Thrice Thwarted
Set out Monday to accomplish three tasks: Get to
the top of Smith Tower; See the Christian Marclay exhibit another time; Make my
comments at the City Council hearing on the Monorail project's alignment
recommendations. I was thwarted in two of them (which was really three thwarts)
but successful with the one which mattered the most - the one which has
community rather than just personal interest - the Monorail. But, despite being
unable to accomplish my personal tasks, I was able to capture an illuminating
slice of urban life with my camera - tons of images at the bottom. Many in the
form of montages since I seem unable to pare either word or
image.
Monday began with incredible expectations. It
was going to get up into the low '80s, it was going to be blue sky and basically
insanely beautiful. Monday was also the day of the City Council public hearings
on the Seattle Monorail Project's Route Alignment Recommendations, for which I
was going to give testimony along with what was expected to be hundreds
more.
I figured I'd spend the entire day downtown and finish by going by City Hall at 4:00 pm to sign up for the hearing, which began at 4:30. I was going to spend about five or six hours downtown and had two goals which would take up that amount of time. First, I was going to get to the top of Smith Tower, the fabulous turn-of-the-century 522-foot high skyscraper. There's an open deck observation area on the 35th floor, just at the point where the structure begins its pyramid peak. The weather was totally perfect since the Olympics, Cascades and Mt. Rainier were all visible. Then, after spending - who knows - up to an hour gawking and taking photographs, I was going to meander through downtown and go to the Seattle Art Museum to catch the Christian Marclay exhibit again. This visual artist/musician/musical artist has produced some outstanding art but his 14-minute multimedia masterpiece "Video Quartet" is an amazing composition. Using visuals and music and sounds from existing cinema productions, Marclay has produced a "symphony" of music and imagery which is musically satisfying and visually stimulating beyond any expectations of an art or music fan. The Marclay exhibit also contained quite a number of other representations of this artist's repertoire and would easily fill an hour or more.
I arrive at the Smith Tower front desk and ask if the Observation Deck is open. They have Winter and Summer hours and I was in the Summer Hour period so they "should" have been open. The guy at the desk says, "Yes, the Observation Deck is open." I respond by asking if the price to get up is still the six dollars it's supposed to be and he responds "Yes, six bucks is right but you can't go up today." I ponder that response for a few seconds and ask "Why today, it's open, right?" The front desk guy - actually I think he was the "concierge" - responds with "Well, the elevator to the Observation Deck is not working. We need a part which we don't have." I ask, "Well, will it be open tomorrow or sometime this week?" The concierge looks somewhat plaintively at me and says "We don't know when we'll get the part. It'd be better to call and ask if the elevator is working." I look at him, not really worried about masking my obvious disappointment, and say "Well, hopefully there'll be another really nice day like today when your elevator is working again. Thanks. Bye." I then turn and head out the door back onto Second Avenue.
Well, not that big a deal, I'm thinking. SAM - the Seattle Art Museum - will occupy a fair amount of time and I can always hang out at Pike Place Market or walk back down to Pioneer Square and troll about. I head north up Second toward SAM and get to the plaza on the south side of the Museum and notice the entire cascading sidewalk down from Second to First is marked off with yellow tape. The classical music on the outdoor speakers is still playing. SAM and Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony, share two blocks of University Street and along those two blocks there are these outdoor JBL speakers which are playing classical music throughout the day. A very nice plaza on the SAM block and the Garden of Remembrance on the west side of Second Avenue along the back of Benaroya Hall. The Garden is another series of cascading stairs and small plazas with waterfalls and granite walls with the names of all 7,500 Washington residents who have given their lives for their country. This whole two block area is a very nice location to lounge, read a book, wait for someone, catch a little classical music or sunshine or just linger. I get to the First Avenue bottom of the cascading plaza on University and head for the main entrance to SAM only to notice that it's "CLOSED ON MONDAY."
Drats. I actually later learn that the Marclay Exhibit closed the day before - Sunday, April 25. Twice thwarted in one morning - and if you count the fact that the Marclay exhibit was already closed, that's three times thwarted in a one hour swatch of time. Wow, I'm fast running out of enthusiasm for spending the entire day downtown since it's now only like noon and the Monorail hearing is four-and-a-half hours away. It's still a fantastic day. I'd worn nice slacks with a dress short-sleeve shirt AND belt, so I'd be at least believably dressed for the Council testimony, despite knowing that in Seattle one can wear shorts and T-shirts and still give testimony at public hearings, City Council or not. Call it my Eastern upbringing, but I figure there's a certain amount of credibility which goes with being presentably dressed in a "somewhat" official situation. So, I'm schlepping downtown looking for all the world like I work somewhere in one of the glass-and-steel towers. Everyone else seems to be taking a lunch break and I'm still trying to unravel this quandary of what to do to waste four hours.
I brought my camera, mostly to capture the city from Smith Tower's Observation Deck, but was cogitating on ways to spend a couple hours downtown with this really beautiful weather. I headed back down First toward Pioneer Square. It was noontime and the sun was nearly directly overhead. When photographing landscapes or cityscapes, high noon - actually any time the sun is within about twenty degrees of directly overhead - is the perfect lighting conditions for photographing. Why? Simple, the sun casts shadows and when it's directly overhead there are scant few shadows or even shaded areas. Why is that important? Well, for a lot of photographers it isn't because they're shooting with better equipment or are shooting scenics which employ or integrate the various sunlit and shaded areas. For me, I very often shoot VR panoramas and presently use a relatively simple "point-and-shoot" digital camera. It's a great camera but it doesn't have the dynamic range to accurately capture the highlight and shadow areas in the same image. Plus, for panoramas, the first image captures the sensitivity and white-point settings and if the scene goes from sunlit to shadow, at least a third if not half of the images in the sequence will be either over-exposed or under-exposed, requiring Photoshop post-image processing and a general reduction in the clarity of the image. However, at or near noon on clear-sky days, panoramas, VR or otherwise, can be captured with full dynamic range and the resulting image set all look sharp, have good contrast and color and work well as individual frames or as a panorama set.
While I'm walking toward Jackson Street, I'm thinking of what I can capture for images. This is a rich city visually and one really need only focus on a few elements of picture composition or theme identification to have a good "shoot" in Seattle. I get to Pioneer Square and figure I'll go about creating a photolog of a bunch of different thematics - that should fill a few hours and give me tons of images to process and post. Given the area and where I am with respect to the city itself, I'd thought about the following themes: Capture more of the artful manhole covers in the Pioneer Square area and see if there were other pieces of street furniture which I could incorporate into the general theme of "Public Works Art;" Capture the downtown expressway interchanges as they met or merged with the east-west cross streets - many of which are quite steep - this later evolved into a streetscape of downtown streets heading toward the waterfront; Capture the skyline as I meandered north again from Pioneer Square, since Seattle has a series of streets which intersect at 45-degrees, the angle of the buildings as they head skyward creates some interesting city views; Capture the facade of all the historic buildings lining First Avenue in the Pioneer Square area for a photographic montage of "turn-of-the-century" masonry art; Capture the shadows cast by the street furniture objects on the sidewalks as I walked through the area.
That was quite a load of thematic images I'd set about to capture and I figured it would take me a few hours to work my way through Pioneer Square and back uptown to the Pike Place Market area along the freeway to get the cross streets and then back down First to get the Pioneer Square facades. Brilliant!! I could at least get through mid-afternoon and see how things were going and figure out what to do with the remaining hours before the Monorail City Council hearing when I got to that time point.
