Almost there; Horseshoes, you say?
Recap on July Fourth fireworks that we saw;
thoughts on street fairs; more comments on house and usual odd-mixture of photos
including new interior views and random scenes from West Seattle Street
Fair.
We spent July 4th evening on the roof deck with
two of our neighbors. It's true, we could see the Elliott Bay fireworks but not
the Lake Union fireworks. But, it didn't matter. Standing on the roof deck, we
were treated - starting at about 9:45 pm (still strong twilight) - to a
surround-sound, Baghdad-style assault from the southeast neighborhoods and
suburbs. Beginning due east and continuing in an arc to the south were at least
fifty displays which continually moved back and forth. We were sure we could
see Renton, Auburn, Kent, Fife and Tacoma because of the super-size and height
of some of the displays in those areas. However, the general theme was one of
horizon-to-horizon fireworks, bursters, artillery shells, high-flying
multiple-stage and color displays and about anything else you can buy. It was
both unreal and surreal.
Seattle neighborhoods take the Fourth of July seriously - much more so I'm told since September 11, 2001, Heck, right beneath our feet were two intersecting corner fireworks displays which lasted at least an hour and they were less than 300 feet from us. What I think everyone doesn't realize, since all these neighborhood displays get set off at the intersection of cross streets is how continuous and seemless they appear from above rooftop altitude. Nancy (nurse neighbor), Katherine, Jim (former lumberjack turned office furniture installer), and I were enthralled, amused, amazed and somewhat stunned by this non-stop, continuous, panoramic display of 6,000-year-old Chinese technology. We're not talking a few here and a few there. What we're talking about is the continuous thunder and distant boom of hundreds of fireworks a minute for the time from 9:45 pm through past midnight when I finally called it a night. Nancy and Katherine had descended to the peace and calm of the first floor about 11 pm, saying they had seen enough fireworks for the year. Jim finally called it quits about 11:30, claiming he needed to get up early the next morning. Me, I called it quits when I realized that this area event would continue through the wee hours of the morning. Proving that, the electrician's helper showed up the next day and said he and his neighbors, who had amassed an arsenal of about $300 worth of fireworks, were shooting them off until about 2:00 am.
I don't think I've ever seen anything like this except for the video from the CNN reporters during the invasion of Baghdad - and that was portrayed in green light using night-vision optics. This was in Technicolor, CinemaScope, and SurroundSound.
So, just before Katherine went downstairs, I asked her - since she and I have seen dozens of years' worth of displays on the Mall during the Washington, DC annual fireworks festival - usually costing up to a dozen million dollars - which was better: The superior shows on the Mall which lasted for 20 minutes and which were choreographed by world-expert fireworks firms or the non-stop, neighborhood and nearby-town displays which had hypnotized us for an hour already? "No question, this is the best." was the answer. And, yes, it was the best. Where else could I have imagined myself being surrounded by fireworks for hours at a time and bathed in the sonic booms of thousands of little neighborhood explosions. From the west we had the various island towns and neighborhoods lighting up the Sound, we could even see the big bursters up over the ridge which hides Bremerton from our direct view. And, to the north there were the super-duper big bangs from downtown and Magnolia and Ballard and maybe even Shoreline. Yeah, I like this town.
Oh, the other advantage of watching all this from afar - no chordite smell in the air, no intervening fog of smoke and powder clouding the view. We did have a view of small crowds - down the various streets and at the various intersections. Big people setting up the device in the intersection or off the edge of the curb and little people getting to light the cord or fuse and then lots of people going "ooooh" and "ahhhh." And could I capture any of this digitally? Well, not really. I've posted a single, composite, image which shows the southeast panorama and which is a layered image consisting of a dozen or more shots. It gives a sense of the event but doesn't really capture the real light show. Next year? Who knows. The roof is too easy but I do miss the feel and sociology of thousands of people crowded together under a panoply of overhead fireworks so I may take my bike to the Lake Union show or may just ride along the waterfront. Plus, I must admit that it's kind of cool living in a town which has two major fireworks displays, both sanctioned and scheduled and of a tradition - the Lake Union event, which started some 40 years ago by Ivars, a local seafood restaurant chain which typifies Seattle and the Northwest, and the Elliott Bay event, which is the official City of Seattle 4th of July Celebration event. Not to mention that every other neighborhood seems to have some form of "area" event not counting the endless sets of neighbors actually setting off their own private fireworks displays in the middle of intersecting streets.
This afternoon, after moving a few more things upstairs (27 more boxes, two huge speakers, about a dozen bubble-wrapped components, several cubic yards worth of CD, Cassette, LP, and VHS storage cabinets filled, and more to go - a bit at a time is the right philosophy now), I walked up to Alaska Junction (that would be two Monorail stops away in the future) to check out the Friday version of the annual West Seattle Street Fair. It was pretty nice - the weather was spritzing and growling and acting mean with temps oscillating between mid-fifties and mid-sixties depending on which block. The WS street fair runs three days - Friday, Saturday and Sunday. They close off California Avenue for one block south and two blocks north of Alaska Street, which is also closed for two blocks east and one block west of California. There are three stages, one at the north end of the closed area of California, one at the south closed end of California and one around the corner from the "Junction," (Alaska@California - old street trolley transfer and turn-around point, at least the Monorail is honoring the history of transportation in West Seattle).
