Summer + Car Show + JP Patches = Tacoma

I don't much like traditional car shows...I like outlaw hot rods...if you're gonna use up the last of fossil fuels..don't Bore Me!

Tacoma has one of the badddest hot rod car shows ever........click this and feast yr eyes!!

and JPPatches...well, you just gotta see this for yerself....

Off we toddled to Fern Hill in south Tacoma to see Mr Patches. JP lived at the town dump, Gertrude wore a dress tho a man (even the kids knew that!) and well, for Mark, the rest is history...

So the Fern Hill car show was sweet... a few cars, some vendors...and JP PATCHES !! we couldn't get too close....he has many many fans! But we did wanna see him...he's quite old and may not be with us much longer...and he meant a lot to Mark, and I have grown to love him...JP And Mark (ha ha) in the years of growing moss here in PNW.
JP is a little hard to see...but he's next to the blue balloon.....just to the left of bald head man...

 

And again.........

Fern Hill is very cute.......Look there's Sonics Man...more of him later........

Mark, Tigger and a tiny little Berkeley car...

 Tressie's Dream Car......Yes it's True ! I wish I drove a suicide door mid 60s Lincoln Continental.....

 Hey, this car show was turning out to be pretty neat!


Sonics Man is real pissed off that Howard "Shithead" Schulz took the Sonics basketball team from Seattle to OklaFuckinHoma!

Sonics Man suggests we all boycott Starbucks to protest.....Sonics Man, consider it done! No M&T shall ever have a Starbucks beverage unless someone gives us one for free!

 Look at this awesome old bus !!

I took a picture of this little girl because she was really rocking that hat ! and she wasn't dressed like a 'ho...She looks adorable!! Totally  appropriate little girl clothes.....she's not a lame Vogue-reading bonehead...she's adorable and well dressed !!

And almost lastly, I took this picture of the Dreaded City Mangler approved Parking Meter...being loaded into a city car...I made the City crew laugh when I took a picture and asked them not to tell City Mangler that I was taking pictures to blog about this stupid meter thing...and say once again...Parking Meters in Tacoma is a Stupid Fucking Idea.

  
At Fern Hill elementary school is this darling art...It's Chicken Making Music with old locking hardware......What the heck does it mean?? I don't know, but I had a fun time walking thru the heavy chains, and playing with all the locks on the artwork........

Check it out. It's in Fern Hill at 90-something and Park Avenue in South Tacoma....Good luck finding it ...I always forget where it is and I've lived here for 30 years....It appears out of the mist as I'm just driving aimlessly around the n'hood....It appears by Magic just like Brigadoon.......but without Gene Kelly and tap dancing.....  

A Safeway in Tacoma

thanks WeeklyVolcano for the pic there...

a bit has been written about the Hilltop Safeway......here....
And too often, I read or hear a smarmy attitude about the store, and the neighborhood.

I imagine it's somewhat scary to the insulated. But my friends who moved here from real big cities, don't blink an eye...it's the small town folks who are most uncomfortable there.

I am more than a bit upset to see the Safeway remodel.......
I feel like I live in The Neverending Story
(and my last name used to be Bastian!!)



The Nothingness is eating away my life......those things I have loved so much about Tacoma......the sameness...the feeling that Time Has Stood Still.........
not anymore.



I didn't get there in time to get a pic of the outside, with the big red SAFEWAY letters on S. 12th (Earnest Brazill St)

The remodel has started. The outside has a new paint job in a safe pale caramel. The inside is torn up a bit now too. This was a few days ago, about May 1st. I'll get more as the work progresses, and it should be all done by mid-June.
So, more selections, a bakery of sorts.....it'll be OK.
And, it will be many more years until something like the Metropolitan Market moves in here......and I'll probably be dead anyway...
;-)


















Sure some things are OK with me, but not much.
I told you the condos were stupid....too much fancy schmancy crap and nothing for, you know ..working people.
I'm not dumb, I know what the "new Tacoma plan" is really all about.
Make Tacoma the South Sound Bellevue.
Yeah. Great.
Barf.
The people in charge have Zero Imagination.
The artists, clearly, are not in charge here!
And the Old Guard benevolent wealthy, the Russells, the Weyhausers, Bill Phillip for instance......are getting old and retired.....and a new crew is taking over.
Are they interested in public beauty?
Are they interested in sharing the wealth and the power for the betterment of all?
Maybe.
I'm waiting for the "new" council to show me they are capable of something more than saying they are for a more lovely, more artful Tacoma.
So far, all I see is , as Angela knows, The Coming Massacre of Small Local Business Downtown.
But it isn't so much that Parking Meters are stupid right now, it is the BIG LIE.
This is all about making more money for the City Government, and not about some stupid 15/85 phantom parking dilemma.