Westsound Modern

It's not you...I've changed:

2009-05-20T02:05:00.000-07:00

Well, that didn't last long. I'm having trouble with blogger's comments section so it's off to Wordpress with a little shove from a friend. The new address is www.westsoundmodern.wordpress.com Bookmark it and I hope to hear from you soon!

Via Maggies Farm:

2009-05-19T17:27:00.000-07:00

I have eight dogs that wonder around the place and two pre-teen boys so I couldn't resist this one.

"Hi-10...pick up the bell at 1st & Yesler":

2009-05-19T16:11:00.000-07:00

Hi-10 was the number of my Yellow cab and typing the call sign these years later brings memories of hearing it crackle over the radio dispatch, snapping me out of my morning routine and back onto the downtown Seattle streets at around last call. People who have lived and worked in a city for a stretch of time come to know that part of the urban landscape's character is hidden to the visitor or casual observer. Things that the chamber of commerce or the tourist t-shirt manufacturers would rather remain obscure come into focus after twilight. It is my experience that the true character of a person can sometimes best be revealed during the dark hours between ten and four.

Twenty five years ago driving a hack was one of the last bastions of pure capitalism left in our ever more regulated nanny state. Many of the cab owners and drivers were immigrants with good educations and professions who were forced to flee their war torn or starving countries and start over with nothing. The competition for fares was pretty fierce but the chance to make nightly cash with your wits and guts being the only limiting factor was thrilling to a young man whose previous work experiences had been mostly in the world of union factory work.

Driving a taxi may seem to the uninitiated a relatively simple exercise in picking people up and dropping them somewhere else and that is true as far as it goes. To the driver who subscribed to this job description, a sixty or seventy five dollar night was to be routinely expected after gas and fifty bucks to the cab owner. To the driver however who could hustle and think, bend the rules a little in his favor, a couple hundred for a six hour shift was fairly common. Nothing to get rich on but not bad for a kid looking for some adventure and a few extra bucks to spend.

The iron rule and secret to success or failure as a cabbie is that the radio and dispatcher behind it is God. He controls and doles out the fares, or bells as they were called, and staying on his good side was paramount. The city was divided into ten or twelve zones and as you drove through them with a bell or without, you were required to radio dispatch as to which zone you were entering and request your position in the new zone. Say you were leaving zone three with a bell traveling to zone nine with the option of going through zones six or seven to get there. A call to dispatch would go "Hi-10 occupied in three, what's my drop (rank) in six, seven and nine". He might say "four in six, two in seven, one in nine". In this case I would say "drop me in nine" and I would be first in line for the next bell to call from zone nine. If while waiting however I saw someone hailing and picked him up thinking that I could take him to where he wanted to go and get back to nine before dispatch called my number, sometimes I would. Depending on how far he was going. If I succeeded fine. If I was caught being out of position however I was screwed. If I was out of position and missed the bell, dispatch had a habit of losing your cab number for a couple of hours. The not so secret secret to making good money was to try and fool the dispatcher into thinking you were in one place while you were in three others. The dispatchers job, and they were pretty savy having all been veteran drivers, was to catch you lying to them. As you can see, for a reasonably intelligent guy willing to gamble a little the possibilities for working the system to advantage were endless. Throw into this mix of low brow creative capitalist entrepreneurship a combination of freaks, thieves, weirdos, pimps, hookers, strippers, trannies, drunk frat boys and sorority sisters, parking meter robbers, and the other flotsam and jetsam of a typical downtown Saturday night and I've never had as much fun before or since at a job.

As far as the character angle of this story, you'll have to take my word that I had more than one opportunity to display a clear lack of Judeo-Christian principals and with only a few exceptions came through with flying colors....mostly. Well, there was that once. An unusually beautiful working girl offered to barter her expertise for cab fare. I reluctantly turned her down but in hindsight it was less an issue of character than of employing Groucho's old axiom of not wanting to belong to a club that would have someone like me as a member. I figured I didn't want to do someone who would do the likes of a cab driver. With maturity I realize that I may have been too harsh with the poor girl but I'm sure she probably got over it.
Character? I'm still working on it.

The Difference Between Liberalism & Leftism:

2009-05-19T11:26:00.000-07:00

From Dan Collins at Protein Wisdom.
As Dan says, here is a guy who by all outward appearances is your typical moonbat. Except he 'gets it".

Does this horse make my ass look big?

