House Renovations, Final SIFF Reviews, Photos
Update on the last of the Seattle International
Film Festival movies which I saw (missed one through internal error - brain
stuck on wrong idea), an abstract of comparisons to home remodeling based on
conversations and tour of house with nearby "lot" farmer couple, update on house
work and - as usual - endless stream of photos capturing whatever struck my
fancy.
It's one week away from the longest day of the
year for us Northern Hemisphere dwellers - and 1 week away from the shortest day
of the year for any Southern Hemisphere dwellers. In Seattle, the Summer
Solstice means the Fremont Fair <http://www.fremontfair.org/>, Saturday and
Sunday at various venues in Fremont with live music from 10:00 am through dark
and lots of funky costumes and goings-on. This is another one of the live,
local, traditions which I'll be catching for the first time, and, from what I've
heard, it's great fun, is filled with tons of unique individuals and makes a lot
of noise. I'll probably bus over so I don't have to worry about walking my bike
everywhere. There's a bunch of music stages set up in various locations in and
around Fremont. I'll bring camera, extra batteries and flash cards, and, this
is one of those times when I sort-of wished I had a small-sized digital audio
recorder.
The Fremont Summer Solstice Fair is 33 years old. Starting July 9, Friday, and running through Sunday, July 11, is the 70th West Seattle Street Fair <http://www.wsstreetfest.com/>. In August comes the Seattle Music Festival at Alki Beach <http://www.northwestarts.org/smf/aboutsmf.htm>, which I'll unfortunately have to miss since it's the same dates as my Mom's side of the family biannual beach reunion in North Carolina <http://www.townofwrightsvillebeach.com/> and I'll be driving across the country while the music is playing on the beach here.
This is by way of reminding everyone that there's plenty of things to do out here; plenty of new music to be heard, plenty of new crafts to see; and plenty of new art to enjoy. The Seattle International Film Festival was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. I love movies, especially the non-standard, offbeat, flicks which come from independent producers and those which come from foreign lands. SIFF was a cornucopia of all that - over 300 movies from nearly every country on the planet in every genre imaginable. The last three I was "supposed" to see were "Bloom," "Playtime," and "Love Me If You Dare." Through persistence of mind, I somehow had the idea that "Love Me If You Dare" was playing at midnight - I remember getting the cheaper ticket. As it turns out it was playing at 1:30 pm Saturday and not midnight. I had planned on doing yard work, going for some pick-up items at Westwood Village and then relaxing a bit before heading downtown for the midnight flick. When I got back from my shopping, Katherine asked me how come the ticket said 1:30 pm if it was a midnight movie - ding, ding, ding. So I missed one of the flicks I'd wanted to see and also upped the average price of the nine I did see by about seventy-five cents. They were still a bargain. I understand from a neighbor that volunteering for SIFF could enable one to see a huge variety of SIFF flicks for free - if the volunteer hours and movie schedules work out. I'll check into that as well as go ahead and join Cinema Seattle, which brings with it the benefit of impromptu screenings and occasional sessions with visiting directors, cinematographers and screenwriters.
Final SIFF Reviews
Bloom * * *
An Irish rendition of James Joyce's Ulysses. The only previous movie to attempt Ulysses was the 1967 Joseph Strick production of Ulysses. I saw that one and it was "true" to Joyce, did capture the dark and brooding feeling of the tome and of the time and a great deal but not all of the salacious nature of Joyce's magnum opus. Bloom, is an update to the Joyce saga, filmed, as was the original, in Ireland, Dublin and along the coast. This version captures more of the brooding of the novel but succeeds much more than the 1967 original in capturing Joyce's stream-of-consciousness internal conversations which the three main characters (Molly and Leopold Bloom and Steven Dedalus) carry on throughout the work. The photography is also a character, as was the setting in Joyce's work - the weather, the brooding nature of the clouds with the breaking sun along the coast. The cinematography on this version is wonderful, capturing the dark and light, the black-white and colors of the people, the town, the coast and the dark alleys and inner sanctum of the characters. Hard as it seems to say this, Bloom also manages to bring a great deal of romanticism to James Joyce's Ulysses. It's not clear that the work itself is romantic; one could argue several ways with Joyce - he was fatalistic, he was existential, or, that he was fatalistic with a romantic inner vision all played out in the existential world of his characters. If one takes the latter approach to Ulysses, then Bloom captures Joyce better than expected. Since there's only two movie examples of this work it's difficult to really compare the two - Bloom is about 30 years later and all Irish - it's also the better of the two movies and if Joyce is too deep for reading, this is a good excursion into the mind of the Irish poet/recounter. Bloom was directed by Sean Walsh and stars Stephen Rea (Leopold Bloom), Angeline Ball (Molly Bloom), and Hugh O'Conor (Stephen Dedalus), and, of course, Ireland, the dark alleys of Dublin, and the North Sea weather.