Did my usual traipse up the concourse, round whatever corners and bends there were, made my way back down the concourse - or in the case of the WS street fair, snaked my way up and down California to catch the inner tent aisles and then the outer sidewalk aisles. Every merchant had a huge sidewalk sale going on, Easy Street Records had used CDs for two bucks and used DVDs for four bucks - and one extra item if you bought a ten-spot's worth. It was a pretty good crowd despite the weather. The first day of these things which go on seem to vary on a fair or parade by fair or parade basis. Folklife seemed to start kind of slow and build up. Fremont started with a bang and seemed to taper down. Gay Pride seemed like a play or ballet with the major movement in the middle of an oddly off-synch time sandwich - perhaps as befitting the "queer" aspects of life being celebrated. I got the sense that the WS street fair is a different thing each day to draw from the really interesting mix of ethnic, economic and sociological variants which make up this peninsula. I love how the high brow live at the lands-end or cliffside places and the peasants live in the swampy low-lying areas with rats, stray dogs and mosquitos instead of richly garnished yards overlooking photon-enriched views of the city or region.
The other thing I like about WS is how it seems to either mimic or represent in miniature the city at large - Seattle city has the Lake to get past to go east, WS has the Duwamish River (a lot like the Cayahoga inside Cleveland city limits or the lower east side of Pittsburgh along the Monongahela). I saw a few of the artists I've seen at the other fairs and talked to one ceramicist (you can't really call them "potters" anymore, can you?) about the quality of deep blue which cobalt gives and how the aluminum silicate and the cobalt oxides interact to produce these deep - nearly ultraviolet - blues and how you can overglaze that with a whitener or even another layer of clay and get blues which range from deep blue through aqua. I was reminded of how many times through the history of the arts a particular chemical has done wonderful things with blue - the dyes which use indigo and how special the vats and preparation for the cloth is to get the colors to hold and remain rich. I'll track these cobalt pots and find some which work in the new space. I'll probably end up wearing an indigo shirt at some point. At an earlier era, in college, I actually sprung one year for a real Madras shirt - made in Madras out of whatever special cotton and weave they have and the way it held its colors was unreal. It wore out in only about three years, though, so not sure how long I should expect an indigo item to last. There were more of the same crafts and clothing folks I've seen before.
What was new seemed to be this "rent-a-circus/amusement park" area which worked just like Seattle Center arcade, you bought tickets to get on the rides. The rides were all made out of these inflatable structures and seemed to catch the imagination of a whole lot of three-to-twelve-year-old boys and girls and give a bunch of dads something meaningful to do. Both Gay Pride and Fremont had kid areas but I didn't see many kids at those and there were lots of kids at the "pay-for" WS fair. The food vendors were some of the usual and a whole bunch of strictly West Seattle places. Husky Deli had an outside stand for some of their barbeque and Harvest Bread and a couple other bakeries were doing pretty good with both the super-healthy-for-you stuff and the can't-get-enough-sugar stuff. In fact, it reminded me a lot of the Sunday Farmer's Market in West Seattle. This is a huge and diverse section of town but it definitely has a cozy feel to it and the West Seattle Street Fair had a cozy feel despite crowds.
It was also my luck to catch two more spectacular music groups. At the south stage I caught Henry Cooper and his band <http://www.henrycooper.com/>. These guys can absolutely play the Chicago Blues live and jammin' and with a real blues feel and steel electric slide taste. I was there for the entire hour gig and they kept the growing crowd tied up in rhythms and blues riffs and great wailing guitar sqeals. I love Chicago style and they're still making that stuff new every day. One of the side joys of traveling through Illinois is how many small towns have Chicago blues bands playing on the road in their town at their festival or fair or whatever. Anyway, great stuff, catch them if you like high intensity wailing and moaning and rocking blues. Down at the other end of the Junction was the north stage where I caught the start and most of Aquaduct's hour show. A weird but easily understood electronica-rock group not without their own internal, on-stage fun and "the joke's on all of us" attitude. Had the weather not turned even colder and wetter I would have stayed the rest of their set, as it was I caught about 40 minutes and they were drawing an interesting cross section as a crowd - not sure what one elderly lady was entranced by and two kids who biked by during one set did something to make the drummer laugh for the rest of the set.
I'll return Saturday and Sunday, each fair day has it's own rhythm and I might as well sample each new morsel with relish.
I've been upstairs a lot in the past few days. It's "finished" enough to move into so long as any of the remaining work can't be easily accessed whenever it is that it will get done (let's see, stuff still being made - for the railings and handrails; painters on vacation; electrical perplexities). Which basically means towels and toilet paper for the bathroom, all Adam's toys, stuff, books and other paraphernalia moved up to Studio A, all my stuff moved up to Studio C. Today I put together the glass and steel rounded-corner desk and set up a few more toys. Yesterday I spent about half the day setting up and then tuning and then playing the drums. Played them again today when a neighbor and her 17-month old son came by. The tyke - Henry - easily understood the concept of two sticks, two hands, bunch-o-differently-sounding percussion toys. The great news is that a pretty loud drum set doesn't create an annoying or disturbing presence downstairs. So, I appear to be free to let loose with the drum set. The JBL powered speaker has been playing the iPod for the past few days. JBL speakers can be made to sound good if you find the right place in the room and have some form of EQ available - the iPod does.
