pilderwasser

at the Frye Art Museum as we speak.

It's kind of a big deal

and it's free, always, becasue Mr. Frye wanted it that way. 

The number of questions far exceeds
the number of answers
Often
answers inspire more questions
How
can one street, address, house, office building
that in appearance hasn’t changed much
take on such a range of meaning
Such different contexts in the same physical location
Like Mr Spock
Half Vulcan -- Half Human
Logic and Emotion doing battle
And it’s not always a fair fight
How
many emotions can be attached to a leftover Greek salad
You’d be surprised
I’m not hungry anymore
Slowly
Imperceptibly
Under the cover of darkness
Inching back the intellectual property line
Far beyond the assessor’s measurements...uncharted territory
Until I am finally ready to build a fence
Enclose
separate
protect my hard-earned knowledge

Before

Bike people understand when they see someone taking pictures of their bike leaning against a wall, a wall like this green one on my street. If you’re reading this, you’re more than likely a bike person and you more than likely have taken a picture of a bicycle.

This 1981 Soma, that I bought from Adam Smith at Bike Works on 10-9 Day in 1999, has morphed just a bit. Inspired by the addition of a new 5-rail CETMA rack This bike is an all weather grocery bar coffee shop utility cruiser. I flip-flopped the rear wheel to the free wheel side, added a rear brake, huge platform pedals, riser bars and a front fender. The risers make it feel much more Saturday afternoon and I do believe make me look 10 years older. I know now, it is possible to be more upright and more laid back at the same time.

Cat knows what's up.  

I've got a jury demand...

take the fucking stairs!

It's your civic duty. Especially when the 4th Avenue entrance is closed due to "cold weather" Especially when you all return from the 701 food court at 1:00pm and the line is out the door. Especially when you only need to go up one floor. Especially when there are 27 of you and herd mentality set in long ago, way back when you learned to stand in line in elementary school.

As a legal messenger in and for the County of King, working in Seattle, I encourage you to take the stairs.  

from where I'm sitting, on the steps at 7th & Union, it's already here.

Take a step back and make your eyes go out of focus, squint a bit and you can view the messenger industry as gage of the economy. We don’t just have our fingers on the pulse of Seattle’s economy, we’ve got our fists wrapped around the rectal thermometer of Seattle’s economy.

Seattle is a bit different from the national average in terms of unemployment, housing costs, and quality of life issues. But I smell some recession muffins cooking right here at home. The construction boom downtown is huge and it appears that when that pendulum stops swinging there will be some surplus office space and condos on the market. I have personally noticed a big decrease in the number of real estate documents I’ve been taking to the Recorder’s office. Take a look at that and then look at the Seattle housing market.

If you carefully compiled data over a 25 or 30 year span of Seattle’s messenger history you would see trends that correspond directly with what was going on in Seattle in terms of construction both commercial and residential, housing prices, commercial rent dollars per square foot, dot-com bubbles, electronic court filings, Boeing burps, Paul Schell’s term in office, all of it. All of that and more.

The number of messengers on the road, the number of messenger companies in the yellow pages, the number of tags pulled down per day, the number on the far right of my pay check, the number of messengers sitting around looking at each other and saying with a smile, “it’s a dying industry…”

It’s a rush pick up.

You’re looking for an economic stimulus package from The Man.

If it’s not ready when you get there, keep track of wait time.

the time is now. round trip airfare to Chicago from Seattle is cheap. all you need is plane ticket and gas money for the team bus and some beer money and you can roll RAGBRAI with pilderwasser. I'm serious. Leaving Seattle July 17 returning July 27. Tell your boss now, you're taking a week off. I'm serious. 

The soul is no traveler;
The wise man stays at home.
He does not go abroad with the hope of finding
    somewhat greater than he knows.
The soul that is plain and true
    dwells in the hour that now is,
    in the earnest experience of the common day,
And the mere trifle becomes porous to thought,
    and bibulous to the sea of light.