Playtime * * * *
This is French director Jacques Tati's 1967 visual comedic parody of "modern" life, set basically at an office park between Orly Airport and the center of Paris. It was filmed in Cinemascope (70mm wide screen) and was presented in that format. It's hard to describe this film since it's a parody of all the foibles which occurred during the modernization of the Western World in the '60s, including automation, centralized management, importation of products from elsewhere, use of new and extremely different materials in constructing buildings and furnishings, the whole "outside" versus "inside" approach to things which transpired in that epochal decade. Plus, Tati has up to four or five dozen different visual sight points (gags, parodies, trompe l'oeil, and so on) going on in every scene. The Cinemascope production allows this to happen and potentially be seen but one has to be quick and scan the entire screen to capture all of what is going on. Every scene is a comedic set of pit or prat falls which occur to our erstwhile hero or to the tourists who are visiting "Paris" and who Tati follows as well. The plot could be described as "visiting salesman tries to find vendor at exhibition site while tourists spend three days exploring Paris." A very simple plot made complicated by the interjection of the new methods and devices of the "modern" world. Nearly everyone winds up being inadvertently frustrated throughout this visual essay. To punch home the notion of ubiquity, every travel poster features the same glass-and-steel skyscraper with a different tag line - "Visit London," "Visit Bombay," Visit Hawaii," and so on. The real Paris, meanwhile, is captured only in reflections of closing glass doors. Without seeing this movie it's difficult to perceive how all this could be two hours and six minutes of nearly non-stop laughter, but, this is the first movie in a long, long time where I literally laughed throughout the entire movie - at times to the point of tears. I'm not sure I can recommend this as a DVD or VHS because of the Cinemascope nature and the number of visual events happening simultaneously. If you have an HD monitor or a widescreen or projector television set then it's probable that the visual treat will come across. On an ordinary 27-inch NTSC television playing either DVD or VHS, I'm almost afraid the visual glee of the movie would be lost. Highly recommended, though. 126-minutes of visual treat and laugh-out-loud comedy climaxing in what can only be described as an exploding night club packed with all manner of hoity toity.
I'll have dozens upon dozens of reviews this time next year - SIFF 2005, Here I Come!
I've spent as much time away from the house as I could in the past few days, mostly to stay out of the way of the carpenters and painters - too many chefs in the kitchen, so to speak. I've been venturing in widening circles from our house in the larger neighborhood, which includes Gatewood, our specific neighborhood, Westwood, the adjacent neighborhood to the east, Fauntleroy, the neighborhood to the southwest (and the one surrounding the ferry terminal), and north towards Morgan Junction and east of there towards Delridge. Seattle is a city of neighborhoods, similar in many ways to Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and even Philadelphia. Much more so than Washington, DC, which, although it does have specific and identifiable neighborhoods, doesn't have quite as many nor are they quite as dramatically different from each other as they are in the other cities. That's probably because of the development patterns of DC - mostly having to do with an influx of government workers after World War 1, after World War 2, and the social era explosion of the '60s - the so-called "entitlement" years. DC's neighborhoods, consequently, cover large expanses physically but do not vary that much architecturally. Partially that's because of the overall concern that the Federal City have a stately look and feel. That's produced no end of Georgian, Colonial, a few Victorian and 60's rambler, but nothing at all like the pastiche of housing styles found in a lot of other similarly-sized cities - Seattle included. There are, for instance, no particular Craftsman or Bungalow style neighborhoods within the District, though Tacoma Park, Maryland, has its fair share of Bungalows and Craftsman homes. Of course, what Washington has that Seattle only begins to approach are whole neighborhoods of rowhouses, two and three and four story stone and masonry constructs which offer an endless facade variety within a block. There are literally whole square miles of such neighborhoods in DC - from Upper 16th Street and North Capitol Street down to the Capitol, all around Capitol Hill, and, across Rock Creek Park into the Woodley and Cleveland Park neighborhoods. Seattle has a few of these blocks in Central District, on First Hill, and in portions of Capitol Hill and Lower Queen Anne, but these are collections of blocks whereas in DC they are collections of square miles.
So, architecturally at least, the Nation's Capitol is relatively unique amongst North American cities in a lot of ways. The general layout of the streets - to a plan rather than to the geography or to a grid; the style of dominant dwelling structure, the limitations of height imposed early on and enforced - really enforced; the dominance of masonry versus carpentry as the home-building skill. Sociologically, the District is much more limited than the other cities cited or Seattle. The District has a "well off" class, a "public assistance" class, and a "wealthy" class. It's very much a three-tiered socio-economic entity. Seattle and the other cities cited have a much wider mix from true poor to true wealthy with a huge range of skill sets and socio-economic ranges in between. Seattle also has a more evolved "neighborhood" complex than does the District. Although we lived in the same house for 23 years, we were really the neighborhood gadabouts by knowing our adjacent neighbors, a few further up and down the block and a few on adjacent blocks for a total of perhaps a dozen folks we could say "hi" to by name. Within months of moving here, I knew that many people in the immediate houses surrounding ours. Taking all these spiraling walks over the past few months I've met even more people I can say "hi" to by name who live as much as a dozen blocks away. I attribute this partly to the greater, by far, number of animal owners here than in DC. In fact, to a degree, we're relatively unique in NOT owning a cat or dog or many cats or many dogs. Dog walking is a major pastime here and because of that people walk dozens of blocks almost daily and pass through their and adjacent neighborhoods on a regular basis.
Recently, coming back from the Staples at Westwood Village (in Westwood neighborhood, just east of 35th Avenue from Gatewood), I passed a house I had passed probably score of times but noticed a "Vegetables for Sale" sign up and one of the residents out and about in the garden. That started a conversation (I'll really use ANY excuse but it's better if the excuse is legitimate). Turns out Mace and Stacy bought this 1920's Craftsman house in 1993 at the unbelievable price of $89,000 and set about to restore and add onto the house. In the past few years they've turned what was a Craftsman kit house into what I'm calling Post-Craftsman Craftsman. They've restored the original structure, raised it and added a heated concrete floor basement (full size and full house), scrounged and found original claw-foot tubs and porcelain sinks, upgraded the electrical, and enhanced the original structure with new (made on Bainbridge Island) double-hung, wooden Craftsman-style windows (quite costly but handsome beyond one's dreams). The house has an organic vegetable garden in which the couple grow potatoes, tomatoes, a variety of beans, a huge variety of leafy greens, artichokes, garlic, carrots, and on and on. I chatted with them for quite a long time, sharing stories of exploration, politics, mass transit, home renovation, and more. Turns out the couple walk their dog by our house and have been watching the construction for the past few months with Stacy wanting to get a closer look. I purchased some outstanding salad greens and invited them to knock on our door next time they're on 39th Avenue walking their dog.
