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High resolution Find the Belltown Messenger at these fine establishments: Zeitgiest Coffee, Elliott Bay Books, News box @ Ferry Terminal, Uptown Espresso @ Olympic Sculpture Park, Uptown Espresso @ 4th and Cedar, Buffalo Deli, Austin Bell Building Starbucks, Marco's Supper Club, Seattle Cellars, News box 2nd and Bell, Rendezvous, Mama's, Lava Lounge, Shorty's, Cafe Casbah, Dan's Belltown Grocery, US Bank, Bauhaus, Hot Mama's Pizza The Messenger is distributed on the first of every month to over 100 Seattle locations, including most Belltown condos. |
misc
J.R. Simplot, Carl Chew, Who's Who in Washington State, Belltown Crime on YouTube by Clark Humphrey 
Captain Steve Brown, Commander of the West Precinct, discusses public safety at the Belltown Community Council's May 27 meeting. 
THIS MONTH'S MISC IS DEDICATED to the memory of J.R. Simplot, the only American to be a tycoon in both potato chips and computer chips. (He also dominated Boise's
economy, particularly in recent years, as Albertson's and Boise Cascade got swallowed up by out-of-staters.)---
I JUST MIGHT BE the first person to notice the similarities between the logo for this year's
Seattle International Film Festival and that of Mattel. You can tell it's an Argentinian abstract-collage feature, it's swell!---
INSERT YOUR OWN PUN HERE: The City of Seattle might build a new jail on the current
Aurora Avenue site of the beloved Puetz Golf driving range.
IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING, the answer is Yes!
Carl Chew, the valiant Eckstein Middle School teacher who's risking his job to take a stand against the meaningless bureaucratic nonsense that is standardized testing, is the same person as C.T. Chew, the pop-folk artist locally beloved for his surrealistic prints, his original "commemorative stamp" series (not good for postage), and his (outsourced to Asia) designer rugs.
Chew's statement to the media about why he's refusing to administer the WASL (Washington Assessment of Student Learning) to his sixth graders is still online at seattlepi.com. It's a beautiful, compelling, structured argument. Students (and everyone else) should read it to learn about the fine art of persuasive writing. ---
RETURN TO WHOVILLE: A kind reader recently gave me a 1927 hardcover book, Who's Who in Washington State.
It was published in Seattle by one Arthur H. Allen. His preface calls the book "the story of human activity, the successes
and failures of forward-looking individuals who have not only conceived projects but have had the courage either to successfully
carry them through, or to lay a ground work which resulted in final completion."
He also promises, "An effort will be made in the next edition of Who's Who in Washington State to list
the names of more women." As far as I've been able to tell, there wasn't another edition, at least not by Allen;
later books by the same name were apparently published in 1949 and 1963 by others.
The tome's 240 pages are crammed with tiny-type, one-paragraph bios. Most of the subjects are businessmen and
lawyers, with a few doctors, government officials, and educators added into the mix.
The Fisher family (then of Fisher Flouring Mills, now of KOMO and related properties) is handily represented. William Boeing is listed
alone, with no relatives. Such pioneer family names as Yesler, Boren, and Denny are missing altogether. So are druggist George Bartell,
banker Joshua Green, and the shoe-selling Nordstroms (though the families behind Frederick and Nelson and The Bon Marche are duly included).
