"Like Pay Phones, Who Uses These Anymore?"

This lonely stack of phone books has been sitting at my building's entrance for a week, untouched. With free 411 service on our cell phones, and our computers armed with www.switchboard and Google to find a name or business in any city, who fusses with these anymore?

"I Was Bored During a Meeting, So I Photographed the Kayakers"

As a neighborhood newspaper reporter/photographer I must cover meetings where the speakers convey plans of a new development or road or bridge repair to the public, "the audience."

They are all similar. The speakers slickly present what the city has decided, and ask for questions from the audience. The audience asks, "Will you be taking our input here into account?"

The former environmentalist hired by the city because the pay was better says, "We are always interested in the concerns of the public, however these are the final plans."

Then the audience asks, "Then why were we asked to this meeting? Couldn't you have sent us a flier instead?"

Then the another presenter, usually a tall man in a tie with silver hair steps up to the mike to the rescue, "Our engineers have studied this blah blah blah and feel that the best way to blah blah blah is to..."

Then the audience snickers to one another as if to say, "The wrong damn people are in charge of this city."

 

"Unsettling Beauty"

Mount Rainier is Washington's highest point. This 14,411 foot volcano is considered active, and looms over Seattle just 55 miles away, the same distance between Chicago and the Zion Nuclear Plant.

The locals here are not too concerned. Geologists say the volcano erupts just once every 1000 years, and it has not had a major eruption since, well, about 1000 years ago.

"Seattle Stage"

"Yellow Development""

"Detectives in the Open"

"Seattle Blues"

"Kiting on the Beach"

"At Liberty by the Beach"

"Red Door To Beach"

"Green Beach Construction"

"Progressive Seattle's Music Scene Has Progressed...To This"

Bing Crosby got his start crooning in Seattle & Spokane. Hendrix came later twanging his big one, the guitar I mean. Then Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder continued the tradition by putting Seattle via grunge rock on the musical map. 

Much like the greenhouse hat in a prior post, this musical array of percussive car parts makes sense to the Seattle mindset. The instrument has been recycled and is therefore sustainable and diverse. Seattle-style progress is sound.

You have any idea how many trees Antonio Stradivari had to ax to make one violin?

"The Space Needle Punctures the Otherwise Scenic Skyline"

The best thing about Seattle's 605-foot iconic erection is that from the moment you step into its elevator en route to the observation deck until the moment you step out back on ground level your view of Seattle was wonderful. That is because you do not see the Space Needle from the Space Needle.

A tacky post-Sputnik architectural reaction, it was built for the 1962 World's Fair. Many here await its blast-off into space.

As if the Needle needed an additional layer of tackiness, it served as the backdrop to the movie  It Happened at the World's Fair starring Elvis Presley.

Tacky enough the rest of the year, on 4th of July and New Years Eve it goes 9/11 on our asses except that usually no one gets hurt. However, even though Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and their many minions live within a half hour of the Needle, a computer board mishap occurred during our last New Year's Eve fireworks show, and the grand finally occurred within the first five minutes.

 

"Seattle Head of Lettuce"

In Seattle this is a completely normal person. His head gear blends form with function. Some in the Midwest might pine for those dapper days of handsome hats, but let it go. Jimmy Stewart's hat was not sustainable. Seattle is a progressive West Coast city, so this hat will soon be coming to a Michigan Avenue milliner near you!

"Homeless Went Hungry Thanksgiving Due to My Photo"

The neighborhood newspaper I work for assigned me to photograph the local food bank with all the donations dropped off the day before Thanksgiving to illustrate the generosity of our community. This is the photo which I took from a tall ladder of the food and polite assistant. The director knew I was there, but had other plans that afternoon.

I recently ran into the food bank director at a chamber of commerce luncheon. She got right in my face and said, "I direct the food bank. Thanks to your photo in the paper, people stopped donating because you made it look like we had so much food. We ran out of food for the homeless and it is your fault!

"Room With a View"

Laura and I moved into Alki, a beachie neighborhood in West Seattle, January 1. This is our view from the living room. You can see the Olympic Mountains. Behind them is the Pacific Ocean which is about one hundred miles wast of the apartment. But it is not about what we do see, but rather what we don't see. The hideous Space Needle. We paid extra for that privilege. 

