The Northwest Bookfest was held again this year in the Stadium Exhibition Center, and again failed to fill even the front room of that vast space. (Curtaining off sections of the room is apparently not practicable or feasible, because the center’s restrooms and concessions are situated along the side walls.)

The result: While attendance was apparently comparable to last year’s event (which had more touring big-name authors), the room energy (and, perhaps, consequently the booth sales) just wasn’t what it had been back when Bookfest took place in the cozy confines of Pier 48 (where, as I’ve oft mentioned, Alice Wheeler shot the cover of Loser at one of Nirvana’s last shows). The pier, alas, is no longer available for public rental. The State Convention Center, whose more flexible floors hosted the 1999 Bookfest, is apparently not available at the right time of year to land a lot of big-time touring authors.

Last year, I proposed revamping Bookfest to fit the space. Since it’s a space built for auto show-type events, I said Bookfest should become more like one of those–a World Of Words Literama, full of pomp and circumstance and balloons and gold lame jumpsuits.

The promoters did successfully attract a few new types of vendors (paper-ephemera dealers, f’rinstance), but still more could be sought out–home office supply stores, computer dealers, college writing programs, grey-sweater and tweed-jacket merchants, magazine publishers (Ed McMahon could even show up to give away some bucks!).

Other possibilities to fill more of the vast room, or otherwise make the thing more exciting: More word-game and puzzle competitions; after-hours no-kiddies-allowed readings from the “good parts” of highbrow novels; Appalachian-style storytelling fests; banks of computers where visitors could add-a-line to ongoing stories; bulletin boards (real, not computerized) where visitors could post index-card-borne answers to pollster-type questions (favorite literary character, first book ever read, etc.); classic poems displayed on big LED-readout walls; maybe even a literary-character costume contest.

Yes, these suggestions go beyond Bookfest’s laid-back-and-mellow dictum of good taste, and that’s part of the point. Reading and (especially) writing are largely solitary pleasures. It’s good to get readers and writers in one big place to share their joys and receive one another’s support. And as a mid-October event, Bookfest marks the beginning of stay-inside season; thus it should be more festive and celebratory, the better to help its attendees stave off Seasonal Affective Disorder and remain cozy and happy thru the dreary months to come.

My ex-Floridian neighbor across the hall, who is wont to ring my doorbell at assorted hours for assorted reasons, rang early Thursday morning.

“Do you KNOW what it is outside?” she proclaimed with baited breath.

“It’s AUTUMN!!

“Do you KNOW how long it’s been since I experienced autumn? Fifteen YEARS! The air is so crisp and biting. It’s not hot. The leaves are becoming beautiful. It’s amazing. You’ve got to appreciate it.”

And I hope you appreciate it as well.

“Children of God Together,” Wednesday night’s peace march from St. Mark’s to St. James cathedrals, was as solemn, united, and respectful as any other of the many terror-attack memorials this past week. What made it different was its purpose. It brought thousands together, not just to remember the victims of the horror but also to try and prevent future horrors with future victims, here and/or overseas.

Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Moslems, Unitarians, a few Buddhists and Baha’is, and assorted others slowly trod the two miles between Seattle’s two most spectacular churches, holding candles and singing spirituals; while supportive bystanders all along Broadway and Madison lifted their arms or held up banners.

Their message is best expressed in this quote from one of the prayers recited by the overflow throng at St. Mark’s:

“Merciful God, we pray for our country, our city, and for Americans everywhere:

“That we may help one another heal from hurt and anger; that we may turn ot one another in love and compasison, rather than fear and misunderstanding; that we may not give in to a spirit of division and the desire to blame and to vilify; for unity and mutual love among peoples of all faith traditions; for strength and wisdom in our witness and service; that you will sustain us now and lead us through whatever lies ahead.”

For further thoughts on this topic, see ‘A religious response to terrorism.’

A UGANDA-BASED relief site offers a list of “Ways to Help America.”

AN EMAIL CORRESPONDENT passed along a quotation from David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest, concerning things one can learn in rehab:

“No single moment is in and of itself unendurable.”

