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BOB OSWALD ponders the Big Changes Life and Death on Second and Battery 
GERI LYNNE EGELER (left) of Hair 113 is being forced to relocate. Also vacating the building is restaurant Marjorie. Long-time Belltown gift shop Blu Canary left last year. Photo by Louie Raffloer The second worst thing that ever happened to me was coming off of a moderate addiction to benzodiazepines, in Manhattan, in August. Cold and sweating in 10,000-degree heat, glancing light from towers of molten glass stabbing the eyes, a million pounds of dense, wet air laying on top of everything like a wet blanket... a wet blanket that was also on fire. I think that was the year that they revved up the Large Hadron Collider on a test run, and gravity got reversed and a bunch of people and buildings and things fell off of the planet into the sun, but the atmosphere was so oppressive in the city that it held us all right down to the pavement, frying us on the sidewalk. Seriously, the air was like chalk, and I don't mean chalk dust-I mean chalk. I spent a week stumbling, mumbling, taking a 30-minute nap every 20 minutes, and staying up all night staring into the holy romantic vicious darkness. And then things started to get really bad. Good times. I was reminded of them the other day, walking down Denny Way. Like getting cold-cocked right between the eyes, I was suddenly smashed with that stuffed-sinus, eyes-half-shut, takes-ten-minutes-to-think-of-the-word-"synesthesia" feeling. One of those Proustian things where an errant sensory impression leads to a cascade of other vague feelings, sensations, and memories. Similar to... what's that word.... oh yeah, synesthsia. I was past Aurora before I realized the initial cause of this remembrance of things past... the sound of cranes, jackhammers, and fat guys with back hair yelling "Hey!" Development, my friends. In The City (you know which one), it's constant background noise, and you can walk from one side of the island to the other without ever leaving the protective shelter of those cattle chutes they use to cover the sidewalk, putting a vital layer of plywood between you and the 1500-pound I-beam that, having fallen from the top of the building, is now hurtling toward your head at about a million miles per hour. But that's the city that never sleeps. Here in our quaint little hamlet of Seattlesburg, we tend to sleep six months out of the year, waking only occasionally to complain about the noise from the bars on Pike/Pine, or about how they're tearing down all the bars on Pike/Pine to build a bunch of stinking condos. A while ago, at a party or something, someone told me that there are currently 14 of those big cranes in the downtown area. While I didn't bother to verify that for the purposes of factual accuracy in this paragraph, I did look up the weight of a commonly sized I-beam for the former. Whether you're downtown, in Belltown, or on Capitol Hill (i.e. any place that matters) you're probably staring down the barrel of a lot of noise and dust, higher rents, and new neighbors who are smarter, richer, and know more about wine than you do (protip: You can sometimes get it in bottles instead of boxes). Anecdote to illustrate larger point and drive home the human and social consequences of this recent boom in construction: the McGraw-Kittenger-Case Building on Second and Battery. You know, the one that used to be an MGM film exchange? With the crenellations on top? Catty-shanks (one of my ex-girlfriends swears that this is a real word, like "kitty-corner" but not diagonal) from the Marrkesh restaurant? Currently home to Marjorie, Hair 113, and, until recently, Blu Canary? Yeah, that's the one. I went down to this place to speak with Geri Egeler of Hair 113 about the situation. Perched atop the old, ivy-sprouting building, blockin' out the scenery and breakin' my mind, was a large sign declaring the property had been SOLD by the Cannon group, by one Joe Cannon, no less. Not playing here... Joe Cannon. In all fairness, I'm sure Mr. Cannon is an honest, respectable local businessman, the kind of guy you'd trust with any of your commercial real estate dealings. But Joe Cannon? Doesn't that just sound like the name of the villain in an '80s movie whose plans to buy out the community center and pave it over with a strip mall? Is it too late to have a dance-off and bake sale to save the McGraw-Kittenger-Case building? I'm sorry, Mr. Cannon; your name is just too perfect, and there was no way you could've avoided your destiny to build a real estate empire... just as the name Bob Oswald has cursed me with literary greatness. The little people might not understand, but I feel your pain. I'd long heard of, but never visited, a "funky and eclectic" place before, but on walking into Hair 113, I knew I had arrived. Exposed brick walls, pastel paintings of fish, gaunt city people with large heads, and other, you know, art stuff. Color, texture, and all of those things that are said to interest people who themselves are interesting. A mirror runs the whole way across the wall so you can not only keep an eye on your stylist, but everything going on through