I, along with some 20,000 other locals, found my way to the Tacoma Dome’s north parking lot bright n’ early last Saturday morning.

We were all off to hear John Kerry give a major swing-state campaign speech.

I’d arrived at 10:30 a.m., an hour after the gates had first opened. It took another hour to wind up the line and get into the outer standing area. An hour after that, those of us without pre-attained tickets were fed through the metal detectors into the inner audience zone.

Almost everyone held an optimistic, celebratory mood. There was a clear air of possibility in the crowd. People felt they really could take this country back, or rather, take it forward, beyond the cynical politics of greed and prejudice.

The conservative counter-protestors were few and brusque. One yelled epithets against “liberal scum,” as if he could persuade people to his side by insulting them.

Most of the homemade buttons and badges were anti-Bush in nature. But the rally’s organizers made sure plenty of professionally made pro-Kerry signs filled the space.

Following the usual round of warm-up speeches by local politicos, “folksy” radio veteran Garrison Keillor led the crowd in a somber a capella rendition of “America the Beautiful.” He then told an anecdote about escorting Kerry to the Minnesota State Fair, where the radio host bought the candidate a corn dog and the candidate had to remind the radio host to put ketchup on it.

A good 45 minutes elapsed between the end of Keillor’s address and the arrival of the candidate’s motorcade. When he finally appeared, he brought two more warm-up speakers. Kerry’s ex-primary opponent Gen. Wesley Clark (below) decried Bush as “an incompetent commander in chief.”

After the general, Kerry’s army buddy Jim Rassmann slammed the TV attack ads questioning Kerry’s Vietnam service.

Finally, the candidate himself took to the mike. He spoke for almost an hour, drawing plenty of whoops and applause along the way.

He made the usual points—reform health care, kick-start the economy, rebuild international alliances, stop tax windfalls for the rich, get folks working again (at living wages), rebuild public education, help real families instead of hiding behind “family values” platitudes.

He said little or nothing about abortion rights, gay rights, ending the Iraq war, ending the drug war, repealing the Patriot Act, getting the FCC off its censorship kick, breaking up the media conglomerates, or bringing a just peace to the West Bank.

Still, Kerry did say what I wanted to hear about the issues he chose to discuss. And he gave the most impassioned, most robust speech of the three of his I’ve seen in person.

John Kerry’s found his proverbial mojo. Whether that’s enough to put him over the top remains to be seen. But at least the Saturday crowd seemed to think it was probable.

…there are many parts of hemp I don’t understand.

One of them is Hempfest, a giant two-day advertisement for a product that’s not legally available.

Musicians (such as the Kottonmouth Kings, above), orators, performance artists, and T-shirts lauded the praises of this supposed miracle industrial-agricultural product to an audience that seemed not to care one whit about industrial agriculture, but who seemed quite interested in chemical hedonism.

As we should’ve learned in the ’60s, hedonism makes a great pretext for a socio-political movement, but a lousy basis for actually running one. It’s hard to get things done that need to be done if you’re relying on people who’ve joined in to have leisurely fun.

Just because I think the stuff shouldn’t be illegal, it doesn’t necessarily mean I like it. (I think traditional haggis, made from organ meats, should become legal in the U.S., but I might never care to eat one.)

And besides, I loathe the smell of patchouli and think “jam bands” can create some of the dullest music on the globe.

One thing I do approve of heartily: Dumping the current political regime, and for many reasons beyond its prosecution of the “drug war.”

I might not go to Hempfest again. But I’d love to go to a Shempfest!

IT’S THE LAST CHAPTER of our recent jaunt to Tacoma. Today: Just a few of the magnificently restored stoic downtown buildings.

Tacoma, as you who’ve read regional history might recall, was originally developed as a Northern Pacific Railway company town. Like all the western land-grant railroads, the NP tried to control all commerce in the territories it settled. By siting its western terminus at its own town, the NP hoped for a stranglehold on the Northwest economy and on north-Pacific ocean shipping as well.

But Seattle offered a more wide-open, less regulated form of capitalism. This, along with the help of the rival Great Northern Railway (now merged, with the NP, into the BNSF), the siting of the University of Washington, and the success of a former furniture maker named Bill Boeing, secured Seattle’s dominance. Seattle became the region’s financial and cultural capital; Tacoma became an industrial and military city.

When I-5 came through town in 1965, coinciding with the opening of Tacoma Mall, downtown Tacoma was left to rot.

It took more than three decades and a series of public projects (including museums, live theaters, and a UW branch campus) to bring downtown Tacoma back.