What's interesting to me is the complete diversity of approaches Katherine and I, on the one hand, and Mace and Stacy, on the other, have taken to adding space, enhancing an existing older dwelling, and maximizing the landuse quality of the particular area where the house is located. They're in a somewhat benign location with respect to wind and hot/cold temperatures, being between the two ridges in West Seattle and on the downward-sloping corner of a street which sinks deep into the lowlands of the Longfellow Creek watershed. This has allowed them to build the house up, mounded so the basement could be added, and has allowed them to use a huge yard space for ornamental and vegetable growing - something they really like since they like to eat well and cook well. Katherine and I have decided to enhance a house which is essentially 25 years younger but much plainer at its birth into something which is rather striking and a departure from the original structure while still keeping the functionality of the original structure. Since we are more into wind and views, our use of yard has been to maximize the flow of air through the structure and to enable the best use of the view space from the most number of internal locations.
The other element of interest is the maintenance of some preservation with the past. In looking at the photos Mace and Tracy got of their house when it was new and looking at the structure as it is now one can still see the original Craftsman house, it's now on a raised ground area and has a perfectly-blended addition to its western end with an enhancement to the original fenestration. Looking at the pictures of our house before the garage was physically moved and attached to the house, before the dining room addition was added, and now with both those previous additions and our second floor and tower/aerie addition, one can still find the original 1947 "war box" house but it's been incorporated into the subsequent structural additions with no loss of integrity to the original structure (such integrity as these type houses actually had). And yet, in both instances, the present incarnation of the existing house has become a much more pleasing form and much more livable space.
I've been watching a few other houses in the extended neighborhood as they've evolved in the past nine months. I get the feeling that in addition to owning animals and having a garden, the other thing Seattleites like to do is continually dicker with their dwellings. When the additions of our house are done we probably won't do much for a bit, but I sense that we might then begin to tackle the yard. With the ease with which things grow out here, it would be a true waste of environment if we didn't decide to grow something edible or something simply for the aesthetic. I personally love to shape trees and we do have a variety of trees at the perfect shaping stage. I also would like to try my hand at bonsai but will approach that from a more learned perspective.
And, speaking of house additions, ours is coming along. We're at the painting stage right now. The exterior work is finished, all the siding, panels, trim and gutters are in place. External colors will be a very pale olive (think light green-gray) for the main house color with a lighter still (think almost yellow-green-white) trim color with certain panels on the tower being a darker olive (think real green olive). That will be in keeping with the existing paint scheme and blends well with the existing shrubbery and the corner location. The interior is now being trimmed out, the doors are in place, the floorboard and other things like window sills are being worked on. Once that is finished, which should be a day or two ahead of the painters, the painters will begin the interior finish painting. They've already primed everything. We've chosen a white which is a true white but somewhat muted from a titanium dioxide or zinc or lead oxide white (Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace if you really need to know). The doors will be a 10 percent gray of that same color, which the painters will mix with lampblack and brown pigment on site with leftover Chantilly Lace. Just to flesh out the color scheme, the carpet is a blue-gray which is similar to a pair of faded blue jeans and the bathroom tile is actually linoleum which is a similar shade of blue-gray.
Todd says we're within three or four weeks of close-out. After the wood and paint is finished comes the door hardware, the bathroom fixtures, the installation of lights, outlets and switches, plumbing connections, carpet laying and then a round of fix-and-correct items. Today was a watershed day in that the spiral staircase was installed. There's a lot more work to trim it out, ensure everything lines up correctly, install the railing and whatever safeguards are required on the top level (we'll need at least one guard rail and perhaps an additional half-wall to keep folks from falling down the stairwell). But, the ability to get to the aerie without having to climb a ladder is so sweet. One just walks up and - voila - there's the Sound, the Olympics, the Cascades, Rainier (Baker - though visible from up there has yet to show itself other than a single viewing so far). We'll undoubtedly wear out the carpet and the oak insets on the spiral staircase over the next few years but I can't wait for that process to begin.
I've given more thought to the open house and have decided we will run what amounts to an afternoon-evening-early night buffet and drink service. I've got a neighbor who's volunteered to help me with the food - we'll need to be conscious of Vegan, Jewish, Omnivore, Vegetarian, Hindu and other food requirements - which just means one each of everything and nothing touching anything else during preparation or presentation. For drink, I'll get any number of waters - flavored, vitamin-added, natural, fizzy, whatever, plus a few natural fruit juices and probably the usual assortment of beers and soft drinks - which means Guinness and Bud, for instance, and Coke and Pepsi and Dr. Pepper and Seven-Up. For me, though, I've got 13 bottles of wine - whites including a collection of West Coast Chardonnays - and a collection of interesting and complex reds from Australia, the Americas, and France. The only thing they have in common is they are all $8 bottles of wine, so it's going to be an eight-dollar-bottle-of-wine testing party as well. I could well be totally looped by the time the sun sets over Puget Sound, lucky for me I live here.