Well, the good news is there's a superabundance of "Public Works Art" in the city. In addition to the sculptured and artistically-designed and cast manhole covers, there are a series of different era streetlight standards and poles, each of which offers yet another photographic opportunity. Many of the streetlight standards are done in bronze castings which age differently, depending on which way they faced and how much exhaust acid and rain they endured. There's a rich texture of browns, greenish-browns, greenish-grays and some with a bit left of the actual bronze color. I snap away at a several of them along Second Avenue near the Smith Tower. With the sun nearly overhead, I capture the Smith Tower from a couple of angles. The building is actually a 21-story pentagon with a 21-story square tower jutting from the western face which makes for some really interesting photographs depending on which face one is shooting from.
I walk east up the hill to Sixth Avenue, the city street which is immediately west of the Interstate 5 ribbon which snakes along First and Capitol Hills to the east of downtown. From here one has great views down into the many levels of the concrete Hydra which is I-5 and one has equally great views in the other direction down all the cross streets which head straight down to the waterfront of Elliott Bay. I meander around a few intersections taking shots of the freeway from the east, south, north and west sides and capturing some of the buildings along the way for that component of my thematic for the day. Downtowns are such fun when one doesn't have to be any particular place at any particular time. There's really so much to explore in addition to watching the myriad folk who are also there - eating, stressing, relaxing, reading, talking, gazing, just being people.
I get to the northern end of my photo shoot and head west towards First Avenue to head back to Pioneer Square for the facades. At about Yesler Way I move from the sidewalk to the median in the middle of First Avenue, which begins there, and walk building to building, taking images of the west side of the street and then the east side and framing each shot so the features of that building's facade will be the center point of the image. There really was a superb degree of craftsmanship evident around the Industrial Age. The stone masons and brick masons and everyone in the construction trades were working in a period of design enlightenment along with some new methods for carving and laying the material. The steel frame structure had just come into existence as a skeletal framework and that freed up the masons from having to perform fundamental structural work to being able to perform elaborate design work.
After shooting about five blocks of First Avenue through Pioneer Square, using up two batteries and filling one entire 128 megabyte Flash card, I'd run through my entire photographic thematic repertoire and still had two hours before the Council meeting. Hmmmm. I'm standing on First Avenue, right in front of one of my favorite bus stops and see that the bus to West Seattle is about two blocks from me and figured I'd dash home, dump the camera, freshen up, maybe start on the image processing and catch another bus downtown for the Council hearing. Which I do, I get home, chat with the builders for a bit - today they had finished the stairs up the tower to the second level and the city electrical inspector was due to drop by Tuesday so the new 200 amp panel was in with breakers installed. Still missing outlets, switches and smoke detectors but the light fixtures and bathroom fan were in. The stairs make getting upstairs fantastically easy, plus the new living room alcove was finished with windows installed and it looks unbelievably cool. I'm a huge fan of odd-shaped spaces and neat little nooks and crannies in living spaces. This house is shaping up to have more nooks, crannies, neat hideaways, and decks, balconies and overlooks than I believe I actually imagined. Looking at elevations, plans, isometric drawings and cross-sections is one thing, actually being inside a real space is quite another reality. The living room alcove is much larger with way better window views than I thought from the drawings.
The concrete floor will transition to the living room wood floor with a piece of beveled oak planking about eight-inches wide and will be a smooth and visually-appealing transition. The see-through triangular space alongside the stairwell which connects the dining-breakfast room to the new living room alcove is also much better than imagined. The visual space it connects is subtle and yet powerful in creating both a real physical addition to the useful volume of the addition and in channelling light and air between the two rooms. From the dining-kitchen area or the living room alcove there's a visual connection to the other side of the house - which not only expands the horizon of what one can see from either room but also increases the apparent volume of the living space. Very subtle - Lisa and I thought about this long and hard and committed to the concept without fully realizing the actual space would be as good as it has turned out. Another win for going with one's gut instincts.
With enough time to catch the bus and make it to Council chambers in time to sign up for the hearing, I leave again - my second trip downtown Monday. I was thinking, both trips down and on the one trip back home already how totally more convenient the Monorail would make this entire activity. I must time my trips now based on either a 20-minute or 30-minute bus schedule. The Monorail will run every four minutes - I wouldn't even have to worry about schedule at all and the transit time for the same distance would be halfed. Had Monorail been in place already I could have dashed between home and downtown four times for the two I was making on the bus. Plus, Monorail would run six hours later than at least one of the buses which takes me home. Even more than before I was convinced of the importance of Monorail and therefore had charged up my advocacy blood during the day. I would be reasonable, quietly impassioned and logical in my two minutes.
I walk up the four blocks from First Avenue to the new City Hall at James Street and Fifth Avenue. I enter and take the escalator up to the Council Chambers, where there is a line of about a dozen folks already waiting to sign up for speaking. Council is in session, going over the Final Alignment with members of the Seattle Monorail Project staff, basically taking each block section, block-by-block. When I arrive, Council is going over in detail the sections associated with the Alaska Junction station - a subject I now know a great deal about having attended an SMP brlefing by the architects on that station and siting plan just the week before. We had, those of us gathering for the open hearing portion, about 40 minutes to wait till we got to our turn. Council staff began to set up the sign-in sheets and created two lines, Pro - for those in favor of the alignment, and Con - those opposed to portions or all of the plan. I begin to talk with a fellow "pro" citizen and we compare notes of other places we've lived where effective, mass transit has been in place and find ourselves perplexed at the vehemence and vitriol of the "con" crowd, both of us having attended previous Council meetings or community sessions on the Monorail and having run across some of the "con" group which we now recognize gathering in the other line.
After signing in I enter the Council Chambers and take a seat up front and near the center and quietly sit down to listen to the Council go over their questions. I've only met four of the nine Council members previously, Peter Steinbrueck, David Della, Richard Conlin, and Tom Rasmussen. I'd met them, not all at once but some more than once, at other meetings they've held either for the neighborhood as members of the City Council or at the Preliminary and Final Environmental Impact Statement hearings on Monorail. I was unfamiliar - in person - with Richard McIver, Nick Lacata, Jean Godden, Jim Compton, and Council President Jan Drago. I listen intently as these members and the rest question the SMP staff over certain elements of the Alaska Junction Station plan and decide that the entire City Council is comprised of intelligent and reasonable individuals. I had watched several previous Council hearings and open Council sessions on Seattle City TV and already had a relatively positive impression of this group of elected officials.
Previously, in my other life in DC, I'd had several decades of experience with my City Council and had corresponded and talked to several members on many, many occasions - usually having something to do with yet another failing of the District Government. On the DC City Council, I had respect and regard for about half of the Council and nothing but contempt and disdain for the other half, including the representative who was from my local district - Kathy Patterson. I'd tried twice in recent elections to get rid of her but my fellow Ward 3 citizens apparently decided to keep her despite the fact that she completely ignored Ward 3 issues in favor of "taking a more synoptic view of the Nation's Capital." Ha! We might as well have had nothing but an entire Council of at-large representatives in DC for all the worth of most of the ward councilmembers there. My greatest success and best response was always from the at-large Council members - especially Carole Schwartz and David Catania. Other District Council members for whom I at least had respect were Adrian Fenty, Jack Evans, Sharon Ambrose and Kevin Chavous. The rest, well, like I said, I'd tried at least twice to vote them out but was obviously overruled by my fellow constituents. Here, things looked brighter from the get-go.
Council finishes its questions with SMP mostly because it's time for the public hearing portion. Council President Jan Drago goes over the rules of engagement - each of five groups will have five minutes and may use one or several members to occupy those minutes. The rest of what turns out to be 128 individuals who have asked for time will be given two minutes to present before Council.
