…begins with some figurative art seen around town recently.

I WAS ONCE one of those who scoffed at the Folklife Festival as the “Forklift Festival.” That was back during the apex/nadir of smug boomer culture, when I’d come to define myself by my rebellion against the hammered dulcimer and everything it stood for.

But in my own creeping middle age (birthday next Tuesday, hint-hint guys!), I’ve come to appreciate the festival’s broad range of acts. The costumed dancers, the bagpipe players, all the accordion players, the tile artists, the butoh and kabuki troupes.

Besides, folk culture is the original DIY culture. It’s by the people, of the people, and for the people. And it’s the original bastion of female creativity.

So let’s all be, as the cable show says, queer as folk.

Here’s our last batch of shots from the spankin’-new downtown library.

Have I any qualms about the PoMo (or is it NeoMo?) palace of info? A few.

The phunky phoam phurniture’s slick and tres comfy, but I dunno how the chairs and couches will survive under constant use-n’-abuse.

The kids’ area is boistrously joyful, but at least a little sound muffling might be nice. (The Mixing Station area can also be a little quietude-challenged.)

But aside from these minor qualms, I’d say the place is a solid hit. It’s got thousands of books, lots of other printed and audio-visual documents, dozens of makeout spots, clean restrooms, mod colors, free wi-fi, and more fun-type atmosphere than most retail stores.

Blue America’s favorite “Presumptive Candidate” showed up in town today for another public speech, along with some private bigtime fundraisers.

Kerry was driven to Pier 62 in an SUV (a Chevy Suburban, to be precise), to talk about our nation’s scary dependence on fossil fuels.

He told a drenched midmorning audience how, if elected, he’d launch a serious crash program for more renewable energy sources, more hybrid vehicles, and “transparency” in energy markets.

Not the most electrifying of topics (pun intended, natch); but he gave it his rhetorical all.

Folks who had invites for the inner seating area had to abandon their umbrellas outside the fences, leaving this forlorn scene.

AS THREATENED YESTERDAY, yet more shots of the new downtown Seattle Public Library, designed by Dutch celebrity-architect Rem Koolhaas.

On one of the chartreuse escalators, a cute yet stunning public art piece awaits in hiding. In this image, you can just barely see a porthole, though which other patrons can peer out, and thus become a temporary part of the art itself.

I’ve heard only a few criticisms of the place thus far. One patron told me the place was louder than a library oughta be. Another, believing a Seattle public building should express a “Northwest” character, criticized a lack of wood on the walls.

And one woman said the Dutch architect didn’t understand American fears; otherwise, he wouldn’t have designed so many nooks and alcoves in which homeless child-abductors might hide.

I believe this fear to be grossly exaggerated. I’m also SO tired of the anti-homeless “jokes” I’ve heard, even from self-styled “radicals,” during the weeks before the new library’s opening.

Yes, we need a dedicated downtown drop-in and hygiene center; despite the consternations of merchants. We need to take care of our less-privileged citizens, not demonize them.

A library’s not the place for those functions. But it is a place for other aspects of rebuilding one’s life, including self-education and job research. The vastness of the new library’s public spaces makes this possible, with relative comfort for all of us.

WE’LL RUN LOTSA LIBRARY PIX over the course of the week. Be prepared.

It was a glorious day inside and out. Everyone seemed truly joyous; as if this magnificent cathedral of popular learning would herald a brighter future for our troubled region.

Seattle’s been called both a “city of readers” and a “city of engineers.” The new Seattle Public Library’s primarily a feat of stunning engineering, and secondly a tribute to reading and to the imagination.

More importantly, out of all the fancy-schmancy new PoMo monuments in this town, it’s the one that’s open to the public every week of the year with no cover charge.

(Now, if the city’d only commit enough funds to properly run the place…)

Head Librarian Deborah Jacobs (like me, a onetime Corvallis-ite), the mayor, and most of the City Council were on hand at the opening, along with several drum ensembles.

Welcoming patrons from inside the Fifth Avenue entrance: Everyone’s favorite Action Librarian, Nancy Pearl.

The sign adjacent to Pearl reveals:

(1) The Koolhaas team’s penchant for bold colors, especially chartreuse (named for a liqueur invented by “Chartist” monks, and hence perfectly appropriate for a contemplative place), and

(2) The team’s choice of Futura Extra Bold as the library’s official typeface. You can tell near the top left corner of this page that I’m also a Futura fan. More significantly, it was the official typeface of the Sub Pop Singles Club, which probably led the Dutch designers to think of it as a “Seattle” font.

I was elated to see the “writers’ room” near the top of the building’s co-named for our ol’ pal Carlo Scandiuzzi, who booked rock shows at the Showbox before becoming a movie actor-producer, and member of assorted local arts/humanities boards.

The children’s area is vast, raucously noisy, and right on the ground floor. It’s got lotsa large, angular concrete posts, which may remind some oldsters of past fun times at the Kingdome or the Coliseum. It’s got games, toys, fun props, kid-sized computer desks and chairs, and a semi-hidden “story hour room.”