It still doesn’t have a mainstream movie theater, or any retailer bigger than the University Book Store. But it’s got galleries, funky boutiques, antique shops, restaurants, bars, cafes, high-offices, and (most importantly) a spirit of possibility.

I’ll forever remember this Tully’s as Tracey Ullman’s pizza place in the film classic I Love You to Death.

At this “graffiti garage,” young spray-paint artists are permitted to create, then cover-up and replace, their expressions of urban individuality.

Our thanks to John Poetzel and “T.Y.D.” for recommending, and escorting me to, some of the sites shown in this series.

WE’LL HAVE ONE MORE set of Tacoma pix following today’s installment, which focuses on quaint signs and on the city’s seaport.

As far as I know, no late-night Showtime comedy series have ever been filmed on this street.

Unlike the unified port districts of New York/New Jersey and Los Angeles/Long Beach, Puget Sound’s seaports operate separately and competitively. This cuts costs for shippers, but raises costs for taxpayers. The Port of Tacoma’s public history kiosk, at the base of the viewing platform where the above shot was made, still boasts of having snagged Totem Ocean Trailer Express (an Alaska container-cargo operation) away from the Port of Seattle back in the mid-’80s.

The once-forlorn downtown of T-Town’s undergone some magnificent renewal in recent years. Still down-n’-out, though, is the once-stoic 1906 Elks club building.

The Elks themselves want nothing to do with their former palace. The landlord wants to raze it for condos. The civic-preservation clique wants it restored. Rebellious kids climb into it through broken windows for squat parties.

And a local guerilla-art group, Beautiful Angle, posts flyers on its boarded-up doors. This flyer depicts the nearby Thea Foss Bridge, also threatened with razing.

The fine print reads: “I am the fishbone stuck in the craw of a great jazz singer, who wishes it were gone and then wonders afterwards why the songs don’t sound as sweet.”

The couple who escorted me down the bridge called it “the Bridge of Death.” A large bird apparently lives in the upper rafters and attacks smaller birds, whose carcasses litter the roadway beneath.

At least one more batch of T-Town pix is still to come.

IT’S DAY TWO of our photo-jaunt up and down the length of that famed street of independent retail, South Tacoma Way.

Oldsmobile may be gone, but an Olds used-car sign remains at Russ Dunmire. One of the last 100 or so Olds-only dealers that remained, it now sells Mazdas.

Incidentally, the great rock combo Ruston Mire is partly named for this dealership, and for the dealership’s once-ubiquitous TV jingle. The band name’s other, more direct source: The Superfund cleanup site at the Tacoma suburb of Ruston, where an ASARCO copper smelter once manufactured arsenic.

Jack Roberts may be dead, but he’ll still take a pie in the face to give you a deal on a new fridge. And he’s given up a big white wall for one of those murals by at-risk youth.

Ponder the potential meanings of a used-car lot called “Bag Lady:”

1. She sells cars so cheaply, she can’t afford one herself. Let alone a domicile.2. At a bank Dumpster somewhere, there’s a pile of loan contracts she can collect into a grocery cart, which are still legally valid.

3. From her appearance, she’s potentially willing to do more to make a deal than Jack Roberts ever would.

This no-name restaurant sign now points down to a Subway franchise.

This neon, I’m told, still works at night, sort of.

After a long afternoon of exploring, there’s only one place to go—the taco wagon!

Over the next several days, I’ll show off some pix I took on a recent jaunt to our neighbors to the south.

First off, the signs and other sights of that great street immortalized by Neko Case, South Tacoma Way.

The Starlite Drive-In is, like most un-razed drive-ins, now an all-week swap meet.

Come in to the PI Bank for today’s special interest rate, 3.14159 percent.

The magnificent Java Jive survives, while many other nightspots and merchants have not.

Also surviving, sort of: The B&I Shopping Center. Once a thriving indie discount store, amusement arcade, and private zoo, it’s now a mini-mall at which various scrappy mom-n’-pop merchants hawk telephone cards, T-shirts, religious trinkets, Yu-Gi-Oh cards, and Mexican soda pop. Ivan the gorilla, who lived at the store for years until economics and politics sent him off to a regular zoo, still oversees the place in caricature form.

In the ’70s and ’80s the Tacoma Mall, and its adjacent strip-mall spaces, absorbed most of the City of Destiny’s retail trade. City-planner types moped about the decimation of Tacoma’s downtown, which has only recently begun to rebound. Few such official concerns were raised over the fate of South Tacoma Way (the in-city stretch of U.S. 99).

America’s great retail chains either moved out of South Tacoma Way or never moved in. Today, the only corporate names you’ll see on that street are those on franchised car dealers and gas stations. South Tacoma Way is a haven for independent retailers of all types—at least for those who can stay in business in today’s Bush-decimated economy.