        --Ralph Waldo Emerson

 I am all for bibulousness at the sea of light.

The common day. And filling trifles with holes of thought. Whole thought holes.

I see your mouth moving. I hear some words coming out. I know what you’re trying to say. I’m pretty sure I understand your intentions. But it’s not in sync, it’s not even close. It’s like John Wayne’s voice dubbed over a scrawny little character in a low-budget martial arts movie. Or a bad dream involving clowns and carnival rides at the county fair. Or some kind of performance art with spooky face paint, playing uncomfortably looped phrases in the background. You don’t need to lie to me. I’d prefer you saying nothing at all, to some bullshit story trying to appease me. 4 minutes my ass. Save it.

You said, “it will be ready in 4 minutes, can you wait 4 minutes?” That’s a great one. I’ve heard “two minutes” a million times, so 4 minutes was novel. Yeah, whatever, I’ve got 4 minutes.

18 minutes later I called you out again to let you know I had to leave in one minute in order to get to the courthouse by 4:30. Then you said, “oh… we’re just going to send this in the morning, so we’ll just call you back”

Thanks.

Have a nice day.

In those 22 minutes of wait time I looked at my watch about 21 times and the Nextel clock about 9 times. But I had plenty of time to practice my shadow monsters on the office wall at 1191. This is me doing my Migraine Boy Messenger shadow. 

Saturday 1-26-08 Neumos

cold, lonely, long, slow, no-work work day in honor of MLK

the Coliseum Theater is one of the finest examples of Tera Cotta Seattle

three faceless women

if you call yourself a photographer

Does that mean you need to be proactive and seek out subject matter, to actively seek photos, to hire models, to play the part, to walk the walk, to fill out the empty promises?

If you don’t call yourself anything

Does that mean you can sit in a chair on a really cold day and drink cold beer and wait for the photos to come to you?

look up, look down, look out, look all around

oh baby you...

...you got what I need

Maria knows ...Maria knew, 34 years ago.

Spicy Teriyaki chicken with steamed rice = $3.50. They also sell deep fried burritos and egg rolls served up quickly along with a wide variety of beverages in convenient single serving sized containers. No line. No wait time. No fluffy trendy half-ass bullshit. Service with a smile. Honest hard working mom ‘n pop proprietors who look me in the eye and say,

“have good day” and they actually mean it.

And I look them back in the eye and smile and say thank you and I actually mean it.

How do you prepare for a ride when it's 25 degrees?

With layers. How do you prepare for a 30 mile ride with a friend at a moderate Saturday morning pace when it’s 25 degrees? With layers. How do you prepare for a series of short rides, punctuated by long pauses and stretches of standing-by downtown? With layers. What if it’s a national holiday and all the courts are closed and almost all the law firms are closed and it's 25 degrees?

How do you prepare for a ride of incredible intensity followed by long stretches of standing by unsure of when the next call will be or where it’s headed? With layers. Layers of protection. Layers that got tossed aside when the heat was on. Layers you thought you wouldn‘t need again. At times, stripping down to layers that never saw the light of day. But then the road turned, the sun went down, and you found yourself scrambling for those protective layers. Layers that next time you may not be so quick to shed.

Layers.

when I get this feeling, I need CETMA rack healing.

today is my Friday 

some phrases that make my eyes light up, in different shades of blue, depending on the context.
Word. Words. Word.