So this glass desk works just as I thought it would. Walking around the room, only the stuff "on" it and the Hong Kong-engineering style supports actually show up. There's no "bulk" or "huge" object taking up space. Actually, there is, it's just not visible. One doesn't intrude any closer to glass desks than one does to solid oak or mahogany antiques but in a room the former appears to be "not there" while the latter "weighs down" a room - visually, of course, but it's stunning how physical this mirage comes across. Anyway, suffice to say the desk works great - also holds heavy stuff and my legs and feet just fine. The other cool thing is how the desk surface reflects the sky above - since it's placed right at the point in the room where the two corner floor-to-ceiling triangular window sets are. The two angled glass desk surfaces reflect the sky up at the same angle the sky is coming in through the windows.
I wanted a kinetic office-studio-escape pod visual background environment. I got it - without even plugging in the television. Sitting on the drum stool and playing some rhythm and looking out into the space in front of me is great - knowing I can play loudly - to my ear's content - and see what's going on around me gives me a sense of freedom that I don't think I've felt except in places like the Black Hills standing on a ten-foot rock outcropping and bellowing out calls to create echos in the canyons and off nearby scrufty mountains. Now I want to stay up all the time.
Ah, such fun. Since August of last year I've not banged on my drums. Not had decent music playing in the background, nor felt like I had a "space" which was truly my own - without disturbing anyone near or far. Our old DC house was perfect like that - it was small and close in but inside it had physically and acoustically separate spaces - enough for four people to have their own space. Outside we had only two neighbors - and they had built their houses as barriers to our lot. Behind was a huge lot and across the street was the largest local neighborhood park - open space. Now, with the upstairs on this house we finally have acoustically and physically distinct spaces. Think of house as either "escape" or as "club" and then think of how many different acoustic, lighting, social or other conditions as might fit - what's that - a dozen. For us it's basically one per person plus one for pairs and one for all of us - which for three people means five environmental spaces for a "perfect" space requirement.
I think the cool thing about the new spaces in our house are how many appeal to different people. In a sense that means that we can allow anyone to feel comfortable by finding the appropriate space in the house. Heck, we've got two separate outside spaces where groups could disappear (lower deck and upper balcony) and an outside space (roof) where we could invite our Krypton-born friends to fly. The second floor has rooms with two doors so there's an open (or closed) flow to the place. Katherine put it this way, "you can't describe how it feels, you have to walk around, stand in different places in the same room, even what you can see changes by just moving." And, it's true.
I can sit at my glass desk, after the sun sets, cold Apple cathode ray tube in front of me, glowing LCD screen in my lap, music coming nicely and full-spectrum from a distant corner, and look out the corner glass prow of my own spaceship with distant lights twinkling across the Sound.
Shots and whatnot images appear below. It's time to return the yard to some kind of matching condition. I did empty and clean the pond and restack some flagstone so it would more emulate a babbling brook than a spout pouring water into a tub. The nice thing about that is up in the 3rd floor aerie, the sound of the babbling creek rises right up and fills the room with a nice background waterfall noise. Illusions, a little reality here and there, we're all easily amused.
Next task after unpacking and setting up - which could take weeks, who knows - is to figure out when we can have the set of open houses we should do - there's actually a block party coming up in the first part of August, I believe right before I'm to head East to DC and Carolina. Anyway, that may be the impromptu one. We need a couple "promptu" ones - for the "crew" (Schulte Builder, et al.; McNelis Architects, et. al; ) - for a couple Meet-Up groups who would find it fun - Photo and Photobloggers and Bloggers (yeah, that's three, but there's some fine distinctions going on here) - a sit-down style dinner party for the brain trust (Schulte, and fewer et al.; McNelis Architects, and fewer et al.) - by then it'll be Thanksgiving. We'll have been here more than a year and our lives still don't seem to have slowed down.
If I seem rambling and psyched it's because of the effects of using this new space. Man, this is way more than I'd put in my expectations bank. I still keep forgetting how much sky I can see. Or how perfectly comfortable the temperature or the rug is or how cool being able to open any window I want in any direction is. A new dominion. Even though we've technically only doubled the floor space (1080 to 2060 sqft), we've added about 160 percent more volume - interior air mass and space. And, yet, my heating bill has stayed steady or fallen. Technically, this house is as modern as can be built in all the right eco-terms. I experienced the thermal reduction from the windows the other day when it was brilliant and bright and blazingly solar hot outside and visibly ultraviolet and perceptibly cooler thermally on the other side of the glass. The sound dampening in the upstairs floor makes you think you're on some soundstage. Yeah, Yeah, I paid for it and asked for it so why shouldn't it be the way I wanted it to be?
Well, it should. I'm saying that the quality of the finished product has exceeded the architect's, builder's, AND owner's best expectation. All the hunches proved to be true and their implementation powerful examples of what can be done with space and light and air.
By all means, if you're in the neighborhood, drop in and ring the bell or knock on the door. If nothing else you can help move boxes upstairs. You all would be proud of how I used physics to surmount the "this task requires two people" aspect of getting some things upstairs - remember, Katherine is effectively out of it - one arm, body still in shock, chemistry all drugged up - not exactly the longshoreman needed to get some things up. But, physics, if you use it, can act as at least one additional person.
To end this rant let me just say it's great to be able to carve my initials on the inside of my own cave again.
More later.
Chas
Many single image frames overlaid on top of each other. The overall effect of being there was to be surrounded
by colorful explosions and to be immersed in this surround-sound of pops, bangs, deep kabooms, and distant
yells and chants.