P-I COLUMNIST ANTHONY ROBINSON WRITES:

“In the longer term, nobility and morality shall be found in restraint rather than in simply unleashing American power and violence in retaliation or retribution.”

OFFICIAL NOTICE: As of Monday, it’s officially OK to complain about Bush again.

PHOTO-REPORTAGE DEPT.: At Friday’s bombing memorial at Westlake, a man made and brought a matchstick model of the towers…

…while a woman took a ball-point pen to the manila envelope she was holding, and made an impromptu sign reading “AN EYE FOR AN EYE WILL MAKE THE WORLD BLIND.”

Later that afternoon, a bagpiper serenaded the people placing flowers at Alki Beach’s Statue of Liberty replica…

…where someone had left a desktop-published plea to “move forward and live well.”

At the firefighters’ memorial in Pioneer Square, more flowers honor the fallen NYC firefighters.

At the memorial floral display in the Seattle Center International Fountain, where hundreds brought flowers and displays, someone placed a homemade flag with the American Airlines logo…

…while a chalk artist made a plea to move beyond calls for vengeance.

PHOTO-REPORTAGE DEPT.: This closure sign at Toys In Babeland expresses the mood on Capitol Hill this evening. In the coffeehouses and bars, everybody’s reading the Times and P-I afternoon street extras, making the same kinds of probably futile speculations you’re probably making, and feeling very quiet and concerned.

A lone protester in Westlake Park chats with passersby, trying to persuade them not to rush to blame the attack on the Afghans, the Iraqis, or Muslims in general. (Right-wing religious radio stations were reportedly spreading the totally untrue idea that Muslims believe they can’t get into Heaven unless they’ve killed an unbeliever.) The other side of the protester’s sign read, “Muslim People Are Good.”

Later that day, some people who’d already been planning a “Peace Day in Seattle” for Sept. 19 held a small rally at Westlake, of about 50-60 people.

A window at the evacuated Bon Marche, displaying the store’s school-fashion promotion and a retro T-shirt bearing a 1945 headline, inadvertantly say what I wish to say to you now.

Gotta have it. Peace.

For 31 of Seattle Center’s 39 years of existence, Bumbershoot: The Seattle Arts Festival has been its biggest annual event.

Devised from the start to encompass the entire former World’s Fair grounds (except the now separately-run Space Needle and Pacific Science Center), it’s also the last of Seattle’s annual lineup of big populist summer gatherings (starting in May with Opening Day of Boating Season and the Film Festival, then continuing with Folklife, the Bite of Seattle, and Seafair).

Bumbershoot’s premise: An all-you-can-eat Vegas buffet of culture. A book fair in one corner, short plays in another, contemporary art installations in another. At the big stages, bigname music celebs. At smaller stages scattered about, secondary performers of all types.

And between everything, the familiar sideshow attractions of Thai-food booths, street jugglers, balloon sellers, and fenced-off beer gardens.

In its early years, Bumbershoot was strictly aimed at a specific socioethnic caste then taking control of the city’s cultural identity–aging, increasingly square baby-boomers. Nonwhite performers were largely limited to boomer-friendly blues bands; mainstage shows were heavy on the likes of Bonnie Raitt and James Taylor.

In the late ’80s, that started to change slightly. Younger, hipper, and more diverse acts have steadily gained their way into the mix.

A bizarre P-I preview story called this year’s lineup “Bumberpalooza,” comparing it to the ’90s Lollapalooza rock package tours. I initially thought the article’s writer used the analogy to claim the festival was becoming more corporate-mainstream.

But the writer, still believing Lollapalooza’s original “alternative” hype, really wanted to say B’shoot had become edgier and more experimental. Fortunately, she was right.

With more hip-hop acts, a whole electronica stage, and a mainstage lineup ranging from Loretta Lynn to G. Love and Special Sauce, Bumbershoot 2001’s fulfilling its name’s promise of an all-covering umbrella of expression.