It should be a great, fun, neighborhood party since most of those who will probably drop by will have walked by this place for the past nearly year. I'll also invite the members of the several meet-ups I regularly hang with - the blog folks and the photo and photolog folks. For them, I'll provide probably some subset of the neighborhood party and add the coffee to the mix, as well as the free Wi-Fi and the outstanding views of the region.
It'll be an interesting way to meet new people and, not inconsequently, an interesting way for the neighborhood to come together. The planning for this event has been moving from the back of my mind to the front for the past week as things are getting close. I dropped by Staples to order five cherry (real wood) four-shelf, thirty-inch-wide, bookcases, three for my studio and two for Adam's, as well as a matching equipment stand (matching my glass and metal desk) to house my stereo gear. I need next to shop for futons, but there's an endless list of futon shops here - I think Seattle's official form of bedding is a futon - so that should be easy enough. It's really getting to feel like the week before Christmas with things getting so close - tantalizingly close.
Will report on whatever happens next - and I can't even imagine what it's likely to be - my life has become as variable as the weather out here.
There are lots of photos, of all sorts of things including house, below. Otherwise, have a fun week, enjoy the weather and celebrate the Summer Solstice in whichever manner you choose - it's a major event - the longest day of the year and all that - coming up just past this weekend. I can't tell you how unnerving it is for daybreak to occur at 4:30 am, which it does here. I'm just not used to that early a day.
Chas
Facade of an older building being incorporated into a new
condominium going up along Second Avenue at Lenora
Street in Belltown.
Brick relief sculpture on Qwest building in Belltown, this one depicts
Alexander Graham Bell's invention through modern fiber optics.
Adjacent brick sculpture depicting Seattle's waterfront evolution. These
sculptures are on the Lenora Street side of the building, which appears to
be the central switch for Belltown and probably Queen Anne and the Lake
Union area. On the Second Avenue side are four additional brick sculptures.
The entire building - a ten or twelve-story structure, is brick and these are
basically the only adornments to the entire facility. There are small
windows located at what appear to be aisle positions on the floors, but it
is definitely a structure for equipment and not people. There is NO lobby,
just a very securely gated side entrance for what looks like vans and people.
Unimpeded shot of Blake Island from street intersection just east of Morgan Junction, showing one of the outstanding,
random, views possible just walking the streets here in West Seattle - not that the rest of Seattle wants for views, either.
Same general neighborhood as the previous shot, this time focusing in on Alaska Junction urban village, at the top-
center of the view. Behind that, in the distance, the radome atop Discovery Park in Magnolia - across Elliott Bay from
West Seattle. In the distance, to the left, the foothills of the Olympic Peninsula. Simply outstanding, random, views from
nearly anywhere in Seattle - or for that matter - along Puget Sound.
Two shots showing Joe (left) and Rick (right) working on the siding. I call this series and the two which follow
Carpenter Symmetry.
A series of four photos - again - showing Carpenter Symmetry. A pair of skilled carpenters can throw things
together like nobody's business. Joe (left) and Rick (right) were putting up siding and - in this case - corner trim.
The final - five shot sequence - in the Carpenter Symmetry series. The use of the work platform has greatly enhanced
Joe's (left) and Rick's (right) productivity. They were able to tackle the siding and trim on the tower section in just a
couple of days whereas previously they would have to rig up ladders, platforms, and other contrivances to get the job
done. Chalk one up for Schulte Construction, this is a productivity-enhancement investment made by Todd for his business.
View of a house in the Morgan Junction area which sits on a high corner and has sound views, similar in siting to
our house. This is being shown to portray the various corner houses which take advantage of their lot.
Panorama of the same house showing the general siting of the house, the rise of its corner, and the lower, flat,
area it looks out over. This is just east of Morgan Junction and in the area south of Alaska Junction between
California Avenue SW and 35th Avenue SW.
The view from the next block up, no fancy corner house but outstanding views from the middle of the road.
Back at 3903 SW Monroe Street, Rick is using electric snippers to cut the sheets of Hardy board to the right angle for finishing
up one area of siding where the siding meets the sloping roofline. The right tool makes a job - if not easy at least productive -
and Rick and Joe (and Andy and Aaron as well) have a rich tool set they carry from job to job. Most of the personal use tools
are owned by the carpenters themselves and the jobsite tools, such as the ladders and platform risers, are owned by the
builder for the crew. These guys have thousands of dollars tied up in their various power tools - both electric and air pump.
Rick and Joe are shown in this sequence putting up the final, custom-cut, pieces of siding to the front - north -
side of the house. What's unbelievable is how many different skill sets these carpenters need to be as polished
and productive as they've been. There are dozens of different kinds of materials, to be cut and applied
differently with a different set of specs and fasteners. There are hundreds of complex cuts for any given
normal square project and this project was anything but square - some pieces of lumber had two or three
compound-angle cuts to make them fit correctly.
With the siding installed, it's the painter's turn to use their
ladders, sheet and otherwise protect the parts which don't
get painted, and then to prime, paint and second-coat
everything. The painters are all brothers - three of them.
Their dad is a painter and a reknowned drummer and
at least two of the sons are also drummers. One runs a
website and graphics business on the side as well.
Joe, working to close out the venting from the various bathrooms and
kitchen to the newly-installed outside vents. The heating ductwork and
new plumbing from the second-floor bathroom are also in this view, as
is the original, through-the-hall-closet, access to what had been the attic.
