Random Notes: Vodka, Portland, Tacoma....

1. Vodka. always OK with me. I wonder if SevenOhWonder down below will trade vintage for vodka...the 3 dollar Martini.....Marketing Genius! We've dined there 2 times because Derek/X133 gave a recommendation......and he was right. Super excellent food, swell waitress...with just the right amount of sass (Liesel)...and besides...the view...and oh, 3 Dollar Martinis....

2. Went to Portland last week...stayed at the Mark Spencer...they love Dogs !!(word up Tacoma, you suck in the pet/hotel department)...So we got settled in and walked around the Pearl and the fringe of the Pearl...yes, the Pearl is sometimes too polished for my taste, but never fear, Portland hardly ever screws it up so bad, that it alienates the very people that make Portland so beloved....
ergo: Within blocks of our hotel, is Ace Hotel, and The Joyce Hotel, and The Kent Hotel...Ace is space deluxe, but downbeat on the decor...spare,indie and a bit too polished.

The Joyce, and the Kent.......oh yes. A hotel from my childhood. Shabby, decrepit and the place for the poor, the adventurous, and the traveling youth to stay. All great cities have these flophouses because not everyone at every time wants/needs/can afford a deluxe stay/place.
oh, and I get a big kick outta Joyce/Kent...my big brother's name is Kent...his wife is named Joyce!!!


2a. Here is Mark, Tigger and our new friend, Alexander, sitting in front of the Half and Half...drinking coffee on the fuckin' sidewalk (Tacoma, take notes!). Alexander was all about vintage photography and vintage bikes.

He is gonna ride in the 42Ride, a cross-country bike ride to promote bike-riding (duh) and 42Below Vodka. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. a street view. vibrant,eh? yup. Bicycle Film Festival website...




3. Tacoma. BEST Monkey Party ever. Who was in the Bell Tower? Who was on the roof and flipping you off? That's for me to know....and you to find out......

Now with Witty Commentary...

Miles and Cole and Tacoma...

One of the best pleasures of having a big space in Tacoma is tossing out a free venue for kids to play in....remember...the yutes of today are the Social Security payers of tomorrow.....so get busy!!

I took this picture of Apache Chief just minutes after pulling in from the 4 1/2 hour drive from Portland!!

Some 'rents...

The kids are alright...

Hey Look it's Kelly !

The bitchin' Phoenix....

2 of my fave shots...Sugar Beats in the greenery...and a moody pic of Hippo Critt...

The Yutes of Today are the ...

MUSIC at funkoma here in T Town on Friday Night !!

short sweet....

here's the fo...


Gonna be at six. The bands playing are Apache Chief, Hippo Critt and Sugar Beats. Apache Chief, we're pretty much garage punk. Hippo Critt is indie rock with poppish tendencies and Sugar Beats are a psychedelic two piece influenced by 13th Floor Elevators and the Velvet Underground. All of the bands are made up of the youth of Tacoma. Uh. I dunno what else besides that.


See you there:

Roses, Night Gardening and your love....

roses...roses...sultry nights in the garden
#2 in Tressie's Garden post series...
This one was first published in June 1996...in the Senior Scene...cause back then...only aging flower children...and old folks gardened...maybe some religious folks, but it was a bit of a strange avocation..
After the hippie back-to-the-earth movement of the 60s and 70s, gardening, canning, and making stuff went out of fashion...people wanted to trade stocks and snort cocaine and vote Republican...see where that got 'cha!
At Last a Decent Plot

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may...
June is for roses. Roses speak of love and kisses. They require some special care, but they are so worth the time. Gather ye rosebuds and petals while ye may, and use them for potpourri.
Planting
June is still a good month for planting four-inch and bigger size plants. Water well, daily at first, until the plant settles in, then mulch to hold in moisture during the hot summer months. Large-size containers are available all summer but be sure to check nursery stock for good health. You don't want a plant that's been under-watered and chewed up an put under stress. It won't stand the heat and bloom well.

Use annual marigold, alyssum, petunia, marguerites, zinnia and portulaca for sunny spots. Hardy summer perennials for sun that are drought-resistant include helenthemem (sunrose, yarrow, black-eye Susan, hollyhock, lavender, baby's breath, and sedum Autumn Joy.

Many herbs take little water once established. Try thymes, sages catmint, and rosemary. All these plants look great together and take the same care. Accent your plantings with gray-leafed plants. these tend to like drier soil too. Gray leaves soften bright orange, red and yellow, or add punctuation to soft pink, white and lilac.

Several artemesias with their finely cut leaves and fragrance are good for drying. Look for Sweet Annie, mugwort, wormwood or the many varieties of fern leaf artemesias.

Bought some roses in pots? Dig a hole twice the width of the container slightly deeper. Remove part of the soil (put it in the compost along with the peat pot) and work in some well-rotted manure. Soak the rose thoroughly, remove it from the pot, and plant it at the same level as it was. Toss in your prepared soil and water.
Form a watering basin slightly wider than the rose and mulch. When you cut flowers for bouquets, cut the stem cleanly just above an outward-facing leaf with five or seven leaflets. Later, keep the old petals and toss the rest on the compost.
Fertilize monthly until August, then stop and allow the growth to harden for winter.
In late fall, remove all leaves to stop wintering pests and diseases. Consult a garden book for more help.

