Signs things are looking up

second and bell

I think this is probably the work of the talented group of designers and artists that frequent Bedlam. Lately I have been seeing a lot of "signs" not specifically authorized but certainly welcomed.

Black Plastic Bags

Did you know its illegal to drink on the street? Me either. At the risk of being banned from my favorite pizza bar and music venue I need to get something off my chest. I have, after all these years made a bad decision because of crack dealers. I have tried to drink on the street.

I’ve always surrendered my cup as I departed the bar for the next bar, usually because I was finished, and the door man presumably was in charge of keeping the glassware from walking out the door. But it was a plastic cup, full of Bulleit Rye. And the band was finished. And you can do meth at any KC metro bus stop. Plus no place I know adheres to that whole 25 feet from the door smoking thing, it's too cold for that to work.

And most obviously, all the crack dealers on my street drink on the sidewalks all day. I think the bike cops put the discarded tall boy cans in the their spokes so they can sound like motorcycles. It can’t be illegal. So maybe what I needed that night that the bouncer pulled the cups from my friend’s and my hand was a black plastic bag.

Black plastic bags. Beautifying our sidewalks, in the hands of all the cool guys on the corner. These bags are as much a part of the uniform of crack dealers as heavy quilted jackets.

It's important to point out that when you finish your beer, you should under no circumstances throw the can into the trash. Recycle: someone wants that can and looking through the trash for it is demeaning. And the bag? Throw that down too, for it is art and someone may want to clean up after his dog anyway.

As for me, I have found a place on the internet where I can purchase my own black plastic bags (Ok, I didn’t look I just got them from the ghetto-mart, the one that complains to the landlord about the nice restaurant it shares the building with while selling whole pallets of Genesee each week.) Anyway, I got all these black plastic bags.

I am thinking of selling them next to the hot dog cart this weekend. So stop by and get a bag, so you can drink on the street too! Just remember, throw it in the air when you’re done. Make it rain!

SMC 12A.24.025 Unlawful consuming of liquor, opening a
container of liquor, or possessing an open container of liquor, each in a
public place.

Rising Fuel Costs, Happy Hour Deals Keep News Crews in Belltown

Belltown, Seattle-The rising cost of fuel combined with Seattle traffic has local news crews scrambling to find news close to home. “Belltown is great for news, its only a few blocks from our office and its got some great backdrops," said cameraman from BIRO8, adding” I have a whole story on the crumbling inner city built entirely around some B-roll of the McGuire!” When asked about crime that takes place in other parts of the city, news organizations all agreed that reporting news outside of Belltown was challenging and not nearly as rewarding. There’s not a single sign or wall not covered completely in vandalism up in Capitol Hill, which is the point, it’s hard to see the forest for the trees, but down here close to home: “Broken windows! Look!” News like this, right by the studio is a no brainer. First Hill has a really bad problem with cars being broken into, I mentioned. “We know, and you can’t imagine how much expensive equipment we have in our van,” said engineer Rob Basil, “going up there could cost us significantly.”
“Belltown has some wicked happy hour specials, and we can walk to most of the best places,” said on air reporter Connie Shellhair. “We used to party down here when I was at UW and I know all the cool spots.” She said that sometime the news hits home for those in the news business, citing last year’s shooting in front of one of her favorite bars. The shooting eventually ended in the bar losing its liquor permit.
“Businesses everywhere are being told to Think Local, and be sustainable,” said news desk manager Duck Blame of KLAW4 holding up his fingers making air quotes, and we’re responding to that market segment. Mr. Blame said that reporting news, any news in the neighborhood was his way of being green.
But it’s not all wine and roses for these loca-repores. Parking rates in the neighborhood are steep, and can put a dent in bottom lines. “Try parking your news van for more than a couple of hours! Forget it!” Engineer Basil lamented. All news crews agreed that to avoid hefty parking fees they tried to cover stories in Belltown as superficially as possible.
“As news people we’re supposed to get footage of us talking to cops, but then we realized that in Belltown there aren’t a lot of cops, so we often get forced to interview the droves of parking enforcement officers and drawing attention to our vehicles. This was a bad strategy.”

