Local musician and photographer Lexi Lutter responded to this sanitized, slightly saccharine version of Capitol Hill (yourcapitolhill.com), courtesy of our local chamber of commerce and Sound Transit:

yourcap.jpg

with this grubbed-up version (yourrealcapitolhill.com):

realcap.jpg

The fine print on the left:

Your REAL capitol hill.

We are a group of people who want to preserve what is left of Capitol Hill in Seattle. Not everything should be family-friendly. We work at bars and movie theaters and other shit jobs, and we like it that way. We want input from YOU. We’re sick of a small group deciding what this neighborhood should be. Email your upcoming outsider events, stories and photos and whatever else you think captures the grittier side of Capitol Hill to: yourrealcapitolhill@hotmail.com

Lexi explains in an email that the whole thing started as a lark, a jokey response to “something I see as a threat”:

I’m a photographer too and can’t stand the idea of the whole scheme they’re running with that thing. I think a few of the photographers running that site are quite talented, but are missing the point. I don’t want the world to think the only photography that counts needs to look like it came from vice magazine or an american apparel ad, but with all the sexiness stripped away. And I always prefer the sleazy to the tame, and I want Capitol Hill to stay that way.

I’d like to think there’s room for cutesy ice-cream parlors and bathhouses in the neighborhood, but Lexi raises the specter haunting Capitol Hill in her first post on the site:

To all you folks who hang out and live on “the Hill”, do you really want your neighborhood to turn into a daytime retreat for squares? How many more ice cream parlors do you need? … do you want all of your favorite real rock ‘n’ roll bands to be run out of their dive bars by a bunch of pussy beardos? Do you want other established businesses on “your capitol hill” to suffer the same fate as The Kincora, and get demolished to make room for condos, only to end up as a parking lot?

Good luck and godspeed to everybody.

See Lexi’s photography (including some hypnotic portraits) here.

Brend an Kiley has worked as a child actor in New Orleans, as a member of the junior press corps at the 1988 Republican National Convention, and, for one happy April, as a bootlegger’s assistant in Nicaragua....

71 replies on “Your Real Capitol Hill”

  2. If you don’t own a stake in a neighborhood you don’t have a say. This basic concept has been a mystery to the last 10-15 years of “capitol hipsters.” Investing in a neighborhood is one of the most basic ways of defining its character.

    You can complain all you want now, but the place was sold out long ago. Once its at 51% the new residents get to make the rules, and its been that way for a while now.

  6. I’m confused. I like real rock ‘n’ roll, pussy beardos, ice cream and Kincora. I guess there’s not enough room for all of that in Lexi’s hotxtxt scene?

    I ask for a little guidance, Lexi, on how I can reconcile this.

  10. Is all ice cream square? What about Vermonty Python, or Negative Chip from Emack & Bolios? I think they’re pretty edgy, verging on downright subversive.

  11. I don’t know a thing about your Capitol Hill, but I know a lot about the Capitol Hill it was modeled on in Denver. They’ve been trying to “clean it up” for the entire 35 years I’ve lived here, and you know what? It’s just as skanky as ever. Some things are just meant to be.

  12. somewhere between 2 and 11.

    day playground for squares. etc.

    people desperately want to gentrify p2 but that will always be an armpit. the hill is all about real estate prices and has been that way for a while. its not where people go anymore to find a counterculture they want to settle into, but just sample for an afternoon or a few years and move on. its just changing from one set of bad attitudes to another.

  14. Yeah! Keep Capitol Hill crime-ridden and filthy and way too expensive! We’re all pirates and punk renegades until one of us gets stabbed/mugged/raped.

  15. @9: Totally. Get down to the ID or Georgetown while you still have time! Two years from now, the developers will put ice cream parlors ALL OVER THIS FUCKING CITY.

  17. People lament the loss of Kincora? It pretty much sat empty for 90% of its existence, sans the 3 skinheads that hung out there. Squid Row maybe, but you’d be showing your age.

  18. It is all inevitable, I am aware. I wouldn’t be on capitol hill if it hadn’t cleaned up from what it used to be, of course. My frustrations lie with the artists who seem willing to help speed that natural process along by helping to selling the idea of capitol hill to others in order to get work. Leave that side of things to the developers. I could have ignored it if we’d all just roll with it with grace since we can’t financially afford to do anything else, rather than capitalize on it. Selling your art is one thing, selling yourself for your art is another.

    Lexi.

  19. So, just to clarify, they want to “preserve what’s left of Capitol Hill” by plugging McDonald’s and Quiznos? Sounds to me like the battle’s already been lost.

  20. 18 is right on, though i wonder if selling out is really the conclusion. but alot of the creatives are being paid to essentially sell the buildings out from under them.