Fragrant Gardens
Plan now for sultry summer nights outside. Plant your garden beds near entryways, window boxes beneath open bedroom windows, and deck and patio pots with fragrant flowers and foliage.
Nicotiana, alyssum, stock, lavender, roses, petunias, honeysuckle, evening primors and heliotrpe are easty to find. Use boxwood shrubs and mix flowers with pineapple sage and mints from the herb garden. Surround steps and walks with creeping thyme. All these release fragrance when you brush past them.

An especially romantic night garden uses the white flowers of those mentioned above. Mixed with gray leaves, white flowers reflect the stars and moonlight.
A garden should always include comfortable benches and seats. Place tables around to set down a plate of summer barbeque while rubbing a leaf to enjoy its scent.
To encourage long romantic visits in the garden, purchase or make overstuffed cushions. Use duck or canvas in solids or stripes, or heavy printed denim to make a basic rectangle, square and even hearts. Stuff with polyester fiberfill to withstand summer showers. Bring fabric cushions in during a real downpour to extend the life of your cushions.

Stroll through the garden at sunset with candles or kerosene lamps. Many plants release a fragrance only at night. Our summers are so fleeting. Will this season be dry or damp?

Create an oasis under a covered porch and hang a hammock under an arbor. Close your eyes and listen to the birds, and breathe.
Summer afternoon, summer afternoon.

****Rose Recipes ****
Potpourri **
Mix dry wormwood leaves with lavender buds and dry rose petals, your choice of fixative, and a few drops of rose oil. This potpourri sewn into sachets and stored with winter and spring sweaters and woolens helps to protect them from moths. Store garments after dry cleaning or washing because moths are attracted to body soil. The lavender and artemesia seem to confuse the moths so won't damage your clothes.

Rosewater**
Rosewater can be used for many things--cooking, drinks or a hair rinse.It was an essential in great-grandmother's day. Gather four cups of fresh, unsprayed rose petals and bring to a boil with five cups pure spring water or distilled water in a glass or stainless steel pot. Simmer for 10 minutes and stir gently with a wooden spoon. Strain, bottle and refrigerate, and use within a week. This recipe makes about a quart of rosewater.

My anniversary bash...the shop and gardening...

I really didn't wanna go to Neil's new 1022...I liked the Monsoon Room just fine, thank you...
but after having tons of fun at the Tempest, and chatting with George, Bender, and Teddy....and a very drunk Mark (not my Mark, someone else's), it was time to go...and when you are at the Tempest...
you just naturally go around the block (don't trip on the busted sidewalk, please)

(sorry for the lack of pretty pictures, I'm back to my old camera, and I'm feeling lazy right now...)
It was plainer and there's no outside seating which is very very upsetting...I spend 9 months a year inside (what, am I a fetus??)
and also, I am a Californian...
I expect some outside action (so get busy....)

But Cory, tender of the evening's entertainment and Jessica, who works at The Art Place...and wears moccasin type shoes (sorry for being all happy and drooly)
but no one wears moccasins..so I get a little excited...made it all better.
Absinthe is bad, and good. That's all I'm saying about that.
Except, this anniversary will be memorable....

It was a learning experience, too.
I learned that some people think LeMay should team up with HotRodARama...to lend some credibility to it.....
folks who haven't been in Tacoma very long are very impressed with LeMay... well, Mark knows way too much about LeMay and old cars, so LeMay is not impressive at all...
but since humans have now been trained to want a Disneyland-Style experience of the most trivial of pursuits.....LeMay will generate copious amounts of money....

HotRod on the other hand is a 100% different kind of experience. It is LeMay that would benefit from the genuine art, intelligence, and kindness that is HotRod...

HotRod would not benefit, because the object of HotRod is not to generate money, number 1, it is to celebrate creativity and the old ethic of people to people fun and art that swells up inside the chest of us who didn't go to art school and wouldn't apply for an art grant if our life depended on it.....
because for a large bunch of humans....
Simply doing something wonderful and satisfying... is what it is all about.
So,
while I wish the folks who work at LeMay and the folks around the Dome who will make some money (finally)....huzzah.
This difference is absolutely crucial to understanding our culture today....and a lot of otherwise smart people (mostly university graduates...) MISS this crucial difference about what is happening in human history now.
Bigness is losing out....and the small, and the personal, and the local is what is coming back.... Social Media is a Big Thing, not a small thing....and I'm sorry if you don't know that. Blabbing on the internet....is a sorry excuse for real life. Which is why I make the rounds....all the time and drool on your shoes.

Farmer's Market today..I shall be jumping the fence to set in my vegies and seeds...
the shop is going along pretty good with the massive cleaning and rearranging project..it looks like a bomb went off...but soon it will be all pretty.

Then.....OMG! WE ARE GETTING ASPHALT STREETS WITHIN A FEW DAYS !!!!!