The five groups are split three-to-two in favor versus opposed. The 128 individuals are going to be given their two minutes based on "pro" and then "con" and then "pro" and so on. Lucky me, I had gotten to the line in the first batch and was speaker number 27 - the first time I've given testimony in five occurrences where I've been in the first hour. Not sure whether that's a plus or minus but it was something new for me. By the time I get my two minutes representatives of "MonorailRecall" <http://www.monorailrecall.com/>, "SaveSeattleCenter" <http://exordia.net/saveseattlecenter/>, and "OnTract" <http://www.monorailontrack.org/> had already either taken their five minutes or had a representative take two minutes. These are three nearly rabid and vituperriously vitriolic organizations whose members - in my very humble but learned and publicly conscious opinion - are just this side of insane. I've heard representatives from these groups at other hearings and each time the person giving the pitch gets strung out - voice gets tight and high-pitched, arms or feet begin to move anxiously with deep affectations of nervous twitching, their words are pure hyperbole - not just the usual hyperbole of the ranting and raving but the rantings of Tourette Syndrome victims <http://www.ninds.nih.gov/health_and_medical/pubs/tourette_syndrome.htm#symptoms>. It's a sad truth about representative and democratic government, but Council must entertain the voices of everyone, but personally I'm really tired of these people. They are individuals who have found a cause which seems at times to be greater than their own lives (laudable in certain circumstances and for certain causes) but for the rest of us who really want to get on with building and using a mass transit system, these individuals have become an honest public nuisance. I suffer through the same tired arguments and the same rantings that I've heard before and spend my time while the "con" group representatives are talking looking at the other members of the expectant Council audience. I'm brightened by the fact that there are a large number of other folks waiting to speak who are effectively rolling their eyes in their heads or shaking their heads in disapproval or disbelief. Council is, of course, courteous and thanks every speaker, including the ranters and ravers.
I get my turn and give my reasons for the alignment through Seattle Center - one of the controversies, my reasons for the alignment along Second Avenue - another controversy and note that at least two Council members nod in agreement with my concerns that the bike lane down Second Avenue remain - as it would under the proposed SMP alignment, and my reasons for all the stations in West Seattle and my general comments on the process I've used to make these observations known to both SMP staff and to Council members previously. I'm on target, take exactly my two minutes, and address only those elements which Council has asked to hear, unlike a lot of others who add gratuitous comments about the system or the project or the funding or some non-relevant-to-the-Council hearing element.
For the next three hours I sit and listen to the remaining 101 speakers, which include a fair number of additional rants and raves from more folks representing the three anti-Monorail or anti-Seattle-Center-Crossing points of view. In terms of Seattle Center, the pros and the cons of going across the Center grounds versus crowding the Monorail along already disastrous Mercer Way to the north of the Center are a toss. It's to my way of thinking the same as arguments for or against vanilla or chocolate ice cream - both sides can and do make their reasonable arguments and both sides will not hear any countering arguments from the other side and both sides will not change their point of view. On the side of crossing the Seattle Center, the entire constituency of Center tenants, organizations, and the many non-profits who work and play there every day have come out in favor. The Bumpershoot and Folk Life Festival folks have come out against the Center crossing. If City Council goes according to the wishes of the most-continuously-affected group of individuals and organizations then the cross Center route will be approved. However, this is an emotional issue and at least three Council members have stated they personally don't like that route. This is one of those "we'll see" issues and I'll just have to wait and see.
By the time all 128 speakers had made their voices heard it was 8:00 pm and Council Chambers had diminished to a few staunch listeners, including me, and a handful of staff and reporters. I'm thrilled to report that the entire Council membership of nine elected representatives either stayed the entire time or - having to make another appointment, left and returned. And, all nine remained attentive, polite, courteous, appreciative and held a pretty good sense of humor during this marathon. The only previous time I'd been to a hearing which was as long and included as many contentious individuals was the Final Environmental Impact Statement hearing which was held at Seattle Monorail Project's downtown offices and which ran just as long but only had about 80 speakers, each of whom was given three minutes - including me.
When Council President Jan Drago called the hearing to a close I talked with some SMP staff to compare notes on the overall comments. It seems that roughly three-quarters to eighty percent of the speakers were on the side of "pro" Monorail with or without minor issues which were in the process of being resolved. That's a pretty good commitment and turnout for Council to hear. That means that the pro-Monorail community is beginning to react to the political realities of the anti-Monorail groups by turning out for the hearings and making their commitment known to city government. On the issue of the cross-Seattle route for the Monorail, 44 speakers spoke out in favor of that crossing, several of them representing either up to score of other individuals or up to score of other organizations. On the opposition side, there were 43 speakers, mostly representing themselves except for the management of Bumbershoot and Folklife Festival, who represented the groups. That's clearly a close call. I did write to all the Council members and had the pleasure of sitting next to Jan Drago's staff assistant during most of the hearing and discussing with her the way and manner by which Council members viewed mail. The staff assistant was telling me that individualized letters were treated with a slightly higher degree of respect than "carbon copy" mail which tends to come in from opposition groups. The carbon copy emails and letters ARE counted but the contents are usually dismissed owing as much to the sloppy English in these letters as to the obvious "easy path" of sending one. That bodes well for the individualized letters I sent Council members. I approached each Council member from the perspective of his or her previous positions on different elements of Monorail and beseeched them using elements drawn either form observations of them in person or a thorough reading of their biography and history in City Government. Although I suspect some staff aide actually wrote them, I've received three responses from Council members on my comments already and each of the three responses have themselves been reasonable and well-written.
I headed out again to the city streets, actually anticipating it would be cool and I'd be chilly on my way home since I hadn't brought a jacket and was wearing only my slacks and short-sleeved shirt. It wasn't. It was a really balmy evening, the sun having just set, and I walked back down to Pioneer Square to catch the bus home. During the hearing another gentleman from West Seattle made essentially the same arguments as I had in support of the alignment and I ran into him at the bus stop. Turns out this guy just retired from the Boeing company and had for years worked at the Johnson Space Center - during times when I was at the center on various missions. I had thought I recognized his face and demeanor. He was involved with remote sensing satellite and ground system development and on several Shuttle missions. He lives right along the 44th Avenue path I take to get to Caffe Ladro and he and I compared notes on our houses - I've actually walked by his house a dozen times - and on our reflections on the space program, NASA and the Boeing Company. What an amazingly tiny world this has turned out to be.
I've posted an unusually large number of images below (think of it as making up for last post's complete lack of imagery). I'd spent yesterday processing the hundred-plus photos and montages I'd taken on Monday and was totally pleased with the result. It's hard for me to trim my words and sometimes even harder to trim my visual output. Also, remember there are several new items on the multimedia page as well - <http://homepage.mac.com/credmond/multimedia.html>.
Have a great week. Katherine is off tomorrow for the wedding of nephew Luke in Georgia, a visit with her mom in Connecticut, and a visit to our eldest son, Leif, in the District, and who knows - maybe even an impromptu farm meeting with all the relatives at the wedding. So, I'll be pestering the Schulte Construction crew - Joe and Rick and, as usual, Todd himself. I'm sure they are probably wishing I'd take some long trip somewhere too.
Chas
The alley between Washington Street and Yesler Way in Pioneer Square district. Left is looking toward the "square" and
right is looking toward Washington Street. Seattle alley's are often as interesting as the main street - true for a lot
of alleys in a lot of other cities. In fact, in Paris, alleys have become main streets. Also true in New Orleans - maybe
it's the French.
More "cover art" from Pioneer Square. The top left one is Seattle City Light, the top right one is Public Works Sewar,
as is the bottom left, the bottom right is - right out of the past - Western Union Telegraph Company.
