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IT’S BEEN AWHILE since we ran a Random Photo Phriday. We’ve some nice shots saved up; here are a few.
Specifically, un-themed floats, clowns, and pirates.
I’ve no idea what this critter is, except that it belongs to the Group Health Credit Union.
TODAY AND TOMORROW, some pix from Saturday’s Seafair Torchlight Parade, just for the fun of it. (We’ll write about the Democratic Convention sometime within the coming week. Promise.)
The theme this year was “Fifty Years of Rock n’ Roll.” Most entrants interpreted it as an excuse for Elvish fetishism and Fabulous Fifties fetishism.
A local Hare Krishna congregation created a float based on Yellow Submarine, perhaps the first rock n’ roll movie to be partly influenced by Eastern culture, albeit in a corporate, watered-down way. But then again, rock n’ roll itself was originally a corporate, watered-down corruption of black R&B.
The Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center offered the best interpretation of the theme—a preview of its forthcoming mixed-race production of Grease, that venerable musical depicting the ’70s version of ’50s nostalgia.
As you may have read, 1954 wasn’t just the year of Presley’s first recording. It was also the year of the Brown v. Board of Education court decision, which broke previous legal excuses for segregated public schools. As John Waters explored in Hairspray, racial and other suppressions were integral to the story of that not-really-so-quiet decade. The freakish unreality of ’50s nostalgia culture, as evinced in Grease (one of Waters’s favorite films), re-interpreted this revolutionary era as A Simpler Time. A more multicolored Grease would be an alternate-universe fantasy, in which a wider swath of America’s youth would’ve had the opportunity to wear the silly clothes, sing the silly songs, and live the fluffy little romances.
Think of it as a healing image.
Speaking of inclusion, longtime local Latino political activist Roberto Maestas was picked to be Seafair’s honorary “King Neptune Rex” this year. He’s accompanied by Jeanine Nordstrom, who, like most female members of that family that got rich selling clothes to women, doesn’t get to do much at the company.
FRIDAY NIGHT was a night of triumph for local writer and former zine editor Steve Mandich.
TNT debuted its new Evel Knievel made-for-cable movie, officially based on Mandich’s now-out-of-print book Evel Incarnate. He held a party for some 50 friends and relatives, plus me, at Goofy’s sports bar in Ballard. He’s shown above in a custom Evel suit, which he asked well-wishers to autograph.
Mandich says he didn’t ask for any input in the making of the movie (“I just took their check and deposited it”), and invited his audience to laugh or make snide remarks about it.
It turned out to be a competent if un-stirring biopic, more entertaining than the two ’70s Knievel films (one starring the man himself, the other with George Hamilton). I particularly enjoyed the obviously fake digital paintings of the Las Vegas skyline, which utterly failed to hide the fact that the whole thing was filmed in Ontario.
…of the many things we saw and did last weekend.
First, our friends in the band Lushy played the last night of Eastlake’s Bandoleone restaurant. (The building’s coming down; the management has found a new site in Fremont.)
When filming a Ford SUV commercial downtown at night, be sure your camera’s mounted on something rugged and sturdy—like a Mercedes SUV.
Seahawks Stadium hosted a big England-vs.-Scotland soccer exhibition. So, of course, the George and Dragon Pub in Fremont hosted a huge postgame party. The joint was filled with raucous singing, replica team jerseys, and dudes with accents boasting to me about their love of drinking until passing out.
And our ol’ friends Elaine Bonow and Harry Pierce debuted their funky li’l soul band Stupid Boy at the new intimate Blue Button cabaret space.
WE SHOT A LOTTA PIX this past weekend. Today, the Capitol Hill Block Party. Tomorrow, other scenes.
If there was an unofficial theme to this year’s heat-drenched Block Party, it was woman-power, in the retro-burlesque and other interpretations. Between the Rat City Rollergirls, the naughty T-shirts for sale, some righteous lady slam poets, and some slammin’ rock bands, the party offered a cornucopia of saucy, sassy femme-empowerment visions.
The party’s chief expression of masculine energy was the closing set by those 20-year veterans of slow metal, the Melvins. I didn’t get any good pictures of their set, partly because these three young aggressive stoners kept stalking me. (Note to our older readers: “Aggressive stoner” ceased to be an oxymoron several years ago.) They insisted that I’d taken pictures of them, which I hadn’t. They semi-incoherently threatened violence, even after I showed them I had no pictures of them.
…with some pictures you can read. Enjoy yourself this weekend and stay cool.
FREDDY’S DEAD, OR IS IT?: The Broadway Market Fred Meyer store is now gone, except for a vestigial pharmacy department. (The last time the site was remodeled, when Broadway Market was built on what had been a freestanding Fred Meyer, the pharmacy remained open in a portable building.)
