This picture looks like it should be part of a real estate ad for a loft with a price approaching seven figures. “Lots of original charm! Plenty of evidence of this commanding space’s former life as a vibrant neighborhood hangout! Eclectic!” But of course it’s just the emptied-out upstairs of the former Bauhaus space. Even so, I kind of want to put my swank queen mattress here and have an unparalled life of bohemian beauty. Continue reading
POSTS TAGGED : seattle
On the Closure of Another Mainstay, on the New Landmarks of Another Day
I walk by this every day. Often twice.
And yet, its impending expiration gave it an extra layer of specialness. Induced me to leave my homework and go outside for coffee at 9:45 pm on a Saturday night. Prompted me to take a couple dozen pictures of things I’ve seen and not thought deeply about so very many times. Continue reading
Hither and Thither #6
You know, I don’t even want context for this. I like it, just as it is.
So, I have cats – two of them, both inquisitive and both deeply affected by things that are small, made of hard plastic, and fun to bat off a table. Despite that, I think… I think I need to own this. I need to own it and kind of gently spoon it sometimes when I’m longing for far-off places, and maybe stick my hand inside the tiny rooms to pretend it’s a tiny bit real. Related: how the fuck did Brickcon just happen in my city without me being aware of it at all? I’m going to blame it on being largely offline while I was in Hawaii, because any alternative suggests an intolerable failure on my part.
An essay about the stifling power of seeking perfection – and how most other people don’t give that much of a shit anyway. And that’s good.
I’ll make you dinner if you make me one of these with my own dudes on it. (I’m online friends with this person, and it’s extra exciting in this moment.)
A collected photo tour of the abandoned Holy Land theme park in Connecticut, over at Messy Nessy Chic, documents the live times and the end times of what looked to be a somewhat eerie place, even when it wasn’t decaying and covered in graffiti. For bonus unsettling, check out this old Time slideshow of post-Katrina Six Flags New Orleans.
If you think this applies to you, it does. If you don’t think it does, it still might. Ask your friends.
What I Got Up to Today
I experienced sadness at the Depressed Cake Shop of Seattle. A mere four minutes before I arrived, my friend witnessed the announcement that there were no more grey cakes or pies or anything to be had. Cheers to the fundraiser; alas for the rest of us.
I discovered there is a second piggy bank at Pike Place Market. Billie, Rachel‘s more retiring younger sister, sits at a back entrance of the market. She is also pleased to take your spare change.
She’s harder to sit on for pictures, though, as I watched an 11-year-old girl discover as she slid down the back, clutching desperately but futilely to Billie’s back.
I saw some Pike Market art I’d never witnessed. It pleases me that this is still possible. I attribute it to the magic of wandering Pike Market with someone who doesn’t live here. It’s like the Room of Requirement, but with public art.
And then we saw this. If my friend wasn’t already pretty much convinced to move here, this might’ve settled it.
I had my last Americano at Bauhaus – for at least a couple weeks. Appropriately, I was joined by the person I’ve known the longest in Seattle. I’ll talk more about this outing later.
And this is what it looked like on that last night:
I realize I’ve been to the last night of several Capitol Hill things – the Vogue, Bailey Coy, and now this. Black widow or opportunist? You decide.
Not pictured: several hours of reading for school; a fine siesta; being in bed with cats; the midnight toast n’ eggs meal I made to settle my coffee-roiled belly.
Finally: The Seattle Design Festival
A curious thing happens when you live in a vibrant place. When you first arrive, you gobble it up whole. Every play, every festival, every street fair: you go and go and go, and you’re so actively grateful all the time to live in such a generous cultural buffet.
But we’re not designed to live in a state of sustained delight. The extreme emotions and reactions – they devalue over time, if the stimuli are the same. If this happens for you with pain or sadness, that’s for the best, really. But the other side of that is that, no matter what kind of marvelous ongoing circumstances you find yourself in, you won’t be able to constantly delight in them unless you make a real effort. Continue reading
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
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.