A Few Things I've Made...

I'm closing the shop and only be open a few days a month.....I may close permanently while I look for new digs in Portland or Seattle...I may never open again....
I shall continue to design.......
Here is a small sample of what I've made recently and not-so-recently......

Why Riley Is mos def a Great Tacoma Landlord

Told the council to compensate victimized businesses during construction on Broadway ....and the city gave small business the Finger.....while giving $$$$ to rich developers and big big big business.....
Riley showed concern for renters and small business owners unlike the City....and most other landlords.......Riley keeps his rents reasonable....He knows people need room to do their thing and to get established....

True, Alan and such, do rent their tiny spaces for pretty cheap and does advertising...which is great ! But it would unnerve me if my Landlord and my Landlady were both in my Lap every day, all day.

I bring this up because I hear what others say to me in confidence. Us small business owners/wanna-be business owners are kinda pissed. This creates a Real Drag on our local economy.....I know so many people just like me that want to start a small business in a tiny storefront.....maybe live-in, maybe not....and we'd like to do our Thing without having to BrownNose.........we're sensitive creative types.....
Where to go? The B & I ?? The Starlite Flea Market ?? Because that's all there is........
Just saying, there is nowhere in Tacoma to have a working live-in studio and decent foot traffic......at a price a struggling tiny business can afford.
And Tacoma is poorer for it. I look at the new businesses.....things started up in the last 3 years.....ALL had a pot of money...somewhere.......anyone else who has a successful business.....started long ago.......
I've had many businesses in Tacoma.....when it was Small-Business-Friendly.
If you take the SBA course, at the end, You get the privilege of Applying for a Loan, At 6% for ......$1000.00 !!!!!!!!!!

They were able to stay and grow because Rents were reasonable. Property was reasonable. But those days are over. It's really sad.
In the blink of an eye, Tacoma became a Yuppie/Hiptard Playground.....
I've been checking out rents.....Can you afford $1800. a month to rent 800 sq. ft ??
I've been looking at Portland and Seattle........for the same or LESS money to rent space, I can get millions more people and foot traffic, and a real chance at the kind of small success I want.

Unless I win the lottery, I'll never get to enhance Tacoma.....I doubt I'll be able to have my own business again....in Tacoma...
Maybe if I was a Mega TransNational Financial Services I could get some big Taxpayer Giveaways....
Hmmm, maybe I should start a Paypal-button blog.....Give me money...a micro-gift !!!
It was/is small businesses, thousands of them that have KEPT THE FAITH IN TACOMA. yet..........Russell has stayed here because they "loved" Tacoma......now, we are their Bitch. Remember Intel ? Build us a new freeway on/off ramp.......then screw you.
Shall I discuss the big LeMay Car Museum giveaway????
The rich get richer (on taxpayer money) The poor get children.

Here's one reason why people laugh at Tacoma

Prints Prints Prints.....Blog Tag

This week on the eVintage Society Blog tag - be sure to check out Kitsch-y-Cool for her Prints Picks !

The questions for this week's fashion wondering/wandering !
WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE PRINT OFFERED IN YOUR INVENTORY? Since the father of LSD....just died today....I'm feeling all nostalgic about Acid....So this one on etsy..........

Wild PsychEdelic 60s Vintage Top will Blow Your Mind

WHAT IS YOUR DEFINITION OF NOVELTY PRINT?
I love prints that are real things......chairs, houses, silly flowers......


SIZE MATTERS….
WHEN WEARING PRINTS, DO YOU PREFER BIG OR SMALL?
Oh I'm petite..so I like small prints......No ! I like big prints......I like all prints....

COLOR OR BLACK AND WHITE? -
Both........ha ha!

WHAT DESIGNER DOES YOUR FAVORITE PRINTS?
My favorite is Alex Colman......
Here's some faves !!

Hindu....

Paisley.....

And on we go to Vintage Bulletin . Mmmm, I can't wait for next week's goodies !! on eVintage blog go-round!

Another perspective on Urban Living....

