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.

THIS WEEK, highlights from our sunburn-inducin’ trip to the Fremont Solstice Parade and street fair. Today, the beautiful costumery and skinosity. On Tuesday or Wednesday, the rest of the spectacle.

The “World Naked Bike Ride” the previous weekend was billed as a participant event, but seemed more like a spectator event. The unofficial bicycle nudes at the Fremont parade are often judged as a spectator event, but seemed this year more like a participant event.

By this, I mean the naked ladies & gents walking and biking, and the more or less clothed audience members standing and sitting, all behaved as if they were of one joyful whole. There was no public making-out, but there didn’t have to be.

Fremont Parade nudity isn’t about the mechanical or hydraulic aspects of sexuality. It’s about showing off yourself, seeing and being seen, just as you are. It’s about freedom and comfort, and togetherness. It’s about having your physical, mental, and emotional beings united. It’s about taking appropriate pride in the gifts with which we were created, and with which we may help create others. It’s about demystifying the female body, and un-demonizing the male body.

And, with or without paint, the nudity is ultimately just another costume choice. You can parade as a human, or as a flower or a bat, or as part of a team uniformly dressed for group unity.

The Science Fiction Museum and Hall of Fame, Paul Allen’s latest vanity monument, opened Friday morning with a simple ceremony. Instead of the all-star weekend of free rock concerts that marked the opening of SFM’s parent organization, the Experience Music Project, SFM merely had some short speeches by the usual suspects (Allen, Mayor Nickels, author Neal Stephenson, etc.).

Nickels, bless him, turned out to be a geek at heart. He thanked the costumed “extraterrestrials” in the audience, and closed his remarks with “Live long and prosper.”

Several of the suspects then jointly pressed a button which set off metallic confetti showers, some steam spurting out of the robo-bug gizmo on the building, and “Also Sprach Zarathustra” (a.k.a. the 2001 theme) blared forth.

Among the costumed fans in attendance was our ol’ pal and Punk Lust zine editor Willum Pugmyr (above).

Management didn’t let me take pictures inside the museum. But I can tell you it’s a fanboy’s dream. For the (relatively costly) price of admission, you get to see dozens of real movie props (Captain Kirk’s chair, the Lost in Space robot), costumes, illustration-art pieces, fanzine pages, book covers, toys, and more. There are also many clever computer-based displays, including the “Hall of Fame” section (honoring some three dozen influential authors), and two impressive globular video-projection units.

And as a writer, I was pleased to see all the attention given to the written origins of sci-fi.

The space is smallish. But since the EMP’s vast Sky Church auditorium’s adjacent, it can be used for any SFM special events, which I hope will include author panels, film festivals, and other fan-convention favorites.

The place is fun, and the strolling experience through the small space is appropriately akin to traversing a cramped spaceship. I’m just disappointed at the $10 admission fee. Perhaps Mr. Allen needs to be reminded that some of us have less spending money than he does.

The “World Naked Bike Ride,” held Saturday in Seattle and various other burgs planet-wide, was supposed to be a political statement against foreign oil or car-culture or censorship or some combo of the above. Its local incarnation was more of a fun run.

Dozens of men, and six or seven women, pedaled their bare buns through Fremont, Westlake, Seattle Center, and downtown. At several stops along the way, cheering spectators and avid photographers expressed their vocal appreciation for those who dared to bare. (Though, unlike the body-paint bikers at the Fremont Solstice Parade, this was intended as a participatory, not a spectator, event.)

There were no arrests, and only the most formal of official disapprovals. That’s good.

Now if we can only get a legal public nude beach in this town….

…who wished the well wishes on my recent birthday. It was indeed pleasurable and memorable.

One of the things I did that day was to visit Chateau Ste. Michelle, the modern factory (hidden behind a pseudo-French facade on an old dairy farm) that, as much as any other outfit, spurred the Washington wine biz to its current lofty heights.

The winery tour was brief and efficiently laid-out. The guide told a little bit about the many different wines made here and at a satellite facility in Eastern Washington, and about some of the awards the company’s received over the years.

He didn’t mention Ste. Michelle’s origin as Pomerelle, a little plant on the Sea-Tac strip that had made cheap screw-top wines since the end of Prohibition. In the late ’60s, it started making “real” wines under the Ste. Michelle name. Under master marketer Charles Finkel (who went on to start the beer importer/distributor Merchant du Vin and the Pike Pub and Brewery), Ste. Michelle became prominent enough to get bought out by U.S. Tobacco, the “smokeless tobacco” guys. With this corporate backing, the company built the “Chateau,” added subsidiary brands and branch plants, and became the grape-crushin’ colossus we know n’ love today.

Back in Bothell, one drive-up espresso stand embraces an epithet that’s apparently become beyond-passe in the big city.

LAST FRIDAY, the mercilessly-hyped new arena rock band Velvet Revolver came to the Moore. The group, and its audience, were welcomed by no fewer than three radio-station promo tents.

All three tents boasted mega sound systems, each blasting a different yet identical mix of generic dirtboy metal. Two of the tents proclaimed the word “alternative” as part of their respective stations’ slogans.

Once upon a time, generic dirtboy metal was the definition of what “alternative” music was an alternative to.

…utter coolosity factor: The huge, graphic cigarette warning notices.