A series of 18 photos showing the installation of the spiral staircase. Seen variously in these views are
Todd Schulte (in straw cowboy hat), Rick (in white T-shirt), Joe (in black longsleeve T-shirt), and Andrew -
a new addition (in gray T-shirt). All four worked on this at some time during the day - measuring, tightening
the set screws, installing the rail stanchions, and securing everything to the top and bottom. This was a first
for everyone - installing a kit spiral staircase - and everyone, including Katherine and me, was interested in
how it went together. The firm included the usual "how to" set of instructions, all hardware was in separate
plastic packs, and Todd reviewed the video which was also included - "how to assemble the 1/2 spiral staircase."
Enjoy the Summer Solstice. More later.
The Fremont Summer Solstice Fair is 33 years old. Starting July 9, Friday, and running through Sunday, July 11, is the 70th West Seattle Street Fair <http://www.wsstreetfest.com/>. In August comes the Seattle Music Festival at Alki Beach <http://www.northwestarts.org/smf/aboutsmf.htm>, which I'll unfortunately have to miss since it's the same dates as my Mom's side of the family biannual beach reunion in North Carolina <http://www.townofwrightsvillebeach.com/> and I'll be driving across the country while the music is playing on the beach here.
This is by way of reminding everyone that there's plenty of things to do out here; plenty of new music to be heard, plenty of new crafts to see; and plenty of new art to enjoy. The Seattle International Film Festival was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. I love movies, especially the non-standard, offbeat, flicks which come from independent producers and those which come from foreign lands. SIFF was a cornucopia of all that - over 300 movies from nearly every country on the planet in every genre imaginable. The last three I was "supposed" to see were "Bloom," "Playtime," and "Love Me If You Dare." Through persistence of mind, I somehow had the idea that "Love Me If You Dare" was playing at midnight - I remember getting the cheaper ticket. As it turns out it was playing at 1:30 pm Saturday and not midnight. I had planned on doing yard work, going for some pick-up items at Westwood Village and then relaxing a bit before heading downtown for the midnight flick. When I got back from my shopping, Katherine asked me how come the ticket said 1:30 pm if it was a midnight movie - ding, ding, ding. So I missed one of the flicks I'd wanted to see and also upped the average price of the nine I did see by about seventy-five cents. They were still a bargain. I understand from a neighbor that volunteering for SIFF could enable one to see a huge variety of SIFF flicks for free - if the volunteer hours and movie schedules work out. I'll check into that as well as go ahead and join Cinema Seattle, which brings with it the benefit of impromptu screenings and occasional sessions with visiting directors, cinematographers and screenwriters.
Final SIFF Reviews
Bloom * * *
An Irish rendition of James Joyce's Ulysses. The only previous movie to attempt Ulysses was the 1967 Joseph Strick production of Ulysses. I saw that one and it was "true" to Joyce, did capture the dark and brooding feeling of the tome and of the time and a great deal but not all of the salacious nature of Joyce's magnum opus. Bloom, is an update to the Joyce saga, filmed, as was the original, in Ireland, Dublin and along the coast. This version captures more of the brooding of the novel but succeeds much more than the 1967 original in capturing Joyce's stream-of-consciousness internal conversations which the three main characters (Molly and Leopold Bloom and Steven Dedalus) carry on throughout the work. The photography is also a character, as was the setting in Joyce's work - the weather, the brooding nature of the clouds with the breaking sun along the coast. The cinematography on this version is wonderful, capturing the dark and light, the black-white and colors of the people, the town, the coast and the dark alleys and inner sanctum of the characters. Hard as it seems to say this, Bloom also manages to bring a great deal of romanticism to James Joyce's Ulysses. It's not clear that the work itself is romantic; one could argue several ways with Joyce - he was fatalistic, he was existential, or, that he was fatalistic with a romantic inner vision all played out in the existential world of his characters. If one takes the latter approach to Ulysses, then Bloom captures Joyce better than expected. Since there's only two movie examples of this work it's difficult to really compare the two - Bloom is about 30 years later and all Irish - it's also the better of the two movies and if Joyce is too deep for reading, this is a good excursion into the mind of the Irish poet/recounter. Bloom was directed by Sean Walsh and stars Stephen Rea (Leopold Bloom), Angeline Ball (Molly Bloom), and Hugh O'Conor (Stephen Dedalus), and, of course, Ireland, the dark alleys of Dublin, and the North Sea weather.
Playtime * * * *
This is French director Jacques Tati's 1967 visual comedic parody of "modern" life, set basically at an office park between Orly Airport and the center of Paris. It was filmed in Cinemascope (70mm wide screen) and was presented in that format. It's hard to describe this film since it's a parody of all the foibles which occurred during the modernization of the Western World in the '60s, including automation, centralized management, importation of products from elsewhere, use of new and extremely different materials in constructing buildings and furnishings, the whole "outside" versus "inside" approach to things which transpired in that epochal decade. Plus, Tati has up to four or five dozen different visual sight points (gags, parodies, trompe l'oeil, and so on) going on in every scene. The Cinemascope production allows this to happen and potentially be seen but one has to be quick and scan the entire screen to capture all of what is going on. Every scene is a comedic set of pit or prat falls which occur to our erstwhile hero or to the tourists who are visiting "Paris" and who Tati follows as well. The plot could be described as "visiting salesman tries to find vendor at exhibition site while tourists spend three days exploring Paris." A very simple plot made complicated by the interjection of the new methods and devices of the "modern" world. Nearly everyone winds up being inadvertently frustrated throughout this visual essay. To punch home the notion of ubiquity, every travel poster features the same glass-and-steel skyscraper with a different tag line - "Visit London," "Visit Bombay," Visit Hawaii," and so on. The real Paris, meanwhile, is captured only in reflections of closing glass doors. Without seeing this movie it's difficult to perceive how all this could be two hours and six minutes of nearly non-stop laughter, but, this is the first movie in a long, long time where I literally laughed throughout the entire movie - at times to the point of tears. I'm not sure I can recommend this as a DVD or VHS because of the Cinemascope nature and the number of visual events happening simultaneously. If you have an HD monitor or a widescreen or projector television set then it's probable that the visual treat will come across. On an ordinary 27-inch NTSC television playing either DVD or VHS, I'm almost afraid the visual glee of the movie would be lost. Highly recommended, though. 126-minutes of visual treat and laugh-out-loud comedy climaxing in what can only be described as an exploding night club packed with all manner of hoity toity.