On the way to the West Seattle Street Fair I take the 44th Avenue route which gives a great north and northwest
overlook of Puget Sound. That's Alaska Junction just right of the telephone phole to the right of center. There's
actually a park down on Fauntleroy Way which is accessible by a series of steep steps just down from the tree
on the far left. It's about a thirty minute walk from my house to the Junction - a distance of about two-and-a-half miles.
Now, Seattle has some strange residents. Normally one goes looking for them on Capitol Hill or in Fremont. But, at
the corner of California Avenue SW and SW Myrtle Street, there's this lady who rents this corner apartment in this
1920's style apartment row complex, who has set up what seems to be an archive or museum of her interests and,
who knows, maybe life, in front of her corner front door. There are flowers, knick-knacks, photographs, dolls, it's
hard to figure out what she's saying and I've been walking by this corner for 10 months now.
Here's a closer vantage point. At first I thought this was a store with the contents being more of the stuff one would
find in a rummage sale but upon closer investigation it began to dawn on me that this was this lady's expression of
personal space - except she has no front yard so she uses the sidewalk and sides of the building as her display space.
There are seven units in this building, which I believe was originally designed and built as a shopkeepers place. Each
of the units can't be much larger than 500 square feet - a big cave but a tiny apartment.
Looking north from the corner of California Avenue and Edmunds Street.
The fair is set up like a cross, with about 1200 feet of California and maybe
800 feet of Alaska set up with tents and other "fair" like features like the
inflatable amusement rides for the kids.
At the north end of California Ave. SW, looking back south towards my
end of West Seattle. The top of the hill in the distance is the Gatewood
neighborhood, my little slice of the town.
That's Henry Cooper on the left and his Chicago-style Blues band. These
guys really rocked and drew an ever-increasing crowd as their hour-long
set progressed. I had an actual seat - a la Folklife Festival Northwest Court
style. The Fremont Fair had four music venues, most with grass for seating,
West Seattle Fair had three music venues, all with little set-ups of folding
chairs for about 50 people and surrounded by street for any overflow. These
guys are worth catching and they seem to play about twice a week in various
Seattle city venues - check out The Stranger <http://www.thestranger.com> or
the various other paper listings.
Aqueduct playing their form of electronica-rock at the north end stage,
sponsored by the West Seattle Eagles, whose lodge is right behind the
stage. Notice the historic Altec-Lansing theater speakers and amplifiers
being used as stage amplification. These two ancient speaker-amp
combinations were taken directly from the Lodge and used for the street
stage. The Fremont Fair has an entire page of formal, big-Seattle-name
sponsors and all their stages were set up by one of the dozens of audio
studios or outfitters which call Seattle home. The West Seattle Street
Fair, in contrast, was sponsored by a half-dozen strictly West Seattle
locals (well, Washington Mutual is a "bigger" sponsor but their sponsorship
signs all pointed to their two Alaska Junction branches). More in keeping
with the "cozy" feel of the West Seattle fair.
A 360-degree panorama from inside Adam's room - Studio A. The left, corner, windows face east and south respectively, The
hallway faces north and the adjacent door leads to a hall with a bathroom and access to the other studio. Yes, it's true, one could
easily fall out of the two corner windows if one wasn't careful.
Not that bathrooms are any more worthy of being photographed than
any other room, but this is the upstairs bath - since this photo was taken
the towel racks and toilet-paper holder have been installed. Of interest
is the wood vanity and blue-marbled linoleum floor. The heating system
runs under the floor and behind the shower - and, yes, the floor is nicely
heated and feels quite toasty despite being hard linoleum.
At this point it looks more like a motel bathroom with no towels, no
Kleenex, no knick-knacks on the counter top - I'm sure that will change.
Looking into Studio C from the area where the bathroom hall would
lead into the room. Marks in the carpet are the sweeper marks.
360-degree panorama of Studio C - with the northwest corner windows in the left area, the hall and one window in the center and the
rest of the area filling the rest of the space. Since I took this photo I've added lots more "stuff" to the room.
Looking from the desk area toward the corner window with me sitting on
the nice wooded ledge - no, it doesn't have lift covers covering some
secret inside storage area - too bad, but that would probably have been
another thousand dollars. The two edge windows allow access to the
balcony - which is still awaiting its stainless steel railing wires.
The corner windows looking north. The odd item under the corner of
the wooded bench is a heater vent and there's an electrical outlet to the
right of that. The black circle in the carpet beneath the card table chair is a
floor electrical outlet awaiting it's fixture (since installed - nice brass one).
Standing on the wooded bench and looking west through the corner windows.
For scale's sake, the lower windows are five-feet in height.
A wide shot of the foyer area standing right at the top of the main stairs. That's an applewood ledge top in the center. One thing
I've discovered is how bright the second and third floor areas are - the white really catches and reflects any street or front door light
from the surrounding area.
Looking back at the area where the previous photo was taken.
A three-shot mosaic (manipulated in Photoshop) of me putting the glass and steel desk together.
A four-shot of me at the finished desk. Notice how the glass desk top catches the sky reflections. The other thing
I learned is that my laser mouse doesn't work on a glass surface which has no bottom. At first I thought the mouse
was dead and then I finally awoke and realized that the laser beam was shining straight through the glass to the
floor and the sensor wasn't catching any reflections. Guess I'll either use the trackpad or get a mousepad.
So, I'm a happy camper, sitting in the corner of my new studio.
