We’ll have a fourth installment of Bumbershoot ’04 pix after this one.

Captions today will be short, partly because many of today’s pix speak for themselves.

This sign, mounted on two film-projector spools, reads: “Support the Washington State Independent Film Industry, Manufacturers of Motion Pictures.” I heartily agree with the sentiment.

Today’s batch starts with the big alterna-comix emphasis at this year’s festival, which culminated in a rather rambling panel discussion among our ol’ pals Harvey Pekar, Peter Bagge, Gary Groth, Jessica Abel, and Gilbert Hernandez.

Back when I was a grunt laborer for Groth, I quickly learned that cartoonists seldom speak in the taut word-balloon language in which they write. They ramble. sometimes they get to their intended point; sometimes (particularly in the case of the beloved Mr. Pekar) they end up somewhere else entirely.

So I wasn’t surprised when the conversation wandered off topic often. Still, the panel made several cogent statements. It concluded that after many years of bitter struggle, “graphic novels” (whatever the heck that term means) have gained a foothold in the mainstream book biz. Of course, that just means there are more of those titles out there, which means a lot more chaff (repackaged superhero crap, comics written to be sold to the movies) as well as a little more wheat.

Artis the Spoonman is now also Artis the Slam Poet, ranting about five centuries of oppression against the true human spirit.

I didn’t get to a lot of the great bands that played over the four days, including Aveo, the Killers, the Girls, and Drive By Truckers. But I did enjoy the thoroughly rockin’ sets by the Witness (above) and the Turn-Ons.

My sometime alterna-journalism colleagues in Harvey Danger have re-formed, and played their first all-ages gig in five years. Sean Nelson, bless him, still looks like a journalist, but his singing voice is stronger than ever.

From the above image, I won’t have to tell you that wristbands for the nighttime stadium rock show were gone within an hour and a half on Monday. Built to Spill singer-songwriter Doug Martsch (below) sounded more Michael Stipe-like than ever.

The reunited Pixies, however, sounded just the same (marvelous) as they ever did. They played all their should-have-been-hits and then some, in a tight hour-and-a-half show. Few singers can make me so happy, singing about such bleak topics, as Mr. Black and Ms. Deal can.

One more set of these pix to come.

WE ONLY GOT TO GO to two days’ worth of Bumbershoot this year, but will stretch our pix of the weekend out to three days, just to extend the joy.

We begin with Mass Productions, who turned the Space Needle into a giant harp last year. This year’s production was somewhat more modest.

Also back this year: Flatstock, the art show and sale by rock poster designers from across North America.

Claudia Mauro, who runs the local indie publisher Whit Press, introduced contributors from her poetry anthology In Praise of Fertile Land.

I love fertile land. I’m just not all that fond of nature poetry, particularly in the ’70s Port Townsend/La Conner style, which Mauro’s book includes much of. All that sanctimonious worship of a selectively-described “nature” in which farms never smell like manure and in which human beings other than the poet are never mentioned.

I used to dislike nature poetry because its sensibility was at odds with my young-adult cantankerousness. Now, I dislike it because it posits a Rousseau-esque romantic longing for a “simpler time” that never was.

In the real world, farmers have always been out to make a buck, have always been pressured by corporate and/or governmental powers, and have always bent and shaped the land to suit their ambitions. Rural life has always been frustrating and/or lonely. Young adults have longed to get the heck outta there since the age of Playboy of the Western World, and likely before.

I won’t even get into the PoMo philosophical construct that “nature,” as nature poets imagine it, doesn’t even exist except as a theoretical opposite to “civilization,” whatever that is.

Liz Phair, as you may have heard, has reinvented her look, from indie-rock bad girl into blonde quasi-waif. As long as she still plays and sings great, I don’t care.

In other apparel topics, fashion shows were held at regular intervals next to the “Fashion Alley” concession booths.

At one such show, we finally learned what’s worn underneath a Utilikilt—another Utilikilt.

The Bumbrella Stage, again this year, held a pair of strange banner-fellows on its sponsor flags. Last year, America’s most widely read lefty magazine shared the stage with Captain Morgan rum. This year, its logo appeared beneath that of Miller Beer, which was recently sold from Philip Morris to South African Breweries.

On the left, James Brown-esque vocalist Bobby Rush. I’ve seen James Brown impersonators on stage before, but they were always white.

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.

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:

• Film-school demo reels, showing off the director’s slickness qualities for the purpose of getting hired in Hollywood;
• Earnest polemical statements, forcibly introducing sociopolitical concepts the director doesn’t know you’ve already heard a thousand times (did you know that advertisements are trying to get you to buy things?);
• Sincere if repetitive homages to other filmmakers or existing pop-culture reference points.

The cliches were particularly fast-n’-furious in the “Sex Ed” set, five unsubtle films in which I learned that:

• Straight couples are inane;
• Straight men are lechers;
• Gay men are sanctimoniously political;
• Lesbians are cute and sassy; and
• Prostitutes are abused waifs.

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.