"The Other Windy City"

This afternoon I took a photo of a guy kite-skating with his homemade devise. He returned the favor...and my camera.

"There's Always a Catch"

This Seattle ritual is called the "Blessing of the Fleet." This Lutheran minister blesses this boat and its crew as a symbolic gesture so that in the eyes of God the craft, and others at sea, will be divinely protected. It works most of the time. I said hello to the captain, the white-haired man standing on the deck. He told me he was an atheist. 

While Seattle is well known for Microsoft, Starbucks, and Boeing, its heart and sole is the fishing industry. Trollers leave Fishermen's Terminal and putt through the Chittenden Locks into and out of the secure Puget Sound, through the Straits of Juan de Fuca north onto open seas to Petersburg, Alaska for salmon, and Dutch Harbor for herring and codfish in the western Aleutian Islands, about 800 miles north of town. 

Fishing is ranked number one as the most dangerous profession. A block, as in block and tackle, came loose and landed on the chest of my friend Stuart on his 56-foot fishing boat. He was bleeding and really in bad shape. Luckily he was by shore giving his childhood friend, now a doctor, a ride. Had he been out at sea he would have died. It takes a lot of bother and schlepping to get that nice piece fish onto your plate. Bon Appetit!

"Get to Know Your Neighbors"

Step outside Seattle, you step into a linguistic land mine.  What's worse, Washingtonians become extremely insulted if one of their town's names they stole from the Indians is mispronounced. 

Here are some gems to practice before you come out for a scenic visit:

"Sequim" is pronounced "Squim." They call this town 'the banana belt" as it has less rainfall than any other spot in the state as the Olympic Mountains block the clouds.

"Puyallup" is pronounced "pyoo-AHL-up" and don't even think about using a "w" sound between the pyoo and the AHL. You WILL get corrected.

"Sedro-Woolly" is pronounced "SEE-dro-wohl-ee," and it is their Berwyn," unsophisticated,  only rural.

"Hoquiam" is just like "hookworm" but without the "r."

Oh, and do not mix up "Snohomish" with "Snoqualmie" or "Sammamish" or "Swinomish." The way I keep these four straight is the first two are in the mountains, and therefore have snow.

The second two are by rivers and have fish. Or maybe it's the other way around.

Also, there is a crime-ridden town called University Place. So when you go on craigslist looking for an affordable apartment near the University of Washington, a great but "spendy" (as they say here) neighborhood near downtown Seattle, your eye always finds University Place, which is 40 miles away from the university but has a hell of a lot more vacancies than its leafier counterpart. But you CAN find an apartment in University Place for under $1200 a month.

Also, a little trick those snarky Seattleites might pull on you Midwesterners is when they mention Vancouver, as there are two, and you have to listen carefully to the context of their sentence. One is just across the northern border, in Canada. The other is this side of the Oregon border, in Washington, and is a Portland suburb. They are both a two and a half hour drive, just in opposite directions. 

If a Seattleite says, "We went to Vancouver last weekend and had a good time-great restaurants, and you can smoke weed outside the coffee shops," they are talking about the one in Canada. If they say, "We spent the weekend visiting our niece and nephew in Vancouver. My how they've grown up fast," they mean the other one. If their comment is more ambiguous,  just don't ask which one. It's better that way.

"Local Government Earmarks"

Seattle is a sea of bureaucracy. It sits uncomfortably inside King County, which is also a sea of bureaucracy. So not only is Seattle an hour glass inside an hour glass, it is also a sea within a sea. Because this is Seattle and not Chicago, this resident who speaks on behalf of local government is taken very seriously. 

"Exact Fare, No...Sturdy Shoes, Yes."

This Seattle bus is a pretty color and you can't beat the gas mileage. The West Coast is much more progressive than Midwesterners. Just ask them. These buses will soon be coming to a station near you.

"Football Team Named For Proud Area Bird"

Seattle loves its baseball, football, and women's basketball teams. I have not yet deciphered this city's lack of hoopla for its men's basketball team, which, according to the sports pages, seems to be moving to Oklahoma City. In fact, if you plan to take a road trip from Chicago to Las Vegas or L.A., you might spot the team en route, dribbling down western Kansas.