More "public art" in the form of covers for Water access and Traffic Lighting access. Simply amazing what
one finds when one looks down. Personally, I recommend using both eyes and one's head and looking
all around when anywhere - especially when out exploring.
More street art, in the form of bronze lamp post bases. Each one has aged differently, depending on car exhaust
access, sunlight access and rain. These are all along Second Avenue between Jackson Street and Yesler Way.
Now here's an interesting shot along Jackson Street, one block east of First Avenue. The gallery on the left, the
red building, had a number of odd-angle glass doors and windows and I was able to capture a reflection of myself in
two of the windows next to me and in one across the street - see below.
So these are close-ups of the lower photograph above - the areas marked
with small green rectangles correspond to these images here. It WAS a
bright and sunny day, for sure.
Standing at the peak corner of the parking garage known as the Sinking Ship, right at the Yesler Way triangle, I noticed
the building on the south facing side had something unusual posted in front of its windows. The top image is a panorama
of the structure as it appears to anyone. The middle image is the unusual features highlighted with small yellow ovals.
The bottom set of images reveal what these items really are - wooden owls. Birds use their eyes to avoid predators and
just the shape of an owl is enough to keep most pigeons, crows and other more vegetarian or carrion-eaters away from
a place. These owl decoys are also installed along the townhouses on Calvert Street just east of the Duke Ellington
Bridge in the District's Adams-Morgan neighborhood.
Also, from the peak of the Sinking Ship garage, here are the porticos of the two buildings fronting First Avenue. Left
portico is to the north and right portico is to the south. Pioneer Square is a true photographer's delight, among its
other joys.
These are three snapshots of the various elements of the building to the north of the Sinking Ship, on the James Street
side of the Yesler Way traingle. I didn't capture the name of the building but the detailing is simply remarkable, as is
the condition it's in. Pioneer Square consists of dozens and dozens of blocks - most of which have structures listed on
the National Register of Historic Places - as is the entire Pioneer Square Historic District.
This is a shadowgraph of me taken looking down from the
top of the Sinking Ship garage. Obviously manipulated in
Photoshop. Consider this my recognition of the sacrifice
being made by American men and women in the current
conflict in Iraq - I applaud their patriotism and allegiance
to our country - I disagree vehemently with this Administration's
international stance and their current domestic policies and
plan to cast my vote against Bush and for Kerry this fall.
Participate in your democracy and be patriotic at the same
time - register to vote .
A hidden jewel in the general Pioneer Square vicinity is the Waterfall Park.
It's at the corner of Second Avenue and South Main Street and is a tiny
corner of the block but includes this wonderful, real, waterfall surrounded
by a quiet set of spaces and set apart from the street by an elegant and
understated simulated wrought-iron fence and set of gates.
Here's a quad of images of Smith Tower. The Observation Deck is at the top of the square
tower set atop the pentagon-shaped lower base of the 42-story structure. It was the tallest
building outside New York City for a while, then the tallest building West of the Mississippi
River for about 40 years. Now it's just a wonderful, restored, elegant representation of
"turn-of-the-century" skyscraper construction and an icon for Pioneer Square. I'll get inside
and up to the Observation Deck one of these clear-blue-sky days and have some great
VR panoramas to show for it - just wait and see.
Here's the Smith Tower amid its brethren - the 76-story Bank of America
Tower - also called the Columbia tower - and the Key Tower, home to the
Seattle City Administration and all its agencies.
Walking north along Sixth Avenue gives one some great views into the city since Interstate-5, immediately to the east
of Sixth Avenue, bifurcates the city in such a way that there's the "up" view towards First Hill and Capitol Hill across the
freeway and the "down" view of the rest of the city to the west toward the Elliott Bay waterfront. On the left is the new
Seattle Public Library Main Branch building and behind it the elegant 45-story Washington Mutual Bank headquarters.
On the right are the twin towers of St. James Cathedral - a Catholic icon for the Northwest and itself an elegant and
beautiful structure. I'll do the "churches and synogogues and mosques" of Seattle in another photo shoot - watch for that
also coming to a blogsite near you.
Here's Interstate Five as it meets Madison Street in the heart of downtown Seattle. The top image is looking north and
shows the entry and exit ramps and Madison Street crossing east and west over the freeway. The bottom view is an
inverted view of the same intersection looking south - figured it made more sense this way - the cars coming and going
in different directions with the city reflected along both axes.
Not that rare a sight, but here's Mount Rainier rising above it all in the
distance, south of I-5 in downtown Seattle. Because the day had turned
slightly hazy there's a bit of Photoshop manipulation used here to bring out
the mountain from the hazy background - which accounts for the generalized
bronze tint for the rest of the scene. Fourteen-thousand-feet is REALLY tall,
this is roughly 59 miles away from Rainier's peak. That's one very
impressive volcano.
Here's something else I noticed walking along Sixth Avenue. There are five cross streets which seem to offer a quick and efficient
means of escape should one ever want to lam out of the country. That's both an oddity and a treat - to live in a major American
city whose nearest northern hub-city is in another country. I can see a movie in my future where I write the screenplay, am the
main character, director, cinematographer, soundman, grip, composer for the soundtrack, post-production effects specialist and
major release agent. It would be called "Escape from Emerald City." Watch for that also in the future - awaiting only the acquisition
of a DV cam.
Downtowns offer a lot of visually arresting contrasts. This montage tries to make sense
of some of those contrasts by pairing a set of street scapes with a set of sky scrapes.
Seattle, in particular, has buildings and streets which meet on both orthogonal rules and
which meet in what was formerly described as "cattywompus" rules. Of course, the
District has it's diagonal Avenues, Houston has it's tilted downtown, Minneapolis and
St. Paul do not share a common grid even though they share a common border, and
Boston has no straight streets at all.
From left-to-right, these are the intersections of Sixth Avenue with Columbia Street, Marion Street, Madison Street,
Spring Street, and Seneca Street. In these images the level of Elliott Bay - water in the distance - is kept at an even
keel. What this really shows is the lessening of slope as Sixth Avenue heads northward. Notice how steep the street
angle is on the streets to the left and how it shallows out on the right. Even though it appears that the street level
itself is rising, in fact what is happening is the grade is flattening. Interesting optical illusion, eh?
The next series of images consist of the facades of the buildings fronting First Avenue in
the Pioneer Square District. There is really no reason to further identify each building as
they all run together and are best seen as a series of adjacent images. Anyone visiting
Seattle should expect to spend several days exploring Pioneer Square - in addition to
the interesting and diverse street scene itself, there's the mix of bars and restaurants,
curio and what-not shops, dozens upon dozens of galleries featuring every form of visual
or kinetic art imaginable, as well as the structures and streets and statues and other
items of public art. These mosaics consist of portrait shots sandwiched as duos and
landscape shots sandwiched as triptychs. No captions will accompany them except that
the general flow of the images follows the path of First Avenue from north to south.
Also along First Avenue in Pioneer Square, the sun was playing wonderful tricks with the
street furniture and casting some dramatic shadows along the very mottled and variegated
sidewalks of the area.
Here's a shadowgraph of scenes along First Avenue, built as a quad view
with an upward aspiring slant. The color images were converted to
grayscale in Photoshop though there was hardly any difference - just a
saving of a few kilobytes with no loss of visual presentation. I'll be making
more of these mosaics as this town has some pretty interesting street
furniture as well as bridge railing treatments which will cast some intriguing
shadows under the right sky and right sun angle.
