To my dismay, I missed the opening night…
…but I am absolutely, positively going to see this in a couple of weekends. Continue reading
DATE ARCHIVES : September 2013
African Store Descending a Closure
Ok, guys. I’ve been to the place formerly known as the Seattle Museum of Mysteries.* I touched a yeti hair. And recently, I smelled bone-released myrrh. What I’m saying is that I have both a comfort with and an attraction to the inexplicable. It informs much of what I seek and love.
And yet, this has been baffling me for years.
Yes. I am talking about Africa Mama.
I have lived here since 2004. The store was closing when I first set foot on the Hill, back in those halcyon days. I think it may, at this point, have been dying for longer than it’s been alive.
I did a little hunting to see if anyone else has been recording the endless legend of this place. I found a Yelp page for their former location and a 2011 KOMO article… about it closing. Note the exasperation in the headline.
So my impression has always been that it’s a store that takes advantage of cheaper short leases, a la this space in the soon-to-be-transformed building on Broadway just south of Olive. And yet it reincarnates like its using god mode or something.
Someone told me once – probably back in 2006, when I was already wondering out loud about this – that there are laws that are meant to keep people from this kind of constant clearance farce. But tell that to the dude who will be waving the FINAL CLEARANCE!!!! signs at the corner of Olive and Broadway tomorrow.
I admire its tenacity, I guess? And yet, like reality shows, tanning salons, and other things I don’t get, they persist in a way that’s more annoying than it should be.
After the apocalypse: cockroaches, Twinkies… and Africa Mama.
*Its old location. Clearly I need to go again.
A Voyage into the Beacon Food Forest
There, we have arrived at the same incorrect preconception together.
“Food forest” is a bit of a misnomer. As my gardening friend explained to me, “Forests don’t actually create that much food.” That would be a garden. Which is what the food forest actually is. Also, the food forest is just a baby. At a mere two years old, it hasn’t exactly had time to develop the many-layered ecosystem it will eventually host.
And I knew my impression was bunk. It was part of why I wanted to go there. Because, honestly, this is what my brain conjured when I first heard “food forest”:
Which, like, no. Try this on for size:
There we are. Continue reading
On the Shore of Lake Crescent
A couple weekends ago, I was part of an unlikely trio. I’ll let you finish the joke yourself: a Frenchman, a Chinese student, and a former Midwesterner are in an Audi, speeding through the Washington peninsula on a fine sunny Saturday. Continue reading
Treasure at Central Lutheran Church
Wait… what’s this?
Is it a portal to another, better reality? A bitchin’ poster from a fabulous 12-year-old girl’s room from 1989? Let’s get closer.
OH SHIT. What? Why would someone leave this out? Why is this abandoned?
Wait… not abandoned. No no. Someone shared this with us. Our lives are embiggened and embettered by this new fact. We walk away from this vision fuller, more effective humans, ready to spread beauty, bravery, and the purest kind of love.
Have you ever seen the color of your dreams while awake? NOW YOU HAVE.
Go forth, child, and enrich others.
All of the Boobs at the Seattle Pinball Museum: Take Two
Trying again, since the slideshow is not friends with mobile devices. D’oh.
Welcome to Deviation Obligatoire’s exploration of Boobs in Pinball. I can’t think of anyone better to welcome you than the Mistress of the Dark herself.
Have you ever thought about what her head is shaped like under there, considering that front-and-center part? I didn’t until I was taking this picture. Now you can too.
Fun fact: there are multiple Elvira-themed pinball machines. I love earth sometimes.
My spirit animal for this undertaking. From basically the Bechdel Test of pinball machines.
Font Cues from Seattle Buildings
In a rad post on the Seattle Times blog, I learned about an ongoing classroom project at Seattle Pacific University, wherein designers find lettering on a Seattle building and turn it into a font.
This is happening on the regular.
The post focuses on the professor’s recently completed font, based on the Bemis Building in SODO. Behold, the sign:
And behold, the font:
Dat E.
From there, the article takes you on a rather loving tour of the greater Seattle font community. (There is one, and it’s great.) Go, behold, immerse yourself in serifs and Papyrus-slagging. We’re a creative city, and it is marvelous.
Life Just Destroys Me Sometimes
Yesterday, I was transferring between the light rail and the 49 downtown, lugging awesome Uwijamaya groceries with my neighbor. As we walked down Fourth, we encountered a battle royale.
A boy of about five, wearing one of those half-face Batman masks and brandishing a toy katana, was engaged in a swordfight… with an old man in an impeccable suit and hat, who brandished his cane for self-defense. As he was much more enthusiastic than the kid, who couldn’t quite seem to wrap his brain around this much awesomeness, I am thinking the old man picked the fight. And then lost it on purpose.
I stood and stared and felt my heart grow three sizes.*
I’ve looked forward to being older/old for a long time now. And it makes me happy to see exactly the kind of old person I want to be, out there, being rad and making life so much better for everyone.
My favorite, most relevant GIS result for “batman swordfight.”
*I am actually mostly heart at this point. It’s getting kind of crowded in here.
Hither and Thither #4
A month or so ago, I was walking through Capitol Hill with a friend. We walked by a former telephone pole that is now sawed off about ten feet up; what remains is thickly covered with several kinds of vine. As we walked by, I reached out and let my palm skip across its surface.
“Ok,” he said. “Hold on. I need you to explain what just happened.”
“I touched the plants?” I said.
“I was walking with a coworker the other day, and she did that too. And I see people just, just do that – reaching out and, like, caressing plants. What is that? Why?”
“Sometimes they look soft,” I said. “Or like they have a varied texture. And I want to know what they feel like. I wonder if they’ll be pokey, or soft like moss, or something else altogether. I just do it. I’d do the same thing with sweaters if we were walking through a department store.” This seemed to satisfy him. Somewhat.
This is all just background to tell you one thing: if I visited one of these exhibits, I would need a couple hours just to go around petting everything, just to see what it felt like.
Tales from the Ladies’
A very small selection of the carefully added graffiti in the women’s bathroom of Smith.
A fact not universally known: women’s bathroom walls often contain some hot truth. If you need advice, especially on your worth and how to conduct yourself in a relationship, you could do worse.
These pictures are mine, but if you want LOTS more from other people, go here.