Since Jane Jacobs is the Goddess and Kunstler the God..of all that IS URBAN.....whilst googling...."self congratulatory circle jerk".......I bumbled upon this:

"Dolores Hayden, a professor of architecture and American studies at Yale and a leading historian of the American built environment's relationship to its political integument, offers in Building Suburbia an explanation of how the now-characteristic forms of that environment took shape and of why the problems they cause have proven resistant to amelioration. She writes, her preface tells us, “from the perspective of an urban landscape historian who is also an architect, wife, mother, and suburban resident.” The last term of her self-description hints at what sets this book apart from even the most worthwhile other treatments of the urban crisis: Hayden tells the stories of suburban settlers without condescension and without automatic ascription of their choice of domicile to racism or mindless conformity. She scrupulously avoids both the self-congratulatory tone that creeps into, for instance, Jane Jacobs's picture of her own idyllically bohemian Lower Manhattan neighborhood in The Death and Life of Great American Cities and the wild anger at suburban piggery that pervades James Howard Kunstler's books from The Geography of Nowhere on. For Hayden, the suburbs' growth is not a drama of moral choice but the product of political and economic forces that she sets out to delineate, armed with formidable archival knowledge of two centuries' worth of building practice and with a sensibility alert to the cultural roots and consequences of that practice."

Since Tacoma, or a small group of Tacomans and Tacowomens are all fired up about Urban Living.........I thought you might like to have this tidbit.......Here's what I find most appealing.........that Hayden documents the political and economic forces that brought about suburbs.
Cities are now bringing expensive condos using your tax dollars (a choice !) to middling, sluggish cities as a means to "save them". No it isn't moral.....it's all about money. If it was to 'save them" then truly affordable housing and educational, and recreational venues would be built downtown, rather than the gated communities for the wealthy. If suburbs were to be saved instead of just derided, then we'd be spending our tax dollars on mass transit, instead of roads and cars. Happily Washington voters just defeated a moronic Road and Transit package. Mass transit ridership has about doubled in the last 5 years in our area.
Because it is true that downtowns and compact living situations are best for a number of well-documented reasons, the fact that the poor always get shoved to the periphery of towns and then to the suburbs, as we are seeing in Puyallup, for instance, is more evidence that the packing of downtowns with the wealthy or near-wealthy......has little to do with morals, and more to do with other reasons as Hayden documents.
If the most vulnerable people where thought about at all other than how to get rid of them, then their housing would be nearest to the amenities and services they need in their daily life. It would be a revolution in city planning vogueness,if All the People were thought about and planned for and treated as if they are human beings.
I will never forget Julie Anderson stating in her campaign literature and her speeches that the ...Bums need to be moved away from legitimate business in downtown because they interfere with commerce..........
Well, "bums" are citizens of America.......Just as much as Law and Order Julie.
For the life of me, I don't know why our "leaders" voted to put the New Homeless Shelter on STW....and not up on the south/eastside near the County Hospital and several bus routes. Near Puget Sound Hospital there are groceries, a drug store, and other medical and social services in walking distance and a short bus ride away. I suspect The View from the Hill, doesn't belong to the poor, or the bums......it belongs to people that are rich. Or pretend they are.

Tressie's Excellent Hilltop Adventure

Went for a walk on the sultry Sunday afternoon......started out with my camera to take some pics of the Hotel but decided to walk over to S. J St, to find the place where my vintage pattern

came from. Uh, the hood.
I took tons of pics on my walk. I was a contractor for about 20 years and then a landscaper and I owned an organic farm. A published writer and a practicing artist.
I love to look at Model Homes. My sister Pat was active in the a builder's group in California in the 60s and 70s, and she was married to a builder. I used to build playhouses, dog houses & bird houses from scraps as a child in the trailer park.
Call it House Envy. Or A Machine for Living. Or A Basic Human Right.
(I blame Jesus for that un-capitalistic bias).


As I walked closer towards the Gintz Group 27th Street Station condos, I took more pics.
Here's your new neighborhood!


Strangely vaguely white/black people..you know the kind that aren't scary.


If you knew who I was I doubt you'd let me in your "gated community".

Into the Mouth of the Beast.

Pretty. Shiny. People. View inside from the kitchen.

I scrunched down a bit to take a picture from the dining area.....and looked right at the toilet. Ummm YUMMMY !!!
Since I have a background in building and living in houses, I am an expert at critique.
I've seen it all. Kitchens with 5 doorways. Must have been designed by college-educated morons who have never actually worked in a kitchen trying to get 3 full meals on the table with toddlers hungry at your feet!