I'll have dozens upon dozens of reviews this time next year - SIFF 2005, Here I Come!
I've spent as much time away from the house as I could in the past few days, mostly to stay out of the way of the carpenters and painters - too many chefs in the kitchen, so to speak. I've been venturing in widening circles from our house in the larger neighborhood, which includes Gatewood, our specific neighborhood, Westwood, the adjacent neighborhood to the east, Fauntleroy, the neighborhood to the southwest (and the one surrounding the ferry terminal), and north towards Morgan Junction and east of there towards Delridge. Seattle is a city of neighborhoods, similar in many ways to Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and even Philadelphia. Much more so than Washington, DC, which, although it does have specific and identifiable neighborhoods, doesn't have quite as many nor are they quite as dramatically different from each other as they are in the other cities. That's probably because of the development patterns of DC - mostly having to do with an influx of government workers after World War 1, after World War 2, and the social era explosion of the '60s - the so-called "entitlement" years. DC's neighborhoods, consequently, cover large expanses physically but do not vary that much architecturally. Partially that's because of the overall concern that the Federal City have a stately look and feel. That's produced no end of Georgian, Colonial, a few Victorian and 60's rambler, but nothing at all like the pastiche of housing styles found in a lot of other similarly-sized cities - Seattle included. There are, for instance, no particular Craftsman or Bungalow style neighborhoods within the District, though Tacoma Park, Maryland, has its fair share of Bungalows and Craftsman homes. Of course, what Washington has that Seattle only begins to approach are whole neighborhoods of rowhouses, two and three and four story stone and masonry constructs which offer an endless facade variety within a block. There are literally whole square miles of such neighborhoods in DC - from Upper 16th Street and North Capitol Street down to the Capitol, all around Capitol Hill, and, across Rock Creek Park into the Woodley and Cleveland Park neighborhoods. Seattle has a few of these blocks in Central District, on First Hill, and in portions of Capitol Hill and Lower Queen Anne, but these are collections of blocks whereas in DC they are collections of square miles.
So, architecturally at least, the Nation's Capitol is relatively unique amongst North American cities in a lot of ways. The general layout of the streets - to a plan rather than to the geography or to a grid; the style of dominant dwelling structure, the limitations of height imposed early on and enforced - really enforced; the dominance of masonry versus carpentry as the home-building skill. Sociologically, the District is much more limited than the other cities cited or Seattle. The District has a "well off" class, a "public assistance" class, and a "wealthy" class. It's very much a three-tiered socio-economic entity. Seattle and the other cities cited have a much wider mix from true poor to true wealthy with a huge range of skill sets and socio-economic ranges in between. Seattle also has a more evolved "neighborhood" complex than does the District. Although we lived in the same house for 23 years, we were really the neighborhood gadabouts by knowing our adjacent neighbors, a few further up and down the block and a few on adjacent blocks for a total of perhaps a dozen folks we could say "hi" to by name. Within months of moving here, I knew that many people in the immediate houses surrounding ours. Taking all these spiraling walks over the past few months I've met even more people I can say "hi" to by name who live as much as a dozen blocks away. I attribute this partly to the greater, by far, number of animal owners here than in DC. In fact, to a degree, we're relatively unique in NOT owning a cat or dog or many cats or many dogs. Dog walking is a major pastime here and because of that people walk dozens of blocks almost daily and pass through their and adjacent neighborhoods on a regular basis.
Recently, coming back from the Staples at Westwood Village (in Westwood neighborhood, just east of 35th Avenue from Gatewood), I passed a house I had passed probably score of times but noticed a "Vegetables for Sale" sign up and one of the residents out and about in the garden. That started a conversation (I'll really use ANY excuse but it's better if the excuse is legitimate). Turns out Mace and Stacy bought this 1920's Craftsman house in 1993 at the unbelievable price of $89,000 and set about to restore and add onto the house. In the past few years they've turned what was a Craftsman kit house into what I'm calling Post-Craftsman Craftsman. They've restored the original structure, raised it and added a heated concrete floor basement (full size and full house), scrounged and found original claw-foot tubs and porcelain sinks, upgraded the electrical, and enhanced the original structure with new (made on Bainbridge Island) double-hung, wooden Craftsman-style windows (quite costly but handsome beyond one's dreams). The house has an organic vegetable garden in which the couple grow potatoes, tomatoes, a variety of beans, a huge variety of leafy greens, artichokes, garlic, carrots, and on and on. I chatted with them for quite a long time, sharing stories of exploration, politics, mass transit, home renovation, and more. Turns out the couple walk their dog by our house and have been watching the construction for the past few months with Stacy wanting to get a closer look. I purchased some outstanding salad greens and invited them to knock on our door next time they're on 39th Avenue walking their dog.