Second-to-last stop on the George Benson Waterfront Streetcar Line - Metro Route #99. This is in the middle of Main
Street between First and Second Avenues. If all goes well for Seattle's Monorail and Sound Transit Central Link light
rail projects and for the Mayor's desires for a Lake Union trolley, Seattle will have as many modes of mass transportation
as San Francisco - perhaps even more. The map on the left is better viewed full-size at Metro King County's transportation
site - http://transit.metrokc.gov/tops/bus/route_maps/m099_0.html .
That's all for the time being, folks. Ciao.
I figured I'd spend the entire day downtown and finish by going by City Hall at 4:00 pm to sign up for the hearing, which began at 4:30. I was going to spend about five or six hours downtown and had two goals which would take up that amount of time. First, I was going to get to the top of Smith Tower, the fabulous turn-of-the-century 522-foot high skyscraper. There's an open deck observation area on the 35th floor, just at the point where the structure begins its pyramid peak. The weather was totally perfect since the Olympics, Cascades and Mt. Rainier were all visible. Then, after spending - who knows - up to an hour gawking and taking photographs, I was going to meander through downtown and go to the Seattle Art Museum to catch the Christian Marclay exhibit again. This visual artist/musician/musical artist has produced some outstanding art but his 14-minute multimedia masterpiece "Video Quartet" is an amazing composition. Using visuals and music and sounds from existing cinema productions, Marclay has produced a "symphony" of music and imagery which is musically satisfying and visually stimulating beyond any expectations of an art or music fan. The Marclay exhibit also contained quite a number of other representations of this artist's repertoire and would easily fill an hour or more.
I arrive at the Smith Tower front desk and ask if the Observation Deck is open. They have Winter and Summer hours and I was in the Summer Hour period so they "should" have been open. The guy at the desk says, "Yes, the Observation Deck is open." I respond by asking if the price to get up is still the six dollars it's supposed to be and he responds "Yes, six bucks is right but you can't go up today." I ponder that response for a few seconds and ask "Why today, it's open, right?" The front desk guy - actually I think he was the "concierge" - responds with "Well, the elevator to the Observation Deck is not working. We need a part which we don't have." I ask, "Well, will it be open tomorrow or sometime this week?" The concierge looks somewhat plaintively at me and says "We don't know when we'll get the part. It'd be better to call and ask if the elevator is working." I look at him, not really worried about masking my obvious disappointment, and say "Well, hopefully there'll be another really nice day like today when your elevator is working again. Thanks. Bye." I then turn and head out the door back onto Second Avenue.
Well, not that big a deal, I'm thinking. SAM - the Seattle Art Museum - will occupy a fair amount of time and I can always hang out at Pike Place Market or walk back down to Pioneer Square and troll about. I head north up Second toward SAM and get to the plaza on the south side of the Museum and notice the entire cascading sidewalk down from Second to First is marked off with yellow tape. The classical music on the outdoor speakers is still playing. SAM and Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony, share two blocks of University Street and along those two blocks there are these outdoor JBL speakers which are playing classical music throughout the day. A very nice plaza on the SAM block and the Garden of Remembrance on the west side of Second Avenue along the back of Benaroya Hall. The Garden is another series of cascading stairs and small plazas with waterfalls and granite walls with the names of all 7,500 Washington residents who have given their lives for their country. This whole two block area is a very nice location to lounge, read a book, wait for someone, catch a little classical music or sunshine or just linger. I get to the First Avenue bottom of the cascading plaza on University and head for the main entrance to SAM only to notice that it's "CLOSED ON MONDAY."
Drats. I actually later learn that the Marclay Exhibit closed the day before - Sunday, April 25. Twice thwarted in one morning - and if you count the fact that the Marclay exhibit was already closed, that's three times thwarted in a one hour swatch of time. Wow, I'm fast running out of enthusiasm for spending the entire day downtown since it's now only like noon and the Monorail hearing is four-and-a-half hours away. It's still a fantastic day. I'd worn nice slacks with a dress short-sleeve shirt AND belt, so I'd be at least believably dressed for the Council testimony, despite knowing that in Seattle one can wear shorts and T-shirts and still give testimony at public hearings, City Council or not. Call it my Eastern upbringing, but I figure there's a certain amount of credibility which goes with being presentably dressed in a "somewhat" official situation. So, I'm schlepping downtown looking for all the world like I work somewhere in one of the glass-and-steel towers. Everyone else seems to be taking a lunch break and I'm still trying to unravel this quandary of what to do to waste four hours.
I brought my camera, mostly to capture the city from Smith Tower's Observation Deck, but was cogitating on ways to spend a couple hours downtown with this really beautiful weather. I headed back down First toward Pioneer Square. It was noontime and the sun was nearly directly overhead. When photographing landscapes or cityscapes, high noon - actually any time the sun is within about twenty degrees of directly overhead - is the perfect lighting conditions for photographing. Why? Simple, the sun casts shadows and when it's directly overhead there are scant few shadows or even shaded areas. Why is that important? Well, for a lot of photographers it isn't because they're shooting with better equipment or are shooting scenics which employ or integrate the various sunlit and shaded areas. For me, I very often shoot VR panoramas and presently use a relatively simple "point-and-shoot" digital camera. It's a great camera but it doesn't have the dynamic range to accurately capture the highlight and shadow areas in the same image. Plus, for panoramas, the first image captures the sensitivity and white-point settings and if the scene goes from sunlit to shadow, at least a third if not half of the images in the sequence will be either over-exposed or under-exposed, requiring Photoshop post-image processing and a general reduction in the clarity of the image. However, at or near noon on clear-sky days, panoramas, VR or otherwise, can be captured with full dynamic range and the resulting image set all look sharp, have good contrast and color and work well as individual frames or as a panorama set.
While I'm walking toward Jackson Street, I'm thinking of what I can capture for images. This is a rich city visually and one really need only focus on a few elements of picture composition or theme identification to have a good "shoot" in Seattle. I get to Pioneer Square and figure I'll go about creating a photolog of a bunch of different thematics - that should fill a few hours and give me tons of images to process and post. Given the area and where I am with respect to the city itself, I'd thought about the following themes: Capture more of the artful manhole covers in the Pioneer Square area and see if there were other pieces of street furniture which I could incorporate into the general theme of "Public Works Art;" Capture the downtown expressway interchanges as they met or merged with the east-west cross streets - many of which are quite steep - this later evolved into a streetscape of downtown streets heading toward the waterfront; Capture the skyline as I meandered north again from Pioneer Square, since Seattle has a series of streets which intersect at 45-degrees, the angle of the buildings as they head skyward creates some interesting city views; Capture the facade of all the historic buildings lining First Avenue in the Pioneer Square area for a photographic montage of "turn-of-the-century" masonry art; Capture the shadows cast by the street furniture objects on the sidewalks as I walked through the area.
That was quite a load of thematic images I'd set about to capture and I figured it would take me a few hours to work my way through Pioneer Square and back uptown to the Pike Place Market area along the freeway to get the cross streets and then back down First to get the Pioneer Square facades. Brilliant!! I could at least get through mid-afternoon and see how things were going and figure out what to do with the remaining hours before the Monorail City Council hearing when I got to that time point.
Well, the good news is there's a superabundance of "Public Works Art" in the city. In addition to the sculptured and artistically-designed and cast manhole covers, there are a series of different era streetlight standards and poles, each of which offers yet another photographic opportunity. Many of the streetlight standards are done in bronze castings which age differently, depending on which way they faced and how much exhaust acid and rain they endured. There's a rich texture of browns, greenish-browns, greenish-grays and some with a bit left of the actual bronze color. I snap away at a several of them along Second Avenue near the Smith Tower. With the sun nearly overhead, I capture the Smith Tower from a couple of angles. The building is actually a 21-story pentagon with a 21-story square tower jutting from the western face which makes for some really interesting photographs depending on which face one is shooting from.