In these images: Happy crowds; the Book Fair (including, this year, only one small press with the word “heron” in its name!); local collectors’ caches of electric mixers and Harlequin Romance cover paintings; an information booth at the start of the slinking line into KeyArena; Posies legend Ken Stringfellow; a hula-hoop demonstration on the main lawn; and, below, our ex-Stranger colleague Inga Muscio.

Muscio, scheduled to perform on the Starbucks-sponsored literary stage, peppered her half-hour slot with plugs for smaller coffee brands. She ended it with a story about dreaming Starbucks boss Howard Schultz was her S&M slave.

Yeah, this is another piece about the Seattle mayoral election, whose primary round is three weeks away as of today.

Specifically, it’s about a very strange event last night at A Contemporary Theatre, a performance-art circus billed as a candidates’ forum on arts and cultural issues. How strange was it? KIRO-TV news guy Mike James was overheard saying, “This is the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.”

It started normally enough, with 50 or so protesters staging a sit-in in front of ACT, criticizing city attorney/mayoral candidate Mark Sidran’s “civility laws,” including his ban on sitting on city sidewalks.

But the event inside got off-script once fringe candidate Richard Lee (producer-host of the cable access show Kurt Cobain Was Murdered) stepped on stage, wearing a dress and holding a video camcorder aimed at his own face.

For the next two hours, no matter what question the moderator (James’s former KING colleague Lori Matsukawa) asked, Lee spent his alloted minutes and longer repeating the same rant–that he has supposed proof that Cobain was assassinated (or at least might have been), that city and county officials (including the three candidates at the forum currently in government employ) are involved in a cover-up conspiracy, and that anyone who declines to play along with his verbal attacks is also part of the conspiracy.

In one evening of tiresome theatrics, Lee destroyed any remaining credibility in himself or his “crusade.”

Worse, he made Sidran look sane.

Notwithstanding Lee’s histrionics, the forum’s other six candidates also frequently strayed from the questions at hand, into pre-prepared hype statements.

Sidran, smug and grating as ever, made his usual buzzwords about “civility” and “strong leadership.” His answer to a question about high housing costs pushing artists and arts groups out of town: Give more “incentives” (read: subsidies) to private developers, and improve the highways so it would be easier to push the non-wealthy out to Kent and Shoreline.

Incumbent Paul Schell and front-running challenger Greg Nickels made nearly identical, nearly meaningless smooth talk about supporting the arts as harbingers of cultural diversity in a cosmopolitan city at the dawn of a new millennium and so forth. The big difference between the two: Schell defended his veto of changes to the hated Teen Dance Ordinance, while Nickels called for new initiatives to promote safe live shows for under-21s.

Omari Tahir-Garrett, out on bail after charged with hitting Schell with a megaphone in July, repeatedly brought every response back to a call to recognize the problems of minorities, especially minority youth. Such statements, by themselves, would’ve been good toward reclaiming his credibility within the Af-Am community–but he usually segued straight from that line into his personal cause, the proposed African American Academy project that’s been years in the making and was taken out of his hands.

(This is an admittedly incomplete telling of what’s really a long story. Tahir-Garrett’s career, and his relationship within local black leadership, is much more complicated than that.)

Scott Kennedy, one of the two liberal-progressives in the race, showed up late and kept promoting his non-politician status. He insisted that as a small businessman, a rock musician, and a friend and colleage of artists and arts organizers, he’d be more sympathetic to the arts than other candidates, but didn’t specifically propose much on their behalf.

Charlie Chong, the race’s other left-of-center guy, was soft-spoken and down-to-earth, and stayed the closest to the topics of Matsukawa’s questions. Then, in his closing statement, he called himself an “anti-establishment candidate,” humorously said that a Seattle under Sidran would be like a Stephen King horror movie and a Seattle under Nickels would be like “four years of Bonanza reruns” (a probable reference to The Stranger nicknaming Nickels “Hoss” during the 1997 election), and apparently offerred his support to Schell, whom Chong fought hard against in ’97.

Yes, things can get weirder still. And they probably will.