dream fragment

Underneath the window of the shop a boy stood. He played with a coin that he continually and with a twist of his wrist used to assault the crumbling plaster of the wall at his feet. He stopped once in a while to look up at the window. The plaster flecked white on his otherwise dirty shoe.
The window of the shop above flickered with a deep light. The light of a betrayed woman’s eyes in winter. The boy displayed patience of a man four times his age. In time, the light faded and the boy looked down and then up the alley where he had stood for a hundred years or more. He stooped down and collected the coin from the grit of the alley. The white of the plaster and the red of the brick that lay underneath ran in curving lines into the creases of the asphalt at his feet, a vascular roadmap, science class diagram of a man with no skin, head turned in silent embarrassment at being found so stripped naked.
The boy looked once more at the shop window and pocketed the coin. He turned and began to walk, following the footsteps of a cat that had darted silent as thought from behind a derelict dumpster. He began to whistle. His hands found his pockets where the right hand idly turned the coin over and over. The alley met a street where astonishingly tall women sailed in pairs carrying parcels or pushing bicycles under trees draped with the precarious heads of late Spring blooms, each one like the face of a woman about to slide from the side of a listing, wailing ocean liner. Thinly they screamed, the air peeling fingers from limbs sending them descending to carpet the path of the cat and therefore the boy.
At the seawall. The scent of the sea sweeps the enormous coral stones of the battlement. Bracing against the angry darkness of the limitless aggression of the ocean which steals the whistle from his face. He throws the coin into the clamor and terror beneath him. The cold fiend immediately clutching the coin in its salty folds.
Turning he sees the skyline of the city. In the high street the shop light again bleeds its color into the ancient iron columns of cloud.

Distractions, God and Passover

I have not posted any content in a while. Bad Monkey. but I have excuses, and since barely anyone reads this blog and I feel sort of narcissistic (cheers to google for helping me spell that correctly) when I write it I don't have to make any further argument for why I have been neglecting the literary flowers in my internet window box.
It was Passover. Before today my last day off was The 7th. I finished strong yesterday, even dropping thank you notes on the many guilty parties to my insanity and stress. Never underestimate the power of a "Thank You" note to anyone over 60. I want a vacation someplace warm but time's a luxury that isn't available to my super busy co-conspirator. She's at that point where she has to be there for everything, and she's super responsible so there's no way she's jumping in the car with me. Secretly I find her dangerously attractive because she's so responsible and reliable. But I still keep asking her to go places with me.
I have been writing though. I wrote a few yelp reviews. You can read those here http://www.yelp.com/biz/bedlam-coffee-seattle#hrid:GJyZvdb4aBCP9xfLG1FjSA
and
http://www.yelp.com/biz/urban-yoga-spa-seattle#hrid:CEav5dsMArw5_sj6i2kgDA

And I write my mom and sister:

Christopher
to Katie, Lisa

Apr 25 (2 days ago)

"We gonna rock down to electric avenue!" Outside the office I hear the radio playing over the cacophony for dinner service. Jeremy shouts for AJ to pick up his food. I only have a minute to write this. The throng of people arriving at 5:45 is the same batch I have been feeding every two hours, like babies.
Prime Rib, medium, up!" Kris shouts. Max has come to the door once, when she comes back I will have to stop this and go see what she needs.
I'm still in Passover. The feeling I have right now about work is not too different from touching fire: I desperately want to not be here anymore and would love to pull my hand away. Overall this Passover has been smooth, but arduously detailed. I know very specific Judaic procedures and laws these days usually known only by the most Orthodox. Good for something, I guess. I have worked 134 hours of the last two weeks. Yea me! Marissa had 16 hours of overtime too, plus she has two 5 hour rehearsals a week. We're soul tired. Exercising has saved me from losing any hair. I love working here at the Summit, but this time of year is the worst.
I will touch base with Elise tonight, Katie. I know she has been taking on clients left and right and lots of her bars are gearing up for summer patio season, but I can catch up with her and see if I can't get you some reduced anxiety....
I remember how much fun your Graduation was, I hope that the trip is great for you.
Mom, keep up the good work with not smoking and remember, the first weeks are your strong suite, keep it up!
There's Max.
Love
Chris


Love to you for reading this too.

