EDITORS: Your intro to the "sexiest people" list [Feb 7] anticipates that you will be called ageist for saying that only young people can be sexy. That's actually not the best word to describe that claim, since it implies that your opinion is correct but should not be expressed because it might be hurtful to the age-challenged. Actually, the proper word would be "stupid": If you stopped 10 people at random on the street and asked them to name the 10 sexiest people they knew of, they would name people who are older than the oldest person on your list. To insist otherwise makes you look rather silly, and worse--since The Stranger aims at a younger demographic--self-congratulatory.
The feature was fun; the introduction was inane.
Mark Diller, via e-mail
EDITORS: We are writing to challenge Emily Hall's self-righteous and classist assertions that the Sex Workers' Art Show in Olympia is "not art" ["Show and Tell, Tell, Tell," Jan 31]. How classic that she would choose to rip apart an art show that was built from the ground up by mostly women, an art show about community and compassion, put on by people whose voices have been silenced, as one place where people in the industry don't have to be marketable.
Emily probably scoffed at Olympia riot grrrls back in the day who screamed about incest onstage at punk shows, too. Never mind that these have been life-changing events for a lot of people, generating an awareness and community recognition of the harsh, fucked-up shit that so often gets swept under the rug. To us bumpkins in Olympia, these culture-changing moments constitute great art.
Since Emily revealed nothing about herself in her review to explain why she's such an amazing expert on the subject of "What Is Art?" we will trust our gut-level appreciation of art that is immediate and authentic and comes from within a community.
Props to Simone for her breathtaking debut. Candye Kane's blues singing, "you've got to love them, and forgive them," performed in front of full-screen solo porn shot in the early '80s, almost brought us to tears. We're sorry that Emily missed the Infernal Noise Brigade's kickoff to the second act, and also one of the most vulnerable and intense presentations of the night, "Deconstructing Crack-Ho." We love the Sex Workers' Art Show precisely because of the raw talent and urgency of it, and find that it's best when experienced rather than judged.
We (and apparently hundreds of others who enjoyed the show) believe that art is social therapy, and thank Annie Oakley and many others for their labor of love.
Nomy Lamm and Tre Vasquez, Olympia, WA
DAN SAVAGE RESPONDS: I hardly think sex workers have been silenced, not lately. In the last 10 years, you could hardly get a book deal in this country if you weren't a sex worker at some point in your life. I was in a bookstore yesterday and saw no fewer than three books by hos and former hos--and I wasn't even looking for 'em.
Sex workers are part of the debate, and their voices are heard (we have a weekly column, Control Tower, by a sex worker). The "we're silenced sex workers" stuff was true a generation ago. It's not true now.
One of the risks people run when they insert themselves, their views, and their art into the public arena--when they join the public debate--is having their opinions, art, work, and ideas challenged, criticized, and assessed. Emily Hall took your work seriously, traveled to Olympia to view it, and wrote a thoughtful critique. Other people will have other opinions; they may disagree. Again, it's a debate. You may think art is social therapy, but Emily Hall clearly doesn't, and your right to think it is doesn't trump her right to think (and write) that it isn't.
That your show was "by mostly women, about community and passion" doesn't mean that a woman art critic can't write it up, favorably or unfavorably. The world owes you a hearing. It doesn't owe you a rave.
EDITOR: I enjoyed Amy Jenniges' recent article on the inability of property owners to fill their new apartment buildings in Belltown ["Desperately Seeking Renters," Feb 7]. However, I felt that it missed a basic point: Remember all of the low-income housing and artists' live/work spaces that these new "high-tech habitrails" usurped or replaced in Belltown? It seems like just desserts that these property owners are having such a hard a time finding the "new money" that they were chasing after. Perhaps when they lower their rates to a point where artists can afford them again, they will be filled.
Joel Lee, ArtSpace Seattle
TO THE STRANGER: Congratulations! You did it! With your last edition and your cute and offensive "Al Qaeda Terror" insert [Feb 14, cover and page 9], you've joined Denver's Westword as the most banal and ignorable city weeklies in the country. I think last year's anthrax was directed to the wrong tabloid. You're very Seattle.