I walk east up the hill to Sixth Avenue, the city street which is immediately west of the Interstate 5 ribbon which snakes along First and Capitol Hills to the east of downtown. From here one has great views down into the many levels of the concrete Hydra which is I-5 and one has equally great views in the other direction down all the cross streets which head straight down to the waterfront of Elliott Bay. I meander around a few intersections taking shots of the freeway from the east, south, north and west sides and capturing some of the buildings along the way for that component of my thematic for the day. Downtowns are such fun when one doesn't have to be any particular place at any particular time. There's really so much to explore in addition to watching the myriad folk who are also there - eating, stressing, relaxing, reading, talking, gazing, just being people.
I get to the northern end of my photo shoot and head west towards First Avenue to head back to Pioneer Square for the facades. At about Yesler Way I move from the sidewalk to the median in the middle of First Avenue, which begins there, and walk building to building, taking images of the west side of the street and then the east side and framing each shot so the features of that building's facade will be the center point of the image. There really was a superb degree of craftsmanship evident around the Industrial Age. The stone masons and brick masons and everyone in the construction trades were working in a period of design enlightenment along with some new methods for carving and laying the material. The steel frame structure had just come into existence as a skeletal framework and that freed up the masons from having to perform fundamental structural work to being able to perform elaborate design work.
After shooting about five blocks of First Avenue through Pioneer Square, using up two batteries and filling one entire 128 megabyte Flash card, I'd run through my entire photographic thematic repertoire and still had two hours before the Council meeting. Hmmmm. I'm standing on First Avenue, right in front of one of my favorite bus stops and see that the bus to West Seattle is about two blocks from me and figured I'd dash home, dump the camera, freshen up, maybe start on the image processing and catch another bus downtown for the Council hearing. Which I do, I get home, chat with the builders for a bit - today they had finished the stairs up the tower to the second level and the city electrical inspector was due to drop by Tuesday so the new 200 amp panel was in with breakers installed. Still missing outlets, switches and smoke detectors but the light fixtures and bathroom fan were in. The stairs make getting upstairs fantastically easy, plus the new living room alcove was finished with windows installed and it looks unbelievably cool. I'm a huge fan of odd-shaped spaces and neat little nooks and crannies in living spaces. This house is shaping up to have more nooks, crannies, neat hideaways, and decks, balconies and overlooks than I believe I actually imagined. Looking at elevations, plans, isometric drawings and cross-sections is one thing, actually being inside a real space is quite another reality. The living room alcove is much larger with way better window views than I thought from the drawings.
The concrete floor will transition to the living room wood floor with a piece of beveled oak planking about eight-inches wide and will be a smooth and visually-appealing transition. The see-through triangular space alongside the stairwell which connects the dining-breakfast room to the new living room alcove is also much better than imagined. The visual space it connects is subtle and yet powerful in creating both a real physical addition to the useful volume of the addition and in channelling light and air between the two rooms. From the dining-kitchen area or the living room alcove there's a visual connection to the other side of the house - which not only expands the horizon of what one can see from either room but also increases the apparent volume of the living space. Very subtle - Lisa and I thought about this long and hard and committed to the concept without fully realizing the actual space would be as good as it has turned out. Another win for going with one's gut instincts.
With enough time to catch the bus and make it to Council chambers in time to sign up for the hearing, I leave again - my second trip downtown Monday. I was thinking, both trips down and on the one trip back home already how totally more convenient the Monorail would make this entire activity. I must time my trips now based on either a 20-minute or 30-minute bus schedule. The Monorail will run every four minutes - I wouldn't even have to worry about schedule at all and the transit time for the same distance would be halfed. Had Monorail been in place already I could have dashed between home and downtown four times for the two I was making on the bus. Plus, Monorail would run six hours later than at least one of the buses which takes me home. Even more than before I was convinced of the importance of Monorail and therefore had charged up my advocacy blood during the day. I would be reasonable, quietly impassioned and logical in my two minutes.
I walk up the four blocks from First Avenue to the new City Hall at James Street and Fifth Avenue. I enter and take the escalator up to the Council Chambers, where there is a line of about a dozen folks already waiting to sign up for speaking. Council is in session, going over the Final Alignment with members of the Seattle Monorail Project staff, basically taking each block section, block-by-block. When I arrive, Council is going over in detail the sections associated with the Alaska Junction station - a subject I now know a great deal about having attended an SMP brlefing by the architects on that station and siting plan just the week before. We had, those of us gathering for the open hearing portion, about 40 minutes to wait till we got to our turn. Council staff began to set up the sign-in sheets and created two lines, Pro - for those in favor of the alignment, and Con - those opposed to portions or all of the plan. I begin to talk with a fellow "pro" citizen and we compare notes of other places we've lived where effective, mass transit has been in place and find ourselves perplexed at the vehemence and vitriol of the "con" crowd, both of us having attended previous Council meetings or community sessions on the Monorail and having run across some of the "con" group which we now recognize gathering in the other line.
After signing in I enter the Council Chambers and take a seat up front and near the center and quietly sit down to listen to the Council go over their questions. I've only met four of the nine Council members previously, Peter Steinbrueck, David Della, Richard Conlin, and Tom Rasmussen. I'd met them, not all at once but some more than once, at other meetings they've held either for the neighborhood as members of the City Council or at the Preliminary and Final Environmental Impact Statement hearings on Monorail. I was unfamiliar - in person - with Richard McIver, Nick Lacata, Jean Godden, Jim Compton, and Council President Jan Drago. I listen intently as these members and the rest question the SMP staff over certain elements of the Alaska Junction Station plan and decide that the entire City Council is comprised of intelligent and reasonable individuals. I had watched several previous Council hearings and open Council sessions on Seattle City TV and already had a relatively positive impression of this group of elected officials.
Previously, in my other life in DC, I'd had several decades of experience with my City Council and had corresponded and talked to several members on many, many occasions - usually having something to do with yet another failing of the District Government. On the DC City Council, I had respect and regard for about half of the Council and nothing but contempt and disdain for the other half, including the representative who was from my local district - Kathy Patterson. I'd tried twice in recent elections to get rid of her but my fellow Ward 3 citizens apparently decided to keep her despite the fact that she completely ignored Ward 3 issues in favor of "taking a more synoptic view of the Nation's Capital." Ha! We might as well have had nothing but an entire Council of at-large representatives in DC for all the worth of most of the ward councilmembers there. My greatest success and best response was always from the at-large Council members - especially Carole Schwartz and David Catania. Other District Council members for whom I at least had respect were Adrian Fenty, Jack Evans, Sharon Ambrose and Kevin Chavous. The rest, well, like I said, I'd tried at least twice to vote them out but was obviously overruled by my fellow constituents. Here, things looked brighter from the get-go.
Council finishes its questions with SMP mostly because it's time for the public hearing portion. Council President Jan Drago goes over the rules of engagement - each of five groups will have five minutes and may use one or several members to occupy those minutes. The rest of what turns out to be 128 individuals who have asked for time will be given two minutes to present before Council.
