Showing posts with label Seattle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Seattle. Show all posts

Thursday, September 18, 2014

The semi-drizzle of Seattle

By Jack Brummet


I've been loving the rain in Seattle tonight. Actually, it's not rain, but a notch below a drizzle and a couple of slots below a sprinkle. . .that misting, intermittent precipitation where you can almost count the raindrops. In the rain hierarchy, something between Defcon 4 and 5, where DefCon 5 is maybe a light fog.  (A friend wrote to me: That's the rain I loved when I lived in Seattle and have missed ever since. Never happens in Spokane).
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Wednesday, July 09, 2014

Well, slap my ass and call me Sally. The City Attorney of Seattle was one of the first people in line to buy leaf today.

By Jack Brummet, Seattle Metro Ed.


It is fascinating that the city attorney, Pete Holmes, of Seattle was in line to buy reefer at the Cannabis City opening today.

“I bought 2-2 gram bags of OG Pearl which was recommended,” said Holmes. “I’m keeping one bag for posterity and one for personal enjoyment at some point when it’s appropriate.”

Man, things have changed.  I didn't expect I'd ever live to see this.  Despite all the chaos, I hope it all works out.

You can find more detail and more from Pete Holmes here.
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Saturday, March 22, 2014

JCBSUP? (Jesus Christ Built Seattle Under Protest)

by Jack Brummet, Seattle Metro Ed.


JCBSUP, a/k/a "Jesus Christ Built Seattle Under Protest" is a mnemonic allegedly used by taxi drivers to remember the order of Seattle streets in the downtown core, kind of from Pioneer Square up to Belltown.  You don't hear it so much now (I'm guessing because everyone has a map in their pocket on their "device."  The streets, south to north are:  Jefferson-->James-->Cherry-->Columbia-->Marion-->Madison-->Spring--> Seneca-->University-->Union-->Pike-->Pine.
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Thursday, March 20, 2014

The end of the line for Tubs, a Seattle graffiti landmark

By Jack Brummet, Public Arts Editor



I'm going to miss this place. I know people are really divided on graffiti, but after living in NYC five years, my time in Bogota and Cartagena Colombia, The Mission in San Francisco, and even in Russia, I have come to feel that, in general, it improves far more than it detracts. Is it art? Of course it is; it's just not the art that might be hanging in your aunt's living room. Adios Tubs

We've known it was on the chopping block for seven years.  Yes, many/most people considered it urban blight; I always thought of it as an ever-changing and wonderful "eyesore."

Tubs, the amazing graffiti sandbox, has finally been demolished, after years of sitting idle, and many years as an ever-evolving and changing canvas for local spray paint artists.  After the hot tub club Tubs closed in 2007, it was scheduled for demolition.  Finally, seven years later, they actually did expunge it from the face of the earth.

We are sad to see it go, since we know it will either be replaced by a strip mall, or the dreaded condo development with bottom floor retail.  It was good while it lasted.  Fare thee well Tubs! On a conceptual continuity note, I went hot tubbing there a couple of times in the 80's, and it was great.  By the time of its closure, it had become a notoriously skeezy hotbed of lord knows what. . .

We wrote this piece and took some photos on our last visit to the site, on January 2, 2012.

In March 2009 The Free Sheep Foundation (I think these are the same guys who liberated the Bridge Motel on Aurora) occupied the Tubs building in Seattle's U District, which has been "slated for demolition" for a couple of years now.  It's become an wonderfully and continually changing canvas for whatever artist or tagger shows up.  Early on, people were outraged by all the painting, but over time, it has become a popular stopping by point.  I think every neighborhood needs a building like this. 

I like what you've done with the place.

I always stop by when I am in the neighborhood, but have never seen anyone at work.  I think they only come out at night?  I believe there is some kind of loophole in Seattle's graffiti law, in which "the authorities" are unable to do anything about the artistic improvements to this long abandoned building.

If you're interested, there is a Flickr group that continually posts photos as the building evolves.  I took these seven photos on January 2, 2012.






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Friday, February 07, 2014

Sign from Seattle's now defunct Funhouse club


This is the sign from the Funhouse, a club located across the street from The Space Needle. It closed earlier this year.

Photo courtesy of Carol M. Highsmith's America, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.
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Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Ballard Cedar mill, Seattle, 1919

By Mona Goldwater, Seattle History Ed.

Photo from the Seattle Museum of History & Industry 

The Seattle Cedar mill, just west of the Ballard Bridge, was the largest sawmill in Ballard. Logs were cut into lumber and then dried for nine months before being sold. The stacks of drying lumber were at least 50 feet high.
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Friday, December 06, 2013

The Fremont Rocket

By Jack Brummet, Start-up Ed.

I've been looking for office space, and today looked at one in the heart of Fremont--on the block with The Rocket. . .






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Saturday, October 12, 2013

Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition forestry building, circa 1909 in Seattle

By Jack Brummet, NW History Ed.


The Alaska Yukon Pacific Exposition forestry building, from the exposition held in Seattle in 1909.




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Saturday, August 10, 2013

Thunder and lightning in Seattle

By Jack Brummet


Midnight, Friday:  What a great lightning storm tonightfrom giant balls to hydra-limbed bolts raining down, and sometimes looking like they were shooting up*from*, and not to, earth [1]. The lightning dances across the sky and I hear the muffled, slow-rolling thunder circle in the clouds overhead, and I'm swallowed up in the soft percussion of the warm falling rain.

[1] Someone just told me that lightning goes both up AND down.
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Wednesday, August 07, 2013

The Lake of Fire: a very short tale

By Jack Brummet [source: unknown]


A man died and found himself in limbo, waiting in a long line for judgment.