One person I met compared the vast interior to a set from a Jacques Tati film. I was thinking more sci-fi. Indeed, it’ll be hard for Paul Allen’s new Science Fiction Museum to look more science-fictiony than parts of the library.

WE’VE SHOWN YOU quite a number of pix of the Space Needle over the years. Today, some pix from the elegant symbol tower.

LAST FRIDAY, a “Broken Record” party occurred at the Crespinel gallery space in Belltown.

It was a promo event for our ol’ pal Peter Blecha’s new book Taboo Tunes: A History of Banned Bands and Censored Songs. The book’s a scholarly, yet gripping, saga relating many of the myriad ways people have tried to silence other people’s creative expressions over the years.

Strictly speaking, Blecha doesn’t write about the censoring of “music” per se. He writes about the censoring of music-related creations—lyrics, band names, album art, and dancing.

At the exhibit (still up for the next week), the words and images associated with music are carefully preserved and protected, in the form of framed album covers, sheet-music covers, and posters. It’s the music itself that gets trashed, in the form of irreplacable 78s smashed around the gallery floor.

I disapprove of this destruction. I say: Be kind to your old 78s. You might be one yourself one day.

Among those who had a “smashing” time: Guest DJs Mark Arm and Krist Novoselic (above), Squirrels fun-popster Rob Morgan, and jazzman Maurice.

AND SO IT HAS COME TO THIS: Frasier ends tonight, after eleven seasons and 264 episodes, of which only one had been half filmed in Seattle. That’s never stopped the local media from considering the series to be “ours;” a portryal, to varying degrees of accuracy, of the local urban zeitgeist.

I must, at least partly, agree with the assessment.

While written and executed on the Paramount lot in LA (one of the early writers, Ken Levine, did spend a little time around here as a Mariners announcer), the show did express what the culture-analysts call a “sense of place.” It was a place that only barely existed in real life, alongside several other Seattles, except in the highly selective realities of the early Seattle Weekly and KUOW.

In 1993, Nirvana’s final album was about to come out. Microsoft Windows was still a kludgy interface add-on to MS-DOS. Seattle was still mostly Boeing Country. Our wealthy were fewer, and much less ostentatious. The upscale home of choice was a huge waterfront “cabin,” not a condo.

But over the next seven years, it came to be. All the “market price” restaurants. All the frou-frou supper clubs. All the high-rise townhomes. All the gourmet cheese shops. All the mauve men’s shirts. All the uptight attitudes.

Now, the Frasier universe goes into that great rerun in the sky. What will be the next great fictional Seattle?

Let’s not wait for Hollywood to invent it. Let’s make it ourselves.

PHOTO PHRIDAY TODAY begins with some standard beautiful cityscapes.

I’ll miss University Used and Rare Books, closing after 40 years. It was your classic college-town used-book store, complete with tall shelves, cats, grizzled customers, and that amazing out-of-print cult classic you’d never seen before.

While homophobes and their opponents verbally duked it out last Saturday, inside and outside Safeco Field respectively, more positive social visions were enacted four miles to the north, along the Montlake Cut.

Seattle has two annual dates with the rubric “Opening Day”—the start of baseball season (of which, right now, the least said the better) and the start of “boating season,” the first Saturday in May. The latter Opening Day’s been celebrated at least since 1913, as far as anyone can recall.

Since 1970, a rowing regatta’s been part of the festivities. This year, the UW men’s and women’s crews hosted WSU, Oregon State, UCLA, Navy, and an Italian squad.

This Husky alum’s proud to say the Dawgs won all but one of the races in which they were entered. At a time of turmoil and scandal in UW sports (even UW women’s sports!), it was great to see a good ol’ triumph of skill and teamwork.

Right after the races, the Montlake Bridge is raised for three hours for the parade of boats. It might sound like an elitist activity to some of you, and it’s even sponsored by a yacht club; but it’s not. Anybody with access to a power boat of any type can participate. Anyone can watch, for free.

The atmosphere isn’t one of rich people trying to intimidate the rest of us with the size of their “toys,” but of proud hobbyists sharing their love for classic beauty, and honoring our local and timeless connection to the sea, the source of life.

And this year, it was a good excuse to get one’s first sunburn of the season.

Not only have the Mariners descended to the depths of their ’80s suckiness, but during their current road trip the joint was rented out to pious hatemonger James Dobson. He held what his staff billed as a stirring crusade-service defending “traditional marriage.”

In Dobsonspeak, “traditional” (i.e., heterosexual) marriage is simultaneously the strongest, most sacred bond in human society AND something so frail as to require government-sanctioned monopoly status, via the clad-iron banning of all other possible romantic combinations.

Fortunately, many upright area citizens were more than willing to vocally disagree.

This chalk-art slogan reads, “Love Thy Neighbor.* (Some Restrictions May Apply.)”

…held another of their fab theme parties last week. This one was “2 of a Kind.” Invites read: “Please come as each other.”

…what would happen if Jesus ran for President.

A BIT TARDY WE ARE, but here are some pix of the sunniest, warmest Easter picnic one might ever hope to attend.