More of these to come.

…begins this time with the recent opening of the first art spaces in the renovated Tashiro Kaplan Building, just northeast of Pioneer Square near Third and Yesler. Depicted above is the new Forgotten Works gallery, whose opening fundraiser reprised one of the fave concepts from its previous location—tiny affordable pieces by dozens of different contributors.

Alas, west Capitol Hill’s Hillcrest Deli-Market was too damaged by the July fire to be fixed. It began under the Hillcrest name in 1959, but was really a pre-supermarket era Safeway dating from the 1920s, making it one of the town’s longest continually-operating grocery locations. We’ll have to wait and see what replaces it.

Remember: Always practice safe shipping.

YEP, IT’S TIME for our annual “In Praise of the Hydros” piece.

Since many of you have read some, if not all, of our previous installments on this topic, this year’s version will be short. Essentially, the hydroplane race is perhaps the most “unique” (to use an overrated LA term) cultural institution Seattle’s still got. Over a quarter-million people gathered on Sunday to watch a sport that exists one week a year here, and is barely noticed anywhere else. KIRO-TV paid a big rights fee to telecast the event, in a seven-hour marathon broadcast utilizing all the hi-tech tricks available to the industry. Advertisers ranging from GM to Mike’s Hard Lemonade commissioned special commercials for the telecast.

Yet, for all its enduring popularity, this may have been the last hydro race as we know it.

To explain why takes a little back-story.

Since the ’80s, the hydro racing circuit was dominated by the Miss Budweiser team, owned by Bernie Little. Anheuser-Busch poured healthy portions of its national ad budget into Little’s operation, as a thank-you for Little’s success as a Bud regional wholesaler. The sport became less and less competitive, especially after other big sponsors (Atlas Van Lines, Procter & Gamble, Kellogg’s) bugged out. As the circuit deteriorated in popularity everywhere except Seattle, Little bought out the whole operation under the name Hydro-Prop.

Little passed away last year. His son took over the Miss Bud team. But soon thereafter, Anheuser-Busch announced it would stop sponsoring the boat after this season.

Hydro-Prop is now in organizational shambles. Little’s heirs haven’t found a new sponsor. Some observers are suggesting the sport physically rebuild itself from scratch, replacing the surplus airplane engines it’s always used with more modern automobile-based engines. And the better-organized Unlimited Lights organization threatens to build its own set of bigger boats, rivaling the “unlimiteds” of Hydro-Prop.

But no matter what happens in the coming years, the 54-year heritage of the hydros will remain an integral (and fun) part of Seattle’s civic psyche.

…was all the “rage” Friday night, with group shows opening at the current CoCA space (across from the Hostess bakery on Dexter) and the Crespinel Gallery on Second.

The CoCA show, 101 Ways to Remove a President from Power, is a mixed bag creative-wise. The contributing artists are united in their loathing for the sitting President (and their consipcuous lack of attention toward his challenger). Some of the artists fused their rage with fun and/or insight; but others settled for the weary ol’ conformist-nonconformist cliches of square-bashing and Nazi-baiting.

Among the worst examples: Three performance artists (below) who donned thrift-store apparel and old-man makeup to appear as “typical” Republican voters, senile geezers who wheeze about family values while grabbing young ladies’ posteriors.

Our ol’ collaborator DJ Superjew gave a more intriguing contribution with The Disregarder, a four-page tabloid commenting wryly on corporate-news-media silliness. (She hand-printed the thing on a vintage letterpress, using coarse pulp-magazine style paper.)

Meanwhile, about a mile away at the Crespinel space, Larry Reid (who used to run CoCA) organized Art vs. Bush. It was a benefit for the previously-mentioned-here No Vote Left Behind organization. Many of the contributing artists donated pre-existing work, much of which had no overtly political content.

But we did get to see former ice-cream baron Ben Cohen’s PantsOnFire-Mobile, an art-car construction being towed across the nation, bearing smoke and artificial flame out the statue’s rear and flashing messages of “lies” across its front.

And Randolph Sill showed off his “877,” a collection of little ceramic coffins (one for every U.S. military death in Iraq as of June). With quiet dignity, Sill offers a more powerful statement against Bush than all the CoCA show’s contributors combined.

One day earlier, our ol’ pal Ross Palmer Beecher won her dispute with the powers-that-be at the Harbor Steps development. They’d asked her to contribute to one of its monthly art shows. Then they tried to rescind the invite when she presented an arrangement of beer-can parts that played on the similarity of Bush to Busch.

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.