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STAGE FORBIDDEN FELINE ROMANCE! PAGE 26 FILM MATT DAMON IS LOST IN SPACE! PAGE 28

Fantastic Voyage

Mr. Oktober

How John Coltrane's Seattle sojourn made music history. By Steve Griggs Page 21

With lagers coming into style, meet the brewer who has never made an IPA. By Daniel Person Page 15

SEPTEMBER 30-OCTOBER 6, 2015 I VOLUME 40 I NUMBER 39

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inside

VOLUME 40 | NUMBER 39 SEATTLEWEEKLY.COM

September 30-October 6, 2015

DORM FOLLOWS FUNCTION BY CASEY JAYWORK | Maybe

we should rethink our microhousing restrictions—tiny apartments could be just the answer to our rent crisis. Plus: the story behind all those jury-rigged utility poles, and a chat with the Seattle Education Association’s Jonathan Knapp.

DUST TO DUST

BY SARA BERNARD | Georgetown

is one of Seattle’s last affordable neighborhoods, but thanks to its industry, there’s a health-related downside— and residents are up in arms.

food&drink

15 LAGERS ÜBER ALLES BY DANIEL PERSON | IPAs have been the trend, but there’s a new interest in authentic German beer. 17 | THE WEEKLY DISH 18 | RESTAURANT REVIEW 19 | BEER HUNTER

arts&culture

BY STEVE GRIGGS | Half a century ago,

right down on First Avenue, John Coltrane made jazz history. 23 | COMIX 24 | CONVERSATION | Local animator

Tess Martin.

25 REVIEWS

A September CD roundup; two new films about trapped individuals; Greek mythology is fucked over by WET; PNB goes historical—and hysterical.

31 CALENDAR 31 32 34 35 36

| | | | |

THE PICK LIST PERFORMANCE & BOOKS VISUAL ARTS/THE FUSSY EYE MUSIC FILM

odds&ends

4 | CHATTERBOX 38 | HIGHER GROUND 39 | CLASSIFIEDS

cover credits

PHOTO BY MORGEN SCHULER

EDITORIAL News Editor Daniel Person Food Editor Nicole Sprinkle Arts Editor Brian Miller Music Editor Kelton Sears Editorial Operations Manager Gavin Borchert Staff Writers Sara Bernard, Ellis E. Conklin, Casey Jaywork

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21 AFROFUTURE SHOCK

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news&comment

EARSHOT

Seattle’s Jazz Festival

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

Over 50 events in venues all around Seattle

October 9 – November 18

The Wayne Shorter Quartet Brad Mehldau Trio Charles Lloyd, Wild Man Dance Wayne Horvitz @ 60 Buy tickets now: Anat Cohen Quartet www.earshot.org Kris Davis Trio Myra Melford’s Snowy Egret 206-547-6763 Edmar Castañeda Pedrito Martinez Group The Scott Amendola Band w/ Nels Cline Chris Potter Trio Somi The Seattle Symphony Orchestra w/ Bill Frisell The Westerlies Tomeka Reid w/ Nicole Mitchell & Mike Reed Wil Blades w/ DJ Logic Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey w/ Skerik James McBride Andy Clausen Shutter Project Sarah Gazarek SRJO celebrates Billy Strayhorn Jacob Zimmerman Quintet Industrial Revelation Hugh Masekela and much more

“The ducks need to be taken off the roads!!! Taking two lanes with flashers on over the bridge still is dangerous.” JOE MABEL

JAZZ FESTIVAL

the chatterbox

$$$EAWALL!

Last week, Ellis E. Conklin looked into how the seawall project has gone 30 percent over budget, and reported on one observer’s contention that the Mayor’s office delayed announcing the cost overruns until after the City Council had voted to put another massive bond levy—Move Seattle—on the ballot. With Bertha mired underground not too far from the costly project, our readers laughed to keep from crying.

criminals who are shot while threatening the lives of civilians and police officers with weapons in their hands is hardly a way to elicit sympathy for one’s cause. Don Ward, via seattleweekly.com With very few exceptions those people caused their deaths. Gary MCerlain, via Facebook

Thank goodness I no longer live within the city limits of Seattle. Sadly the entire state will have to pony up megabucks to bail out these mismanaged projects. I can’t wait to see what happens when Bertha shuts down under a high rise. John Doll, via seattleweekly.com