In the side-entrance window, a Liquor Board application sign lists Fred Meyer as applying for a grocery beer-wine license at the site. We’d previously been led to believe Kroger (parent of both Freddy’s and QFC) would simply move and enlarge its existing QFC into the Broadway Market building. The application notice implies an alternate plan, to fill the building with an expanded Freddy’s that includes a grocery department. I’d like that much better.
…we still haven’t been told what caused the mysterious late-night fire that destroyed the Hillcrest deli-mart on East Olive Way. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, to hear that the building might be razed and condos might be put up in its place.
(UPDATE: Since this item was first posted, I’ve been informed that the Hillcrest’s owners may very well rebuild and reopen.)
The Hillcrest, a former pre-supermarket-era Safeway, had a full food selection at decent prices, and had the best convenience-store fried chicken and jojos in all Seattle. I miss it, and hope it comes back.
IN OTHER NEWS, the Museum of History and Industry quietly announced it would like to lease out the 117,000 square feet of exhibition-office space it owns near the Convention Center, which had been used for the temporary downtown library these past two years. The statement implies MOHAI’s raised nowhere near enough money to move in there itself.
…and a lot of hard work, last Sunday will have been the first July Fourth of America’s new independence movement.
Kerry’s election wouldn’t be the fulfillment of this new spirit, but it’s a first and most intensely necessary step.
The Fourth of Jul-Ivar’s management asked that no pix be taken of the on-stage performers. So you’ll just have to believe me that the Elvis impersonator was even dumber than most. (And claiming to be a wink-wink parody of a bad Elvis impersonator didn’t make him any less lame.)
Ahh, the two great tastes that taste great together….
This children’s break-dance competition was sponsored by Sprite, which also had a do-it-yourself DJ stratch-mixing booth.
For the big fireworks, we relocated to a high-rise rooftop party where, supposedly, both the waterfront and Lake Union pyrotechnics could be seen. It was a sort-of-just-barely case. Each show was mostly obscured by taller buildings. But we all had a smashing time anyway.
ON THURS. NITE, we spent some pleasant, albeit quite warm, hours at the glorious Lower Level performance space on Capitol Hill.
There, the enterprising Francophile DJs known as La Boum! (one of whom’s also involved in the Cicada fashion boutique) presented a quite sprightly, defiantly girlie, and ultimately playful fashion show, featuring both vintage and new ensembles.
IT’S THE THIRD AND LAST PART of our look at the LGBT Pride rally/parade. Yesterday we saw the gents; today it’s the ladies.
The Pride festival’s officially all about forthrightly declaring one’s sexuality, no matter what people say.
So I’ll forthrightly declare: I mainly go to Pride to enjoy the presence of the women.
The fact that the women are mostly lesbians (with a few bis and post-op trannies mixed in) matters not one atom.
In my long life, I’ve viewed and adored thousands of women who didn’t want to have sex with me. From this point-O-view, lesbians are merely one subset.
Like a Medieval troubadour toward a lady of the court, my attraction to the Pride Parade lesbians is both defined and enhanced by knowing my desire probably won’t be physically consummated.
Rather, I can only express my admiration and my yearning as artistically as I can, and trust that, at least on some level, these strong women can gratefully accept my highest regard for their faces, their bodies, and their courageous hearts.
Of course, should any one of these women turn out to be bi (or het-curious), and find herself reading this, I would love the chance to channel this high adoration toward a lower plane.
IT’S PART 2 OF 3 of our documentin’ last Sunday’s LGBT Pride Parade.
Today, we separate the boys from the girls, since that’s what gaydom essentially does.
The prime contradiction of the “gender diversity” and gay-rights movements is that they (rightfully) demand society welcome a broader range of gender-types and relationship-types, yet the most common of these uncommon sexualities is that of men who prefer to smooch it up with their fellow men. William Burroughs and other commentators have noted over the years that male-gaydom isn’t a weaker or sissier masculinity but a more exclusive masculinity. It’s manhood uncompromised by the need to live with, or satisfy, women.
Given that, of course, there are still many, many types of man-loving men and man-and-man relationships. I predict that even when (not if) gay-tolerance finally spreads out to the vast suburban and rural stretches of this country, gays will still choose to congregate in the major cities, because only in a large population base (or via net-dating) will a pseudo-Eurotrash fashion victim in search of a leather-bondage cowboy be likely to discover his soulmate.
But then again, bifurcating and bisecting’s what U.S. society seems to be all about these days. We’re (including my own het-self) spinning out into ever-narrower subcultural niches. In this regard, it’s commendable that the Pride people have kept so many queer-culture subsectors involved all these years.