2009-05-18T11:19:00.000-07:00

There is a rough equivalent in the world of horse flesh to the insecure woman who constantly inquires whether a certain garment creates the perception of a large posterior. This is the phenomenon of the bigger guy who is convinced that only a horse of immense proportion can accommodate his frame. He will worry anyone who will listen that a 1,200 lb, 16 hand tall horse will immediately buckle under his 225 pounds. That only a Clydesdale or something approaching that size could possibly put one hoof in front of the other while he is in the saddle.

They almost always couch this in terms of concern for the poor frail animal but personally I think they are having a little trouble with an over active fantasy life or that they are just afraid of looking like this guy.

No way to start my morning:

2009-05-18T07:49:00.000-07:00

The title link on this post will take you to a moving essay by Dr. Bob at "The Doctor Is In" regarding the recognition of pure evil and how most of us (though not all) when faced with it prefer to call it something...anything...other than what it most obviously is. If you have a minute go take a read and come on back.

Every so often I come across something in my travels through the intertunnel, an essay, a picture, an observation, that will stop me cold in my tracks. Something that will cause me to pause from the routines we all settle into and reflect on how evil, and there isn't really any other term for what I am talking about, can move so seemlessly in and out of our consiousness with little or no remark. A post by Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club detailing the final stages of the Sri Lankan government's decades long battle with the rebel Tamil Tiger's contained these couple of sentences.

"As teenager, a guy who lived through the Second World War pointed out to me the Bayview Hotel on the corner of TM Kalaw Streets and what was then Dewey Boulevard. It is nearly at catty corners from the present United States Embassy. He was a boy in 1945 and after the Battle of Manila was largely over, he went wandering, as thousands of displaced persons did, among the ruined buildings. One of them was the Bayview. In its scorched and blackened rooms he found the walls smeared with the eyeball jelly of untold numbers of women, who the Imperial troops had, in their last desperate sex and alcohol-fueled orgy, taken to the Bayview to rape and mutilate".

The horror contained in this long ago memory is beyond comprehending. As I sit here at my desk and attempt to compose a followup to that thought I realize that there is really nothing more to be said. How do such things happen seemingly without end throughout human history? To linger too long on such a subject, to allow a picture to be formed in the minds eye for most of us would be too much to bear. Got to get breakfast in the kids and get them on the bus. Run some errands, get some work done. No time to dwell on the unfortunate realities of someone else, somewhere else.

And so it goes.

I feel.........Happy!

2009-05-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

FDA Approves Depressant Drug For The Annoyingly Cheerful

The Harvard Five:

2009-05-16T13:47:00.000-07:00

Nice write up over at Metropolis mag on the recent modern home tour put on by the New Canaan Historical Society. Be sure and follow the link for the slide show.
Via bloggers Tom and Gina at the aptly named modern.

H/T to Maggie's Farm for the linked title video.

Postmodern Incrementalism & the Banality of Evil:

2009-05-16T11:13:00.000-07:00

Now that I have your attention by employing the use of a sensationalist headline...

I noticed this label on my shampoo bottle while in the shower this morning:
(OK, so I've got a little spare time on my hands. It's either this or mop the floor.)

If you're like me you are uninterested in the nine who "perceive" thicker hair but are rather more curious of the tenth who either has or has not obtained a fuller more luxurious mane through the use of this product. I'm sure this guy "perceives" the same head of hair he had at 22 when he looks in the mirror but he is mistaken.

In case you are wondering, this hair thickening product was purchased for a friend. I have plenty of my own thick shiny hair pal. Hair so thick it can wrestle you and a couple of friends to the ground with both hands tied behind its back. Blindfolded.

"Will it fly? What does that have to do with what we were talking about"

2009-05-16T08:29:00.000-07:00

Via Maggie's Farm, Randall Hoven at American Thinker pokes a bit of fun at the postmodern leftist cargo cult.

Like all postmodern schemes it's all fun and games until you actually put someone in the cockpit and shove it off of a cliff.

The Demon Rum:

2009-05-13T17:28:00.000-07:00

"Work is the curse of the drinking yachtsman" read the small plastic plaque on the lower helm station. As a young man with a taste for distilled spirits and a less than stellar work ethic, I immediately fell in love with the old girl. By "old girl" I mean a 34' Stan-Craft Express Cruiser that I stumbled upon for sale at the old Newport Yacht Basin on Lake Washington east of Seattle. Built in 1955 on Montana's Flathead Lake, she was ten meters of solid African mahogany with the shape and style that watercraft of a more contemporary nature sorely lack. Her best years were clearly behind her as evidenced by the peeling topside varnish and the frequency with which the automatic bilge pump activated but love is not to be reasoned with and I bought her on the spot.