The man saw that some souls were allowed to march right through the pearly gates. Others were led over to Satan, who threw them into a lake of fire. Every so often, instead of hurling a condemned soul into the lake of fire, Satan would toss him or her off to one side.

After watching Satan do this several times, the men's curiosity got the better of him. He strolled over The Great Deceiver.

"Excuse me, there, Your Darkness," he said. "I'm waiting in line for judgment, and I couldn't help wondering why you toss some people off to the side instead of flinging them into the fires of hell with the others?"

"Ah," Satan said with a grin. "Those people are from Seattle. I'm just letting them dry out so they'll burn."
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Wednesday, April 03, 2013

The gum wall in Seattle's Pike Place Market

By Jack Brummet 

No trip to Seattle's Pike Place Market is complete without a visit to the gum wall in Post Alley.





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Monday, November 19, 2012

Seattle experiences 10.5" of rain (more than a quarter of its annual total) since November 9th

By Jack Brummet, Precipitation Editor


Seattle receives around 38" of rain a year (making us the 44th rainiest city in the U.S., even though many people would name Seattle No. 1). In the last 11 days, we've had 10.5" of rain..nearly 1/4 of all rain that will fall here this year. I'm still loving the rain festival.

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Friday, July 27, 2012

The Space Needle becomes a UFO above the clouds

A photo yesterday from KOMO-TV news.  You actually see this happen a few times every year, when we have low clouds.  And we have low clouds (and every other form of cloud) pretty often.


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Saturday, July 21, 2012

Jack's aerial photos from north of San Francisco and Seattle

By Jack Brummet, Travel Editor

Of all the places I've flown over the last few years--in Asia, Europe, Mexico, and around the U.S.--I have never really thought about taking pictures from the plane. When I tried years ago, they never really turned out. I think I'll do this from now on. It's pretty fun.  You definitely get a foggy haze from having to shoot through two layers of plexiglas, but especially in Seattle, where you often swoop in low and close as you head east to the airport, you get some pretty amazing views.  It's always nice to fly home to Seattle.


Farms in Northern California. I always love those grids broken up by roads and curves

My plane home from SF today flew almost directly over my house, but I didn't whip the camera out until we were over Queen Anne/Downtown. Good view of the Needle, EMP, the arches at the Science Center, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (among many other buildings wharves, piers, streets, and parks).



 
Mount I don't know.  It must not be a giant--Mount Rainier, Shucksan, Baker, Hood, 
etc., are covered  in snow. That may even be a glacier along the top ridge (can't tell).

a slice of downtown Seattle and the waterfront

waterfront 

close up of Seattle Center/EMP/Gates Foundation 


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Friday, May 11, 2012

1960 photograph of Ballard and the Olympic Mountains









This 1960 photo is a view of Ballard in Seattle.  The Bardahl Manufacturing sign is still around...not sure about the WaMu sign (I suspect not) . In the background, beyond Bainbridge Island, are the Olympic Mountains. Photo courtesy of the Washington State Digital Archives.
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Photograph: 1935 - Battleships in Seattle's Elliott Bay









Photograph of the USS California (left) and the USS Tennessee (right) at anchor in Elliot Bay during summer maneuvers, ca. 1935.  Courtesy of the Washington State Digital Archives
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Tuesday, January 10, 2012

A Puget Sound Tugboat Yarn – Vancouver to Ballard

By Jack Brummet, Seattle History Editor

[from the Library of Congress Washington State folk life archives]

"I was skipper of a tugboat towin' a boom of logs from Vancouver Island to Ballard in 1911. Most of the way down we had one of them frozen fogs, and it kept gettin' colder all the time. The seagulls had slim pickin's that time of year up the Sound, and they swarmed onto the log boom till you couldn't see the bark.

"One morning, about six hours from Ballard, one of the deck hands noticed that they were flapping their wings considerable without gettin' anywhere, and [?] we come to find out, be'jeeze their feet was frozen to the logs. When we got about opposite Meadow Point, somp'n went wrong with the engine. The Chief reported that it couldn't be fixed without goin' onto dry dock, and there we was, driftin' out there in the fog, with little chance of gettin' any help for twelve hours or so, and a darn good chance of fouling on the point and losin' the boom and our skins besides.

"It looked pretty tough until I got an idea. Then I says to the Steward:

“Charlie, how much sack coal we got left?”

"Charlie says: 'We got five sacks in the hole and one part sack in the galley.'

“That's fine, I think that will be enough to get us into port."

He looks at me an though I had somp'n wrong with my head, and goes off mutterin' to himself. Then I calls the two deck hands and tells them to get the sacks of coal out of the hole and carry them way aft. Then I order all hands an' the cook to stand aft and throw coal at the seagulls on the log boom. And bejeeze, them seagulls flew us and the boom into port."
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Monday, January 02, 2012

I like what you've done with the place:Tubs in Seattle

By Jack Brummet, Public Arts Editor

In March 2009 The Free Sheep Foundation (I think these are the same guys who liberated the Bridge Motel on Aurora) occupied the Tubs building in Seattle's U District, which has been "slated for demolition" for a couple of years now.  It's become an wonderfully and continually changing canvas for whatever artist or tagger shows up.  Early on, people were outraged by all the painting, but over time, it has become a popular stopping by point.  I think every neighborhood needs a building like this. 

I like what you've done with the place.

I always stop by when I am in the neighborhood, but have never seen anyone at work.  I think they only come out at night?  I believe there is some kind of loophole in Seattle's graffiti law, in which "the authorities" are unable to do anything about the artistic improvements to this long abandoned building.

If you're interested, there is a Flickr group that continually posts photos as the building evolves.  I took these seven photos on January 2, 2012.






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