Now the real hard work, getting everything upstairs and setting everything up.
More photos of how things evolve as it happens. The yard, yikes, now I've
got to pay attention to the yard again - no more work crew stuff littering
the grass so there's no excuse anymore.
One final shot taken today - Sunday - of the stuff I've managed to set up in the past couple of days - my desk, my
drums, my stereo (still missing a few cables, but there's still 25 more boxes to go). Drums sound great in this new
space - as do the Infinity's.
Seattle neighborhoods take the Fourth of July seriously - much more so I'm told since September 11, 2001, Heck, right beneath our feet were two intersecting corner fireworks displays which lasted at least an hour and they were less than 300 feet from us. What I think everyone doesn't realize, since all these neighborhood displays get set off at the intersection of cross streets is how continuous and seemless they appear from above rooftop altitude. Nancy (nurse neighbor), Katherine, Jim (former lumberjack turned office furniture installer), and I were enthralled, amused, amazed and somewhat stunned by this non-stop, continuous, panoramic display of 6,000-year-old Chinese technology. We're not talking a few here and a few there. What we're talking about is the continuous thunder and distant boom of hundreds of fireworks a minute for the time from 9:45 pm through past midnight when I finally called it a night. Nancy and Katherine had descended to the peace and calm of the first floor about 11 pm, saying they had seen enough fireworks for the year. Jim finally called it quits about 11:30, claiming he needed to get up early the next morning. Me, I called it quits when I realized that this area event would continue through the wee hours of the morning. Proving that, the electrician's helper showed up the next day and said he and his neighbors, who had amassed an arsenal of about $300 worth of fireworks, were shooting them off until about 2:00 am.
I don't think I've ever seen anything like this except for the video from the CNN reporters during the invasion of Baghdad - and that was portrayed in green light using night-vision optics. This was in Technicolor, CinemaScope, and SurroundSound.
So, just before Katherine went downstairs, I asked her - since she and I have seen dozens of years' worth of displays on the Mall during the Washington, DC annual fireworks festival - usually costing up to a dozen million dollars - which was better: The superior shows on the Mall which lasted for 20 minutes and which were choreographed by world-expert fireworks firms or the non-stop, neighborhood and nearby-town displays which had hypnotized us for an hour already? "No question, this is the best." was the answer. And, yes, it was the best. Where else could I have imagined myself being surrounded by fireworks for hours at a time and bathed in the sonic booms of thousands of little neighborhood explosions. From the west we had the various island towns and neighborhoods lighting up the Sound, we could even see the big bursters up over the ridge which hides Bremerton from our direct view. And, to the north there were the super-duper big bangs from downtown and Magnolia and Ballard and maybe even Shoreline. Yeah, I like this town.
Oh, the other advantage of watching all this from afar - no chordite smell in the air, no intervening fog of smoke and powder clouding the view. We did have a view of small crowds - down the various streets and at the various intersections. Big people setting up the device in the intersection or off the edge of the curb and little people getting to light the cord or fuse and then lots of people going "ooooh" and "ahhhh." And could I capture any of this digitally? Well, not really. I've posted a single, composite, image which shows the southeast panorama and which is a layered image consisting of a dozen or more shots. It gives a sense of the event but doesn't really capture the real light show. Next year? Who knows. The roof is too easy but I do miss the feel and sociology of thousands of people crowded together under a panoply of overhead fireworks so I may take my bike to the Lake Union show or may just ride along the waterfront. Plus, I must admit that it's kind of cool living in a town which has two major fireworks displays, both sanctioned and scheduled and of a tradition - the Lake Union event, which started some 40 years ago by Ivars, a local seafood restaurant chain which typifies Seattle and the Northwest, and the Elliott Bay event, which is the official City of Seattle 4th of July Celebration event. Not to mention that every other neighborhood seems to have some form of "area" event not counting the endless sets of neighbors actually setting off their own private fireworks displays in the middle of intersecting streets.
This afternoon, after moving a few more things upstairs (27 more boxes, two huge speakers, about a dozen bubble-wrapped components, several cubic yards worth of CD, Cassette, LP, and VHS storage cabinets filled, and more to go - a bit at a time is the right philosophy now), I walked up to Alaska Junction (that would be two Monorail stops away in the future) to check out the Friday version of the annual West Seattle Street Fair. It was pretty nice - the weather was spritzing and growling and acting mean with temps oscillating between mid-fifties and mid-sixties depending on which block. The WS street fair runs three days - Friday, Saturday and Sunday. They close off California Avenue for one block south and two blocks north of Alaska Street, which is also closed for two blocks east and one block west of California. There are three stages, one at the north end of the closed area of California, one at the south closed end of California and one around the corner from the "Junction," (Alaska@California - old street trolley transfer and turn-around point, at least the Monorail is honoring the history of transportation in West Seattle).
Did my usual traipse up the concourse, round whatever corners and bends there were, made my way back down the concourse - or in the case of the WS street fair, snaked my way up and down California to catch the inner tent aisles and then the outer sidewalk aisles. Every merchant had a huge sidewalk sale going on, Easy Street Records had used CDs for two bucks and used DVDs for four bucks - and one extra item if you bought a ten-spot's worth. It was a pretty good crowd despite the weather. The first day of these things which go on seem to vary on a fair or parade by fair or parade basis. Folklife seemed to start kind of slow and build up. Fremont started with a bang and seemed to taper down. Gay Pride seemed like a play or ballet with the major movement in the middle of an oddly off-synch time sandwich - perhaps as befitting the "queer" aspects of life being celebrated. I got the sense that the WS street fair is a different thing each day to draw from the really interesting mix of ethnic, economic and sociological variants which make up this peninsula. I love how the high brow live at the lands-end or cliffside places and the peasants live in the swampy low-lying areas with rats, stray dogs and mosquitos instead of richly garnished yards overlooking photon-enriched views of the city or region.