Going below to get acquainted with my new mistress I spied a small toggle switch in the galley labeled Cocktails. Never one to hesitate at the bar I pushed the toggle and to my surprise a circular aluminum disk in the center of the galley counter started to slowly rise exposing a rack containing various glasses and a 3/4 full bottle of "Old Vatted Demerara Rum". Wiping the dust from one of the glasses with the tail of my shirt I poured three fingers and sat down to reflect on my extreme good fortune. After four or five reflections in the span of thirty minutes or so I re-racked the now considerably drier bottle and decided that it was high time to get the old girl out on the water and determine if her beauty was merely skin deep.

If you've ever heard the sound of the old inboard motors in these vintage wooden boats you'll know what I mean when I say heads all over the marina snapped 'round when the twin Chrysler Hemi V-8's caught a spark and roared to life. Idling out and clearing the end of the marina, there was a small voice on one shoulder telling me to start slow and take it easy as the old power plants probably hadn't been run hard in who knows how long. On the other shoulder however was the slightly more insistent voice of "Old Vatted Demerara Rum" saying "Pour the coals to her!"

When something of a mechanical nature goes sideways on a boat running at speed, you feel it more than hear or see it at first. Imagine it as a person suffering the early symptoms of a stroke or heart attack. There is some minor numbness or maybe weakness, often followed by a denial of anything being wrong until it is too late. With the big mahogany hull on step and the twin engines thrumming perfectly in sync, the first sign of trouble was a nearly imperceptible slowing of hull speed without a reciprocal slowing in engine RPM's. Probably just my imagination. Just a little paranoia. Nothing to make a fuss about said the voice of "Old Vatted Demerara Rum". No problem. Right up until the port engine hatch blew off followed by billowing clouds of smoke and steam exiting the engine compartment.

The first thought an un-inebriated person has when there is any kind of explosion on a boat is wondering in what proximity it is to the eighty gallon cylinder of gasoline below decks and wondering whether you have minutes or seconds before this question answers itself. The first thought I, and "Old Vatted Demerara Rum", had was that if my new found love was going to jilt me by burning and sinking to the bottom of the lake, I was sure as hell going to pry something loose to remember her by before I jumped and swam for shore. Seeing as the plaque stating "Work is the Curse of the Drinking Yachtsman" was the initial spark that set in motion this passionate affair that was looking more and more destined to be a one night stand, it seemed just the ticket. Setting to work with a small key chain pocket knife, I earnestly went about the job of separating the plaque from the ancient glue fastening it to the helm. I just about had it loose when to my disgust it snapped in two and fell to the galley floor. After reflecting on my disappointment for a moment, the thought occurred to me that the breaking of the helm talisman might be a bad omen. It was about then I noticed that the port engine was no longer belching smoke. The fire had luckily been quenched by the quickly rising water in the engine compartment.

Lake Washington is a very deep lake but not particularly wide at any point. The shore is tightly packed with the waterfront estates of the "John Galt's" of King County, easily visible from nearly anywhere on the lake. I determined that the only hope for saving my beloved was in restarting the starboard engine and getting her as close to shore as possible before the rising water drowned the remaining operating motor and sealed our doom. It also didn't escape my fogged senses that as the authorities tended to frown on drunks running their boats up on estate lawns I would, out of necessity mind you, have to polish off the remaining rum and dispose of the incriminating bottle. These two tasks I accomplished in short order. Most of these lakefront homes have stone bulkheads or large docks running the width of the lots making them unsuitable for a high speed beaching. Cruising perpendicular to the shore and after passing eight or ten such places I finally spotted a beautifully sloped lawn that extended right down to the waters edge. I brought her hard about, pushed the throttle forward and aimed the bow directly for the center of the lawn.

As luck, or fate would have it, the beautiful rolling lawn was only so due to the fact that the boulders and rocks that previously occupied the lot had been bulldozed into the lake and right into the path of my future beaching attempt. With a great grinding and snapping of planks and ribs, she came to rest where I had planned, though not quite as I had planned, at the point where the lawn and water met. Of course such a commotion immediately caught the attention of the home owner who rushed to the waters edge just in time to witness me leap from the bow, drop to my knees, and vomit all over his freshly manicured lawn. Not my proudest moment as a mariner but certainly one of the more memorable.