At least the SPD seems to be doing better—one death in nine months, compared to five for all of last year, according to your earlier story. Seems the problem is most prevalent in smaller towns— and Tacoma. Hammermaster, via seattleweekly.com

The day you are born is the day you start dying. The day Seattle approves costs for a project is the day it starts going over budget. Martin Rowe, via Facebook

THAT WHICH RHYMES WITH DUCK

And many readers shared their thoughts on the fatal accident between a Ride the Ducks tour boat and a charter bus on the Aurora Bridge, revealing long-simmering frustration with the hulking amphibious vehicles. Send your thoughts on

Big transportation projects are often controlled by A-holes who’ll this week’s issue to The ducks need to be taken off only hire other A-holes, most of letters@seattleweekly.com the roads!!! Taking two lanes whom only care about money with flashers on over the bridge and will go along with devious still is dangerous. monopoly devices meant to control people’s lives so transportation costs remain exorbitant. The real Sean Devlin, via Facebook problem with the seawall is its design. It cannot withstand destructive earthquake forces, nor will Went for a tour on one in D.C. last year. Was it last more than 30 years before replacement or shocked that the driver was also the one pointing major reinforcement again becomes necessary. out buildings of historical significance and giving In-fricking-competent conservative A-holes runa spiel the entire time. He did an amazing job, ning Washington State DOT hate Seattle and are but it seemed like a recipe for disaster. planning a murderous disaster. Robert Keller, via Facebook Wells, via seattleweekly.com I, too, agree these tours should be changed significantly OR eliminated in Seattle. They use THE GOOD KILL public boat ramps (part of the city park system) Rick Anderson continued his tally of people who are but disobey both the park rules (wait in line to killed by police or die in custody in Washington state, enter and exit, give way to craft not under motor adding seven stories to the 19 already documented in power) and the general maritime rules for safe his cover story on the subject in July. Seattle Weekly operation and navigation. There are numerous is among a number of media outlets attempting to options for tourists to see Seattle by water (the keep a more complete record of people who die after state ferries, Argosy Cruises, the Center for run-ins with the law, as police face more scrutiny Wooden Boats, canoe rentals at the Waterfront over use of force in the United States. Activities Center, or rentals from Lake Union Electric Boats) that do not entail having World Sad thing is I can’t say I’m shocked. They’re all War II-era amphibious landing craft being used corrupt. Sorry Seattle, you don’t care, if it’s not a for a purpose for which they were not designed bike lane you don’t care. My opinion. or constructed. Heather D. Connell, via Facebook Erin Moore, via Facebook E All of these incidents mentioned are Good Kills. Wringing your hands over the deaths of violent Comments have been edited for length and clarity.

news&comment CITY HALL

SeattleBriefly

Fast takes from the news desk

A Small Request

JEREMY DWYER-LINDGREN

Why won’t the city allow dorm-style housing as one solution to soaring rents? BY CASEY JAYWORK

ity Council is sitting on a HALA recommendation that could provide hundreds of affordable housing units every year—without spending a dime of taxpayer money. Microhousing—extremely small apartments that often share communal space such as kitchens—took the spotlight last fall when the council passed new restrictions on their production. The legislation became a flash point in the ongoing debate over how to grow, with opponents arguing that microhousing ruins a neighborhood’s character and is arguably inhumane, given the cramped quarters. The restrictions that eventually passed limited, among other things, the locations where microhousing (also called aPodments) can be constructed. Since then, production of the cheapest and most efficient micro-units has plummeted. But now, with housing affordability dominating the agenda at City Hall, microhousing is getting a new spin as part of the solution to rising rents in Seattle. Mayor Ed Murray’s Housing Affordability and Livability Agenda (HALA) committee has recommended relaxing the restrictions signed into law by the mayor just over 12 months ago. “The beauty of the microhousing product was that it [allowed people to have a] smaller living space in exchange for proximity to things that are very valuable, and all that largely without any tax-credit financing or [similar subsidies],” says

developer lobbyist Roger Valdez, himself a microhousing tenant. Broadly speaking, there are two types of microhousing: congregate, essentially dormitories with shared kitchens and living spaces; and small efficiency dwelling units—SEDUs—which are tiny, self-contained apartments. Congregate is the cheaper, denser, and more environmentally friendly option of the two. Just as it’s more efficient for an entire neighborhood to share a large park than for each house to have its own lawn, it’s more efficient for neighbors to share a big living room and kitchen. And it’s affordable. While microhousing is more expensive than subsidized housing, it’s much cheaper than standard market rents. APodments, for instance, rent for between $600 and $1,000— between one- and two-thirds of the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Seattle. The Yobi, a new four-story congregate micro-

housing building on Capitol Hill, demonstrates what that rent can get you. Architect David Nei-