Belltown's own crying indian

This morning as I was leaving to go run I passed a guy drinking a beer in front of the corner shop.
“Yum,” I thought.
He finished his beer and tossed it down on the sidewalk. This gentleman was one of several of the same mysterious-to-the-cops industrious young men that always stand there. They dress very similar to each other, perhaps to appear similar when the cops show, or maybe they are all in a boy-band. “B-boy’s Town?” On the way back from my run as I waited for the light to change in front of the cross-fit that isn’t open much I decided.
Come on.
I picked up the cans and the chee-toe bags from their feet and looked up and said,
“Man, can you believe people would disrespect OUR neighborhood like this? I mean you and I, we live here, why would they do that to us?”
I looked around, the trash can that used to be in front of the Ahjang market is now across the street. As I crossed the street, a lady dressed in the standard issue puffy nylon coat- maybe she’s going skiing later—says,
“Thas why they got street cleaners.”
“Yeah, but the city doesn’t seem to like to spend money, and I would rather they feed some folks that need it our use it for housing homeless.”
Now, I should stop here and say that I am an ethical person, but it is always OK to lie to a crackhead.
“besides, its not about hiring a street cleaner, You live here, I live here- this is your neighborhood, why would you allow (still pretending I don’t presume it was her and her pimp who tossed down the beers) someone to trash your home? “
“Sounds like you want to cal the cops, go on and call em.” She said.
“I don’t want more cops, I just want people to show some class, ya know?”
“I gots class, it wasn’t me!” She said as I left.

We can live and let live, and I certainly don’t want anyone getting hurt, but I am going to start to make my streets cleaner and try to get my neighbors (aka crackheads) to clean up after themselves. As I write this I know that Bedlam has done more for this neighborhood than any other organization or business in the city and I want to say it is with respect that I patronize them. But we’re numerous, and have less “business” risk than them so I suggest we start doing some browbeating. If you know anything about cocaine you know it makes people paranoid, so if we all start talking to crack heads and dealers about cleaning up, twenty different random people, sometimes several different ones in an hour- its going to be weird to them. And fun for us.

Maxwell

The room was cold. He lifted from the bed and went to the bathroom in the dark.
In the bathroom he felt how thirsty he was.
The light from the refrigerator falls across the linoleum, his legs. Briefly he wonders where Max is off to. He stands there drinking water from a cup that has a map of Wisconsin on it, a bird and a rat.
He recalls that his daughter calls Wisconsin the beaver state, which always makes his wife smile and steal a glance at him. He pours the rest of the water into Max’s enamel dish on the kitchen floor and turns toward the bedroom.