It so happened that the Earl of the estate was a fellow wooden boat owner and for reasons I have yet to fathom took pity on my predicament and neglected to alert the authorities of what could have been interpreted by less imaginative souls as a pre-meditated menacing of the public safety. Upon recounting my story of the previous hour it turns out he was an aficionado of fine Rum himself and over the course of the two weeks it took to remove my boat from his lawn, we became friends. Over time he became somewhat of a mentor to me in the intricacies and hard rules that must be followed by those who take on the stewardship of old wooden boats or indulge in the occasional heavy drinking of liquor.
"Slowly" he would say, "Slowly and methodically will accomplish your goals". "With your eyes always focused on the horizon rather than the passing squalls of the mundane and irrelevant.

He actually talked like this and it seemed like silly advice in my youth but his stern tones let me know he was serious and that perhaps I should consider that his words had some validity. As I grow older, taking on the responsibilities of being a husband and father, I have given up the "Demon Rum" (mostly) and no longer can afford the time and expense of owning a wooden boat yet his words seem to apply equally in other areas of life as well.
"Slowly and methodically will accomplish your goals".
So far so good.

Sellers & Brokers:

2009-05-13T10:20:00.000-07:00

Chris Fountain at "For What It's Worth" is one of the better real estate bloggers out there IMHO because there seems to be no B.S. in the man. Either as a listing or selling agent he gives a brutally honest opinion of worth without regard to damaging the fragile sensibilities of seller and fellow broker alike. He acts like a guy who figures if you are in the market to buy or sell a house in the price range he deals in, you've been around the block a time or two and should be able to determine if someone is blowing smoke up your arse or not.

Below I have reproduced in full a short post of his from yesterday that really says it all regarding the only criteria for choosing a listing broker for selling your home. Do you trust the broker to place your best interests over his or hers in a transaction.

Who’s to blame?

I have buyers with $3.5, $4, $4, $5, $6 and $6 million respectively, cash, ready to buy in Greenwich, and aside from those properties owned by lenders or heading there, I can find nothing to recommend. We’ve weeded through and dismissed existing houses and viewing new listings is useless because they’re coming on at prices that are so crazy it’s obvious the owner won’t be reasonable for a long time. One came on recently for just under $3 million, for instance, and with that price offers the roar of I-95 at no extra cost. Others are perfectly nice, older homes, but are priced millions of dollars above what I think they will eventually sell for. What the F? I blame the listing brokers for these prices, either because they suggested them in the first place or accepted their clients’ opinion of value. Either way, they’re doing their sellers no favor. I was taken to task a year ago for suggesting that a particular house was overpriced – the listing agent told me that the sellers were “a really nice couple who have to move and get on with their lives”. I wasn’t sure how that affected the value of the house but did suggest that, if they had to move, they should lower their price. A few weeks ago that same broker told me rather smugly that the house was finally under contract. “Of course,” she conceded, “it is a short sale.” So the sellers have lost everything and the bank will get a fraction of what it loaned on the house. Who was kinder to those poor people in this instance, their agent for encouraging them to stick with an unrealistic price, or me? I’m not losing sleep over that question.

The broker who sold the short sale here was obviously less concerned about her client than she was about her commission. Unfortunately this is more common in the business than you might think. Many brokers will come to a listing presentation with only the goal of "getting the listing" rather than presenting a simple strategy to get the seller the most for their home in the shortest amont of time and then letting the chips fall where they may. You can usually spot these brokers as they are armed with a stack of statistics and superfluous information the size of an Omnibus spending bill and by the fact that they will agree with you enthusiastically on virtually any subject from what you think your home might be worth to your opinions on the probablity that the moon landing in 1969 was a hoax. The law of "Occam's Razor" can apply to choosing a real estate broker as it does almost anywhere. It states that "All things being equal, the simplest answer is usually the correct one." So keep it simple. Ask your broker for comps on SOLD homes to set the price. How will they market the home other than posting it to the mls and waiting for the offers to roll in. Ask for client references from your broker and then call them. Ask them the only question that really matters. Did the broker represent their client's interests in the transaction above all else?
Or you can pick a number out of a hat, maybe based on what you paid or what you need to get and roll the dice. In this instance any broker will do. Somebody has to win the lotto. Maybe it will be you!

Those who ignore history...

2009-05-12T08:06:00.000-07:00

Sippican Cottage is complaining again about our imminent return to the 1970's. Sure the economy will suck, and the world will once again treat us like a doormat but check out these groovy threads via plaidstallions.com
So dig that Bedazzler out of the junk drawer and get busy!
Click and scroll, you will be sorry.

