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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.
WE’VE SHOWN YOU quite a number of pix of the Space Needle over the years. Today, some pix from the elegant symbol tower.
A fellow Stranger refugee stopped me on the street the other evening. He said he still enjoyed my writing, my vocabulary, and my sense of style.
But he also said he thought I’d limited my vision by holding to a rose-colored nostalgia for “the old Seattle,” a viewpoint that’s ill-suited toward effectively discussing today’s city of high tech and hipsters.
I beg, as I do so darned often, to differ.
You can’t really know where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.
The mindset that created the Century 21 Exposition, f’rinstance, is with us still. The magnificent Space Needle was built with private money on land essentially donated by the city. The publicly-funded exhibit buildings were either cheap “multipurpose” constructions (just like most local government buildings between then and the late ’90s) or repurposed older structures that weren’t that distinguished to begin with.
The old Seattle had its progressive, even radical ideas, alongside plain old fashioned racism/sexism. Some of its citizens held both types of beliefs at once. (I’m thinking of labor organizers who appealed to anti-Chinese hysteria among their flocks, and of “New Left” rabblerousers who defined “women’s liberation” as the right to give blow jobs.)
Today, Seattle loves diversity. Or rather, it loves the idea that it loves diversity; just so long as its white female children don’t have to go to the same schools as black male children.
The old Seattle had civic leaders who tirelessly struggled to have their burg seen as “world class,” but always by someone else’s standards. (Hence the ’60s campaigns to bulldoze the Pike Place Market, Pioneer Square, and large swaths of the Arboretum for parking lots, office towers, and highway lanes respectively.)
In more recent years, Seattle had civic leaders who saw every problem as solvable by a construction project. That’s why we can build new libraries and arts facilities, but can’t afford to run them.
The old Seattle’s governmental gears could grind very slowly; just as they can now. It took the “foodie” restaurant revolution of the ’70s before the city legalized sidewalk cafes. Now, we need, but are less likely to get, a similar outspoken demand before the city will allow new strip clubs.
If I may switch metaphors for a moment: Leonard Maltin’s book Of Mice and Magic, an invaluable history of the early animation business, refers at one point to the Warner Bros. cartoon studio’s desire in the thirties to “keep up with Disney, and plagiarize him at the same time.” Seattle’s assorted drives over the years to become “world class,” by imitating all the things all the other would-be “world class” burgs do, have often been just as self-defeating.
Warners conquered the cartoon world when its directors and artists stopped aping Disney and started to create their own brand of humor. LIkewise, Seattle will come into its own as it develops its own ways of doing city things.
We don’t have to have a cars-only transportation plan, or sprawling McMansions devouring the countryside. We don’t have to give in to corporate job-blackmail shakedowns. We can lead, not follow.
That’s not the “old Seattle,” but it’d be a better Seattle.
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.
…at least until today. Here, some random action shots from Sunday. Above: “Le Petite Cirque.” Below: A break-dance contestant practicing prior to his turn onstage.
And some civilians getting in on the act on the big lawn.
Following all this, I saw two and a half sets of the One Reel Film Festival. In these days since the rise and fall of movie dot-coms like AtomFilm, modern U.S. live-action shorts, at least the ones booked for this series, mostly fall into a few main categories, including but not limited to:
The cliches were particularly fast-n’-furious in the “Sex Ed” set, five unsubtle films in which I learned that:
There’ve gotta be better up-n’-comin’ film and videomakers out there, and I hope to find some.
FROM THE RIDICULOUS to the sublime, Sunday was the last night for the grand old Sorry Charlie’s piano bar. The space has been bought by some hipster capitalists who plan to revamp it into something nice and retro-elegant, but it just won’t be the same.
On closing night, the place was jammed with fans ranging in age from the barley legal to the barely walking. We were united in our love for the place, for the participatory good times shared over the years, and especially for the artistry and geniality of our host lo these many years, the great Howard Fulson. He’s been a piano player with good taste, in a dive bar that tasted good.