CASEY JAYWORK

Production of this type of apartment took a

big hit after last year’s legislation. Data from the Department of Planning and Development shows that in 2014, the department received applications to build more than 500 congregate units in the city; as of May, 2015 has seen zero. (Applications for roomier SEDU dwellings doubled over the same time period). The reason is zoning. “In the Venn diagram between where it’s allowed and where it makes any sense, there’s no overlap,” explains Neiman. “That’s why the production . . . has disappeared.” The regulations limited congregate housing to so-called Neighborhood Commercial Zones, dense mixed-use areas designated for heavy pedestrian traffic where buildings are generally allowed to be six stories or taller. For financial reasons, investors are rarely willing to build below height limits. Yet congregate apartment buildings make sense only if they are short enough not to need an elevator—up to four stories, says Neiman. “If you build an elevator in, then every one of these rooms has to be fully

» CONTINUED ON PAGE 6

Shell Game

When Royal Dutch Shell announced late Sunday that it was suspending its Arctic drilling exploration, which was to be based out of Seattle, many analysts pointed to slumping oil prices as a driving culprit. If this is truly the case, then it should temper the excitement about Shell’s decision. As of Tuesday, sweet crude oil was trading at $48 a barrel, a low, low price largely attributable to the fact that we are already drilling far more oil than we recently had been. The New York Times reports that the U.S. has doubled its oil production in the past six years. Therefore, you could see Shell’s decision as the result of too much oil being pulled out of the ground elsewhere. Celebrating Shell’s decision may be analogous to congratulating a drunk for passing out before he could have had another beer. Needless to say, few are taking this glum view in Seattle, where kayaktivists staged a series of on-water protests of Shell’s large drilling rig and public officials jockeyed for who could be the most anti-Shell. “What we want to talk about is the fact that this is a massive victory,” said Zarna Joshi, a member of ShellNo, in a phone interview Tuesday. “It is unprecedented that we actually forced a giant company like Shell, used to getting its own way, to back down.” Joshi argued that the effect of oil prices was overblown, saying it was actually bad press that brought Shell to its knees. “We here in Seattle brought so much public scrutiny to Shell. There’s no bones about that. The fact that we made this a global issue shows the entire world was watching.” DANIEL PERSON

Growing Costs

On Monday, Mayor Ed Murray released his proposed 2016 budget, a 757-page document that is largely an attempt to deal with the mixed blessing of Seattle’s explosive growth. In a speech to the City Council, Murray said that 70,000 new residents and nearly as many new jobs have arrived in the Emerald City in the past half-decade—a roughly 10 percent increase in population. But Murray’s budget also includes $1.8 million to outfit every SPD patrol officer with a body camera and $5 million to potentially quadruple the Pronto rent-a-bike system. (Both depend on federal grants for full funding.) And it sets aside about a quartermillion for the city’s three hotly debated homeless encampments. Murray opined on this in his speech: “I understand the frustration and disappointment with homeless services being located in some of our neighborhoods. But we have no alternative—in unsanctioned camps, people have been murdered. People have been raped. People have fallen to their death on the freeway. As a city, we must not conflate criminal behavior with those who are desperately homeless. Or forget that there are families and children with no other choice.” CASEY JAYWORK E news@seattleweekly.com

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

COURTESY OF THE YOBI

Real-life tenant Doug Vitaly in his congregate apartment, and some of his conceptual counterparts.