"Nice Wheels, Baby!"

In Seattle, yes, newborns are not only issued drivers licenses, they also get SPECIAL PARKING PRIVILEGES. I am not convinced that a baby's needs are as special as that of an injured war vet, or senior with a bad hip, but these convenient parking spots do save newborns time when in a rush to pick up their babysitter. 

"Seattle's Mayor Green"

Chicago-born Greg Nickels, Seattle's mayor, wants his city to set the national standard for sustainability, and to be green. Think: bicycling to work in the rain while squeezing between Softies driving BMW's while chugging Starbucks, talking on their headsets, and listening to NPR. (Softies are Microsoft workers.)  Nickels always says hello to me and gives me a pat on the back, and his programs are well-intentioned, but...His new ordinance forces all city taxicabs to be hybrid cars by 2012. But there is another ordinance that forbids a taxi that takes a fare to the airport to then pick up another customer there. The taxi must return to dispatch empty while another empty taxi goes to the airport to pick up new customers. This forces the taxi driver to burn a lot of gas with no one in the back seat. Plus, they "recycle" police cars for taxis for five grand. Hybrids will cost over twenty, a high price for a new Somalian or Uzbek immigrant entering our job market. 

No "State and Madison" here.

I heard a seismologist on the radio here describe Seattle as "an hour glass inside an hour glass."

That's actually kind of poetic and beautiful, except for the 500,000 grains of sand, er, Seattle residents, trapped inside the inner glass, who may have to escape the "Big One," with time running out. And, unlike Chicago's grid system of NS & EW streets, Seattle has three grids divided into four sections, NE, NW, SE, and SW, because, unlike Lake Michigan, which is generally due east of Chicago, the Puget Sound's Elliott Bay carves an arc on Seattle's western edge, and Lake Washington excises a 25-mile bite out of Seattle's eastern side. (And within lies the downtown with curves like Jane Mansfield.) So for example, as you can see from the map at right, you can live on the corner of 50th Avenue Northeast, & Northeast 50th Street. Your address would correspond. Your address might be 5050 Northeast 50th Street, or 5050 50th Avenue Northeast. But I couldn't live there, not because of the confusing address. But because that's an expensive neighborhood!

"Like Father, Like Son"

The b&w eye-catching photo was taken by my father, Art Shay, and appears in his book, Nelson Algren's Chicago, which is a book about Nelson Algren in Chicago. I mean, he didn't actually purchase the entire city. 

I took the color shot because my girlfriend, Laura, and I were at a typical Seattle circus and she said, "Steve! Take a picture of that! He looks like that guy with the sword in your dad's book! Perhaps the guy in my photo is really the son of the guy in my dad's photo. They do have a family resemblance, and perhaps someday HIS son will become a things hanging from the eyelids performer, too...or better yet, an optometrist. 

"A Seattle Conservative"

In terms of the Seattle political mindset, the owner of this car is a conservative. How can you tell? Notice not one mention of "Che Guevara." 

"Come on out, lady. We've got you surrounded."

She refused to sell to developers. It's a win/win for both sides. I should also point out that this is 10 miles north of downtown Seattle. A house like this on a normal street (not surrounded by walls) would cost half a million dollars in Seattle.  

(Not) on the go in Seattle

Thousands of pleasure boats choke every possible anchorage within 20 miles of the Emerald City. Yet, on a sunny afternoon one glance at the Puget Sound off Seattle will yield a view of about six boats. When will their owners set their sails free and uncage their craft?

Typical dinner and a show in Seattle

A picture should say it all. Nevertheless, I will attempt a little diary to match the image posted. Both photo and dialogue will aid in introducing the non-initiated, non-neurotic among you into the zeitgeist of the gestalt of the Seattle mindset. (OK. I admit it. I always wanted to use "zeitgeist" in a sentence.) In this photo I took Friday night at a Capitol Hill club, observe the Seattle circus. No monkeys, elephants, or poodles to be seen. And I am still searching for the cotton candy vendor.