I’M STILL FEELING ERRATIC ACHES and dizzy spells at varying times of the day following my recent panic-type episode. (I’m still waiting for at least one reader to email their sympathies.)
But I did get to spend most of Friday at Bumbershoot.
Firstly, I spotted this loving pair on the way to what band’s set? (C’mon, it’s an E-Z guess.) (OK, the answer’s at the bottom of this post.)
Prior to that, however, I got to see plenty-O-rockin’-action at the Exhibition Hall, starting with the wonderful Visqueen.
Later, during The Divorce’s set in the same space, I finally got my very own Charles Peterson moment.
Beer gardens are everywhere on the B-shoot grounds, in keeping with the festival’s ongoing capitulation to the national mania for revenue enhancement. The Ex Hall’s beer garden is festooned with lovely Lava Lites and similar products.
Jessica Lurie performed a typical mind-blastin’ set with her ensemble at the Northwest Court stage.
The Bumbrella Stage’s banners include plugs for two sponsors I’d never expected to see on the same piece of screen-printed fabric.
One big change this year: The Small Press Book Fair was turned into the Ink Spot. Its aesthetic premise was also changed, from circa 1973 (Port Townsend-esque nature poetry) to circa 1983 (punk zines). Above, local zine vet Gregory Hischack (Farm Pulp).
(Answer: Modest Mouse, of course.)
FINISHING OUR RECAP of scenes documented but not uploaded back in June, here at last is the open house at Seattle Opera’s new McCaw Hall. (Yep, a giant theater named for a family fortune earned from every theater manager’s #1 bane, cell phones.)
The joint’s not paid for yet, even though its makers saved a few bucks by keeping the structural frame of the old Civic Auditorium/Opera House. And there’s no way of telling when or how it’ll be paid for, since there aren’t any governments in the immediate proximity that have a bunch o’ spare cash laying around.
There are still two arts-related construction megaprojects in Seattle, the new downtown library and the Paul Allen-supported sculpture garden near Pier 70. It’s now time (or rather way past time) to turn our collective fiscal attention toward arts funding that emphasizes art and artists, rather than the more politically expedient route of huge building projects.
The place itself is, as you might have expected all along, a clean, retro-modern looking joint, but with its own touches. The Seattle Symphony’s Benaroya Hall looks like a modern urban Protestant church. McCaw looks like a new suburban mega-church.
In place of the old Opera House’s steak-house crimson wallpaper, McCaw’s all done up in what Ikea would consider to be “warm” designer colors. It’s all so laid back and mellow and formally informal. I’m not sure that’s the proper milieu for opera and ballet, which are (or ought to be) all about big passions. At least they kept all the public art from the old space, including the Mark Tobey mural.
…has come and gone. I was only there for two hours or so. I really don’t mind crowds; but crowds + excessive heat = unneeded discomfort.
Still, it’s a great people-watchin’ spectacle, and the most populist (yet also the most consumerist) of Seattle Center’s three big summer whindigs.
It just so happened that the big rally starting off Saturday’s peace march took place outside Fisher Pavilion (where the Flag Plaza used to be). Inside the pavilion was Festival Sundiata, an annual African American crafts and culture fair. That was the reason Philly’s Best, the black-owned cheesesteak house at 23rd & Union, brought its mobile van there that day.
Its delectable sandwiches happened to be the perfect peace-march meal—hearty, flavorful, made with person-to-person care by an independent business, and named for the birthplace of modern democracy.
The march attracted at least 30,000 people and possibly many more. The police kept to themselves. The marchers were remarkably upbeat. There was such a vibe of togetherness and optimism, one wishes the march had led to a closing rally-party in a park rather than merely to a dispersal point in front of the INS jailhouse.
The question remains: Did anybody in power pay attention to the thousands marching here, and the millions marching worldwide?
We can be reasonably certain the Bush goon squad has privately pooh-poohed all the protests as the impotent work of a few scattered ’60s relics who refuse to get with the proverbial program. The professional bigots on hate-talk radio and the Fox Fiction Channel are assuredly poring over their theasauri this afternoon, devising newer and meaner epithets to hurl against anybody who dares to question instead of obey.
