Though hidden, the Lady Rainier statue is easy to find. She is right next to the northernmost building of the Old Rainier Brewery complex on Airport Way. A few steps from a parking lot lead you to her feet, which are planted on an orb. Her toes, particularly on the left foot, are the stuff of magic. You can’t stop looking at them. They were undoubtedly shaped by an artist with a foot fetish. Each toenail is lovingly carved. The edge of her dress flows down past her left knee, brushing her ankle; her right thigh, like her left breast, entirely exposed. And while her left hand holds a wreath of leaves on her left hip, her right hand raises not a lowly beer mug, but a high and noble chalice.
When the German-made bronze statue was installed in 1903 in the courtyard of the Seattle Brewing & Malting Company, the company that gave the West Coast endless bottles of Rainier Beer, frothy-looking water overflowed from this cup. The boom town believed in beer that much. Also, this is how the 19th-century German philosopher, and beer lover, G.W.F. Hegel concluded his practically unreadable but still influential masterpiece Phenomenology of Spirit: with a chalice from which the “realm of spirits Foams forth to… infinity.”
The 10-foot statue has not always been in this spot, which is near the point where Stevens Street meets Airport Way. At one time, she made it all the way to the top of the brewery’s building. This was, clearly, the statue’s peak period. That moment of history came to an end in the late 1950s, according to local historian Jean Sherrard. The Lady then moved here and there. Not long after the brewing days came to a close in 1999, the statue was donated to MOHAI. But the museum never claimed her and was even happy when, in 2005, the Georgetown Community Council attempted to relocate her to Oxbow Park, which is home to Hat ‘n’ Boots. But the cost of moving the statue proved to be prohibitive: an estimated $30,000. In fact, the reason why Lady Rainier is still at 3100 Airport Way is that her relocation demands a pretty penny, a fact that others who are interested in claiming the statue for other parts of town, including Columbia City, are discovering.
But why move the Lady? Not only is she here surrounded by leafy trees, which become gloriously gorgeous in autumn, but she has her back to the insane carbon-liberating structure called 1-5 and faces, and toasts (though without frothy fountain water), not only Link trains entering and exiting the tunnel that leads to Beacon Hill Station, but also the Link’s main trainyard. The old statue (one of the oldest in this city) is oriented to the only future that’s possible—the one that transports people not as individuals but gregariously. A car can only be a sorry couch. A train is always the life of a party.
You can drink as much as you like if you take the train. You can’t do that in a car without putting the lives of other drivers and pedestrians in real danger. What will not be found in the sector of society that involves rapid transportation is a mode that surpasses the freedom enjoyed by the passenger, bus, or light rail. Theirs is the cream of freedom. The individual realized by all of the users and operators of mass transit.
This is our Lady Rainier today. She came to America to sell beer; now she promotes the only future that’s possible, one devoted to renewable sources of energy. And this fact alone shows us that the concept of essence, as determined by the ancient Greek philosophers, is useless to us, the subjects of modernity and plasticity. A change in context, as understood and explicated by the Cuban American philosopher Alicia Juarrero (“context changes everything”), can transform the essence—a real but not sure thing. Lady Rainier was once in the same genus as Starbucks’ mermaid (whose own status is now in question, as the company she represents has turned to what the near future will recognize as raw asset stripping). But the collapse of Seattle’s beer industry at the end of the 20th century meant our Lady was confronted with two possibilities: 1) ending up in the dustbin of history or 2) undergoing a renewal of meaning and cultural function. The accident of her location saved her from the former fate and landed her in the second.
If you are on a Link train, you can see the statue before entering the tunnel, and you see her when exiting it. Either way, she is there just for you. Looking at you. Loving you. Raising a drink to you. The bad traffic behind her is a dinosaur that refuses to believe in its own extinction. But you, Link passenger, are the only game in town. Lady Rainer is now our queen of public transportation. Do not move her.