A good regional modern, gone to contract:

2009-05-11T13:50:00.000-07:00

Here is a very nice example of a mid-century modern architecture home in the Northwest vernacular. So much of the modern design familiar to the general public is of the New Canaan Connecticut or California/desert style due to the fact that the cultural zeitgeist was and still is to a large degree centered around the metropolitan areas of Los Angeles and New York. It is important to realize however that the modern movement of the mid twentieth century was not just a California or Ivy League phenomenon but was embodied in a number of regional architectural styles drawing on local cultural influences and the raw materials available in those areas.

This particular home was designed in 1970, fairly late for mid-century standards, by Hal Moldstad. Hal was a prolific architect in the area of Bainbridge Island near Seattle and designed a number of similar homes drawing heavily on the influences of coastal Native American culture and that of turn of the century Japanese immigrants. Extensive use of native cedar and basalt stone were commonly used in these designs. Local architects such as Ralph Anderson, Bert Tucker, and Robert Sheilds pioneered this style of regional modernism starting in the late 1940's and their influence is very obvious in Moldstad's later design work.

Hal's career as an architect while prolific was relatively short lived as he retired his practice to concentrate on painting when the public's tastes in architecture began to move away from his finely tuned aesthetic sense in the 1980's.

This one has gone to contract but there are two other excellent examples of his work currently available on Bainbridge Island. Contact me if you are in the neighborhood and would like to take a look.

WTF Rooster?!

2009-05-10T14:41:00.000-07:00

So I go out to the chicken coop this morning and I find two piles of feathers in the corner and my bad-ass rooster basically doing his best impersonation of Foghorn Leghorn strutting around with the five remaining hens. I have to fetch the eggs with a heavy stick in my hand to keep him from jumping me but when there's a fox or a weasel in the run overnight I don't hear a peep and the next day he's all "Hey, everything is cool" and thinks that maybe I won't notice my egg production has just been reduced by 28.5714%!
YOU DON'T HAVE TENURE ROOSTER! In these times of woe and want I'm sure I can find a replacement who will bring a little more game.

Mortality:

2009-05-09T18:53:00.000-07:00

Came across this at Ann Althouse's place and it put me in a melancholy mood to think that Farah Fawcett, someone so associated with youth and vitality in my generation is close to death at the relatively young age of 62. It's enough to make a guy of my age reflect on his life and realize that he is likely closer to the end of it than the beginning.
Maybe much closer but that's not for us to know.

About a year ago I lost my father to congestive heart failure at 78. He was a great man from a dirt poor background who through will, determination, and the GI Bill worked his way through college to become an aerospace engineer with Boeing. As a kid I remember him waking before dawn for the two hour commute to Vandenberg AFB and then arriving home long after my sister and I had eaten supper and been tucked into bed. When I was very young I recall the sounds of his harmonica and those of a few of his friends playing guitar and banjo and learned that he had been an accomplished musician in his youth and had dreamed of playing for a living. Over time as his family grew and he settled enthusiastically into his role of husband and father, his playing became less and less frequent until taking a new position with Boeing near Seattle moved him away from his band mates, and his collection of harmonica's were relegated to a box in the basement with the other flotsam of life that falls out of favor for one reason or another. He was a very good engineer and took his responsibilities of being a husband and father as his highest priorities but he kept his creative mind alive by becoming a pretty decent sculptor of wood and later developed a deep appreciation of Native American design, teaching himself the art of silver smithing and becoming a master at creating silver jewelry using the spiritual forms of the northwest coastal tribes.

At the age of 62 he suffered a stroke leaving him unable to speak and his left side mostly paralyzed. He was no longer able to practice his profession or indulge his creative passion, forced into an early retirement. You may be thinking this is the part of the story where I recount my fathers decent into bitterness and resentment and early death but you would be wrong. After a long rehab he partially regained mobility and improved his speech to where he could be understood. He came to understand his forced early retirement as a second chance to do some of the things that he had long ago dismissed as unpractcal or unrealistic. His final fifteen years were a time of traveling. Of buying a small place on the Sea of Cortez in Baja. Of exploring and adventure. Of living with no rules other than where to, what next.

Mortality is often defined as how long rather than how well you have lived. We are delt unexpected hands throughout life and as free human beings it is up to each of us to make the most of them.

H/T to Gerard for Sandburg's "The People Yes".