But Saturday’s events prove more and more of us refuse to be cowed by the fearmongers.
We can stand up and resist. We can answer deliberate fear with compassionate love.
Even if the near-right Democrats are afraid to come along, we can let them know it’s in their best electoral interest to listen to us.
We can encourage individual Republican politicians to break off from the hate machine if they’re ever going to win another “swing district” election.
We close today with a line from the ineptly directed, but politically prescient, Attack of the Clones:
“The day we stop believing democracy can work is the day we lose it.”
THE NEW YEAR’S FIREWORKS at the Space Needle were particularly lavish this year, lasting nearly 10 minutes and involving a clever variety of colors and effects. God knows we could use a big bang to put the past year (the past two, actually) behind us.
THE WASHINGTON STATE LOTTERY’S been running TV spots fantasizing about a big winner buying the Space Needle and moving it from Seattle to the remote Eastern Washington town of Moses Lake. Some viewers might see the ads’ computer-animated imagery of wide-load trucks transporting the Needle across Snoqualmie Pass and imagine it represents just another outmoded tribute to individual greed.
But the ads’ clever creators are also tapping into another fantasy—that of transferring wealth and prestige away from Seattle (where the economy’s been horrid lately) to rural Washington (where the economy’s been even worse, and has been for a much longer period of time). It’s a blatant exploitation of what lotteries, and gambling in general, have always exploited—the dream of the futureless underclass citizen finally Making It.
True, the Needle’s fictional purchaser in the commercials isn’t depicted as a country cracker or a world-beaten working stiff, but the implication’s all there: Buy a lottery ticket and, just maybe, you can transcend your dead-town life.
TODAY, some non-caption-requiring people shots from the Forklift Festival.
They were partying like it’s 1999 again last Friday when another WTO protest march took place. This one didn’t directly connote the anniversary of the Seattle trade-meeting debacle but rather noted this year’s meeting in Qatar, a land that doesn’t let such foolishness as freedom or democracy get in the way of making deals and bucks.
Of course, here in the U.S. it’s quite harder these days to demonize something with “World Trade” in its name, without giving an audience all sorts of other unfortunate memories. Thus the banner proclaiming WTC and WTO to be equally disastrous. The rest of the visuals in the march rehashed common protest topics not directly related to word trade (the Iraq sanctions, the drug war, and, of course, Mumia Abu-Jamal).
They’ve torn down the Flag Plaza Pavilion at Seattle Center. Another of the Center’s dwindling inventory of 1962 World’s Fair buildings, it hosted everything from cat shows and rave parties to the touring King Tut artifact show. Bulldozers are now at work preparing the lot for the replacement, Fisher Pavilion (KOMO’s parent company bought the naming rights).
The comforting sights of the Standard Time rainy season in the great PacNW include those of kids defiantly playing at the Center’s International Fountain and a Metro bus’s unwiped windshield portion glistening in another vehicle’s taillight.
In Monday’s email, I received the Museum of History and Industry’s long list of nominees for “MetropoLIST,” the MOHAI/Seattle Times scheme to name the 150 “most influential” people in Seattle and King County, tying in with the city’s upcoming 150th birthday. (I get to be one of the voters on the final lineup.)
The long list has over 450 people on it. My first cut dropped a bunch of old-family lawyers and Boeing executive vice-presidents and suburban hospital administrators, but still left 192 people I thought worthy of the list. I had to chop that down to 150 to vote for, including any write-in suggestions of my own (the long list didn’t even include such big names as Eddie Vedder, Dyan Cannon, and Mary Kay LeTourneau!).
I’ll get my final votes done and sent into MOHAI probably by the end of today. The final roster, as voted on by the whole panel, will appear in the Times on Sept. 30.
Two weeks later, our own MISC roster of famous/infamous Seattleites will appear, in illustrated-poster form, as a centerspread in the next issue of our print mag.
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.