the window behind you. This is an old building, the kind with history, charm, and faulty wiring. The kind of place that has been so many things to so many people that it takes a strong force of will to change it, to soften the tile floor and round the corners into something that looks like you, your friends, your neighborhood. This is Ms. Egeler's fourth year in this location, and the quiet pride of someone who has actually accomplished something in her life (something more than a couple of articles in a local paper and getting rejected by every literary magazine in the country, god I hate myself) is evident in her calm enthusiasm for the place. It's one of those symbiosis things; the way she sits and moves around her salon, it is sometimes difficult to see where the person ends and the place begins. This place radiates the creative charm of its owner and Belltown itself. I asked Geri about the sale of the building and she told me a story that sounded very familiar: The building had gone on sale a little over a year ago, not much direct communication from the owners or sellers, and then, hey presto, suddenly there was a new owner. She heard rumors the place had been sold before receiving 
official notice; in fact, she didn't receive any kind of notice until she noticed no one had come around with a lease renewal. Finding this lack of basic procedure strange, she asked around and, hey
presto-you know. This time honored delaying tactic is great for, well, delaying things. Especially unpleasant things, like telling people news they may not want
to hear.
Geri was disappointed at the prospect of moving, but pragmatic. "Not knowing was the hardest part. Imagine your life being on hold for an entire year." She looks around the spacious antechamber of the salon that serves as both waiting room, with a red couch you could almost drown in, and styling area, complete with swivel chairs and the big mirror. "This whole area used to be women, small business owners."
And the history of these small business owners, women and men alike, is complex enough to lose me entirely. The stories of who rented which storefront when who went out of business, who was forced out by the cranes or competitors or simply waking up one day and not finding the will to do it anymore, who bought out whom, wither
hurried hence, and all the like, are as convoluted and Byzantine as the pipe works in the McGraw-Kittenger-Case building itself. By the end of our conversation Belltown seemed like a seething pit of financial chaos, with little boutiques jockeying for position and market share, restaurants and bars sprawling out and retracting like the tentacles of a very confused octopus on Quaaludes.
And it makes sense; it's always been this way. You think this city popped up overnight? Hey, I'm the first to say we lose something in tearing everything down and throwing up shoddy condos and mixed-use megaconglomocenters.
But on the other hand, even all of the shoddy depression-era brick apartment buildings on the hill with the hilariously pretentious names carved over the doors were, at one time, new development. And you can bet someone just as annoying as you-perhaps even more so-was complaining about it. There's a balance to be struck somewhere... or maybe not. But
it is a shame to see nifty old buildings turn into nifty new wine bars and stores that sell things I don't understand and/or can't afford.
No one seems to know what the new owners' plans are for McGraw-Kittenger-Case, except that current tenants' leases will not be renewed. (Hair 113 will move before its lease is up, to Third
Avenue near Vine Street.)
The old building itself is a bizarre mishmash of the old-intricately tiled bathrooms, '40s-era sink fixtures, the cold, metal-lined walk-in safes where MGM stored its film-and the new, with crudely-erected plasterboard walls, bland industrial carpet, and exposed wire. This place has died and been reborn continually, in rhythm with the lives of the people who have lived, worked, and died here in Belltown in its time.
Stopping once while giving me the grand tour, Geri says: "When I first moved into the place, I thought it was haunted." She pauses. "If I had the money, I'd buy the place and turn it into one big living area."
Geri has accepted the change of the sale as a part of the Big Change that is always happening in our lives. She is looking forward to being a mom, and doesn't express any bitterness: "Maybe this was just the right time. I'm still paying off some of the startup costs, but I can go cut hair anywhere."
Still, while we are all supposedly already ankle deep in a recession, one has to wonder where all of this new development is taking us. Are these strange and beautiful old buildings going to come down or be modernized only to end up as tax write-offs and subsidized housing, the strange and beautiful buildings our children's children's children will write nostalgic articles about? Isn't someone getting squeezed here? Isn't someone always getting squeezed?
"I still have to sit down and talk about this with my employees," Geri told me: "I have to think about their livelihood, too."
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