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.

ANOTHER RANDOM SET for Photo Phriday. Enjoy.

Last Saturday, yr. ob’d’t web-editor was invited to “More Music @ the Moore,” a talent revue starring nine of the region’s top teen pop and jazz acts. It was structured like one of the old vaudeville shows the Moore used to host–each act got no more than ten minutes onstage, and the headliner was billed next-to-last.

In this case, the headliner was Seattle’s own American Idol semifinalist Leah Labelle (above). Like all the performers this night, she was strong on skill and spunk, a little light on originality.

Labelle was quite nearly upstaged by the act appearing just before her, ultra-tight Auburn rockers Mechanical Dolls. They’ve already played Graceland and EMP; look for ’em at an all-ages gig near you soon.

Other crowd-wowers included neo-soul combo As 1 (above), and sultry diva-ette Aleteena Mobley.

HERE, AS PROMISED, are fun images from our fun book release party. The top two were graciously provided by John of Flipdingo.

WITH THE ARRIVAL of spring came the return, corporate galleries be damned, of the indie art walk in Occidental Park. Artists now have to buy a city license and sign a disclaimer attesting they’re selling their own stuff, but the freewheeling spirit of creation and discovery remains.

FOUND ON THE GROUND on East Pike Street: “We’re getting married tomorrow in Portland, whether you like it or not.”

THE QUINTON INSTRUMENTS building on Denny Way, formerly a warehouse for the old Frederick & Nelson department store, is coming down for one of Paul Allen’s megaprojects.

Quinton, now out in the far suburbs, makes, among other things, hi-tech treadmills. I trod on one at Providence Hospital last September. The diagnostician asked me to tell her when I was too pooped to keep running in place. Ten minutes later, after the machine’s difficulty level had been upped to six miles an hour at a fifteen percent uphill grade, I gave the word; which, of course, was “Jane, stop this crazy thing.”

ABOVE, the remains of Titlewave Books; which, as previously mentioned here, closed after nineteen years.

Below, the remains of Venus, the plus-size clothing boutique on Capitol Hill that insisted women of dimension are beautiful.

WITH MUCH LESS MEDIA HYPE this time around (thank God), Krispy Kreme opened its latest donut stand on First Avenue South last week, just in time to get the staff trained before nearby Safeco Field opens for the start of baseball season next week.

They promoted the new place by handing out boxes of the glazed circles downtown. The boxes include a full ingredient listing. Among the deliciously good things that go into those sweet Os: Vital wheat gluten, diammonium phosphate, sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate, ethoxylated mono-and-diglycerides, calcium propionate, fungal alpha amylase, pentosanase, protease, and carnuba wax.

KEXP’S PUTTING OUT POSTERS and postcards around town, aimed at helping the station’s core listeners feel proud of their indie-musical knowledge. This one, f’rinstance, is a cute joke if you know the two bands referenced by the visual clues. Since you all undoubtedly know them, I won’t have to tell the names here.

GHOST TOWN is a haunting long online photo essay about motorcycling through Chernobyl.

SOME RANDOM STREET IMAGES this Photo Phriday, starting with the lovely statue put up last year atop the former Speakeasy Cafe building (which is otherwise still hardly improved upon since it was gutted by fire nearly three years ago).

The above is what a 76 gas-station sign, bowl-style, ought to look like.

The 76 emblem has been orange for nearly 80 years. It was orange when it was successively shaped as a shield, a vertical rectangle, a disc, a sphere, and finally a bowl. It was orange under the successive managements of Union Oil Co. of California, Unocal, Tosco, and Phillips 66.

This abomination is the new red 76 bowl, imposed after Conoco bought Phillips. Corporate powers-that-be apparently decreed that since the Conoco lozenge logo and the Phillips 66 shield logo are red, so should the 76 bowl.

The red bowl signage has been installed at the chain’s longtime outlet at Westlake and Mercer, and more recently at an ex-Chevron station on Broadway (across from an apartment building built on a former 76 station site). It will probably be phased in across the brand’s marketing territory over the next few months. There’s not much any of us can do about it, except register our complaints and fly our antenna balls at half-staff.

A CERTAIN GENT OF THE STREETS (specifically, Ballard Avenue) has at least one friend to nuture and rely upon.

TIMES CHANGE, and so do loyalties.

…formerly the Rhodes of Seattle department store, began to come down during the same week that M. Lamont Bean, who closed Rhodes and turned its suburban branches into the Lamonts apparel chain, passed away.

Bean’s story was one of your classic rise-and-fall (or should I say rise n’ fall?) tales. He started as a protege to his dad Monte Bean, who’d bought the Tradewell grocery chain and opened the first Pay n’ Save pharmacy at Fourth and Pike. Bean fils built Pay n’ Save into 300 stores in 10 states. He further built his “Family of Stores” empire by buying Ernst Hardware, Malmo Nurseries, Rhodes (which begat Lamonts), and Seattle Sporting Goods (which begat SportsWest). By the ’70s, it seemed like every other strip mall in Washington was anchored either by Pay n’ Save/Ernst or Pay n’ Save/Tradewell.

But a takeover bid for Schuck’s Auto Supply left him in debt and vulnerable to a 1984 takeover by New York financiers Julius and Eddie Trump (no relation to Donald). They sold off the Bean chains, piece by piece.

Pay n’ Save, including the Fourth and Pike flagship, is now absorbed into Rite Aid. What’s left of Lamonts is now part of Gottschalk’s. Ernst and SportsWest have disappeared altogether. Only Schuck’s, the buy that broke Bean, remains under its original name (though now merged with two other regional chains under parent company CSK Auto).

BRAVE SIGN INSTALLERS at the Kenneth Cole store (where Lamont Bean’s Ernst used to have its flagship outlet) unwittingly turn themselves into image props for giant-woman fetishists everywhere.

TELL ME AGAIN why I’m supposed to want to live someplace else?

IT’S BEEN AWHILE since humans were featured in our random Photo Phridays. So here’s a selection for your enjoyment.