In most situations with a strong correlation I say let’s not jump to causation. But here I say causation all the way.
27 years ago I did a little zine called kickstand with the Soundgarden song looping in the back of my mind…
…correlation? Yes.
…causation? Hell Yes.
Today I made myself a dickstank trike shirt and I also got myself a knock-off Soundgarden kickstand trike shirt
In the late 90s I had this t-shirt, not from a concert, from the cool poster shop at 6th & Denny. I wore it very few times. If only I still had it I could sell it on Etsy for $450.
For my second attempt at owning a version of this shirt I went with a tasteful understated black instead of the original sickly brownish green.
kickstand
Kicksand, you got loose and I threw up Yeah kickstand, you got the juice to fill my cup My mother say that it's alright My mother says that's the only life
So do it right Do it right Come stand me up Come stand me up Come stand me up
Yeah kickstand, I got saddle made of leather Oh kickstand, I got the words to come together I got the urge to ride your trike My mother says that's the only life
So do it right Do it right Come stand me up come stand me up come stand me up
Oh kicksand, you got loose and I threw up Yeah kickstand, you got the juice to fill my cup My mother say that it's alright
Do it right Do it right Stand me up stand me up, stand me up
When I was a bike messenger I took these photos at 1000 2nd Ave when Martin Selig the Seattle real estate titan, owned 33.3% of downtown Seattle. Selig probably owned 66.6% of the buildings I frequented as a legal messenger.
5 years ago the covid shutdown lockdown ghosttown downtown zombie shitshow (working remotely) changed Seattle in many ways. It still has not recovered or returned to the work-a-day office space of yesteryear. Here and now Selig’s grip on the city is slipping away. You can read all the details in this Seattle Times article
If you own the building you can do what ever you want with it. You can paint huge canvases, call them art and hang them in the lobby, in the hallways, in the offices of your real estate empire. Selig painted these giant paintings (12’ x 7’ ish) that got my attention back then. That's Mary posing in front of one circa 2006.
The USPS will call it a postcard if it’s no more than 4.25" high x 6" long x 0.016" thick.
Some of these pilder mashups are 12” x 18” and up to 0.25” thick. I like to write on the back, put on a fake stamp or three and “mail them” to special penpals I know on campus or nearby in coffee shops or bike shops. Hand-Delivered via electric ass cargo bike.
Junior Junior will take over delivery duties on a crow creation I recently made for one of his teachers that is retiring, a guy you might know: Chris Quigley. As if. If only.
One day a few months ago, I hand-delivered an old-marine -climatic-map-crow-creation with the words I wouldn’t want your job on a day like thisslathered over it, to Dr. Cliff Mass at Atmospheric Sciences. When I asked him about it later, he laughed and said he got a real kick out of it.
I enjoy handing off postcard-size postcards to the USPS, for penpals around the country. Those feature some of these same themes but are constrained by their size limits. However, I’m not ready to pay the postage on these 18” x 12” lumpy creations that would have to be bundled up to make the journey and therefore would no longer appear to be giant postcards.
It’s not my birthday but it will be soon. A calendar date to commemorate. When you get to be my age you start thinking about fresh tennis balls for your walker.
Today I went out for a dry-fit test-run. The drive side ball needed a little tweaking and luckily the Medicinal Herb Garden guy had a Rambo knife that he let me use for 23 seconds. Perhaps later on, the Electric-Ass-Cargo-Bike-Fleet-Mechanic can dial the tennis balls in for the big day.
In 2003-2004 I was silkscreening T-shirts, one at a time. Stick figure bikes on the front with “a quality of life issue” on the back. I gave them away to friends and sold a few on eBay. With postage fees and eBay’s cut of the deal, my profits added up to Jack Shit. So in 2005, I started this website to sell some t-shirts directly to consumers.
Somewhere in that there time span I asked my college friend Dan Murray if he wanted to do a little bike ride in Iowa called RAGBRAI. He asked his brother Chris to come along and we all rode our first RAGBRAI, calling ourselves “team pilderwasser” because we were wearing some of those stick figure bike shirts I made. As seen in the photo above on our way home after our first Great Bike Ride Across Iowa.
1047 weeks later...
...this site is still up
YOU ARE HERE but not to buy t-shirts.
And Mr. Chris Murray has done every single RAGBRAI since 2005. With Jimbo’s help, they’ve grown team pilderwasser into kind of a big deal. With luggage trucks and charter buses. A strong core of regulars surrounded by a rotating cast of newbies. They’re not messing around in halfass t-shirts. They’re sporting pilderwasser jerseys with matching caps and coozies too.
It took me a second to realize the green-black-white color scheme of this edition of the jersey is a nod to the Grinnell Griffins Rugby team which is a nod to the 2007 original pilderwasser team bus
A Bulldog T-shirt under a Big Time Hoodie. Both ends of my coffee-beer continuum. Literally, figuratively, metaphorically, symbolically, gastronomically, economically, anaerobically, wardrobically.
Single-handedly supporting the local economy, one beverage at a time. Frequent flyer cards in my wallet side-by-side. Buy 10,000 pints, get one free. Not just talking the talk, walking the walk, wearing the shirt. Wearing the shirt and the hoodie too. A “most-regular regular” candidate. I’m drawn to authentic real-deal really-real places like these. They’re not fluffy or shiny or trendy or new. They're not perfect. They are what they are. Good coffee. Great beer. Cool people.
The owners of both establishments are pillars in the U-district community with a rich history of UW connections and plenty of stories to go along with it all. Bulldog opened in 1983. Big Time in 1988.
More often than not, my workday begins at Bulldog with coffee and ends at Big Time with beer. Old School U-district all the way both ways. Round the way, University Way NE bro, you know "the Ave". Just this side of 42nd on the Ave to just that side of 42nd across the Ave.
I shared this photo with UW President Ana Mari Cauce and she responded with a “That’s great. It made my day. Thank you.” all before 8:17am this Monday morning.
President Cauce is winding down her final weeks as President. I’ve had the privilege of being the electric ass Mr McFeely to her office in Gerberding for 73.7% of her tenure. I don’t talk to the president but I talk to the staff in her office and they talk to her for me.
Ana Mari Cauce is a real badass, on so many levels and I believe she has done things the way they should be done, working through many difficult situations over the years. Now she can take a deep breath, relax a little bit and go back to being a psychology professor.