Scott Kennedy, a software engineer who started the (lovely) BitStar Internet Cafe on Capitol Hill, launched his independent mayoral campaign Sunday evening with a short rally outside the former Denny Way car-rental office where he’s installed his campaign HQ. The 50 or so supporters did little to fill the huge parking lot in front of the office.

The advertised highlight was a gig by a Beatles cover band, the Nowhere Men, playing on the building’s roof. (The real Beatles, as you assuredly know, played on a London rooftop as their final joint public performance–not the right symbolism when you want to be starting something, such as a political career.) The arrangement of the band on the roof and the audience down below kept the audience from getting within 30 feet of the campaign building, except for one dancing fool of a four-year-old boy.

Kennedy’s speech at the event, also performed on the roof, showed inadequate preparation and the lack of seasoned campaign handlers on his team to coach him. He interrupted himself twice, to take some gum out of his mouth and to take an earpiece out of his ear. He didn’t have anyone introduce him (you know, someone who could give endearing personal remarks about a candidate which the candidate himself would pseudo-modestly then demure from).

I personally like many of Kennedy’s stated platforms and ideas, which you can read about on his own site. I just want him to become more effective at stating them, and at the basic nuts-‘n’-bolts of campaigning. After all, voters have always, at least partly, judged a candidate’s potential adeptness as an office-holder by his/her adeptness as an office-seeker.

Some local activists had a great idea, to hold a “Reclaim the Streets” party Saturday afternoon, along the lines of similar events in England and across the U.S.

The premise: A party, a celebration, an outdoor rave of sorts (albeit without a DJ booth) in a big public place, unauthorized and unofficial.

The justification: The streets, and the city, belong to the citizens, not to politicians or cops or retail chains.

The organizers wanted the event to be a celebration, not a protest. Instead of complaining about society, attendees were asked to make positive statements about creating a new world without cars or malls or dumb laws.

But that was enough of a premise to draw the usual protest infiltrators from the Revolutionary Communist Party and other bands; plus individual marchers who believed in taking any opportunity to call attention to fervently believed-in causes (Mumia Abu-Jamal, police brutality).

And, natch, it was enough to draw great phalanxes of cops (who, at one point near the event’s end, may have outnumbered the participants).

There were cops in riot gear, cops on bicycles, cops on horses, cops in cars, and cops in a big van. There were lines of cops guarding the Convention Center, a Starbucks, the new Hyatt Hotel, and Pacific Place.

There were pepper-sprayings; there were cop horses sticking their heads out at protesters. There were an estimated 18 arrests (almost 10 percent of the marchers).

“Rioting” on the protesters’ side, meanwhile, was limited to just a couple of hammered-at windows at the Gap and Banana Republic, which attracted the extended gazes of the TV news crews, which were apparently out to tell a violent-assault-and-righteous-retribution story no matter what the real situation was.

So why the heavy police over-reaction?

It’s been pretty obvious these past few weeks that Mayor Paul Schell, heavily trailing in the polls for his re-election bid, has been staging silly PR stunts to make him look better in the public eye. The amassing of all those cops (clearly instructed to protect private property above all other priorities, just as they were at Mardi Gras) may have been, at least partly, a show intended to make weekend downtown shoppers believe Schell’s finally got his act together.

And what of the event itself? How could it have more effectively communicated its message and attracted a larger, more diverse set of supporters?

The “Reclaim the Streets” ideology, borrowed whole from out-of-town and out-of-country events (the first was a protest against a British highway project), wasn’t specific to the particular situation of downtown Seattle (or even of U.S. big-city downtowns in general). There are already lotsa Northwesterners who like to live and play where there aren’t malls or cars; these people are sometimes called exurbanites or backpackers. People who’ve chosen to live in town have often done so because they enjoy the bustle and the excitement. A New-New Left celebration in Seattle ought to welcome those who actually like city life, inviting them to help try and take charge of how their city develops.

(Of course, that means it would also have to be inviting toward older people, nonwhite people, non-vegans, and people who don’t necessarily enjoy wearing face bandanas.)

Yes, longtime MISC. readers, it’s time for our annual defense of Seafair, the set of local summer rituals poshed at all these years by would-be tastemakers of both the “world class” and bohemian varieties.