Unknown Architects # 2

2009-05-08T14:20:00.001-07:00

Here is another great little modern designed by an unknown architect in 1953 on Bainbridge Island. The trees around the house made it difficult to get a good picture but both the exterior and particularly the interior are in remarkably original condition.
In an earlier post responding to an essay by architecture + morality I had mentioned that Green architecture was nothing really new and that many of the concepts of smaller building footprints, siting, large roof overhangs, radiant heat slab floors, etc. were originally experimented with during the mid-century era. The low sloping roof line facing south combined with the overhangs and large window walls keep the home cool in the summer when the sun is high and warmer during the winter months when the sun is lower on the horizon. There is also a series of louvers at floor height under the windows that open and provide ventilation. These economical design features were conceived in an era of cheap fuel and energy costs and are an example of the genius and forward thinking philosophy displayed by the architects of these simple yet sophisticated homes.
Currently for sale on Bainbridge Island just outside Seattle.
Contact me if you would like to check it out.

It was my understanding that there would be no math:

2009-05-07T16:04:00.000-07:00

From the always thought provoking shrinkwrapped.

As American....

2009-05-06T12:07:00.001-07:00

Shockingly, the date on this cartoon is 1934.
Click on the image to imbiggen.

Unknown Architects

2009-05-06T08:14:00.000-07:00

This is a little house I listed and sold late last summer by an architect that I had previously been unaware of. If not for the homeowners having a set of the original plans hidden in a closet, it is likely that I would have remained ignorant of his contribution to modern design in our region.

I Googled the name on the drawings and only came up with one result far from here in the northeast corner of the state. There was a phone number with the name so I called and left a message figuring it was a long shot. A couple of days later I received a call from Kurt O. Jacobsen and he indeed had designed this home in 1960 and about twenty others on Bainbridge Island before moving his practice to the small town of Winthrop in the remote Okanogan area of our state. He had graduated from the University of Washington School of Architecture in 1953 and worked under the noted regional modernist Paul Hayden Kirk for a few years before opening his own practice. Most of his designs it turns out were of a more traditional genre but as is obvious from this home, if his client wanted modern he certainly had the chops to give it to them.

Even in our down real estate market there is a demand for great mid-century design like this one as evidenced by the fact that this home was under contract two weeks after listing. It was purchased by a young architect and his family who plan on a few sensitive updates while keeping the original design intent intact.

If you are looking for something like this in our neck of the woods be sure and contact me.

Delphi, the Oracle, and "The Worlds Biggest Lava Lamp"

2009-05-05T09:08:00.000-07:00

Just as ancient Greece had what it considered to be the center of the universe in Delphi, home of the Oracle, the state of Washington also has a cosmic center in the town of Soap Lake. Located on the high desert exactly in the geographic center of the state, Soap Lake also had an oracle like figure in one Sam Israel.
Born in the early 20th century in Rhodes, Greece (coincidence?), he immigrated to Seattle shortly thereafter and made his fortune buying delapidated downtown real estate during the Great Depression.

Seattle has what many consider to be one of the most finely preserved collections of late 19th century buildings of any large urban core in the country. Pioneer Square in the heart of the city is nearly perfectly preserved just as it was constructed after the Great Fire of 1889. This was not due to any altruistic do-gooding on the part of the city who tried for years to condemn these buildings, but was attributed entirely to the shear stubbornness of Mr. Sam, who owned many of these buildings, and his refusal to let the powers that be bully him.

Legend has it that Mr. Sam was a grade A asshole to all of the right people. As a landlord his overhead was low due to the poor maintenance and upkeep he practiced on his buildings and he cheerfully passed this on in generous lease terms to his tenants. Many a successful restaurant, gallery or watering hole were established in these beautiful old downtown buildings due to these low rents. To the city official or bureaucrat however who attempted to coerce him into improvements, he was decidedly less generous in word and deed. In an era when property rights had a little more bite than they do today, his pat answer to threats of eminent domain or condemning his buildings was "fuck you, I'll see you in court". And in court he mostly was in the 60's and 70's fighting the do-gooders and their urban renewal until public perception, and finally the politicians, came around to the position that maybe these old buildings might be worth saving. When he wasn't fighting the pinheads, he could usually be found at his compound in Soap Lake which leads to the cosmic angle of this story.