All you can eat
Happy Hour
Free Beer
Live Music
Wine & Cheese
Sincerity
Integrity
Honesty
Bad pork chop

Chicken Shit
Karaoke
Anti inflammatory
Syrup of ipecac
Alcohol free
Ultra sensitive
Long lasting protection
Long term goals
Comfort zones
Ruby Slippers
Make do
Make up
Over due
Over done
Over done make up
Fake
False
Plastic
Thin veneer
Horseshit
Limp fish handshakes
Daily Special
White belt
Studded belt
Kevlar Belt
Rust Belt
Bible belt
Below the belt
Tighten your belt
Inside the Beltway
Rust proof
Water proof
Water resistant
Stain resistant
stainless
Breathable
Merlino wool
Virgin wool
Smart wool
Swobo
Dry Clean Only
The smell of freedom
Is it raining?
Art
Science
Logic
Love
Gray Area

Bathing suit area
Continuum

peace be with you
Pleased to meet you
hope you guess my name
That greater force…which cannot be named

word words word
If you meet Buddha on the road, kill him

4130 chromoly steel natch

4130 is the PLU number for Pink Lady Apples

Coincidence? I think not.
I like steel bikes. I like Pink Lady apples. I like them a lot.

That phrase inspires a variety of things in a variety of people. To JP, it no doubt brings this Nu Shooz song to mind. But in this specific moment, this one spot-lighted, laser pointed, parabolic focused context, this is what it means to me. The Point of No Return is that moment when you have eaten enough of the food in front of you that no matter what the dispatcher throws at you, you’re golden, you’re set, you’re fine, can’t touch this, bring it, whatever. You cannot afford to wait in line on your lunch break or your so-called lunch break. So you choose establishments that offer food fast, which may or may not be “fast food”. You choose places that don’t offer a place to sit and chat. No bullshit. Or you choose to eat when the rest of the downtown population is not eating. Today I went into on of my favorite bodegas at 12:07pm for some spicy teriyaki and there were at least 20 construction workers waiting in line for the same thing. The same goes for any respectable place in the core, just substitute pasty office workers for hard hat wearing blue collar wouldn’t want your job on a day like this workers. So I turned around and went for another option, which happened to be Café Zum Zum, two hours later. If everyone zigs at 12 noon, I”ll choose to zag. I’ll sit and read the book review on my lunch break and try to scarf down some food later.

So this is where the point of no return comes in. It’s 10:43am or 2:12pm and you stop for some food because there are no lines and you’re hungry. You get the food and start sucking it down and when you’ve eaten enough of it so that no matter what your dispatcher barks at you, you can cover it comfortably, you’ve passed that point of which I speak. You can casually finish eating and do what you need to do. In that pre PNR stage you’re visualizing packing it up and one-arming your food to your next stop or double bagging it and stuffing it in your messenger bag to slowly leak all over your work and personal possessions. There is no post PNR because when you achieve the PNR, you’re set, you can smile and relax.

If I...

Extreme. To the extremes. Gravitating to the poles. All or None. On or Off. Black or White. Yes or No. Hot or cold. USE EXTREME CAUTION.

Looking for a happy medium. A warm grey area. Like a shower in a claw foot tub with really old plumbing that needs to be finessed into a comfortable mix, not too hot, not too cold. Like that.

Toggle switches and their visible predictability, their audible flip, their satisfying simplicity, they’re great. But life isn’t always so ON or OFF.

Last week I found a sign much like the one in this photo. But it was the uber-reflective flexible vinyl kind supported on a cross-frame. It was crumpled sans frame and muddy and soaking wet in the gutter on 5th Avenue and at least one earwig was living in it, but the orange caught my eye and I picked it up, rolled it up and stuffed it in my bag. A short time later I gave it to DANK Bags. 24 hours later I had a custom clip-on coozie made of uber reflective orange street sign. 48 hours later I had a custom EXTREME top-tube pad made of the same sign. Photos will follow soon, when it’s not dark ass crack soaking ice storm I can’t feel my hands cold wet.

Note: DANK bags is that locally owned and operated messenger bag company that I like to refer to as if they were a big operation just to keep the chuffers thinking what they’re thinking. But it’s really just Cory. And Cory makes the finest bags and accessories and if you want some of that you need to talk to Cory. Word.

