the Urban Archivist

The road through Aberdeen is strewn with psychic graffiti left in the wake of passing Puget Sounders on their way to surf in Westport or stay in a cabin at Ocean Shores. It’s a kind of pall born from indifference, vapid hostility, and eyes that can easily overlook what’s right in front of them.

“Only one more hour to the beach, kids!”

“What the hell do people do around here?”

“God, no wonder Kurt left.”

“This is such a dead little place.”

These sentiments and worse litter Highway 12 as it melts into downtown Aberdeen and vacationers peel off toward Ocean Shores or take 105 to Westport (…and the rest of the Cranberry Coast), leaving the city behind and thinking about it little, if at all, for the rest of their journeys. Why is that? In the words of Rodney Dangerfield, why doesn’t Aberdeen get any respect?

The prosaic answers are many, and easy. Logging and fishing have both declined in Washington in recent decades, with ill effects for the economy and for the people. Aberdeen is an hour away from the I-5 corridor, and what some people think of as the only part of the state that really matters. Nirvana came out of Aberdeen, and whether Kurt Cobain or Krist Novoselic actually hated the city or not, many people were left with that impression.

Every year as a child, I used to go to the coast with the family–once, twice, three times or more a year. We passed through Aberdeen and enjoyed it every time. Whether stopping at Duffy’s for lunch, browsing through junk shops, or stopping at the grocery store for kitchen supplies for the beach, it felt like home. That familiarity, ultimately, is why Seattle and the rest of so-called “enlightened” Washington tends to look down its nose at Aberdeen.

There was a time when Seattle was a working-class town - the kind of place where parades and hydroplane races were the height of summer fun. Seattle had dreams of being a bigger city and those dreams have largely come true, despite endless debate about its troubles. These debates reflect a persistent, unabated insecurity about Seattle’s status as a big city, and those who are insecure are right to be so. Some days it seems that for every step Seattle takes toward growth, it takes two steps away from it, usually at the behest of forces wanting a time capsule of Seattle, not a living, breathing city.

“Where,” you may be asking yourself, “does Aberdeen enter the equation?” Aberdeen represents Seattle’s fears of what it might become, what could lie just down the road if the pro sports teams go away, Boeing truly closes up shop, or Microsoft starts looking for someplace more congenial. What if Boeing had never set up shop in Seattle? What if Grays Harbor had become the center of PNW shipping? These fears are mostly unfounded, of course, if for no other reason than that Seattle (and the rest of the greater Seattle area - Everett and Tacoma, I’m looking at you) would have rather a tough time contracting to Aberdeen size.

And yet… the fear is still there. You can almost smell it in the snidely bemused tone folks sometimes take when it comes to happenings in Aberdeen. Both Seattle and Aberdeen grew up as lumber and fishing towns, with active rivers and harbors, plenty of business, and lively trades in vice. Could Aberdeen have become the metropolis that Seattle did? Could Seattle have run its course with the decline of logging and fishing? We’ll never know, but it’s hard not to wonder. Aberdeen will remain the place that it is - at least for now - but there’s no telling what changes the future may bring.

Next time you’re on your way to the beach, take a look around the city. Stop and look for ghost signs, visit the history museum, check out the library. Heck, take a look at the local newspaper. Aberdeen is closer than you think.

It has become one of those pleasant, little, semi-annual surprises since taking up residence in the Pacific Northwest. It is that one day when one realizes that a change of season is coming. It is sudden; it is as abrupt as the flip of a switch. It jolts you out of whatever you were contemplating while walking. After that moment, “you just know”.

The switch from summer to fall has always been visual for me. It was signified by the rolling in of clouds after a long string of consecutively cloudless summer days. After that point, subsequent sunny days would shine with that autumnal shine: cooler, crisper, more filtered, and at a shallower angle. This has usually happened in middle to late September, though. This year, however, the cue came earlier. And it was not visual.

I was walking down 35th Street from downtown Fremont to the Aurora bridge. I remember seeing a few leaves on the ground as a bicyclist whizzed past me going the other way. As this happened, and moments before I turned the corner up Troll Avenue, I caught a whiff. The smell that I picked up was solidly that of autumn. It was dry and crinkly. It was also cooler and more definite, unlike the fuzzy, lazy smells of summer that waft over on an occasional breeze. I though of wearing jackets and sweaters; I wanted apples.

Now, my sinuses being what they are — chronically conjested — this was a big deal. If my substandard olfactory sense could pick autumn out of the rich, full-bodied Fremont airspace, then there must be something there. And it seems that I wasn’t the only one who noticed… and that I noticed it yesterday as well. I was going to write a quick post about it for Seattlest, the metroblog for which I have recently become a contributor but I was beaten to the punch. Fellow Seattlest, Courtney wrote the following:

Degrees of Change
originally posted 25 August 2006 at http://www.seattlest.com/archives/2006/08/25/degrees_of_change.php

Temperature is a skilled communicator, even in small doses. Under normal circumstances, minute changes we might not notice are essential for sparking bird migration; more extreme fluctuation is the very heart of concerns regarding what long-term havoc climate change could wreak on our environment.

Yesterday evening while walking our dogs, we tuned into temperature. The quality of the air had shifted, but nearly imperceptably so. Our neighbhorhood was bustling with the usual activity of football practice in Judkins Park and as we set out, it felt like any other day. Twenty minutes into the walk, as we turned to head back home, facing towards the western view of city and sound, time slowed down by just one tick. The sound of our own footsteps, clicking of dog nails on concrete, echoes of yelling children, and bike gears whizzing by were all simultaneously amplified and stretched out. The park we bisect almost daily, while shaped in high relief by setting sun against crisp blue sky, softened as we passed through; we were cushioned, comforted.