What's interesting to me is the complete diversity of approaches Katherine and I, on the one hand, and Mace and Stacy, on the other, have taken to adding space, enhancing an existing older dwelling, and maximizing the landuse quality of the particular area where the house is located. They're in a somewhat benign location with respect to wind and hot/cold temperatures, being between the two ridges in West Seattle and on the downward-sloping corner of a street which sinks deep into the lowlands of the Longfellow Creek watershed. This has allowed them to build the house up, mounded so the basement could be added, and has allowed them to use a huge yard space for ornamental and vegetable growing - something they really like since they like to eat well and cook well. Katherine and I have decided to enhance a house which is essentially 25 years younger but much plainer at its birth into something which is rather striking and a departure from the original structure while still keeping the functionality of the original structure. Since we are more into wind and views, our use of yard has been to maximize the flow of air through the structure and to enable the best use of the view space from the most number of internal locations.
The other element of interest is the maintenance of some preservation with the past. In looking at the photos Mace and Tracy got of their house when it was new and looking at the structure as it is now one can still see the original Craftsman house, it's now on a raised ground area and has a perfectly-blended addition to its western end with an enhancement to the original fenestration. Looking at the pictures of our house before the garage was physically moved and attached to the house, before the dining room addition was added, and now with both those previous additions and our second floor and tower/aerie addition, one can still find the original 1947 "war box" house but it's been incorporated into the subsequent structural additions with no loss of integrity to the original structure (such integrity as these type houses actually had). And yet, in both instances, the present incarnation of the existing house has become a much more pleasing form and much more livable space.
I've been watching a few other houses in the extended neighborhood as they've evolved in the past nine months. I get the feeling that in addition to owning animals and having a garden, the other thing Seattleites like to do is continually dicker with their dwellings. When the additions of our house are done we probably won't do much for a bit, but I sense that we might then begin to tackle the yard. With the ease with which things grow out here, it would be a true waste of environment if we didn't decide to grow something edible or something simply for the aesthetic. I personally love to shape trees and we do have a variety of trees at the perfect shaping stage. I also would like to try my hand at bonsai but will approach that from a more learned perspective.
And, speaking of house additions, ours is coming along. We're at the painting stage right now. The exterior work is finished, all the siding, panels, trim and gutters are in place. External colors will be a very pale olive (think light green-gray) for the main house color with a lighter still (think almost yellow-green-white) trim color with certain panels on the tower being a darker olive (think real green olive). That will be in keeping with the existing paint scheme and blends well with the existing shrubbery and the corner location. The interior is now being trimmed out, the doors are in place, the floorboard and other things like window sills are being worked on. Once that is finished, which should be a day or two ahead of the painters, the painters will begin the interior finish painting. They've already primed everything. We've chosen a white which is a true white but somewhat muted from a titanium dioxide or zinc or lead oxide white (Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace if you really need to know). The doors will be a 10 percent gray of that same color, which the painters will mix with lampblack and brown pigment on site with leftover Chantilly Lace. Just to flesh out the color scheme, the carpet is a blue-gray which is similar to a pair of faded blue jeans and the bathroom tile is actually linoleum which is a similar shade of blue-gray.
Todd says we're within three or four weeks of close-out. After the wood and paint is finished comes the door hardware, the bathroom fixtures, the installation of lights, outlets and switches, plumbing connections, carpet laying and then a round of fix-and-correct items. Today was a watershed day in that the spiral staircase was installed. There's a lot more work to trim it out, ensure everything lines up correctly, install the railing and whatever safeguards are required on the top level (we'll need at least one guard rail and perhaps an additional half-wall to keep folks from falling down the stairwell). But, the ability to get to the aerie without having to climb a ladder is so sweet. One just walks up and - voila - there's the Sound, the Olympics, the Cascades, Rainier (Baker - though visible from up there has yet to show itself other than a single viewing so far). We'll undoubtedly wear out the carpet and the oak insets on the spiral staircase over the next few years but I can't wait for that process to begin.
I've given more thought to the open house and have decided we will run what amounts to an afternoon-evening-early night buffet and drink service. I've got a neighbor who's volunteered to help me with the food - we'll need to be conscious of Vegan, Jewish, Omnivore, Vegetarian, Hindu and other food requirements - which just means one each of everything and nothing touching anything else during preparation or presentation. For drink, I'll get any number of waters - flavored, vitamin-added, natural, fizzy, whatever, plus a few natural fruit juices and probably the usual assortment of beers and soft drinks - which means Guinness and Bud, for instance, and Coke and Pepsi and Dr. Pepper and Seven-Up. For me, though, I've got 13 bottles of wine - whites including a collection of West Coast Chardonnays - and a collection of interesting and complex reds from Australia, the Americas, and France. The only thing they have in common is they are all $8 bottles of wine, so it's going to be an eight-dollar-bottle-of-wine testing party as well. I could well be totally looped by the time the sun sets over Puget Sound, lucky for me I live here.
It should be a great, fun, neighborhood party since most of those who will probably drop by will have walked by this place for the past nearly year. I'll also invite the members of the several meet-ups I regularly hang with - the blog folks and the photo and photolog folks. For them, I'll provide probably some subset of the neighborhood party and add the coffee to the mix, as well as the free Wi-Fi and the outstanding views of the region.