man says the Yobi is an attempt to “purposefully design a building that was meant to house lots of people together” rather than just a way to circumvent zoning rules. He says he began with the assumption that “this can be a good way to live,” then asked, “How do we design it?” The inside of the Yobi resembles an upscale hostel. On the ground floor is a sprawling lounge complete with a fireplace and non-ugly paintings on the walls. The laundry room is one example of how Neiman tried to bake neighborliness into the Yobi’s architecture: Rather than banishing it to the basement, he put it beside the front door, making it an extension of the lounge. The rooms themselves are tight without being claustrophobic, like the living quarters on a yacht. A toilet and shower are separated from the main room, which holds a desk, shelves, bed, microwave, and sink. Units on the top floor boast a loft area accessible by ladder and big enough to hold a guest bed. On the building’s south side, each unit includes a small balcony. Doug Vitaly, a Seattle University student and newly arrived Yobi resident, pays just over $1,100 a month in rent. He says he’s comfortable living in such a small space, and would consider renting a similar unit after graduating, partly because of how much he values the location. “I would definitely see myself living in microhousing,” he says, “just because of the exploding cost of rent here in Seattle. Even at a $1,100-a-month microapartment, I would pay that simply because location is one of the most important things for me. And I know for my demographic, people in our 20s, that’s important too.” For Vitaly, size itself is part of microhousing’s attraction. “I feel like this [size of housing] is normal and natural and really all that one person needs,” he says. “I think that in the U.S. we’re really used to having all of this space and all of this luxury that just isn’t necessary.”

A Small Request » FROM PAGE 5

TOWN HALL

CIVICS

SCIENCE

ARTS & CULTURE

COMMUNITY

(10/1) Alva Noe Using Art As a Gateway to Human Nature (10/1) Town Hall & Seattle Channel: Seattle City Council Debate: District 4 Rob Johnson & Michael Maddux (10/2) Larissa MacFarquhar Self-Sacrifice, The Price of Idealism (10/3) Early Music Guild presents Seattle Baroque Orchestra ‘Ebb and Flow,’ Handel’s ‘Water Music’ (10/4) Russian Chamber Music Foundation presents Atrium String Quartet Autumn Evenings (10/4) Town Hall, Seattle Channel, and SU present Seattle City Council Debate: District 3 Kshama Sawant & Pamela Banks (10/5) Anne-Marie Slaughter ‘Women, Men, Work and Family’

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

(10/5) Sandbox Radio presents Sandbox Radio in Nighttown

(10/6) Bryan Doerries with David Strathairn & Lili Taylor The Healing Power of Theater (10/6) Kerry Eleveld LGBT Rights, and the Power of Advocacy (10/7) University Book Store: Richard Dawkins (10/7) Robert Michael Pyle with David Guterson A Portrait of Washington Logging (10/7) Town Hall & Seattle Channel: Seattle City Council Debate: District 2 Bruce Harrell & Tammy Morales (10/8) Steven Pinker Think Better, Write Better (10/8) Kaitlin Roig-DeBellis ‘Choosing Hope’ After Sandy Hook TOWN HALL

CIVICS

SCIENCE

ARTS & CULTURE

COMMUNITY

TOWN HALL

CIVICS

SCIENCE

ARTS & CULTURE

COMMUNITY

(10/8) Amitav Ghosh WWW.TOWNHALLSEATTLE.ORG ‘Flood of Fire’ (10/11) BAHFest presents BAHFest Seattle Big Science

[wheelchair-] accessible,” says Neiman. “By the time [we’re] done making them accessible . . . we can’t offer people smaller, cheaper housing because we have to make it twice as big.” Hence the developer’s dilemma: There are places where congregate microhousing is legal, and there are places where it makes financial sense. But there are very few places that are both. “It’s not technically impossible,” says Neiman. “It’s just that the amount of land where it makes any sense is so vanishingly small.” To address this problem, the HALA committee

recommended in July expanding the areas in the city where developers can build congregate microhousing, one of 65 such recommendations made to increase affordable housing in Seattle. However, the Council is reluctant to return to the contentious issue of microhousing zoning. While Council president Tim Burgess is “open to that discussion,” according to his staff, other councilmembers either don’t have microhousing zoning on their radar or are “not inclined to revisit this,” as Nick Licata’s staff put it. In the Council’s HALA work plan, the congregate microhousing recommendation isn’t even mentioned. Councilmember Mike O’Brien, who sponsored the ordinance that restricted microhousing, says he’s not interested in rehashing an acrimonious debate that concluded just last year. “It’d be one thing,” he says, “if people were just sitting around looking for things to do, but that is definitely not the case here in Council right now. We have capacity constraints on, it seems like, almost all committees.” Because the Council doesn’t have the resources to tackle all 65 recommendations at once, he says, it makes more sense to pick lowhanging fruit than hot potatoes like microhousing. But even without political obstacles, O’Brien says he’s not sold on the idea of expansion. “We need a lot more housing,” he says. “I get that.” But O’Brien thinks that congregate microhousing is too dense for the lower-height neighborhoods where the HALA committee suggested putting them. “I would put congregate toward the much higher-density side” of the city, he says. If developers are to be believed, that essentially means hardly any more congregate microhousing in Seattle at all.