Seafair is, above all, a reminder of where this city and region have been. It’s a glorious, unpretentious, homespun celebration of traditional Wash.-state values–hokum contrasted with mannerism, “wholesome” emotional repression (and its noisy release valves), and an engineering-nerd aesthetic.

We’ll discuss the latter trait a little later on. But first, the Torchlight Parade.

It’s admittedly a perennial also-ran compared to Portland’s Rose Parade. It’s smaller, it’s rowdier (partly due to its sunset timing), and has less support from local high society. But it’s ours, dammit.

The drill teams, the beauty queens, the less-than-zany clowns, the not-as-naughty-as-they-used-to-be Seafair Pirates–they’re examples of folk culture from a specific place, dating from a specific time (the early ’50s) when enough people here believed in making up their own shit, not in desperately trying to be sophisticated.

The Seafair organization (formerly Greater Seattle Inc.) also incorporates a score of neighborhood parades, kiddie festivals, and other assorted events around King County.

But the big stuff consists of three pieces: The aforementioned parade, the “scholarship pageant for young women” (also a pale cousin of the Rose Festival’s pageant), and something neither Portland nor most of the rest of North America has.

I speak, of course, of the hydros.

Yes, I still like the hydros after all these years, despite all the hipster flack I’ve taken for it.

Yes, they’re loud. Yes, they’re testosteronic. Yes, they’re not seen in, or approved by, NY/LA/SF.

But those are some of the reasons why I love them.

They’re also a pleasant childhood memory for many NW natives.

But more than that, they combine no less than six of our region’s innate qualities in a single spectacle:

Our love of the water and nature, and our traditional wish to express this love by leaving our mark of conquest upon them.

Our engineering-nerd aesthetic, represented here by the obsessive attention paid to the boats’ custom designs and engine systems.

Our love of clean lines and “clean” living, evinced by the boats’ aerodynamic beauty and the insistant proclaimations that this is a “family” event.

Our historic dichotomy between the squeaky-clean and the down-and-dirty, as shown in the giant floating drunken orgy of yachters that is the Log Boom.

Our manic-depressive nature, shown by monster machines that either go 260 m.p.h. or lie dead in the water.

Our combo of ambition and envy, symbolized by all the underfunded crews trying every year to beat the Budweiser.

Anyhow, this year’s race was one of the best in years.

Thirteen boats were entered. Each of them finished at least two heats, and there were no “Did Not Starts.” There were no serious crashes. There was real competition throughout the day. And the winner-take-all final heat was a battle two of the little-guy teams; the Bud only made second place on a penalty.

Last year, we worried whether the hydroplane racing circuit had a future after Bud boat owner Bernie Little and partners sbought up the whole organization (renamed HydroPROP). Instead, the new bosses installed new rules to relieve the Bud’s dynasty status and make it a race again. The rules worked.

Perhaps this could be a lesson and inspiration to those trying to lessen a certain other Lake Washington dynasty’s power.

Submitted for your approval (can’t help it, I saw five hours Sci-Fi’s Twilight Zone marathon yesterday), some images from the Fourth of Jul-Ivar’s.

Thanks to decent weather for the first time in the past ten 7/4s, the crowds at Myrtle Edwards Park (not to mention the sailboats and yachts just offshore) were even larger and swarmier.

What they saw and experienced: The usual all-white boogie blooze bands, the usual curly fries and kettle corn, the usual vintage-aircraft flybys, a strange promotional touring-van exhibit called “The National Peanut Tour,” a woman in a Bugs Bunny suit handing out samples of banana flavored milk to the kiddies, and a 50-foot inflatable figure of a cartoony bodybuilder guy bearing the name “Ironman.”

Then, just after 10 (well after the kids had gotten pooped and suburned while the adults had gotten drunk and hazy), came the big blast-o-rooney (seen here from upper Queen Anne).

In short, a perfect normal Fourth; a holiday almost completely free of any patriotic or other official reason for its existence other than the universal need to gather and see stuff blow up. A ritual of lowbrow mechanized “fun” every nation oughta have at midsummer, under one excuse or another.