The five groups are split three-to-two in favor versus opposed. The 128 individuals are going to be given their two minutes based on "pro" and then "con" and then "pro" and so on. Lucky me, I had gotten to the line in the first batch and was speaker number 27 - the first time I've given testimony in five occurrences where I've been in the first hour. Not sure whether that's a plus or minus but it was something new for me. By the time I get my two minutes representatives of "MonorailRecall" <http://www.monorailrecall.com/>, "SaveSeattleCenter" <http://exordia.net/saveseattlecenter/>, and "OnTract" <http://www.monorailontrack.org/> had already either taken their five minutes or had a representative take two minutes. These are three nearly rabid and vituperriously vitriolic organizations whose members - in my very humble but learned and publicly conscious opinion - are just this side of insane. I've heard representatives from these groups at other hearings and each time the person giving the pitch gets strung out - voice gets tight and high-pitched, arms or feet begin to move anxiously with deep affectations of nervous twitching, their words are pure hyperbole - not just the usual hyperbole of the ranting and raving but the rantings of Tourette Syndrome victims <http://www.ninds.nih.gov/health_and_medical/pubs/tourette_syndrome.htm#symptoms>. It's a sad truth about representative and democratic government, but Council must entertain the voices of everyone, but personally I'm really tired of these people. They are individuals who have found a cause which seems at times to be greater than their own lives (laudable in certain circumstances and for certain causes) but for the rest of us who really want to get on with building and using a mass transit system, these individuals have become an honest public nuisance. I suffer through the same tired arguments and the same rantings that I've heard before and spend my time while the "con" group representatives are talking looking at the other members of the expectant Council audience. I'm brightened by the fact that there are a large number of other folks waiting to speak who are effectively rolling their eyes in their heads or shaking their heads in disapproval or disbelief. Council is, of course, courteous and thanks every speaker, including the ranters and ravers.
I get my turn and give my reasons for the alignment through Seattle Center - one of the controversies, my reasons for the alignment along Second Avenue - another controversy and note that at least two Council members nod in agreement with my concerns that the bike lane down Second Avenue remain - as it would under the proposed SMP alignment, and my reasons for all the stations in West Seattle and my general comments on the process I've used to make these observations known to both SMP staff and to Council members previously. I'm on target, take exactly my two minutes, and address only those elements which Council has asked to hear, unlike a lot of others who add gratuitous comments about the system or the project or the funding or some non-relevant-to-the-Council hearing element.
For the next three hours I sit and listen to the remaining 101 speakers, which include a fair number of additional rants and raves from more folks representing the three anti-Monorail or anti-Seattle-Center-Crossing points of view. In terms of Seattle Center, the pros and the cons of going across the Center grounds versus crowding the Monorail along already disastrous Mercer Way to the north of the Center are a toss. It's to my way of thinking the same as arguments for or against vanilla or chocolate ice cream - both sides can and do make their reasonable arguments and both sides will not hear any countering arguments from the other side and both sides will not change their point of view. On the side of crossing the Seattle Center, the entire constituency of Center tenants, organizations, and the many non-profits who work and play there every day have come out in favor. The Bumpershoot and Folk Life Festival folks have come out against the Center crossing. If City Council goes according to the wishes of the most-continuously-affected group of individuals and organizations then the cross Center route will be approved. However, this is an emotional issue and at least three Council members have stated they personally don't like that route. This is one of those "we'll see" issues and I'll just have to wait and see.
By the time all 128 speakers had made their voices heard it was 8:00 pm and Council Chambers had diminished to a few staunch listeners, including me, and a handful of staff and reporters. I'm thrilled to report that the entire Council membership of nine elected representatives either stayed the entire time or - having to make another appointment, left and returned. And, all nine remained attentive, polite, courteous, appreciative and held a pretty good sense of humor during this marathon. The only previous time I'd been to a hearing which was as long and included as many contentious individuals was the Final Environmental Impact Statement hearing which was held at Seattle Monorail Project's downtown offices and which ran just as long but only had about 80 speakers, each of whom was given three minutes - including me.
When Council President Jan Drago called the hearing to a close I talked with some SMP staff to compare notes on the overall comments. It seems that roughly three-quarters to eighty percent of the speakers were on the side of "pro" Monorail with or without minor issues which were in the process of being resolved. That's a pretty good commitment and turnout for Council to hear. That means that the pro-Monorail community is beginning to react to the political realities of the anti-Monorail groups by turning out for the hearings and making their commitment known to city government. On the issue of the cross-Seattle route for the Monorail, 44 speakers spoke out in favor of that crossing, several of them representing either up to score of other individuals or up to score of other organizations. On the opposition side, there were 43 speakers, mostly representing themselves except for the management of Bumbershoot and Folklife Festival, who represented the groups. That's clearly a close call. I did write to all the Council members and had the pleasure of sitting next to Jan Drago's staff assistant during most of the hearing and discussing with her the way and manner by which Council members viewed mail. The staff assistant was telling me that individualized letters were treated with a slightly higher degree of respect than "carbon copy" mail which tends to come in from opposition groups. The carbon copy emails and letters ARE counted but the contents are usually dismissed owing as much to the sloppy English in these letters as to the obvious "easy path" of sending one. That bodes well for the individualized letters I sent Council members. I approached each Council member from the perspective of his or her previous positions on different elements of Monorail and beseeched them using elements drawn either form observations of them in person or a thorough reading of their biography and history in City Government. Although I suspect some staff aide actually wrote them, I've received three responses from Council members on my comments already and each of the three responses have themselves been reasonable and well-written.
I headed out again to the city streets, actually anticipating it would be cool and I'd be chilly on my way home since I hadn't brought a jacket and was wearing only my slacks and short-sleeved shirt. It wasn't. It was a really balmy evening, the sun having just set, and I walked back down to Pioneer Square to catch the bus home. During the hearing another gentleman from West Seattle made essentially the same arguments as I had in support of the alignment and I ran into him at the bus stop. Turns out this guy just retired from the Boeing company and had for years worked at the Johnson Space Center - during times when I was at the center on various missions. I had thought I recognized his face and demeanor. He was involved with remote sensing satellite and ground system development and on several Shuttle missions. He lives right along the 44th Avenue path I take to get to Caffe Ladro and he and I compared notes on our houses - I've actually walked by his house a dozen times - and on our reflections on the space program, NASA and the Boeing Company. What an amazingly tiny world this has turned out to be.
I've posted an unusually large number of images below (think of it as making up for last post's complete lack of imagery). I'd spent yesterday processing the hundred-plus photos and montages I'd taken on Monday and was totally pleased with the result. It's hard for me to trim my words and sometimes even harder to trim my visual output. Also, remember there are several new items on the multimedia page as well - <http://homepage.mac.com/credmond/multimedia.html>.
Have a great week. Katherine is off tomorrow for the wedding of nephew Luke in Georgia, a visit with her mom in Connecticut, and a visit to our eldest son, Leif, in the District, and who knows - maybe even an impromptu farm meeting with all the relatives at the wedding. So, I'll be pestering the Schulte Construction crew - Joe and Rick and, as usual, Todd himself. I'm sure they are probably wishing I'd take some long trip somewhere too.
Chas
The alley between Washington Street and Yesler Way in Pioneer Square district. Left is looking toward the "square" and
right is looking toward Washington Street. Seattle alley's are often as interesting as the main street - true for a lot
of alleys in a lot of other cities. In fact, in Paris, alleys have become main streets. Also true in New Orleans - maybe
it's the French.
More "cover art" from Pioneer Square. The top left one is Seattle City Light, the top right one is Public Works Sewar,
as is the bottom left, the bottom right is - right out of the past - Western Union Telegraph Company.
More "public art" in the form of covers for Water access and Traffic Lighting access. Simply amazing what
one finds when one looks down. Personally, I recommend using both eyes and one's head and looking
all around when anywhere - especially when out exploring.
More street art, in the form of bronze lamp post bases. Each one has aged differently, depending on car exhaust
access, sunlight access and rain. These are all along Second Avenue between Jackson Street and Yesler Way.