Neiman is unimpressed. Under pressure from

homeowners in July, the Council backpedaled from HALA’s proposal to increase density in single-family neighborhoods. For development advocates like him, the silence around congregate microhousing is just another instance of electoral timidity in the face of Seattle’s housing crisis. “You can boil down the HALA recommendations really quickly,” he says. “One, you gotta build as much housing as there is demand. Whatever that demand is, you have to meet it. And if you don’t do that, then the whole housing market stays in a bidding war for scarcity, and poor people lose. “Second, in an increasingly unequal society, people with money—society as a whole has to contribute resources to provide housing that the market can’t [provide]. And the more unequal our society becomes, the bigger that pool of people is. “You gotta do those two things: more housing, more resources,” says Neiman. “But it’s a hard thing to get people to pay for the resources, and it’s a hard thing to get people to open the door.” E

cjaywork@seattleweekly.com

Pillars of Shame

ETC.

What’s up with Seattle’s messed-up utility poles? BY WARREN LANGFORD

the authority to move their wires and boxes themhere’s an enigmatic monolith on Capiselves. City Light contacts whomever still has stuff tol Hill, near East John Street and 10th left on that pole, and it’s up to them to transfer it. Avenue East. The last organization to remove their equipment The haunted soda dispenser, you say? has the job of removing the old pole. No, a much more perplexing mystery resides on the So it comes down to how these companies corner mere feet from the fabled vending machine: a pole, and not of the ever-present Northwest totem prioritize this activity. If their wires are still working, why would they care? Just like you and me, variety. A utility pole, amputated at knee height and Seattle’s power company is often left waiting supported on a pegleg of sorts. The hobbled pole indefinitely by Internet providers. is strapped with wire to another younger, heartier pole, this one reaching all the way into the earth. Together they are sealed in eternal embrace. These mutilated and ramshackle utility poles OK, that might be pushing it, but . . . are eyesores, but are they as perilous as they look? “It’s been like that a couple years now,” says Thomsen says, “The double poles are secured Mickey Peters, who’s worked on the corner at in a safe manner . . . We are working with local Broadway Locksmith for three decades. “I don’t communications companies to encourage them know much about it, it’s just there.” to complete their portions of the work in a timely Wander around the manner. Please send me pole numcity and you’ll find bers for each of these.” Seattle is full of this sort The pole numbers, which are of bizarre, and sometimes usually black and yellow and about baffling,utility-pole six feet from the ground, should spectacle. be reported to Seattle City Light. In Lower Queen Anne, “That makes it easier for us to find an older pole is conjointed them in the system and see when with rusty wire to a new the last activity was . . . Helps in pole at roughly a 10-degree conversations with the companies,” angle, jutting dubisays Thomsen. ously north by northeast. Comcast Senior Director of Between them, a brick is External Affairs Walter Neary wedged in an inexplicable wrote in an e-mail that it’s “Comgap. If that wasn’t enough cast’s goal to respond to make you nervous, the within weeks or old pole is elevated about certainly sooner than four feet off the ground by the target of 30 days its pegleg. A toddler after notification.” could stand comHe added, though, fortably underneath that there can be (not that parents “some variation.” He would let their reiterated Thomsen’s children anywhere sentiment that there near this mangled are many organizamonstrosity of tions to deal with metal, wood, and before they can repair masonry.) the poles. “One may This abstractionist have, say, five lines on pole is right in front it that come down of Deli Deluxe’s in different orders parking lot—and through different Some of the stranger longtime employee, government entities poles in Seattle. Kim (“Just Kim”) and companies.” says it’s been this way for over a year. “I thought In other words, there’s a lot of passing the buck they would fix it when they put a sidewalk here,” when it comes to who’s to blame for the mutant says Kim, explaining that the store’s parking lot was poles. But at least one company has sprung into recently reduced to one entrance (from two) by the action, red tape be damned, after being questioned new sidewalk, and as a result he’s been losing cusabout the Queen Anne Deli Deluxe pole. Centomers. “But after all that the pole stays the same.” turyLink’s Mark Molzen wrote, “Although the pole, located at Roy Street and Queen Anne, has not been confirmed as our pole, in the spirit of Seattle City Light representative Scott Thomsen partnering with Seattle City Light, we are transsays the process of replacing a pole is more comferring the fiber and removing the pole tomorrow plicated than it might seem, which goes a long [Tuesday, Sept. 29]. Whenever Seattle City Light way in explaining these sights. Poles over time contacts us regarding a pole, we conduct a review get damaged by weather, cars, bugs, or “even birds of that pole for any safety concerns and prioritize trying to carve out a place to live.” When it comes the bracing or removal of that pole. Public safety is time to replace them, City Light puts in a new a high priority for CenturyLink.” pole and transfers all its wires and equipment. So maybe all it takes is a little nudge. But here’s where it gets tricky. Many poles are Just don’t nudge any of those poles leaning subject to joint-use agreements or are co-owned against bricks. E by communications companies (read: Comcast and CenturyLink), and City Light doesn’t have news@seattleweekly.com WARREN LANGFORD