The other thing I like about WS is how it seems to either mimic or represent in miniature the city at large - Seattle city has the Lake to get past to go east, WS has the Duwamish River (a lot like the Cayahoga inside Cleveland city limits or the lower east side of Pittsburgh along the Monongahela). I saw a few of the artists I've seen at the other fairs and talked to one ceramicist (you can't really call them "potters" anymore, can you?) about the quality of deep blue which cobalt gives and how the aluminum silicate and the cobalt oxides interact to produce these deep - nearly ultraviolet - blues and how you can overglaze that with a whitener or even another layer of clay and get blues which range from deep blue through aqua. I was reminded of how many times through the history of the arts a particular chemical has done wonderful things with blue - the dyes which use indigo and how special the vats and preparation for the cloth is to get the colors to hold and remain rich. I'll track these cobalt pots and find some which work in the new space. I'll probably end up wearing an indigo shirt at some point. At an earlier era, in college, I actually sprung one year for a real Madras shirt - made in Madras out of whatever special cotton and weave they have and the way it held its colors was unreal. It wore out in only about three years, though, so not sure how long I should expect an indigo item to last. There were more of the same crafts and clothing folks I've seen before.
What was new seemed to be this "rent-a-circus/amusement park" area which worked just like Seattle Center arcade, you bought tickets to get on the rides. The rides were all made out of these inflatable structures and seemed to catch the imagination of a whole lot of three-to-twelve-year-old boys and girls and give a bunch of dads something meaningful to do. Both Gay Pride and Fremont had kid areas but I didn't see many kids at those and there were lots of kids at the "pay-for" WS fair. The food vendors were some of the usual and a whole bunch of strictly West Seattle places. Husky Deli had an outside stand for some of their barbeque and Harvest Bread and a couple other bakeries were doing pretty good with both the super-healthy-for-you stuff and the can't-get-enough-sugar stuff. In fact, it reminded me a lot of the Sunday Farmer's Market in West Seattle. This is a huge and diverse section of town but it definitely has a cozy feel to it and the West Seattle Street Fair had a cozy feel despite crowds.
It was also my luck to catch two more spectacular music groups. At the south stage I caught Henry Cooper and his band <http://www.henrycooper.com/>. These guys can absolutely play the Chicago Blues live and jammin' and with a real blues feel and steel electric slide taste. I was there for the entire hour gig and they kept the growing crowd tied up in rhythms and blues riffs and great wailing guitar sqeals. I love Chicago style and they're still making that stuff new every day. One of the side joys of traveling through Illinois is how many small towns have Chicago blues bands playing on the road in their town at their festival or fair or whatever. Anyway, great stuff, catch them if you like high intensity wailing and moaning and rocking blues. Down at the other end of the Junction was the north stage where I caught the start and most of Aquaduct's hour show. A weird but easily understood electronica-rock group not without their own internal, on-stage fun and "the joke's on all of us" attitude. Had the weather not turned even colder and wetter I would have stayed the rest of their set, as it was I caught about 40 minutes and they were drawing an interesting cross section as a crowd - not sure what one elderly lady was entranced by and two kids who biked by during one set did something to make the drummer laugh for the rest of the set.
I'll return Saturday and Sunday, each fair day has it's own rhythm and I might as well sample each new morsel with relish.
I've been upstairs a lot in the past few days. It's "finished" enough to move into so long as any of the remaining work can't be easily accessed whenever it is that it will get done (let's see, stuff still being made - for the railings and handrails; painters on vacation; electrical perplexities). Which basically means towels and toilet paper for the bathroom, all Adam's toys, stuff, books and other paraphernalia moved up to Studio A, all my stuff moved up to Studio C. Today I put together the glass and steel rounded-corner desk and set up a few more toys. Yesterday I spent about half the day setting up and then tuning and then playing the drums. Played them again today when a neighbor and her 17-month old son came by. The tyke - Henry - easily understood the concept of two sticks, two hands, bunch-o-differently-sounding percussion toys. The great news is that a pretty loud drum set doesn't create an annoying or disturbing presence downstairs. So, I appear to be free to let loose with the drum set. The JBL powered speaker has been playing the iPod for the past few days. JBL speakers can be made to sound good if you find the right place in the room and have some form of EQ available - the iPod does.
So this glass desk works just as I thought it would. Walking around the room, only the stuff "on" it and the Hong Kong-engineering style supports actually show up. There's no "bulk" or "huge" object taking up space. Actually, there is, it's just not visible. One doesn't intrude any closer to glass desks than one does to solid oak or mahogany antiques but in a room the former appears to be "not there" while the latter "weighs down" a room - visually, of course, but it's stunning how physical this mirage comes across. Anyway, suffice to say the desk works great - also holds heavy stuff and my legs and feet just fine. The other cool thing is how the desk surface reflects the sky above - since it's placed right at the point in the room where the two corner floor-to-ceiling triangular window sets are. The two angled glass desk surfaces reflect the sky up at the same angle the sky is coming in through the windows.