ELSEWHERE:

Can anyone or anything stop the major labels’ legal putsch to stop Internet music?

The old joke is that the British created such beautiful dinnerware in order to distract attention away from British food. Yet the U.S. holds enough expatriates and Anglophiles for several companies, including “Expatboxes.com,” to specialize in importing hard-to-find Brit packaged food products, from Marmite yeast spread to McVitie’s Digestive Biscuits and Heinz treacle sponge pudding.

Seattle’s annual Gay Pride Parade (officially, the “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Parade, March, and Freedom Rally”) long ago ceased to be a niche-subculture celebration.

Today it has only slightly more specifically-gay meaning than the modern St. Patrick’s Day has specifically-Irish meaning.

It’s become the day when everybody claims or pretends to be, if not a proud queer, at least a proud friend of proud queers.

The floats, performance troups, and marching units of actual lesbians and gays (and their support groups) are heavily interspersed with those of officially gay-friendly corporations (Microsoft), marketers (KUBE-FM, Starbucks, lots of beer companies), and politicians major and minor.

Why, even petty-tyrant-wannabe mayoral candidate Mark Sidran showed up to aggressively shake everyone’s hands, whether folks wanted their hands shook or not. (Sidran was accompanied by a small entourage holding up yard signs, whose logo bore a loud rightward-pointing arrow).

Some gays might consider this mainstreaming as a sign that gays and gay rights are increasingly accepted in American society, yea even among the power brokers of business and politics.

But other gay activists, who’d dreamed their liberation movement would lead to a larger public questioning of the so-called “dominant culture,” have branded such mainstreamed celebrations with such terms as “assimilationist.”

They allege that the organizers of rituals such as Seattle’s Pride Parade are helping destroy not just the larger queer-lib political agenda but the distinct GLBT subculture.

I can leave such distinctions to those within the community.

But I can say that the overall trend in this country is for more subcultures and social niches, not fewer. Even within LGBT there are subgroups (gay men, lesbians, bis, M2F trannies, F2M trannies, cross-dressers, etc.) and sub-subgroups (bears, leather, butch, femme, etc.) and sub-sub-subgroups (too numerous to even sample).

That’s one of the aspects of the Pride Parade’s smiling, family-friendly homosexuality that helps make it so appealing to so many straights.

Thousands of Americans who’ve never been erotically attracted to someone of the same gender wish they could belong to a subculture like GLBT; though preferably without the job-discrimination and general bigotries so many real GLBTs face.

And I don’t just mean those urban-hipster straight women who think it’s cool to pretend to be bi, or those college-town straight men who wish they could be as sanctimonious as radical lesbians.

We’re all “queer” in one way or another, in the older and larger definition of the term. We’re all different, from one another and from any dictated vision of “normality.”

And we all have a sexuality; and many of us wish (at least secretly) that we could be part of a culture in which we could proudly proclaim our sexual selves, without fear of being branded as sluts or chauvanist pigs or unfit parents.

Postscript: The night before the parade, Showtime ran Sex With Strangers, a documentary by Joe and Harry Gantz about three couples (two from Olympia), and the bi-female “friend” of one of them, who are all in the swingers’ lifestyle. The closing “where are they now” titles revealed that three of the seven individual protagonists had lost their jobs after their nonmonogamies became known. (The other four were either self-employed or were now on “extended vacations.”) The lesson: You don’t have to be gay to need the more progressive social attitudes gay-lib promotes.

Post-postscript: The loneliest-looking entry in the Pride Parade was the car sponsored by the Capitol Hill Alano Club, with its plain signage, few passengers, and fewer attending marchers. The 12-Step group was almost directly followed by a succession of beer-company vans and trucks (even a delivery semi rig).

Went to the Fremont Fair. The unauthorized naked bicyclists were out in force once again, beloved by paradegoers of all ages and detested (but unarrested) by cops.

This year, the baring bikers all had elaborate body-paint designs, and almost all were female. Both factors helped make the experience more of a display and less of a statement.

