This shot from 87 arrived with no words, no story, no nothing. It makes me think of a cookie sheet of stale Christmas cookies that nobody wanted in December and they’re still sitting around in the break room at work well into January festering and bringing up bad feelings or family history or some deep dark crusty shit no one wants to talk about. Bar ends were all the rage and everybody had to have them until they realized they didn’t and then they didn’t need their brake lever extensions or their 140mm stems.
Those in the know know that 87 can ride the shit out of a bike. Bar end brake lever extenders will always remind me of him rolling out a nose wheelie half way down the block feathering the front brake oh so gently until he arrived at the bike rack at 2101 or 1201 or wherever he happened to be locking up. He was riding an ABC work bike and had anodized brake lever extensions that matched his bar ends of course. I like to think that they were purple but 87 will correct me.
This shot from 37 came with a brief background note:
Ground found this little snap on 3/8" beauty by group health on capitol hill in 98 (I think) one of my all time favorites because it is small, so you can't really over torque the shit out of a 4mm Allen with it, it is quick to drive because of its size, it's a quality tool, and it has the previous owners name engraved on the side....
This cute little wrench makes me think of a lucky charm you keep in your pocket like a smooth river stone or a blown glass amulet. Doctor 37 is a surgeon and knows a thing or two about swinging tools around and the fact that he’s using a ground-score wrench 22 years later says something. Talk about palpable quality.
"A busman's holiday is free time a person spends in an activity that's much like what he does for a living"
Yesterday I took a little holiday. When I say holiday I mean I cashed in one hour of accrued vacation time and went home early and for a portion of that hour I took Junior Junior on a little cargo bike ride. When I say little I mean we spent as much time inflating the tires as we did on the bike.
It was a true busman’s holiday. I spent most of the day schlepping cases of hand sanitizer and amazon packages the final fifty fucking feet as well as actual USPS mail and interoffice envelopes. Then I spent a little free time schlepping the kid down the block and back.
Cargo bikes are heavy and Junior Junior just keeps getting bigger. On this brief little jaunt I found my left thumb reaching out for the throttle for a little boost from the electric assist I've grown accustomed to on the work bike but it's not there at home.
I wouldn’t ride the bike further than 50 feet with a 12oz can in the cup holder unless it was secured by a DANK coozie. This was just a matter of snapping a photo to pinpoint my position along the continuum to jot it down as I posted up to pound a beer under the overpass before boarding the next southbound train. As president emeritus of the PDCHC I will remind you that the Profile Design cup holder is ideal for roadmasters and tallboys in coozies as well as coffee in various containers. It will even hold water bottles if that’s what you’re into. I like coffee. I like beer. I don’t usually like the two at the same time. But I am a big fan of Bale Breaker and their beers. Stout isn’t usually my cup of tea but this can of dormancy was presented to me by someone in the know you see you may find yourself somewhere along the coffee-beer continuum and you may say to yourself this beer blurs the lines by including coffee am I transitioning seamlessly or just repeating repeatedly.
I’m looking forward to looking back on this shit. 2020 the year of the rat. throw in the wrench you know a towel in the gears. One morning last week rolling into work I spotted this wrench on the road and stopped to circle back and pick it up. Not that I really need another adjustable wrench but I’m not one to pass up any ground scores. I’m wearing some of these as we speak only because I found them on the road.
The 10” Milwaukee Adjustable Wrench now has a spot on the wall between baby bear, brother bear and papa bear. Probably won’t get much use swapping out the CO2 tank on the kegerator every 14 months or so. The quality of this wrench is palpable and it shines a light on brother bear’s low quality sandwiched between an actual Crescent Wrench and a Milwaukee. But brother bear isn’t going anywhere, he’s earned his spot on the wall.
The grass is always greener except when you’re at Boise State or Eastern Washington.
The grass is greener on the other side of the fence except on the north side of the house where the neighbor pours out slabs of cement to smother out every living thing and make it easier for her to sweep up obsessively compulsively constantly. are you fucking kidding me?
The grass is greener in March than it is in August.
The grass is greener at Augusta because they paint it that way.
The grass is greener in Seattle than it is in Spokane unless you’re talking about the cost of living then it’s the other way around.
The grass is greener in the haze of phantom nostalgia syndrome.
Recently Junior gave me some sheets of business cards pre-perforated to feed into an inkjet printer. I silkscreened on them and wrote some notes on the back then broke them up into pieces and mailed them out to people around the country. Steve put in the time and dedication to reassemble his elaborate 10-piece puzzle and took this photo as proof.
had a dream I was sleeping only this time I didn’t wake up in a shower curtain factory and there was no Rick Steves hassling me I was woken by Compu Teresa’s generic voice letting me know that this train is out of service and all passengers must exit the train so I pulled my bike off the hook and took 3 escalators to the surface until it occurred to me that this is where I should be right here right now getting my bearings geographically after autopiloting things blindly on muscle memory when I saw Husky Stadium I said it’s peanut-butter-jelly time and decided to post-up and wait for the sunrise even if the sun hadn’t actually risen for over a week obscured by wildfire smoke it seemed like the thing to do because that’s what I do and there is comfort in doing what you do when you’ve done it before reaching deep into my satchel I pulled a sandwich out of a bread sack and looked back to see the grim reaper dressed in a fare enforcement officer uniform taking his smoke break with a half smile and nod I looked toward the stadium only to see a huge cloud of locusts blocking out the already mostly blocked out sunlight swirling into a funnel cloud looking fake like bad wizard of oz special effects and making an awful racket until they all kind of settled onto the artificial turf chow down on that plastic shit suckers I thought and when I said holy shit did you see that the grim reaper said how you like me now then I looked down to take a bite of my pb&j but it was enveloped in locusts and in the blink of an eye it was devoured disappearing completely and cleanly from my hand and when I said are you fucking kidding me the grim reaper said you know you could make more money delivering tamales
at Elliott Bay Messenger Company in 1997 I knew him as 19 Todd then he morphed into 20 Todd at KnR. I don't know the exact details of that transition but it's Seattle messenger history.
Craig sent me this in an email three months ago and I received it yesterday. what day is it?
Last week my boss let me borrow this book and I read it straight through in just a few sittings. Fuckin A+. If you feel like you’re having a rough day read a bit of Lanegan’s story and learn what a rough day really is.
This guy should not still be alive. It’s amazing he survived his childhood in Ellensburg but for him to have survived through all the shit he did for years and years is truly amazing.
In 1991 my brother in law gave me The Winding Sheet and I listened to it a lot over the next 29 years. I’m listening to it again as we speak with a deeper understanding after reading this book. I was never really a Screaming Trees fan in more than just a Singles-soundtrack-way. (Lanegan talks some shit about Singles and especially the soundtrack and how they ended up on there. He also talks some shit about SubPop and how that image ended up on the cover of his first solo album)
I appreciate history, specifically music history and the Seattle bands and all the connections among them. It helps being only 5 years younger than Lanegan (his mom wanted to name him Lance) and growing up in Spokane (if you know Spokane you probably know Ellensburg) I started hanging around Seattle in the summers of the late 80s and then moved here in 1991 and I got to see a few of the bands that pop up in the book like Mudhoney and Seven Year Bitch.
"whatever dad, we don't care about your stupid photo" said Junior and Junior Junior when I asked them to reenact a photo from 2014. Same sign, same lawn chair. They didn't care.
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