I wanted a kinetic office-studio-escape pod visual background environment. I got it - without even plugging in the television. Sitting on the drum stool and playing some rhythm and looking out into the space in front of me is great - knowing I can play loudly - to my ear's content - and see what's going on around me gives me a sense of freedom that I don't think I've felt except in places like the Black Hills standing on a ten-foot rock outcropping and bellowing out calls to create echos in the canyons and off nearby scrufty mountains. Now I want to stay up all the time.
Ah, such fun. Since August of last year I've not banged on my drums. Not had decent music playing in the background, nor felt like I had a "space" which was truly my own - without disturbing anyone near or far. Our old DC house was perfect like that - it was small and close in but inside it had physically and acoustically separate spaces - enough for four people to have their own space. Outside we had only two neighbors - and they had built their houses as barriers to our lot. Behind was a huge lot and across the street was the largest local neighborhood park - open space. Now, with the upstairs on this house we finally have acoustically and physically distinct spaces. Think of house as either "escape" or as "club" and then think of how many different acoustic, lighting, social or other conditions as might fit - what's that - a dozen. For us it's basically one per person plus one for pairs and one for all of us - which for three people means five environmental spaces for a "perfect" space requirement.
I think the cool thing about the new spaces in our house are how many appeal to different people. In a sense that means that we can allow anyone to feel comfortable by finding the appropriate space in the house. Heck, we've got two separate outside spaces where groups could disappear (lower deck and upper balcony) and an outside space (roof) where we could invite our Krypton-born friends to fly. The second floor has rooms with two doors so there's an open (or closed) flow to the place. Katherine put it this way, "you can't describe how it feels, you have to walk around, stand in different places in the same room, even what you can see changes by just moving." And, it's true.
I can sit at my glass desk, after the sun sets, cold Apple cathode ray tube in front of me, glowing LCD screen in my lap, music coming nicely and full-spectrum from a distant corner, and look out the corner glass prow of my own spaceship with distant lights twinkling across the Sound.
Shots and whatnot images appear below. It's time to return the yard to some kind of matching condition. I did empty and clean the pond and restack some flagstone so it would more emulate a babbling brook than a spout pouring water into a tub. The nice thing about that is up in the 3rd floor aerie, the sound of the babbling creek rises right up and fills the room with a nice background waterfall noise. Illusions, a little reality here and there, we're all easily amused.
Next task after unpacking and setting up - which could take weeks, who knows - is to figure out when we can have the set of open houses we should do - there's actually a block party coming up in the first part of August, I believe right before I'm to head East to DC and Carolina. Anyway, that may be the impromptu one. We need a couple "promptu" ones - for the "crew" (Schulte Builder, et al.; McNelis Architects, et. al; ) - for a couple Meet-Up groups who would find it fun - Photo and Photobloggers and Bloggers (yeah, that's three, but there's some fine distinctions going on here) - a sit-down style dinner party for the brain trust (Schulte, and fewer et al.; McNelis Architects, and fewer et al.) - by then it'll be Thanksgiving. We'll have been here more than a year and our lives still don't seem to have slowed down.
If I seem rambling and psyched it's because of the effects of using this new space. Man, this is way more than I'd put in my expectations bank. I still keep forgetting how much sky I can see. Or how perfectly comfortable the temperature or the rug is or how cool being able to open any window I want in any direction is. A new dominion. Even though we've technically only doubled the floor space (1080 to 2060 sqft), we've added about 160 percent more volume - interior air mass and space. And, yet, my heating bill has stayed steady or fallen. Technically, this house is as modern as can be built in all the right eco-terms. I experienced the thermal reduction from the windows the other day when it was brilliant and bright and blazingly solar hot outside and visibly ultraviolet and perceptibly cooler thermally on the other side of the glass. The sound dampening in the upstairs floor makes you think you're on some soundstage. Yeah, Yeah, I paid for it and asked for it so why shouldn't it be the way I wanted it to be?
Well, it should. I'm saying that the quality of the finished product has exceeded the architect's, builder's, AND owner's best expectation. All the hunches proved to be true and their implementation powerful examples of what can be done with space and light and air.
By all means, if you're in the neighborhood, drop in and ring the bell or knock on the door. If nothing else you can help move boxes upstairs. You all would be proud of how I used physics to surmount the "this task requires two people" aspect of getting some things upstairs - remember, Katherine is effectively out of it - one arm, body still in shock, chemistry all drugged up - not exactly the longshoreman needed to get some things up. But, physics, if you use it, can act as at least one additional person.
To end this rant let me just say it's great to be able to carve my initials on the inside of my own cave again.
More later.
Chas
Many single image frames overlaid on top of each other. The overall effect of being there was to be surrounded
by colorful explosions and to be immersed in this surround-sound of pops, bangs, deep kabooms, and distant
yells and chants.
On the way to the West Seattle Street Fair I take the 44th Avenue route which gives a great north and northwest
overlook of Puget Sound. That's Alaska Junction just right of the telephone phole to the right of center. There's
actually a park down on Fauntleroy Way which is accessible by a series of steep steps just down from the tree
on the far left. It's about a thirty minute walk from my house to the Junction - a distance of about two-and-a-half miles.