I can't believe someone actually has a job at Gintz Group and designed this stupidity!
You're sitting at the dining table eating your Maine lobster pancakes with pea shoot salad and ginger-carrot emulsion...washed down with your Napa Valley Opus One....and you glance up to see the Toilet.
Now this low-class design flaw could have been remedied for about 250. american with a short wall ..a cubbyhole for storage....So I suggest to the renters who the Yuppie Landlord will allow to live in their investment, to buy a Shoji screen ...like at Target.
But I really think that in all the Self-Congratulatory Circle Jerk that is the hallmark of Developers That Are Saving Tacoma....this is what the poor get.
I will lay bets right now that these will all be rentals.



Your view. It's very nice. Seriously.
Lets go meet your neighbors.





“We won’t make a killing,” Gintz said. “But we like taking ugly properties and making them nice.”
Um, yes, I think a profit of about $30,000 per unit (87 units), in my world, is A killing. Roughly that's about $2,500,000. or so, after taxes and selling expenses. And the self-delusional cavalier attitude continues:
“27th Street Station will set the tone for gentrification of this neighborhood.”
“We got panned on one of the local blog sites because of the gentrification and forcing people out of the neighborhood,” Gintz said. “But those people were going to get forced out anyway as rents go up.”

Nobody needs to get forced out as rents go up. that is PURELY a landowner's greed that moves the rent upwards. And could you at least, Gintz Group, practice a little bit of Bullshit Humility
....like at least give me a jar of vaseline before you try to um, you know.
And what of the people that are evicted? What of the people who will be evicted when the other landlords get your Style of Greedy?
I know you don't give a Flying.....
But I challenge you to a little soul-redemption........
How's about you make a BIG Contribution to a Charity in Tacoma that deals with Domestic Abuse....or Low Income Housing?
I suggest A Million Bucks. You have it.
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Well, at least your ego does.
Yes this is personal. You are a Grinch. You are not doing affordable housing. So stop Patting Yourself on the BACK before you break your arm !
You're Dickensian. You are Scrooge.
And I also know I am wasting my time.....You will just blow this off because you actually believe you're a Great Person Doing Great Work. Helping out the poor black people. And the rich white yuppies who will buy them.
Your project is just a vehicle to make the rich even richer.
Just calling Bullshit on Bullshit.
If you cared at all, you might do this:
Say: "I know this will cause disruption in the lives of the tenants I will have to evict. I am giving them each $2000. in moving assistance and I am asking the City Council to pass laws that are favorable to renters since I realize that renters are at the mercy of developers. Housing is a basic human right, and folks like me also have a right to make money. "

I Can Make You Happy !

One of the best things about funkoma vintage is that folks find things here that make them soooooo happy....
Old records they have always wanted....
Record players....
crinolines....
gingham dresses....
vintage t shirts.....
vintage bowling bags....
me !!
I was regalling the sweet Shannon and the jumpin' Jessi......with tales of vintage music......I am nothing if not arrogant about growing up in the SF bay area during the Free Speech movement, Black Panthers, Mario Savio, Bettina Apthecker......Grateful Dead, Moby Grape, Country Joe, and Stanford and Berkeley and all that and the bridges.....and It occurred to me recently.

that a Left Coast girl I am and always will be......I will always live in sight of
the Pacific Ocean and near a bridge or 2.
From the saltwater I came and so I shall return....

So may I take you on a little trip today???
(Jerry, I am so sorry I missed your show at the Swiss...I was so f'n tired that night...being a vintage pimp is hard on a girl)
Let's start with Moby Grape....
8:05 remains one of my fave songs....on this vid...you have to zip ahead to 3:30.....but listen to Mike Douglas....
and try to imagine what it was like to be cool and surrounded by squares.
tho Mike Douglas is pretty cool despite all appearances....(The Moby Grapes !!)
take my word for it.....


OK the other thing on my mind is the Surrealist theme for ZeitBike
There will be a public judging of the bikes on Third Thursday Artwalk at the Tacoma Art Museum....May 15
.....which Mark will enter .....
So, when I got the artlist email, I first thought of duh,
Jefferson Airplane's Surrealistic Pillow !
and Marty Balin is so underrated as a sexy moody evocative singer...
I could listen to these 2 bottom songs below again ....and again....
And then there is the Red Octopus album....which has the classiest song ever that sings of cunnilingus....yeah, I said it....clam dip....muff diving...for pearls...


Now this is music to make love by....a 7 minute song from Jefferson Starship...Miracles
Yeah if you can't get your Happy ON in 7 minutes...check your pulse.....

mmmm, Where's Mark right now ?????

A little Jefferson Airplane....




and finally, It's A Beautiful Day.....yes......and the group.....
Shannon found a serviceable copy....she's a happy girl !!!!