Now, I'm not much of a woo-woo guy by nature. I think that pyramids are great for burying mummies in but probably don't keep your razor blades sharp. If someone tells me that they are employed as a "lifestyle coach" I'm generally thinking that you're going to be in deep doo-doo if the societal shit ever hits the proverbial fan. There was a definite vibe however upon entering Soap Lake for the first time like only a few other towns I've been in. It seemed to have a direct pipeline feeding to the source of Universal Weirdness. If you've ever been to Bizbee, Arizona or maybe Key West in the sixties, you'll know what I am talking about. Not so much an Oprah vibe as a David Lynch one.

In the summer of 1992 a friend of a friend who had emmigrated from Chicago to Soap Lake with his entire clan had invited us to the Greek Days festival there. After fueling ourselves with Margaritas at a Belltown bar in the days when drinking and driving was still marginally tolerated as acceptable behavior, we headed east. Arriving at the city limits around 11:00 PM, the town was dead and the sidewalks rolled up as you might expect of a small rural town an hour before midnight. It occurred to us as we looked down the length of Main Street that we hadn't given our friend fair warning that we were taking him up on his invitation and had no idea of where we might find him. Just then at the far end of town we saw a single headlight come around a corner and head toward us. As the light approached us we could see that our friend, somehow anticipating our arrival, was piloting a Vespa scooter equipped with a sidecar and was riding heeled over on two wheels so that the side car was suspended in the air. Wearing an old bucket helmet and goggles and sporting a leather jacket with a "Real Men Ride Hodakas" patch on the back, he dropped the sidecar while coming to a stop and said "follow me" in an unpracticed deadpan. We did.

Our first stop was the Notares Lodge and being sworn in as members of the Soap Lake Businessman's Club. There was no initiation or anything, just a fee of seven dollars and the personal vouching of our local friend as to our good character and high moral fiber. After receiving our membership cards, we descended a set of stairs out back of the lodge and our friend knocked on a large imposing basement door with a small hatch located in the center. The hatch opened, cards were checked and we were in! The place was constructed entirely of huge Douglas Fir logs and was packed to the rafters. We grabbed a stump at the bar, an enormous old growth fir of about forty feet sawed in half lengthwise and started tossing them back. Our friend grabbed a beer and jumped on stage to introduce the evenings entertainment, Bonnie Guitar and the Buglight Band. She couldn't have been younger than eighty and rumor has it used to play with Hank Williams Sr. back in the day. They ripped immediately into a rockin Texas two step that had the place jumping ala Bob's Country Bunker in the Blue's Brothers Movie when our friend proceeded to leap on stage and launch into a fine harmonica solo which Bonnie apparently didn't appreciate as she took a run at him and knocked him off the stage into the first row of tables. Convinced that Bonnie was a solo act, our patron took us to a table in back and introduced us to a few of the locals. Bobcat, an old broken down black dude and ex rodeo clown armed with a pearl handled six shooter whose holster he constantly fondled, he couldn't see two feet in front of his face and for some reason called everybody Wayney as in "Is that you Wayney? I can't see you!". There was the owner of the florist shop who according to our new pals, was the only gay guy in town. He kept squeezing my drinking buddy's biceps and exclaiming that he must be a wheat farmer with arms like that. Also sharing our table was a guy who had scandalized the town and couldn't show his face anywhere other than after dark in the club as he had cheated on and then left his beautiful young wife for her mother who had a face like a well worn leather Harley bag with eyes. Love is blind I guess. We were all getting pretty drunk when the locals started speaking in earnest tones of how their dream of building "The Worlds Biggest Lava Lamp" would be just the ticket to put the town back on the tourist map after the interstate had bypassed them years before. Us city boys had a good laugh at that one but the stern looks from all at the table told us that maybe a more stoic approach might serve us well as long as we were in town. At some point the motherfucker's ex-wife/daughter in law/whatever tracked him to the club and got in a chair throwing dust up with him while Bobcat, shouting "Is that you Wayney?" put a couple of slugs point blank into a poster of John Wayne tacked to the lodge wall. We scrambled for the exits but I don't remember much after that. I hope nothing weird happened.

We woke the next morning under the tables at a Greek restaurant owned by our friends aunt, who was the spitting image of a 1960's Elvis Presley, where we had ended the evening about three hours earlier with shots of Ouzo and further discussion of how the "Worlds Biggest Lava Lamp" was sure to revive the fortunes of Soap Lake. After a good stiff Bloody Ceasar or two to ease our well deserved hangovers, we proceeded to walk in small quiet steps to Main Street where the Greek Days parade was just kicking off. It was the usual affair with high school bands from around the area and local dignitaries riding in new convertibles provided by the Ford dealer in Ephrata. At the head of the line in his position as Grand Marshall, as he had been for as long as anyone could remember, was Mr. Sam and Miss Grant County riding in the back of a big '68 Eldorado convertable. Our friend, having just enough of a buzz from his Ceasar's shouted out, "Mr Sam...to what do you owe your success?" Mr. Sam smiled and right there in front of moms, the kids, and Miss Grant County says "Fuck You! I'll see you in court!"
A true story and wise words from the Oracle of Soap Lake.

