these creative types living right here in town, instead of having to split for a lower-rent locale.

So: What’s the most appropriately festive way to fete this joyous occasion? With some butoh, of course.

The Seattle Storm hosted a WNBA basketball game at KeyArena Wednesday night.

Just steps away, the visual-arts portion of the Bumbershoot arts festival held its free preview shindig. The theme of the opening, and of one of the exhibits: “Girlie Fun Show.”

I mean no irony by mentioning this. Women are different from other women. Some get their kicks by shooting dunks, others by drinking shots. Some even like both activities, at different times.

And some just ilke to create intriguing art. Such as Jodi Rockwell, whose walk-in installation surrounds a giant ball of frozen beet juice, slowly dripping onto a salt-covered floor.

On the gents’ side, W. Scott Trimble’s got a series of coin-op machines. This one uses wooden pieces attached to a mechanism that might be compared to the wheel tracks of an army tank.

This is either a robotic mannequin created by Mr. Juniper Shuey or Mr. Shuey himself.

There are plenty of other visual treats to enjoy over the long weekend, including a Matthew Kangas-curated group exhibit on the theme of “Consumables,” a bunch of classic art photos from the files of Aperture magazine (including such famous creators as Diane Arbus, Edward Weston, Sylvia Plachy, Imogen Cunningham, Chuck Close, and Ansel Adams), and street-cred group shows from Cut Kulture and the Bluebottle Gallery.

And the Girlie Fun Show exhibit itself is, well, fun. It’s femininity without guilt. Nobody’s vilifying anything. Any and all possible expressions of womanhood are welcomed within the room, though the more outrageous ones are preferred. There are stereoscopic nudes you watch on genuine View-Masters, and a video all about the eating of chocolate.

But for now, let’s return to the opening night festivities. There were “cigarette girls” selling small art-trinkets, and “flamingo girls” providing hospitality.

There was a double-dutch jump rope demonstration, and the enticing avant-jazz sounds of the Bethurum Collective.

The night’s star performers were the Vargas Girls, an all-singing, all-dancing troupe named in honor of longtime Esquire/Playboy pinup illustrator Alberto Vargas. Their moves and their banter were even tighter than their attire.

The art exhibits continue, with regular Bumbershoot admission, through Monday.

ABOVE, AN EXAMPLE of what will keep the Left out of power in the US forever.

I happen to know the gents behind this poster; some of them were also behind the post-industrial rock band ¡TchKung!. I’d argued with them in the past about the futulity of square-bashing.

To dehumanize those whose lifestyles are different from yours—even under the guise of parody—is to become that which you claim to hate.

The same day John Kerry spoke at Tacoma Dome Parking Lot A (see below), a bigass RV sale occurred at Lot C. Several of us strolled from the former event to the latter.

After all, there’s a big correlation between loving your country and wanting to see some more of it. And the RV biz is one of the industries that’ve been hurt real bad by Bush’s policies of manipulating fuel prices and decimating middle-class consumer power.

As I strolled the hundreds of vehicles on the lot, something landed inside me. Something I’d started to feel a couple of weeks before. I began to crave an RV lifestyle.

Yes. I, who’ve never owned a car, now want a vehicle I can live in. One I can take around these disunited states, in search of a more purple America.

I’d traverse the nation, writing about and photographing everything I saw. I’d have satellite TV and satellite Internet to keep me in touch with the larger world. I’d stay at Wal-Mart parking lots and in specialty RV parks.

Today’s motorhomes truly have everything in ’em. The problem: The way their particular “everything” looks.

So many motorhome interiors are designed with a gaudy, faux “colonial” look, like the sets of talk shows on Christian cable channels. I’d have to undertake serious redecorating work to refurbish one of these AARP-mobiles into something in which I’d want to be seen.

But then I found it. The vehicle of my dreams. And, of course, it comes from the one truly hip RV brand, Airstream.

Specifically, it’s the International CCD model, with a quasi-retro, quasi-Ikea interior. It’s got great fung shui, and even a computer desk. It’s a small space I could truly live in. It was love at first sight.

(It also happens to be the official traveling vehicle of The Simple Life, but that has nothing to do with my adoration for it.)

The downside to the Airstream: It’s not self-contained, so I’d have to also get a vehicle to pull it. And it couldn’t be a cute micro-car, but something with significant towing capacity (at least 2.5 tons). It’d be simpler, and probably cheaper, to get a parkable-sized motorhome (22′ or shorter).

The downsides to RVs in general: The initial cost, the operating costs (fuel, propane, etc.), the insurance costs, the depreciation, the regular chores (adding propane and water, dumping waste water and sewage), maintenance (particularly in the winter months), urban driving/parking hassles.

And if I tried to be a “full timer” (a permanent RV resident), I’d also need a permanent mailing address, a more-or-less regular parking spot, and a garage or storage locker for all the stuff I’d want to continue to own but wouldn’t want to cart around with me.

But damn it all, I still want one.

I’ll have to suffer through this craving until it passes, or until I rent one for a weekend to get over the craving, or until I fully succumb.

Fortunately, we’re nearing the off-season for this particular pastime, so I can put it into personal hot-stove-league status for a few months.

Should I fail to overcome the craving by then, I might start up a “Get Clark On the Road” donation fund.