Those who are in the book, and whom I'd heard of, include real-estate titan Henry Broderick, longtime P-I sportswriter Royal Brougham, nursery
owner Charles Malmo, UW prof Edmond Meany,  naturalist/writer Floyd Schmoe (above - whom I'd met in his old age), lumbermen Charles Stimson and John Weyerhaeuser, Seattle Times publisher Clarence Blethen, PACCAR cofounder William Pigott, and seed packager Charles Lilly (his firm became Lilly-Miller). But it's the names I'd never heard of that particularly fascinate me. Names like Alice Rollit Cole ("teacher of expression and dramatic reader"), Walton Lindsay Fulp ("Supt. Carnation Milk Products Co., Kent"), O.H. Woody ("Mgr. and publisher, the Okanogan Independent"), and Anna Elisibit Green Grant ("Owner S.O.S. Placement Bureau"). It's fun to open the book to any random name (say, "Fleming, Howard Glenn, v-p. Snoboy Fruit Distributors"), and make up an imagined full life story for the person, complete with parents, spouse(s), children, likes/dislikes, triumphs/frustrations, hopes/fears, and ultimate life's regret, if any.--- THOUGHT FOR FOOD: Once again, we're hearing about one of my pet topics, the lack of decent grocery shopping in many Seattle neighborhoods; particularly in neighborhoods far from any full-size supermarket. It doesn't have to be this way. Specialty produce stands, such as MacPherson's on Beacon Hill or Rising Sun Farms on NE 65th, profitably fit into former gas-station buildings, with the same square footage as your basic C-store. With a little bigger restocking budget and a couple more cooler compartments, they could fit in a meat-deli counter and some basic staple groceries (rice, pasta, etc.). Communities can organize to start up such a store in their ‘hoods IS THAT DREW CAREY OR DREW BARRYMORE?: Broadstripe (formerly Millennium, formerly Summit, formerly Seacom), the "little" cable company with a big image problem, has finally added a bunch more hi-def channels. They're all versions of brands you know and love-TNT, TBS, A&E, History Channel, National Geographic, Lifetime Movie Network, and (for a little extra) Showtime. We get TNT's NBA playoffs (including, alas, the Lucking Fakers) and TBS's baseball games (no longer exclusively starring the Braves) in their full-res, widescreen glory. The same goes for some movies, recent off-network reruns (Lawn Order: Assorted Flavors), and "reality" faves such as Ax Men (northwest Oregon never looked so beautifully foreboding). But, and this is something Broadstripe can do nothing about, these channels ruin their regular-def movies and reruns, by altering it into fake widescreen. Even movies that were originally made in widescreen will get cropped and then stretched out like digital Silly Putty comics.--- THE BIG BUZZ about our odd li'l neighbothood this month concerned the "Belltown Crime" YouTube videos. These clips, no longer publicly viewable, were placed by an anonymous 26-year-old white female who moved into an apartment here and was shocked to find poor people hanging out in the alleys. That's a snarky sentence, I know. It makes the videographer sound like one of those upscale couples who move into quaint country houses near picturesque cattle pastures, then complain about the wafting aromas. Please note the videographer's not claiming the persons in her video clips had directly threatened any crime against her own self. Nor was she overtly ranting about the poor or the homeless, but about what she calls "crackheads." She's not dissing them for existing but for existing while (allegedly) drugged up. Here's the SPD's PowerPoint presentation from the Belltown Community Council's May 27 meeting.  Belltown_Presentation.mov - Belltown_Presentation.ppt Yet, to the untrained (suburban) eye, the behavior of a disoriented, mentally ill, or simply out-of-sorts man or woman, particularly if the man or woman has an unkempt appearance, can be mistaken for the behavior of a frizzled-out drug user. Downscale people have existed in Belltown long before upscale people did. There have been three traditional newcomer responses to the downscalers' existence: 1. Ignore, shy away, close the curtains, cross the street, don't talk to them, don't look them in the eye, pretend you didn't see anything. 2. Harass, belittle, demonize, call for police crackdowns, alert the media, evict social-service agencies, demand Someone Do Something Now. 3. Empathize, donate, seek positive solutions (no matter how incomplete). You can probably discern which category I believe the videographer has chosen, and which I believe you should choose. |
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Thanks to our print edition advertisers this month: Moira Holley, Hawaii Express, Desert Sun Tanning Salons, Leone and Vaughn Orthodontics,
Belltown Barber, EasySeattleRealEstate.com, Mark E. Plunkett Attorney at Law, Continental Furniture, ctaww.org, Bayview retirement community,
Queen Anne Chiropractic, The Museum of Flight, Sugar, Shallots, SIFF, Antioch University Seattle, bokaseattle.com, The Blarney Stone, Lucky Palate,
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