  21. @ lexi, perhaps the artists involved are not selling themselves out, perhaps they genuinely enjoy the lighter, prettier side of Capitol Hill and are actually not that into Methadone clinics etc? You are of course entitled to your preference for the sleazy, but by the same token they are entitled to a preference for a nice, clean livable neighbourhood.

  22. @ lexi, perhaps the artists involved are not selling themselves out, perhaps they genuinely enjoy the lighter, prettier side of Capitol Hill and are actually not that into Methadone clinics etc? You are of course entitled to your preference for the sleazy, but by the same token they are entitled to a preference for a nice, clean livable neighbourhood.

  24. Yeah, preserving the imaginary punk-rockness of Capitol Hill is real high on my list of political priorities. I’m going to write “sellout!” on some pussy beardo businesses tonight with a permanent marker. That’ll show ’em. Who’s with me?

  25. i can’t believe the people that are accusing the photographers
    who contributed to this site of ‘selling out’.
    i am the designer of the site and this is by far the most embarrassing
    and offensive this about this whole debate.
    there are very few opportunities for photographers in this city
    …..it is very hard for any photographer to make a living doing
    what they love in this town….or even to get their work seen widely.
    they we’re all stoked when we approached them and gave them the opportunity
    to portray their idea of the ‘hill’. we wanted to present a balanced view of what
    the hill ACTUALLY is….NOW……as i write this.
    the fact that the reality doesn’t appeal to certain nostalgists is not really these photographers fault.
    their ‘hill’ is different to your ‘hill’…..that’s all.
    say what you want about my design…..i could care less.
    but attacking these photographers is pathetic and childish.

    christian petersen

    dumb eyes design

  26. This is so funny to me. Like 52-80 I’m of the age that remembers when the Hill was transitioning from being a family friendly day time retreat for squares to the hipster heaven the writer imagines it always to have been. At one time Broadway boasted some REALLY high end home furnishing stores, and a 31 Flavors, along with places like Ernie Steele’s where you could go get your drunk on with old straight dudes in the middle of the afternoon. Because at one time, the Hill was a neighborhood full of upper middle class families and the dads needed somewhere to drink, and the moms needed somewhere to buy a sofa, and the kids could walk down the block for ice cream after school. That was, of course, pre Slats (and the junkie who lived in the parking lot behind my house with whom I had a smile and nod, no pun intended, relationship), but even after artists and what not moved in, those stores were still there, and the older residents lamented bitterly how things were changing. It’s a cycle. Today Georgetown is the cute, hip, inexpensive neighborhood in which to rock your ironic mustache and sweater vest. In 10, 20 years it could be White Center or, who knows, Queen Anne after the housing prices are driven down by an influx of meth dealing robots. But I do miss Slats.

  27. Ah, I see. Lexi wants things to be like they were in the “good old days.” That is, she is a conservative. And like all conservatives, her opinions are doomed to failure because they do not take into account that change is the only constant in the universe.

    Except! I just Googled her name and found her MySpace, which indicates that she is 27 years old and graduated from high school in Sioux City, Iowa in 2001. (Oops! Might want to hide that info next time you start pretending to be the authority on “Real Capitol Hill.”)

    Oh, and what could possibly be more square than hating on beards? They are the epitome of slacker hygiene. Beards are the default condition of a (caucasian) male human head in the absence of body modification. You of all people should know that…your beloved drug addicts have more beards per capita than anyone else on the planet.

    You will do us all a favor by getting over yourself now. Kthx.

  31. @ 30. Now, now, let’s not shoot the messenger. Lexi represents a constituency. Whether you agree with it or not, her city of origin is irrelevant. You don’t have to be an 85-year-old native who’s never left the neighborhood she was born in to have an opinion on the subject.

    and @ 25. I’m sure Lexi, a photographer, appreciates the difficulty of getting work show and paid for. So she has a different point of view. That’s allowed.

    And remember that yourrealcapitolhill.com has a sense of humor. It’s poking fun. Take the lighthearted criticism in the spirit that it’s given.

  32. WOW. ooof. i was involved with the analysis/research for yourcapitolhill.com, and from the beginning, the site’s intention was to support, not harm, local businesses. we made a huge effort to represent the diversity of the hill – newer, …”squarer” businesses are a factor of that diversity as it currently stands and there was simply no way around it.

    not all of those businesses fit in to lexi’s, or for that matter my own, preference. i like pine street the way it was in 2005 (i can’t personally claim to go back farther than that on the hill). and while i absolutely share lexi’s frustration over drunken idiots with no investment in this neighborhood using it as a forum for nothing but gross consumption on the weekends, she’s misdirecting that sentiment by attacking yourcapitolhill.com, and especially by attacking the artists involved in the site design.

    also i’m not sure how creating parodies of others’ hard work qualifies as keeping it real.

  33. @23 – I moved in 2000, I do understand Kincora’s had a bit of a rush toward the end, but it’s weird to hear someone talk about how great it was. I think I stopped in around 2003ish and was surprised by the modest crowd. Still beats a parking lot.