Mr. Sam died a couple of years after that and was burried somewhere on the shore of the lake. Most of his old downtown buildings reverted to corporate hands and have been fixed up and utilized to their "highest and best use". Last I heard the lodge and businessman's club had burned down and "The Worlds Biggest Lava Lamp" remains unbuilt and a still distant dream to the folks of Soap Lake. A few years ago I found myself in Ephrata attending a baseball camp for my two boys and thought I would take a quick detour and see how the town was faring. I drove up Main Street past the Del-Red Tavern and what was left of the lodge and got the feeling that the pipeline to Universal Weirdness had maybe dried up or had been diverted to some other place. I hope not. That sort of thing found, and then lost, is not easily discovered again I think.

Hey! I resemble that remark:

2009-05-04T15:28:00.000-07:00

As usual, Sippican Cottage hits the nail on the head.

Bad Architecture

2009-05-04T07:53:00.000-07:00

Part of my schtick on this blog in addition to raising awareness of the inherent beauty in good modern architecture is to dismiss post modern philosophy in general and more specifically as it applies to architecture.
Architecture + Morality has up a thought provoking essay on the relativity inherent in post modernism and its corrosive effect on truth and beauty.
Take a look at these two homes designed by iconic architects widely recognized for their genius in different genres. The Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe and the Vanna Venturi House by Robert Venturi. Whether or not you could feel comfortable living in either of these homes, one is most certainly beautiful to look at and the other is not. It is obvious to even the most casual observer that one was the product of a careful discipline. Universal laws of symmetry, geometry, and historical precedent all coming together to form a unified whole. The other looks like it was built off site with spare parts gathered from demolished homes and dropped in with a helicopter without care or concern of how the home's parts relate to the whole or how the home relates to the site. Of course this is the whole point and the goal of the post modern relativist. Who is to say what is beautiful and what is not. My suburban McMansion is no better or worse than your falling water aesthetically speaking. Anyone with eyes to see knows that this is ridiculous.
Venturi's work in my opinion is a denial of architecture as a dicipline or an art at all since anybody can slap together a design like the Vanna Venturi house. Like I said, this is always the post modernists intent. When everyone is special...no one is, and the perception of equality is achieved.
Post modernism in all contexts is the realm of the envious and self indulgent. Of those without the vision or talent to create something beautiful from nothing.

Must be the Mayor's house

2009-05-02T11:22:00.000-07:00

On the western road trips of my youth we would often pass the time behind the wheel with mindless banter to take our minds off of the fact that despite the euphoric feeling of being young, free, and mobile in America we still, according to the road side signs, had hundreds of miles to go before we were face to face with the "Worlds Biggest Ball of String" or fake turquoise baubles being sold by "Real Indians" or that icon of mid-century, western road trips, Tiny's of Cashmere, Wa.
Whether it was a discussion of the origins of "nougat", that stuff that somehow seems to have gotten inside all our candy bars, (we determined it was grown on the surface of rural ponds, secretly skimmed and collected, then surreptitiously inserted into the bars without our knowledge or consent...probably by Haliburton......it could happen) or in turn expounding in great detail why each of us sucked worse than any human being to have ever disgraced the planet. As far as we were concerned we had it made. Best friends piloting our own wheels, on our own far from home. Independent.
One of these road games, repeated at every crossroads that could be reasonably defined as a town, was to identify the biggest most beautiful home once inside the city limits and declare loudly and suddenly "That must be the Mayor's house!". Seems kind of stupid in hindsight but we laughed like it was the funniest line ever every time. Interesting that when you are nineteen and on the road with your best buds everything is hysterically funny. If you caught your compadre dozing or unprepared and he flinched or was startled when you shouted it out for the umpteenth time, well....that was just further proof of what a loser he was.
So...fair warning.
THAT MUST BE THE MAYOR"S HOUSE!!
Currently for sale. Contact me if you're in the neighborhood.

Required viewing: via Ed Driscoll

2009-04-17T22:17:00.000-07:00

"All your news medias are belong to us"
Bill Whittle's latest spells it out in logic even a leftist can follow.