Mind you, I do eternally adore the work of heavenly creation that is the adult female body. And I have nothing less than total admiration for those women who selflessly share the sight of their physical beauty with the world.

It’s just that the Fremont Fair’s bike brigade has been a situation in which adults of all genders could appreciate this beauty, and in which children of all ages could glimpse adult bodies presented as something neither disgusting nor overtly sexual. It’s been a proclamation of freedom, in which the bikers invited the audience to share the spirit of wholesome naturist body-love and innocent norm-breaking.

I’d like to see that continue.

IN RELATED NEWS: The Gun Street Girls, those lusciously costumed neo-burlesque dancing dames, are apparently splitting into two new troupes, neither of which will be Seattle-based. One will be in New Orleans; the other in Portland. Let’s hope both will still visit often, for either separate or combined shows.

A MONTH AGO, we began a countdown to the gigantic MISCmedia 15th Anniversary celebratory fete on June 2 (details at the left side of this virtual page), with a glimpse of the art show that’ll be part of the festivity–randomly-ordered pix of every home yr. web-pal had lived in. Today, some more.

#14: 4533 9th Avenue NE. A small, cruddy room in the basement of a small, cruddy house in the U District. Occupied March-April 1982.

Following my winter’s exile in Ballard, I returned to the local Ground Zero of ultra-cheap ex-student housing. My room was the one with the window seen in the bottom left corner of this picture. It was the room’s only window. I shared the kitchen and bathroom with the owner and his sons, who lived in the rest of the basement. The main floor was rented out to four lesbians who played Frank Sinatra records at full blast.

The week after I moved in, a “For Sale” sign appeared on the front lawn. The owner assured me that day that I wouldn’t have to leave. The lesbians and I were evicted three weeks later.

After I moved (to a commercial rooming house), I learned that author Thomas Pynchon may have lived there while working as a Boeing technical writer and starting his first novel V.

NEXT: Another entry in this series.

ELSEWHERE:

• Tiny but full-length streaming video files of some forgotten Warner Bros. Cartoons, including some of the ones Warner won’t let Cartoon Network show due to racial characterizations….
• Rock isn’t dead. Rock criticism, however, might be….

SEATTLE (May 3): Declaring the written word “a passe institution,” longtime Seattle writer Clark Humphrey has announced he’s changing careers to become a documentary photographer.

He’s holding a coming-out party for his vivid color images, titled Words: Who Needs ‘Em?, on Saturday, June 2, 7-9 p.m. at the Belltown Underground Gallery, 2211 First Avenue in Seattle (north of the Frontier Room).

The event will be held on the 15th anniversary of Humphrey’s original “MISC.” column in the old Belltown-based monthly Arts Focus (it later appeared for seven years in The Stranger). The exhibit will remain on display through July 5.

A professional writer for nearly 20 years, Humphrey wrote Loser: The Real Seattle Music Story, still the most complete account ever written about the early-’90s “Seattle Music Scene” hoopla. In addition to his Stranger tenure, his material has appeared in The Seattle Times, Seattle Weekly, Seattle magazine, Washington Law & Politics, The Comics Journal, Tower Records Pulse!, Penthouse Hot Talk, and The Washington Post Book World.

He continues to contribute a biweekly column and crossword puzzle to Tablet, a new alternative arts tabloid. He also maintains an ongoing “online column” at www.miscmedia.com; and for the past year and a half has published MISCmedia magazine, a print version of the website.

But his future projects (books, exhibitions, and a revised print magazine), several of which will be previewed at Words: Who Needs ‘Em?, will all involve original photographs and art in one form or another.

Why the switch? After losing a dot-com crossword-writing gig, Humphrey trolled around for writing assignments and found the trough crowded by laid-off web writers. Realizing the online fad (email, chat rooms, personal web sites, etc. etc.) had reinvigorated written-word culture to the point of decimating it as a career profession, he turned to the not yet totally demystified world of visual images.

“Everybody’s writing these days,” Humphrey said. “Or, rather, everybody thinks they can write.”

At the show, Humphrey will offer previews of one upcoming book and two larger-scale exhibitions: