Then there are the bartenders who know far too much about your private life, but never skimp on the gossip when you're feeling chatty. The homeless inebriates who beg for money and then bless you and say you're beautiful whether you give them a quarter or not. The yakking and the burning and the sameness of taste is all you recall, until one day you look up and something awful is staring you in the face. Tacked to a chainlink fence, it reads, Notice of Proposed Land Use Action.
I heard that the lot at Pine and Boylston was marked for condo development the same time I learned that the kitschy Hi*Score Arcade was getting kicked out of its space. I was pissed that a haven for pinball and video lovers was losing the war against real estate developers, and I was sad that yet another all-ages music venue would be forced to close its doors. But I didn't really think beyond the loss of a business as to what exactly would take its space. I thought maybe a tony restaurant would go in, some place that catered to the snooty condo owners who recently converged on Pike Street. Something along the lines of Tango, where fancy folk sip stylish cocktails and fret about their stock options.
It's hard to believe that one multi-unit domicile, complete with retail space, can sound a death knell for an entire neighborhood, but that's what will most certainly happen in the little community I call home. This death will not be swift--not like the quick-spreading pancreatic cancer that will surely fell the drunks who make their home against the outer walls of Kincora, the Irish pub that once housed the neighborhood's only rock club, Squid Row (which later became Tugs, relocated from Belltown). The death of my neighborhood will be merciless, a gradual cancer, slow and steady and undeniable, until even the bullheaded resistors, the true believers, are forced to pack up and leave it behind. Already, rents are inching up, turning several tenured residents out. Thousand-dollar one-bedrooms and $750 studios have forced many to relocate to West Seattle, even to Wallingford, an option once loathed by folks who lived on the Hill.
These days, I look at my neighborhood with a growing sense of nostalgia and longing. I've been on the planet long enough to know that change, however painful, is inevitable. To fight it is admirable, I suppose, but futile. So rather than fight, it's better to savor what's still here for as long as we have it.
My neighborhood--loosely bordered by Pike and Howell and Harvard and Bellevue--is a land of dichotomies, things that, while not entirely unacceptable or unbelievable, don't quite gel in their cohabitation: the halfway houses for formerly incarcerated substance abusers, located across the street from the shelter for battered women; the enormous condo building around the corner from Summit and Pine, full of notorious bitchers about noise (from bars that were there before their condos were), who don't seem to mind being situated in close proximity to a halfway house for sex offenders. (If I can put up with seeing the condo dwellers in various states of undress through their huge expanse of uncurtained bedroom windows, which face my kitchen, then they can put up with a little noise.)
There's the world's cleanest, fanciest pawn shop, a dichotomy in itself. The bar staffed by members of several prominent bands, which had, until recently, a most famously awful sound system--the speakers blew and remained in place, with the unbearable high-end making conversation nearly impossible. The regular at that particular bar, who lived upstairs and died of a drinking-related illness, and who left $100 to pay for a round of drinks for those who kept him company at the ol' watering hole. The apartment building with a pool, for crying out lou\d, located just south of the power wires strewn with pairs of shoes and just north of the dumpster surrounded by sodden mattresses and beastly, broken couches. The newly relocated upscale vintage furniture joint that moved in next to the Cha Cha, pissing off the rest of the businesses on the street because of its obvious salivation for the future dot-commers who will move into the proposed condo units. (It's also rumored that the store left a refrigerator next to a dumpster that it clearly didn't own, and my whacked neighborhood is fiercely proprietary of its garbage receptacles.)
I'd be less than truthful if I didn't admit that I hated the neighborhood when I first settled into it. I owned a car in those days, and I had the misfortune of moving in next door to a miserable man I came to call Oscar the Grouch. Oscar lived in a basement apartment that offered him a prime observation post of not only his building's dumpster, but also the strip of unrestricted parking in front of it. Unrestricted parking is golden in the neighborhood, and when residents find these spots, they usually leave their cars there for as long as possible. Some jerk informed Oscar that local parking laws state that one car may stay in a spot for only 24 hours before it is eligible to be towed--and he spent his days counting the hours until he could call the police and have a car removed. His only other daily occupation, apparently, was to curse out anyone who dared to drop an apple core or Kleenex into the dumpster, an innocent offense for which the offending parties would be verbally abused and shamed, while Oscar informed them exactly who and what building that dumpster was for--litter prevention be damned.
I hated Oscar, because two weeks after I moved in, he had my beloved car--a '68 Dodge Dart named Chet--towed. When I got Chet out of impound (clear up in North Seattle, of course) and moved him to another spot a few feet up the street, Oscar had him towed again. Financially, it was a tough time for me, and I was forced to leave Chet in the tow yard for good. Soon after that I moved across Pine to a duplex, which, ironically, boasted an off-street parking space that I now rent to a neighbor who has a car. A couple of months ago I saw Chet parked in front of Linda's Tavern (a block from his old home), looking exactly as he had when I owned him, his faded blue paint doing its best to hide the red primer on his roof, his furry bench seat cover frayed but still in place. It comforted me to see Chet in the neighborhood again. Oscar, on the other hand, rose in rank and moved to an upper-floor apartment on the other side of the building, where meters line the streets. I never saw him again, and I can only hope he died in a car-related accident.
I still hate the neighborhood sometimes, like Saturday mornings when the human megaphone who works at Phil Smart's glorified car wash--for Mercedes owners too pampered to do the job themselves--begins his weekend oratory on the girls he banged the night before. The Blue Angels, who swoop and swirl annually over my head, are infinitely less irritating.
The hipster factor is a point of annoyance for many who avoid this neighborhood, and certainly there is no black hair dye left to be found in any store within the 325 prefix area on any given Friday afternoon. (However, white belts are available at Lipstick Traces on the corner of Pine and Summit.) It's this very hipster factor that kept me from patronizing both Bimbo's Bitchin' Burrito Kitchen and Bauhaus coffee shop for a good two years after I moved into the neighborhood, just because I thought I wasn't cool enough to darken their doorsteps. (Truth be told, Bauhaus continues to frighten me with its "French Riviera on Pine Street" outdoor seating; I don't need to be looked at that badly.)
Longtime resident Jeff Ofelt, who owns Bimbo's and the Cha Cha, is the neighborhood's resident historian. To hear him tell it, Rudy's Barber Shop was the first business to come in with a hipster cache attached. Then came Nils Bernstein's legendary record store, Rebellious Jukebox, located near Braxton Music, which was owned by a founding member of Sky Cries Mary. Rebellious Jukebox eventually went out of business, and Ofelt opened a resale clothing store called Righteous Rags, which was eclipsed once Buffalo Exchange and Red Light took resale clothing to a higher retail level. "Then it wasn't fun anymore," says Ofelt. Righteous Rags became the Cha Cha a few years back, and the hipsters at once had a home.
Speaking to Ofelt, you get the impression that he's of the firm belief that change is a good thing for the area, to a point, though he winces at the mention of what the future could hold. "It's inevitable. Fifteen years ago Broadway was cool, and now look at it. Any time you have some area that's cool, businesses move in, in hopes of making money. I love the good mix of stores in the neighborhood right now: all the antiques, the shoe store, and Area 51. Maybe we'll be really lucky and this new building will fit in. Maybe they'll let people from the neighborhood help them make decisions as to what will go into the retail spaces at street level; some outside business guy can't make the right choices on his own. Otherwise, it's going to turn into something that people who live here won't want to go to."
Ofelt notes that his own bar, as well as Linda's Tavern, already brings in people we all refer to as "amateurs" on Friday nights. His main concern is that the new building not be some awful '80s-looking thing. "Seattle is notorious for tearing down the old and throwing up the new. It's a city full of all these unattractive buildings. It's all about immediate money right now. Twenty years from today Seattle is going to be just plain ugly if they don't start preserving some of its historical buildings."
It's not just permanent residents or businesses that will be uprooted. When asked what he thinks about a condo building going up in the space where he parks his rear end, a drunk named "Joe," whom I've come to refer to as the Ranter, begins an obscenity-infused diatribe about not caring what anyone tells him to do. Once construction is underway, he and his transient buddies may move up one block to the corner of Pine and Boylston, which now houses Pine Street Market and another parking lot. Grudgingly, from this onlooker's perspective, that corner now seems like prime development space.
There are probably several examples of local color that are present in any neighborhood, but I want to celebrate the ones I see every day in my own neighborhood. There's the older gentleman with the white dog, who once made me laugh as I sat on my porch attempting to sell my castaways in one of my neighborhood's greatest pastimes--the yard sale. "Are there any flea markets around?" he asked. "My friend and I are looking for one." I took him literally at first and directed him to the weekly swap meet that took place in the soon-to-be-demolished lot across the street. When he began to chuckle, I got his little joke, and no matter how many times he tells it to me as I pass him on the street, it still makes me laugh.
Another thing that makes me smile is the lone rockabilly boy who remains in the neighborhood, despite the dwindling numbers of compatriots. Pompadours and hair grease has been traded for less structured, more fuckable 'dos, but he holds steady, his hair slicked back, "16 Chicks" blasting out the window of his vintage Caddy as he cruises the neighborhood for girls.
Then there's the neighborhood gigolo, who often speaks of himself in the third person when bragging of his lovemaking skills. Quite often he holds down a job and lives respectably, buying drinks for friends and taking women out on legitimate dates, because, as he'll tell you in the first person, he's a romantic guy who doesn't want to sleep with anyone he doesn't see himself marrying someday. In lean times, however, he kicks into third-person gigolo gear and attaches himself to older women in the neighborhood--women with steady jobs who pay for his meals and drinks, and, in a roundabout way, his sexual company, though both parties would be loath to see it that way.
Still, the neighborhood gigolo accepts these women's gifts and happily fucks them in the process, while his first-person voice asks past conquests--women whose friendship he values too much to sleep with anymore--why he can't find the intimacy he so desperately wants. Perhaps someday he'll figure out the answer to that sincere desire. (It is, after all, a very small, gossipy neighborhood.) But I doubt it'll come before he's forced to blow town, with $300 in his pocket and a police escort-like line of women leading his way to the bus station--not out of respect but to make sure nothing gets in the way of his boarding that bus to someplace else.
Ofelt speaks of a few of his neighborhood faves: "There was Mr. Twitch, a guy who used to position himself outside of Righteous Rags, and whenever any kind of music with a techno beat was played, his right hand would twitch to the music. Mar's Cleaners, which had been in the neighborhood for over 25 years, had these three people who lived in the back room, including a little old man who had a hunchback and a woman who was pregnant for over two years. I don't know if it was just that she had a huge tapeworm or what. I think there was some kind of slave labor going on in there."
It'll take years, I'm sure, for the neighborhood I know to completely disappear. And no doubt 10 years from now the condo owners soon to take up residence at Pine and Boylston won't remember that Manray was once Puss Puss Cafe, but perhaps they'll mourn when R Place or 611 Supreme go under or are forced out when the neighborhood changes yet again. People I've spoken to who've lived in the neighborhood a decade or more mourn a lost neighborhood I never got to visit. Change is coming, and there's every reason to expect it will keep coming.
And while some of the things that I love about my neighborhood aren't dead yet, somehow I can't help mourning them already.