It'll be an interesting way to meet new people and, not inconsequently, an interesting way for the neighborhood to come together. The planning for this event has been moving from the back of my mind to the front for the past week as things are getting close. I dropped by Staples to order five cherry (real wood) four-shelf, thirty-inch-wide, bookcases, three for my studio and two for Adam's, as well as a matching equipment stand (matching my glass and metal desk) to house my stereo gear. I need next to shop for futons, but there's an endless list of futon shops here - I think Seattle's official form of bedding is a futon - so that should be easy enough. It's really getting to feel like the week before Christmas with things getting so close - tantalizingly close.
Will report on whatever happens next - and I can't even imagine what it's likely to be - my life has become as variable as the weather out here.
There are lots of photos, of all sorts of things including house, below. Otherwise, have a fun week, enjoy the weather and celebrate the Summer Solstice in whichever manner you choose - it's a major event - the longest day of the year and all that - coming up just past this weekend. I can't tell you how unnerving it is for daybreak to occur at 4:30 am, which it does here. I'm just not used to that early a day.
Chas
Facade of an older building being incorporated into a new
condominium going up along Second Avenue at Lenora
Street in Belltown.
Brick relief sculpture on Qwest building in Belltown, this one depicts
Alexander Graham Bell's invention through modern fiber optics.
Adjacent brick sculpture depicting Seattle's waterfront evolution. These
sculptures are on the Lenora Street side of the building, which appears to
be the central switch for Belltown and probably Queen Anne and the Lake
Union area. On the Second Avenue side are four additional brick sculptures.
The entire building - a ten or twelve-story structure, is brick and these are
basically the only adornments to the entire facility. There are small
windows located at what appear to be aisle positions on the floors, but it
is definitely a structure for equipment and not people. There is NO lobby,
just a very securely gated side entrance for what looks like vans and people.
Unimpeded shot of Blake Island from street intersection just east of Morgan Junction, showing one of the outstanding,
random, views possible just walking the streets here in West Seattle - not that the rest of Seattle wants for views, either.
Same general neighborhood as the previous shot, this time focusing in on Alaska Junction urban village, at the top-
center of the view. Behind that, in the distance, the radome atop Discovery Park in Magnolia - across Elliott Bay from
West Seattle. In the distance, to the left, the foothills of the Olympic Peninsula. Simply outstanding, random, views from
nearly anywhere in Seattle - or for that matter - along Puget Sound.
Two shots showing Joe (left) and Rick (right) working on the siding. I call this series and the two which follow
Carpenter Symmetry.
A series of four photos - again - showing Carpenter Symmetry. A pair of skilled carpenters can throw things
together like nobody's business. Joe (left) and Rick (right) were putting up siding and - in this case - corner trim.
The final - five shot sequence - in the Carpenter Symmetry series. The use of the work platform has greatly enhanced
Joe's (left) and Rick's (right) productivity. They were able to tackle the siding and trim on the tower section in just a
couple of days whereas previously they would have to rig up ladders, platforms, and other contrivances to get the job
done. Chalk one up for Schulte Construction, this is a productivity-enhancement investment made by Todd for his business.
View of a house in the Morgan Junction area which sits on a high corner and has sound views, similar in siting to
our house. This is being shown to portray the various corner houses which take advantage of their lot.
Panorama of the same house showing the general siting of the house, the rise of its corner, and the lower, flat,
area it looks out over. This is just east of Morgan Junction and in the area south of Alaska Junction between
California Avenue SW and 35th Avenue SW.
The view from the next block up, no fancy corner house but outstanding views from the middle of the road.
Back at 3903 SW Monroe Street, Rick is using electric snippers to cut the sheets of Hardy board to the right angle for finishing
up one area of siding where the siding meets the sloping roofline. The right tool makes a job - if not easy at least productive -
and Rick and Joe (and Andy and Aaron as well) have a rich tool set they carry from job to job. Most of the personal use tools
are owned by the carpenters themselves and the jobsite tools, such as the ladders and platform risers, are owned by the
builder for the crew. These guys have thousands of dollars tied up in their various power tools - both electric and air pump.
Rick and Joe are shown in this sequence putting up the final, custom-cut, pieces of siding to the front - north -
side of the house. What's unbelievable is how many different skill sets these carpenters need to be as polished
and productive as they've been. There are dozens of different kinds of materials, to be cut and applied
differently with a different set of specs and fasteners. There are hundreds of complex cuts for any given
normal square project and this project was anything but square - some pieces of lumber had two or three
compound-angle cuts to make them fit correctly.
With the siding installed, it's the painter's turn to use their
ladders, sheet and otherwise protect the parts which don't
get painted, and then to prime, paint and second-coat
everything. The painters are all brothers - three of them.
Their dad is a painter and a reknowned drummer and
at least two of the sons are also drummers. One runs a
website and graphics business on the side as well.
Joe, working to close out the venting from the various bathrooms and
kitchen to the newly-installed outside vents. The heating ductwork and
new plumbing from the second-floor bathroom are also in this view, as
is the original, through-the-hall-closet, access to what had been the attic.
A series of 18 photos showing the installation of the spiral staircase. Seen variously in these views are
Todd Schulte (in straw cowboy hat), Rick (in white T-shirt), Joe (in black longsleeve T-shirt), and Andrew -
a new addition (in gray T-shirt). All four worked on this at some time during the day - measuring, tightening
the set screws, installing the rail stanchions, and securing everything to the top and bottom. This was a first
for everyone - installing a kit spiral staircase - and everyone, including Katherine and me, was interested in
how it went together. The firm included the usual "how to" set of instructions, all hardware was in separate
plastic packs, and Todd reviewed the video which was also included - "how to assemble the 1/2 spiral staircase."
Enjoy the Summer Solstice. More later.
Posted: Tue - June 15, 2004 at 10:25 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