The other thing I learned was that my favorite Greener who is older than me....has had some very serious health problems.
Love one another, hug and make merry.
Too soon our mortal coil may unwind....

Vote For Salmon Swimming thru the North End !

Time to Vote!
Time to vote for salmon streams running through Tacoma!
Vote for Puget Creek Restoration Society
Vote Green
Vote Scott



Scott Hansen, founder of the Puget Creek Restoration Society, and our sweet neighbor here on Broadway, funky funky dirty dirty Broadway, is a finalist in the Cox Conserves Heroes program, presented by KIRO 7.

This program honors people in the community that help create, preserve or enhance places for everyone to enjoy...you know...like creeks, parks, gardens, plazas, streets and public squares.........the places that make life beautiful......
the places that make life possible.

go here... Then click

• Scott Hansen - Environmental Non-profit of Choice: Puget Creek Restoration Society

to see a lovely website....ahhhh...breathe deep...........

then, on the

Welcome to the Seattle Market

page, click finalists and watch a sweet video about what Scott and the folks do...
then come back and click vote.........
and click for Scott........
You'll feel better......

and omg........the Puget Creek Restoration Society can win
5 Thousand, yes, bones or clams or whatever you call them
.....to continue the fabulous work...and get a load of urban achievers in the vid....

so VOTE you hooked up monkey...Scott Hansen is at the bottom of the vote page......
DO IT.

This'll be short and sweet.....

like me. So, I've been told that I have readers...yeah me. and that I am passionate. thank you. Yes, I will say things out loud that others may be thinking.
I also do not have a 100% cheery outlook...I see things as they are...and how they could be........

so I hope some love Neko because she is not 100% cheery and her songs are hauntingly macabre and strangely uplifting because they are about humanity and the natural world...it's not always a pretty sight, and we must. look.

so. Neko Case. Pretty nice eh? I didn't go because I don't go to big concerts anymore (much). Here's my 2 favorite vids on YouTube, baby.





Well, work continues on my street...It will never ever end...
from Morgan's Brain post (via feedtacoma)...got me thinking about this:
from wikipedia's article on Florida's Creative Class theory....(in bold)

The Creative Class is a class of workers whose job is to create meaningful new forms (2002). The Creative Class is composed of scientists and engineers, university professors, poets and architects.

The Super-Creative Core is considered innovative, creating commercial products and consumer goods. Their primary job function is to be creative and innovative. “Along with problem solving, their work may entail problem finding” (Florida, 2002, p.69).

The Creative Class also “includes people in design, education, arts, music and entertainment, whose economic function is to create new ideas, new technology and/or creative content” (Florida, 2006, p.8).

Their designs are widely transferable and useful on a broad scale, as with products that are sold and used on a wide scale. Another sector of the Creative Class includes those positions which are knowledge intensive, these careers usually require a high degree of formal education (2002). Examples of this sector are health professionals and business management, who are considered to be a part of the sub-group called Creative Professionals.

back to the Super-Creative Core theory....
Their primary job function is to be creative and innovative. “Along with problem solving, their work may entail problem finding” (Florida, 2002, p.69)
Even though the Creative Class has been around for centuries........

well, yes of course...I'll take issue with the business management folks...they better get their head out of their asses because I don't yet see much change in corporate culture that embraces intelligence...yet...I see glimmers of hope in small business...ala Paul Hawken's theories, for example....

Additional to these two main groups of creative people, the usually much smaller group of Bohemians are also included in the creative class.

ah yes, Bohemians. The sub sub culture that is entirely misunderstood and ripped off. We're creating all the time. The air we breathe is different. We do our own thing, man, and dip our toes in the common culture to test for love/hate. But we mostly watch our ideas get co-opted. There is some satisfaction knowing that trends and general enlightenment start with us.

Here's where bohemia culture in the most modern times has been co-opted and then moved into mainstream culture....just a few examples from the last 50 years....

*Wearing of work clothes as a fashion statement..Denim/Painters pants/work boots...
*Home gardening, once the hobby of the homemaker and immigrant is now Big Time!
*Organic foods, and slower lifestyles, once the purvey of back-to-nature types of Rousseauian and 20's boho Back To The Land movement that spawned Hippies and Diggers and Flower Children....
*Poetry/Open Mike/Indie culture have arisen into mainstream because of co-option by corporations that are empty vessels of profit-obsession...

well, there's a few to chew on.
Me, I'm gonna go cut up some t-shirts and creatively re-fashion them into something new ....I started doing that about 40 years ago (yikes!) and selling my wares on the streets of San Francisco, in my high school, and on and on and so forth.

Florida may have flaws in his theories, but I think his detractors don't know boo about creativity...and how it is nurtured. It isn't nurtured by gentrification!
The fact that the most creative group of people in Tacoma have long congregated around the Broadway/St. Helens/7th -9th street area...and are now being gentrified out...is a perfect example of the co-option I was talking about.

I still have to stare at 505 Broadway and those lions (?) and the FAKE PEOPLE in the windows.

FAKE PEOPLE. In the windows.
and read the sign in the window of the condo building...
warm and fuzzy huh?
You just can't make this shit up.