Now here's an interesting shot along Jackson Street, one block east of First Avenue. The gallery on the left, the
red building, had a number of odd-angle glass doors and windows and I was able to capture a reflection of myself in
two of the windows next to me and in one across the street - see below.
So these are close-ups of the lower photograph above - the areas marked
with small green rectangles correspond to these images here. It WAS a
bright and sunny day, for sure.
Standing at the peak corner of the parking garage known as the Sinking Ship, right at the Yesler Way triangle, I noticed
the building on the south facing side had something unusual posted in front of its windows. The top image is a panorama
of the structure as it appears to anyone. The middle image is the unusual features highlighted with small yellow ovals.
The bottom set of images reveal what these items really are - wooden owls. Birds use their eyes to avoid predators and
just the shape of an owl is enough to keep most pigeons, crows and other more vegetarian or carrion-eaters away from
a place. These owl decoys are also installed along the townhouses on Calvert Street just east of the Duke Ellington
Bridge in the District's Adams-Morgan neighborhood.
Also, from the peak of the Sinking Ship garage, here are the porticos of the two buildings fronting First Avenue. Left
portico is to the north and right portico is to the south. Pioneer Square is a true photographer's delight, among its
other joys.
These are three snapshots of the various elements of the building to the north of the Sinking Ship, on the James Street
side of the Yesler Way traingle. I didn't capture the name of the building but the detailing is simply remarkable, as is
the condition it's in. Pioneer Square consists of dozens and dozens of blocks - most of which have structures listed on
the National Register of Historic Places - as is the entire Pioneer Square Historic District.
This is a shadowgraph of me taken looking down from the
top of the Sinking Ship garage. Obviously manipulated in
Photoshop. Consider this my recognition of the sacrifice
being made by American men and women in the current
conflict in Iraq - I applaud their patriotism and allegiance
to our country - I disagree vehemently with this Administration's
international stance and their current domestic policies and
plan to cast my vote against Bush and for Kerry this fall.
Participate in your democracy and be patriotic at the same
time - register to vote .
A hidden jewel in the general Pioneer Square vicinity is the Waterfall Park.
It's at the corner of Second Avenue and South Main Street and is a tiny
corner of the block but includes this wonderful, real, waterfall surrounded
by a quiet set of spaces and set apart from the street by an elegant and
understated simulated wrought-iron fence and set of gates.
Here's a quad of images of Smith Tower. The Observation Deck is at the top of the square
tower set atop the pentagon-shaped lower base of the 42-story structure. It was the tallest
building outside New York City for a while, then the tallest building West of the Mississippi
River for about 40 years. Now it's just a wonderful, restored, elegant representation of
"turn-of-the-century" skyscraper construction and an icon for Pioneer Square. I'll get inside
and up to the Observation Deck one of these clear-blue-sky days and have some great
VR panoramas to show for it - just wait and see.
Here's the Smith Tower amid its brethren - the 76-story Bank of America
Tower - also called the Columbia tower - and the Key Tower, home to the
Seattle City Administration and all its agencies.
Walking north along Sixth Avenue gives one some great views into the city since Interstate-5, immediately to the east
of Sixth Avenue, bifurcates the city in such a way that there's the "up" view towards First Hill and Capitol Hill across the
freeway and the "down" view of the rest of the city to the west toward the Elliott Bay waterfront. On the left is the new
Seattle Public Library Main Branch building and behind it the elegant 45-story Washington Mutual Bank headquarters.
On the right are the twin towers of St. James Cathedral - a Catholic icon for the Northwest and itself an elegant and
beautiful structure. I'll do the "churches and synogogues and mosques" of Seattle in another photo shoot - watch for that
also coming to a blogsite near you.
Here's Interstate Five as it meets Madison Street in the heart of downtown Seattle. The top image is looking north and
shows the entry and exit ramps and Madison Street crossing east and west over the freeway. The bottom view is an
inverted view of the same intersection looking south - figured it made more sense this way - the cars coming and going
in different directions with the city reflected along both axes.
Not that rare a sight, but here's Mount Rainier rising above it all in the
distance, south of I-5 in downtown Seattle. Because the day had turned
slightly hazy there's a bit of Photoshop manipulation used here to bring out
the mountain from the hazy background - which accounts for the generalized
bronze tint for the rest of the scene. Fourteen-thousand-feet is REALLY tall,
this is roughly 59 miles away from Rainier's peak. That's one very
impressive volcano.
Here's something else I noticed walking along Sixth Avenue. There are five cross streets which seem to offer a quick and efficient
means of escape should one ever want to lam out of the country. That's both an oddity and a treat - to live in a major American
city whose nearest northern hub-city is in another country. I can see a movie in my future where I write the screenplay, am the
main character, director, cinematographer, soundman, grip, composer for the soundtrack, post-production effects specialist and
major release agent. It would be called "Escape from Emerald City." Watch for that also in the future - awaiting only the acquisition
of a DV cam.
Downtowns offer a lot of visually arresting contrasts. This montage tries to make sense
of some of those contrasts by pairing a set of street scapes with a set of sky scrapes.
Seattle, in particular, has buildings and streets which meet on both orthogonal rules and
which meet in what was formerly described as "cattywompus" rules. Of course, the
District has it's diagonal Avenues, Houston has it's tilted downtown, Minneapolis and
St. Paul do not share a common grid even though they share a common border, and
Boston has no straight streets at all.
From left-to-right, these are the intersections of Sixth Avenue with Columbia Street, Marion Street, Madison Street,
Spring Street, and Seneca Street. In these images the level of Elliott Bay - water in the distance - is kept at an even
keel. What this really shows is the lessening of slope as Sixth Avenue heads northward. Notice how steep the street
angle is on the streets to the left and how it shallows out on the right. Even though it appears that the street level
itself is rising, in fact what is happening is the grade is flattening. Interesting optical illusion, eh?
The next series of images consist of the facades of the buildings fronting First Avenue in
the Pioneer Square District. There is really no reason to further identify each building as
they all run together and are best seen as a series of adjacent images. Anyone visiting
Seattle should expect to spend several days exploring Pioneer Square - in addition to
the interesting and diverse street scene itself, there's the mix of bars and restaurants,
curio and what-not shops, dozens upon dozens of galleries featuring every form of visual
or kinetic art imaginable, as well as the structures and streets and statues and other
items of public art. These mosaics consist of portrait shots sandwiched as duos and
landscape shots sandwiched as triptychs. No captions will accompany them except that
the general flow of the images follows the path of First Avenue from north to south.
Also along First Avenue in Pioneer Square, the sun was playing wonderful tricks with the
street furniture and casting some dramatic shadows along the very mottled and variegated
sidewalks of the area.
Here's a shadowgraph of scenes along First Avenue, built as a quad view
with an upward aspiring slant. The color images were converted to
grayscale in Photoshop though there was hardly any difference - just a
saving of a few kilobytes with no loss of visual presentation. I'll be making
more of these mosaics as this town has some pretty interesting street
furniture as well as bridge railing treatments which will cast some intriguing
shadows under the right sky and right sun angle.
Second-to-last stop on the George Benson Waterfront Streetcar Line - Metro Route #99. This is in the middle of Main
Street between First and Second Avenues. If all goes well for Seattle's Monorail and Sound Transit Central Link light
rail projects and for the Mayor's desires for a Lake Union trolley, Seattle will have as many modes of mass transportation
as San Francisco - perhaps even more. The map on the left is better viewed full-size at Metro King County's transportation
site - http://transit.metrokc.gov/tops/bus/route_maps/m099_0.html .
That's all for the time being, folks. Ciao.
Posted: Wed - April 28, 2004 at 03:46 PM
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Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM
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Published On: Jul 04, 2005 05:41 PM