Perhaps just one degree colder, and we’d have thrilled at the familiarly nostalgic feeling of fall encroaching, but strangely this wasn’t the familiar pang we know so well which accompanies that seasonal shift. Not fully realized yet, this was a stage before the annual recognition of the snap which we’d never detected before. Soon, we thought, it is going to feel like that point where we recognize fall is coming. But not quite yet.

Trabant Chai Lounge

Some time ago, I speculated about the affiliation of the Ave Hot Dog: whether it was an advertising agent of Matt’s or just an independent wiener.

Tonight, I walked into Matt’s because, while past the other day, I noticed that they were once again offering a Chicago-style for the very Chicago-like price of $1.99. When I walked in, the locally-famous, down-on-her-luck, trans woman who hangs out on the Ave was inside talking to the two, young, post-fraternity gentlemen working behind the counter. I started putting my stuff on the counter, thinking nothing of her being there except that I have seen her in a while — and that I’ve not been on the Ave much in the last 6 weeks. By the time I had taken off my jacket and approached to order, she had left.

It wasn’t until after I had paid for my order and sat down to wait that the light of Divine Providence shone down upon me and illuminated me with an answer to my question.

At the back of the restaurant, in the little nook that led to a supply room or some-such, on top of a waist-high stack of cardboard boxes lay the red and yellow pelt of the Ave Hot Dog! It was horizontal with its head pointing toward the dining area. There was a big red X atop its bald, meaty head where the fabric came together. Though lying neatly, it was a bit deflated since nobody was inside. It looked very similar to the discarded skin of some animal that molts and leaves behind the skin to look like a somewhat smaller copy of itself.

To tell the truth, it seemed a bit eery. I am so used to seeing the Ave Hot Dog extremely animated, even athletic what with how that woman was always running in place while wearing the pelt. So seeing it so lifeless did not invoke sadness, mind you, only caution and mild trepidation. It looked like it was sleeping — or maybe like it wanted me to think that it was sleeping. Whatever, the case, it certainly did not want to be disturbed and I was certainly not going to walk over and get a close-up peek. I half expected it to spring to life on its own.

Some time ago, Mr. Cthulhie relayed to me a story in which he overheard the woman speaking to somebody on the street and telling that person that she just lost her job. Was it the Hot Dog job that she lost? If so, what was she doing inside Matt’s today? More importantly, what is the story of the pelt? Is it possessed? Does it subsume its wearer and cause him/her to perform unseemly acts? Whatever the case, I know that I am going to be extra cautious as I peek into the shop on my walk home later.

It seems that a couple of U-District neighborhood residents have taken matters into their own hands. The following story comes courtesy of The Stranger (Vol. 15 No. 46: Jul 27 - Aug 2, 2006).

Striking Back
UW Neighbors Rain on LaRouchies

by Sarah Mirk

On Friday, July 21, two recent University of Washington grads struck a blow on behalf of Seattle residents: They staged a water-balloon attack on two crews of those ubiquitous, aggressive Lyndon LaRouche campaigners.

Ashley Miller, 22, lives in an apartment above Bulldog News on University Way. Every weekend, volunteers for the LaRouche campaign set up tables along University Way. The LaRouche campaign is known for tying traditional left-wing rhetoric to psychedelic conspiracy theories involving Nazis, Dick Cheney, supertrains, and Satan. On Friday, the LaRouche folks had a table on two corners of the intersection at Northeast 42nd Street and University Way Northeast. “You couldn’t even cross the street to get away from them,” Miller says.

That evening, she and her friend Kevin Mock, 29, filled six water balloons and lobbed “warning shots” out the apartment window. One balloon hit a volunteer in the chest. Another exploded on a stack of pamphlets. Soon, the police showed up and the self-styled hooligans hightailed it out the apartment’s back entrance. After the police left, Miller and Mock returned and hurled six more balloons down at the LaRouchies. The campaigners left soon after that and have not returned since, Miller says.

The attacks were motivated by previous encounters with LaRouche campaigners and a desire to “give back to the community,” according to Mock. “When I was a freshman, I made the mistake of giving them my phone number,” says Miller. “They called me every other day for six months.” Miller has already stockpiled a stash of biodegradable balloons to leave no trace of their next attack.

I like this. This seems a little like the British pie in the face method to express displeasure with a public figure. Now, one can argue whether or not this is technically non-violent but I believe the most important point here is that it is both non-lethal and non-scarring. Even though many LaRouchies deserve a good bop on the head every now and again, I wouldn’t want them to be targets of actual, physical violence.

I can’t argue against their right to set up sidewalk tables and preach their point. In fact, I rather like to see people, even and especially extremists, handing out literature on street corners. I only have two complaints against the LaRouchies: first, they lack creativity and flair of the local counter-Illuminati and, secondly, they are rude, aggressive, and abrasive. I hate bullies.

This is the same reason that I both love and hate campus preachers, for example. I enjoy seeing their signs and am frequently entertained hearing the tone of their hellfire and damnation. But lately, they have gotten more nasty. It seemed, back in my days at Urbana-Champaign, that some quad preachers knew not to take themselves too seriously. However, in the extremely politically divisive atmosphere of the last few years, all of today’s quad preachers have gotten more militant. Thus, I have often wanted to smack some of them.

So this, then, seems like a more palatable way to express disagreement with a little more… zeal. Whether I would actually do this or not I’m not certain. However, looking at this from the receiver’s end, I would much rather get soaked with water balloons than, say, eggs and bottles and rocks — which is what gay pride supporters in Warsaw, Poland faced last year. Heck, for any subsequent outing, I’d make sure that I was packing some water armaments too.