Now, Seattle has some strange residents. Normally one goes looking for them on Capitol Hill or in Fremont. But, at
the corner of California Avenue SW and SW Myrtle Street, there's this lady who rents this corner apartment in this
1920's style apartment row complex, who has set up what seems to be an archive or museum of her interests and,
who knows, maybe life, in front of her corner front door. There are flowers, knick-knacks, photographs, dolls, it's
hard to figure out what she's saying and I've been walking by this corner for 10 months now.
Here's a closer vantage point. At first I thought this was a store with the contents being more of the stuff one would
find in a rummage sale but upon closer investigation it began to dawn on me that this was this lady's expression of
personal space - except she has no front yard so she uses the sidewalk and sides of the building as her display space.
There are seven units in this building, which I believe was originally designed and built as a shopkeepers place. Each
of the units can't be much larger than 500 square feet - a big cave but a tiny apartment.
Looking north from the corner of California Avenue and Edmunds Street.
The fair is set up like a cross, with about 1200 feet of California and maybe
800 feet of Alaska set up with tents and other "fair" like features like the
inflatable amusement rides for the kids.
At the north end of California Ave. SW, looking back south towards my
end of West Seattle. The top of the hill in the distance is the Gatewood
neighborhood, my little slice of the town.
That's Henry Cooper on the left and his Chicago-style Blues band. These
guys really rocked and drew an ever-increasing crowd as their hour-long
set progressed. I had an actual seat - a la Folklife Festival Northwest Court
style. The Fremont Fair had four music venues, most with grass for seating,
West Seattle Fair had three music venues, all with little set-ups of folding
chairs for about 50 people and surrounded by street for any overflow. These
guys are worth catching and they seem to play about twice a week in various
Seattle city venues - check out The Stranger <http://www.thestranger.com> or
the various other paper listings.
Aqueduct playing their form of electronica-rock at the north end stage,
sponsored by the West Seattle Eagles, whose lodge is right behind the
stage. Notice the historic Altec-Lansing theater speakers and amplifiers
being used as stage amplification. These two ancient speaker-amp
combinations were taken directly from the Lodge and used for the street
stage. The Fremont Fair has an entire page of formal, big-Seattle-name
sponsors and all their stages were set up by one of the dozens of audio
studios or outfitters which call Seattle home. The West Seattle Street
Fair, in contrast, was sponsored by a half-dozen strictly West Seattle
locals (well, Washington Mutual is a "bigger" sponsor but their sponsorship
signs all pointed to their two Alaska Junction branches). More in keeping
with the "cozy" feel of the West Seattle fair.
A 360-degree panorama from inside Adam's room - Studio A. The left, corner, windows face east and south respectively, The
hallway faces north and the adjacent door leads to a hall with a bathroom and access to the other studio. Yes, it's true, one could
easily fall out of the two corner windows if one wasn't careful.
Not that bathrooms are any more worthy of being photographed than
any other room, but this is the upstairs bath - since this photo was taken
the towel racks and toilet-paper holder have been installed. Of interest
is the wood vanity and blue-marbled linoleum floor. The heating system
runs under the floor and behind the shower - and, yes, the floor is nicely
heated and feels quite toasty despite being hard linoleum.
At this point it looks more like a motel bathroom with no towels, no
Kleenex, no knick-knacks on the counter top - I'm sure that will change.
Looking into Studio C from the area where the bathroom hall would
lead into the room. Marks in the carpet are the sweeper marks.
360-degree panorama of Studio C - with the northwest corner windows in the left area, the hall and one window in the center and the
rest of the area filling the rest of the space. Since I took this photo I've added lots more "stuff" to the room.
Looking from the desk area toward the corner window with me sitting on
the nice wooded ledge - no, it doesn't have lift covers covering some
secret inside storage area - too bad, but that would probably have been
another thousand dollars. The two edge windows allow access to the
balcony - which is still awaiting its stainless steel railing wires.
The corner windows looking north. The odd item under the corner of
the wooded bench is a heater vent and there's an electrical outlet to the
right of that. The black circle in the carpet beneath the card table chair is a
floor electrical outlet awaiting it's fixture (since installed - nice brass one).
Standing on the wooded bench and looking west through the corner windows.
For scale's sake, the lower windows are five-feet in height.
A wide shot of the foyer area standing right at the top of the main stairs. That's an applewood ledge top in the center. One thing
I've discovered is how bright the second and third floor areas are - the white really catches and reflects any street or front door light
from the surrounding area.
Looking back at the area where the previous photo was taken.
A three-shot mosaic (manipulated in Photoshop) of me putting the glass and steel desk together.
A four-shot of me at the finished desk. Notice how the glass desk top catches the sky reflections. The other thing
I learned is that my laser mouse doesn't work on a glass surface which has no bottom. At first I thought the mouse
was dead and then I finally awoke and realized that the laser beam was shining straight through the glass to the
floor and the sensor wasn't catching any reflections. Guess I'll either use the trackpad or get a mousepad.
So, I'm a happy camper, sitting in the corner of my new studio.
Now the real hard work, getting everything upstairs and setting everything up.
More photos of how things evolve as it happens. The yard, yikes, now I've
got to pay attention to the yard again - no more work crew stuff littering
the grass so there's no excuse anymore.
One final shot taken today - Sunday - of the stuff I've managed to set up in the past couple of days - my desk, my
drums, my stereo (still missing a few cables, but there's still 25 more boxes to go). Drums sound great in this new
space - as do the Infinity's.
Posted: Sat - July 10, 2004 at 04:28 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