    And to whomever wants to claim the Hill, whatever, but anyone spending their money there is investing in it. If someone wanted to start a website cataloging the sweetest Capital Hill dumpsters to dive in, more power too’em. (confidential to if that happened in 1994, those tapes you steal out of the Musak dumpster won’t work for recording your band practice)

  34. WOW. ooof. i was involved with the analysis/research for yourcapitolhill.com, and from the beginning, the site’s intention was to support, not harm, local businesses. we made a huge effort to represent the diversity of the hill – newer, …”squarer” businesses are a factor of that diversity as it currently stands.

    not all of those businesses fit in to lexi’s, or for that matter my own, preference. i like pine street the way it was in 2005 (i can’t personally claim to go back farther than that on the hill). and while i absolutely share lexi’s frustration over drunken idiots with no investment in this neighborhood using it as a forum for nothing but gross consumption on the weekends, she’s misdirecting that sentiment by attacking yourcapitolhill.com, and especially by attacking the artists involved in the site design.

    also i’m not sure how creating parodies of others’ hard work qualifies as keeping it real.

  36. @ 31

    this has nothing to do with her point of view.
    i see no ‘sense of humor’ in her attacking of these photographers.
    she can pine for the days of ‘dirt and junkies’ all she wants.
    flogging that dead horse will soon reveal this not as a
    satire but as sad, misguided posturing.
    if she really wants to contribute why not create something that positively contributes to the community rather than mocking and berating a section of it that does not share her lame ideas of ‘keeping it real’.

    you and she really need to grow up brendan.

  37. @31

    “Selling your art is one thing, selling yourself for your art is another.”

    doesn’t sound much like lighthearted criticism to me….

  38. Hey Lex, looking at your photos…..

    Suggestion? 

    Keep your day job.

    FYI the Holga was passĂ© when you were a sophomore in high school in that little town in Iowa you swore you’d leave so you could move to the ‘big city’, be yourself, hang out with ‘artists’ become famous and loved…..but then you found yourself at 50 working checkout at a Safeway which stacks of photos of all your friends in drag at parties on the Hill, none of whom became famous either. 

    There’s 3 types of artist in the world, guess whcih one you are:

    1. The ones who become successful.  0.01% of all artists.
    2. The ones who have some business savy and channel their creativity into making a living. 10% of all artists.
    3. the ones who aren’t talented enough to be successful or smart enough to figure out how to make money. See drag queens bagging groceries or wannabes making lattes after age 30.

  39. Whoops, no one berating out for spelling it “Musak”? You people have either lost your edge, didn’t live on Capital Hill when it was, errr.. what people thing it should be, which is probably never was, or you just got used to skipping my posts, which makes the most sense.

  40. @31 dude, it’s hardly lighthearted criticism.

    She’s lived here for two years, and she somehow represents a constituency? Give me a break. She wasn’t even here when Kincora existed, but I’m sure she has fond memories (of something).

    This classic Midwest intolerance will not stand, man.

  43. Aww, poor butthurt little hipster helped gentrify his neighborhood by schlepping his skinny shit-job-having artist ass over there from fucking poughkeepsie and driving up the rent. Who the fuck do you think lived in the neighborhood before your carpetbagging ass arrived, you mewling mealymouthed shitstain? Grow the fuck up.

  44. Both websites are very ugly. Explore? Please. I detest advertising that encourages me to explore, play, discover, inspire. Just a bunch of stupid buzzwords.

  47. @ 38 and 43. There is no coward more despicable than the coward who roars insults from behind a hedge of anonymity.

    You are a coward. A sniveling, spineless, no-count coward.

    Just wanted you to know.

  48. i have lived on the hill for over 17 years, and I love where it’s going. I’m happy to be rid of the junkies and gutter punks. fuck ’em. 85% of the hipster twats who live up here now are all recent L.A. and N.Y imports. fuck them too.

  49. I am one of the photographers of the original yourcapitolhill.com website, and I don’t believe I, or any of the others involved were ‘selling out’ in any way. We pretty much had free will to do what we wanted, and shoot what we wanted for the site. We are well-aware of the sleazy part of Capitol Hill and I personally love to shoot things of that sort, but to go to the extreme I do in some of my work wasn’t really applicable to the site.

    Thank you Izzie (#21) and Christian (#25) for explaining this as well.

  50. I am one of the photographers of the original yourcapitolhill.com website, and I don’t believe I, or any of the others involved were ‘selling out’ in any way. We pretty much had free will to do what we wanted, and shoot what we wanted for the site. We are well-aware of the sleazy part of Capitol Hill and I personally love to shoot things of that sort, but to go to the extreme I do in some of my work wasn’t really applicable to the site.

    Thank you Izzie (#21) and Christian (#25) for explaining this as well.

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