Note #2: CETMA racks are made by hand in Eugene, Oregon. It is also not a huge operation. CETMA is Lane. And Lane makes very fine racks for your bikes. Lane knows utility cycling. Lane knows messengering. If you want some of that talk to your local bike shop and talk to Lane too. More to follow soon when I get my hands on that special delivery from CETMA that’s sitting at base right now.

follow Cat's example, mark your calendars for RAGBRAI  

so this messenger walks into a bar...

bartender says, "why the long shadow?"

and why are you riding in that bike lane the wrong way up 2nd Ave?

that bike lane is for chuffers, southbound chuffers

--- 

Why?

Because I'm not supposed to.

Why not?

Because you want me to.

Recommendations, suggestions, traditions, laws, customs, rules, regulations, requirements, dress codes, uniforms. At times I view traffic laws, traffic signals and lane markings like suggestions. I hear what you’re saying, but I‘m not feeling it right now, I mean it’s not really speaking to me. Like an overly doctored photo on a box of pasta with small print in the corner that reads SERVING SUGGESTION. Or the lines in a coloring book that are so predictable and vanilla it feels like a joke to actually take them seriously. When someone talks at me, as if I were in the principal’s office, using sentences that start with words like traditionally, the new policy is, you’re required to, the law states, the family has done it this way for generations…I get turned off, turned away, turned in, turned the other way. An eloquent poet in Rage Against the Machine said it best, when he said “Fuck You, I won’t do what you tell me!” then he said it 15 more times with feeling at the end of Killing in the Name.

I like postcards , I like Bimbos, I like Bimbo's postcards and I wonder what my grandma thinks of Bimbo’s Burritos postcards. I wrote her one this afternoon and when I dropped it in the mailbox, for some reason I was reminded of a hand written note I saw, years ago, taped to the mailbox on 6th Avenue West at Crockett, across the street from Targy’s Tavern. It said something like “my son’s backpack was placed in this mailbox this afternoon, please call me at this number so I can recover it” That little note said so much. It brought an image of some kid getting his backpack taken away by a bully or even an asshole friend who then ran around with it for a little while, the owner in hot pursuit, then the chase ended at the mailbox as the backpack was stuffed in.

Long pants, long shorts, short pants, short shorts.

One afternoon this week I caught a whiff of spring in the air, just a whiff, a hint, a reminder. Like the smell of an old friend. I’m not sure where it came from and it was fleeting and even if it was all in my mind, it was there. 40 degrees and the first week of January but I smelled it. And it was encouraging. It made me want to keep my job for a little while longer. Long enough to start cutting more and more cloth off the cuffs of my pants until finally in May or June they’re full-on in-your-face short shorts. Yes. Rolling around in a t-shirt and shorts. 100% cotton. Sweating.

background music here:  remix  

Hibernating through January, I suggest these two films. Gimme Shelter (1970) Documentary on the Rolling Stones 1969 tour and Altamont Concert. And Grey Gardens (1975) an amazing documentary about Big Edie and Little Edie, mother-daughter pair, aunt and cousin of Jackie O. Worth watching more than once, it inspires some questions. Take a look at the original trailer on YouTube.

Both films were made by Albert and David Maysles. Both are available at the library. However the waiting list for Grey Gardens at the Seattle library, is months long, I finally got my hands on it last night.

Two thumbs up.

seek and you shall find

at least assume the posture of seeking

pretend like you're looking for something

you might not find IT

you will find something

---

A friend asked me to check the lost 'n found at the bar for her rain jacket.

Didn't find her jacket but found one that fits me perfectly.

***

I've been searching for a word to describe the ability to see so clearly in other people what you cannot see in yourself.

 Devlin at a Wright Runstad messenger lunch

Kevin after the Cross Town Traffic Alley Cat  

Here's to you Phil and Kevin and Devlin

In 2008 I have resolved not to drink less, because that’s horseshit and that’s as played-out as 1100 Olive.

In 2008 I have resolved to be fully aware, present and attentive to the beverages I consume.

In that simple resolution, is a parable.

In that, is the truth.

thanks for the high five  How to Avoid the Bummer Life

right back atcha