TO ERICA C. BARNETT: Your comparison of Seattle's new support for music to Austin's ["Seattle City Limits," Feb 19] is like comparing a baby just learning to walk to a 15-year-old, and then making fun of the baby for even trying to walk.
First off, Nickels didn't claim Seattle is Austin today. He simply stated a vision and a goal, which is to create a city government that is actively pro-music. We all know Seattle has historically been an anti-music city. You ask if people, or Nickels, remember the Teen Dance Ordinance, Mark Sidran's poster ban, or the noise ordinance? Nickels is the candidate who ran against and beat Sidran, and part of his campaign was to do away with the TDO! And he did! Nickels is also the mayor who passed one of the most sensible noise ordinances in the country, at the same time that Austin passed an oppressive one.
If you had ever been to Austin, you would realize that they do not have anywhere near 250 clubs surrounding Sixth Avenue. While Sixth Avenue in Austin has its high points, like Emo's, most of the clubs there host karaoke, blues and bluegrass jams, and alt-country cover bands. If you count every business that hosts open mics, karaoke, or bluegrass jams in Austin, that city might have more venues than Seattle, but taken as a whole, Austin's quality venues do not come close to Seattle's. You also completely ignore a successful city-initiated program, the Vera Project, something Austin lacks.
As for new bands breaking out of Seattle, The Stranger and even the New York Times have both recently recognized how the young rock scene here is better than possibly anywhere in the world right now. You say Seattle musicians "don't have a city-appointed liaison lobbying for their interests at city hall." You are dead wrong! Like Austin, Seattle has a Music Office, and it has a great advisory board, much like the Austin Music Commission. The point is that the mayor of Seattle is talking about the new Music Industry Economic Impact Statement and how great the Seattle music community has become. This is amazing! Former mayors wrote the Teen Dance Ordinance, passed the poster ban, and vetoed the All-Ages Dance Ordinance.
David Meinert, Fuzed Music
James Keblas, the Vera Project
ERICA C. BARNETT RESPONDS: I agree that Mayor Nickels has changed the city's attitude toward the music industry for the better. But Seattle's long history of anti-music policies far outweighs this individual mayor or his economic impact study. Would Vera be so necessary if Seattle hadn't spent years squashing all-ages venues with draconian anti-music policies?
As someone who lived in Austin for six years, I can confirm that the city's venues are indeed "concentrated around... Sixth Street and the surrounding downtown core." Seattle clubs' decentralization is a major barrier to the music industry, as are Washington's liquor laws, Seattle's anti-music history, and the lack of a full-time city staffer devoted to the music industry's interests. Hopefully, the city's commitment to dealing with these and other issues won't begin and end with Nickels' study.
VECK'S A SICK FUCK
TO THE EDITOR: I was horrified to read your publisher's attack on Seattle Times publisher Frank Blethen in your February 19 issue ["An Open Letter"]. To see such pointless, rambling vulgarity coming from the publisher of The Stranger is inexcusable. It's "sick" and merits a summary dismissal.
What Tim Veck thinks of Blethen is his own affair. (I might suggest an e-mail or personal phone call next time.) Who edits this guy's stuff? Oh, I get it. He's the publisher. That's why I don't hold it against The Stranger for allowing Veck to pour his hatred for Blethen into a commentary on a Seattle Times employee ad campaign. For the record, companies around the world promote their businesses by reminding the us that a given company is a great place to work. Perhaps Veck's words will anger or even hurt Frank Blethen, but the damage done has more far-reaching consequences. For starters, it demeans the two individuals who chose to participate in this ad campaign. Good people whom Veck doesn't know from a "sick" hill of "fuck" beans.
I work at the Seattle Times. And I also read other publications, including The Stranger. But I won't disgrace my hands with it until your "publisher" provides a public apology for what was nothing more than an inexcusable, juvenile tirade.
Paul Prappas
TIM KECK RESPONDS: That's got to be the silliest publisher's "nome de plume" that I've ever heard, Frank. Couldn't you crack open a phone book and come up with something that sounds like someone's real name? Or order one of your ass-lickin' toadies to do it for you? Furthermore, if you think giving me the cold shoulder in the Rainier Club's sauna hurt my feelings, Frank, you're right.
DEPT. OF CORRECTION: An item in last week's In Other News, ñPot Watch," misrepresented pot activist Dominic Holden's quote. Holden was referring to City Council staffers--and not the SPD or City's Attorney's Office, as we implied--when he told us: ñThey're doing things the panel members should be doing." City Council staffers were working to draft reporting criteria for SPD drug arrests--to Holden's chagrin. We were high when we mischaracterized Holden's quote.