They had been drinking for hours. Torn pieces of beer mat and cocktail napkins with drawings on them. The TV endlessly flickering images. Eventually they left; the bartender had looked unconcerned at their advanced state of drunkenness. It was that kind of place.
The bar was in a neighborhood of single-family homes. Walking along the sidewalk quietly because by now it had grown late, she came upon a cat. It was longhaired and began doing figure eights around her ankles. She clumsily bent and began to coo, taking the grey flat face in her chapped fingers.
“You like me, don’t you!’ she said.
He turned, smoking a cigarette. “What?” Was this directed at him, he thought. He turned again to look up at the silvery leaves of the tree above him, they swayed in his vision and he decided it was he, not the leaves that moved. He looked up the quiet street, for what he did not know.
The car was cold, the smell of cold plastic and old ashtrays overwhelming. The sound of his keys too loud. He looked over and saw her standing at the car’s passenger side, she had a coat on he did not recognize. He leaned over and unlocked the door.
“He wants to come with us, don’t you?” She was nose to nose with the cat, which wore a blue flea collar. It wasn’t a coat she held, now he saw.
“We’ll keep him and he can drink milk, I always wanted a kitty.” Her gushing baby talk and noises are making him sick.
He couldn’t find strength. He pulled the car into gear as she closed her door, began complaining that her purse strap was closed in the door.
She opens the door then slams it again quickly, tosses the purse to her feet.
He’s concentrating on driving, the streetlights wet pools streaming toward then over them. The cat scratches her and for a moment is under the pedals of the car, he yells violently at her. He is driving. She yells back and he slams the steering wheel repeatedly until they realize nervously that they are being watched by a cabbie, the car has a single moveable light affixed near the rearview mirror, a retired patrol car. The cat has begun to groan deeply from under the seat behind him.
At the next corner he realizes he has missed the turn and is lost. He tries to focus on the green sign swinging beside the red light but cannot. She wants to pee.
You can’t wait? He looks around nervously, the cat is making noises like a raptor from a movie. No I can’t wait she says, she is pulling on the cat’s leg, the cat and the floor mat it is holding to is coming out from under her seat. The cat’s eyes judge him suddenly yellow in the light from the dome light of the car.
She leaves the door ajar and walks away into the shadow of a Honda with red plastic letters ’99 ACCORD LOW MILES across the window. He begins to doze, his wrists resting on the wheel, he awakens: she is yelling, cussing. She falls back into the car, licking the meatiness of her thumb, bloody. Let’s go. He pulls the car out into the night.

When things like this happen he sometimes wonders if he is cut out for this daddy thing. It’s not that he is ever violent, but the rage that wells up in him at his inability to keep her from harm, at the futility of being a father unable to fix something. He could kill the people who drive too fast down his street. It scares him. His wife had put out food, then called in that voice that made her sound as if she would be an excellent auctioneer or maybe run a square dance. Maxwell had not appeared, which was not like him. His daughter had not noticed the cat missing as she readied herself for school and ate breakfast. After dropping her at school he drove deliberately around the streets in search of him, his mind and stomach lurching as he slowed near culverts and gutters in fear of what he might find. Fearing the worst, finding nothing, which turned out to be far worse. At work his wife calls, he’s anxious when he answers but she is only calling to say she isn’t going to stop at the dry cleaners after work. He downloads a picture from his Facebook page. At the copier he makes signs.

LOST CAT

He does not want to go home. He’s walking around posting the signs when a man approaches him quickly.
“Excuse me, sir?”
“yes?” He is electrically shocked by the interaction. He has been dwelling in his head too long as he slapped the signs against the phone poles, thinking abstractly about the bands and bars advertised on the posters he covered with Max’s image, slap slap slap slap the staple gun cold and heavy in his hands, his anger welling.
He assesses the man quickly, a fight or flight feeling. He resolves to calm himself.
“Yes?” he says again.
“Can you tell me where the 264 stops on this street?”
The number means nothing to him, the question is like a dot on a white page for a moment and he feels flustered and is worried that he may seem deranged, a crazy with a staple gun…
“The bus?”
“Oh, yes. Umm, Well it stops uh, down there,” he points past a row of cars to the nearby stop sign and the familiar rectangle of the bus stop where the grass has died and he sometimes sees the forlorn girl in the blue parka standing.
“Thanks, lose your cat?” the man says.
He will be able to go home now, his daughter will not cry! Tonight the familiar solid paperweight shape by his foot will not make him cranky, he promises.
He is elated, he breaks into a smile and says, “yes, I have! You know where Max is?”
“No, I just see your poster. Good Luck, though. “ The man begins to walk towards the stop.
He turns and drives a staple.