Among these subsectors: Drag afficianados. If we’re to believe the papers, drag-queen performance, on both pro and amateur levels, is significantly less popular than it had been in the ’90s. Still, for those who truly care for the art form, it’s never mattered whether it was considered “in” or “out.”
On his net-radio talk show Sex Life, local “sexpert” Dane Ballard recently discussed why the Pride Parade seems to have become passe to many local gays. You can hear it all here, once the archive file’s been placed online (which should be as early as today).
By the way, ’twas nice that the Seafair Pirates showed up. For some fifty years, the Pirates have represented a just slightly more acceptable image of rowdy male bonding, in a town that’s spent the past century trying to distance itself from its rough-hewn frontier past.
Over the next two or three days, we’ll look back at the massive affirmation of corporate- and local-government-approved taboo-bustin’ that is the Gay Pride Parade. (The event’s actual name is almost as long as the event itself, so we won’t bother with it.)
We’ll let somebody else (Mr. Dan Savage, perhaps?) discuss whether there’s an intrinsically transgressive aspect to homosexuality and other “alt” sexualities, and hence whether a pride fest that welcomes banks, beer companies, city-council members, etc. contradicts said transgressive aspect, drawing “gender outlaws” into everyday mainstream society.
This year, as you might imagine, there was a renewed spirit of political activism at the parade, and it centered around lesbians and gay men demanding a certain ordinary mark of acceptance into everyday mainstream society, a marriage license.
Other messages were also conveyed by marchers, dancers, and others. Some messages called for religious tolerance. Others called for intolerance toward abusive relationships (a boy carried a sign that read “Abusive Priests Suck”).
And some messages expressed the one paramount lesson we all must heed this year.
Unsorted shots for your pondering pleasure.
HEREWITH, THE SECOND and last part of our recent visit to the Fremont Solstice Parade and street fair. Today, some of the more overtly “political” statements made there.
Despite this “wall of shame” and other anti-right-wing displays, the Bush-Cheny ’04 campaign bravely staffed a booth at the street fair.
The megaphone guy is calling for John Kerry to show some backbone during the current campaign.
This Statue of Liberty balloon has just been re-inflated, to thunderous crowd applause, after having been deliberately run over by a cardboard replica of a U.S. Army tank.
I’m not sure what this sad, chained penis is meant to represent. The stripped and abused Iraqi prisoners? U.S. society’s repression of Eros? Seattle’s moratorium on new strip clubs? “Alternative” culture’s sexist stereotype of the phallus as the “root” of all evil?
In any other era, a line of belly dancers probably wouldn’t seem all that “political.” This year, it’s a statement. Yes, there are positive cultural contributions from the Arab world; female-empowering contributions, even.
Every year, the parade includes at least one entry based on a big local-news story. This time, it was the big move into the big, beautiful new Seattle library (which, I’ve now decided, is an airport terminal for voyages of the mind). The paucity of objects on the carts these folks are pushing might represent the library’s slashed operations budgets.
You might not think of the Oompa-Loompas from Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory as political, but I do.
Dahl was one of the wisest and most subversive authors of “children’s” literature. I’ve always thought Charlie was a prescient parable/parody of conservative economics. Willy Wonka, you might recall, is a ruthless capitalist who’s fired his unworthy local workforce, then reopened for business with a crew of happily servile, low-wage immigrants.
Indeed, in the 1964 first edition, the Oompa-Loompas were (in the words of Dahl biographer Jeremy Treglown) “a tribe of 3,000 amiable black pygmies who have been imported by Mr. Willy Wonka from ‘the very deepest and darkest part of the African jungle where no white man had been before.’ Mr. Wonka keeps them in the factory, where they have replaced the sacked white workers. Wonka’s little slaves are delighted with their new circumstances, and particularly with their diet of chocolate. Before they lived on green caterpillars, beetles, eucalyptus leaves, ‘and the bark of the bong–bong tree.'”
Dahl re-created them as white fantasy creatures for the 1971 Willy Wonka movie and subsequent reissues of the book.
The end of the parade didn’t mean the end of the statements. The art-car display included this minivan decorated by Calif. conceptual artist Emily Duffy. Recalling our recent discussion about the limits of “positive attitudes,” we can ponder what Duffy believes are the deleterious effects of fashion advertising.
Duffy believes the fashion biz thrives parasitically, by bullying women into hating themselves and their bodies. But the industry’s ads, magazines, and in-store displays are exclusively filled with overt “positivity.” In Fashionland, everyone’s happy, confident, full of pep and/or attitude.
But it’s a happy fantasy land populated only by those deemed by the industry’s gatekeepers to meet one ideal of perfection or another.