news&comment

Getting Schooled

Q&A

The Seattle teachers’ strike shifted the public image of teachers’ unions—both in Seattle and across the country.

G N I V I V R SU : R E T S A S I D

NATURAL HAZARDS & RESILIENT COMMUNITIES

BY SARA BERNARD

hree years ago, Jonathan Knapp took the helm of a Seattle Education Association that had taken its share of defeats. Teachers were dissatisfied with the contract they’d negotiated in 2010; voters approved the creation of charter schools in 2013 (seen by some as a rebuke of public schools); and ongoing conflicts over student testing were fraying everyone’s patience. The picture is much different now. Two weeks ago, with teachers on strike for the first time since 1985, SEA and the Seattle School District agreed on a contract that not only sees pay increases across the board but makes major changes to everything from recess Knapp to teacher evaluations. We asked Knapp, who is leaving his post at the end of the school year after serving his second two-year term, how they did it.

SW: This was the first time the Seattle Education Association went on strike over contract issues in 30 years. Why now?

Was there a specific moment or event that turned the tide for the union? A new era of solidarity, if you will?

Two springs ago—in the budget season going into last year—the district was proposing a bunch of budget cuts, and proposing to lay people off. And we had done some budget analysis, tracking district spending, what their trends had been over the past five or six years. They always have about 20 or 25 million dollars left over at the end of the year. They always plan for some reserves, a responsible amount, and they always have twice that. Every year. So we organized against that. In the budget process, each school gets its allocation from the district and then has to approve a budget. We [told the schools], “Do the best you can with the money you’ve got, create a budget, and then vote it down. Because we’re not going to sanction this layoff of our office staff.” At a halfway point in the process, when about 50 schools had said no, we got an invitation to come up to the district office. And the head of Teaching & Learning, who was chairing the

A lot of the issues that came up during the 2015 bargaining process were student-focused, such as recess, equity teams, and standardized testing. It wasn’t just about teacher pay. Was that new? Was that strategic?

Recess, equity teams, limits on testing—all of that is really important. That was getting a lot of airplay, and rightfully so. But those weren’t the only issues. There were a lot of things in this contract that we went after. In [public-sector] bargaining, there are mandatory subjects of bargaining: wages, benefits, and working conditions. But there’s nothing that says you can’t try to bargain things that are non-mandatory subjects of bargaining. You just have to get the other side to agree. The first time we put the recess proposal on the table, you could just see it in their eyes. Like, “Yeah, right. Recess. Now let’s get down to business.” They totally expected that to just go away. And we knew that wasn’t going to go away. Once we set a strike deadline and they saw that we were going to go on strike if they didn’t get their shit together, they agreed to recess. They must have finally said, “Holy crap, this is gonna be the Great Recess Strike of 2015 if we don’t get this off the table!” Like, “The school district goes to the mat against recess for kids”? That is not a winning proposition.

OCT. 13

DISASTERS FAST AND SLOW:

From Catastrophic Landslides to How We Treat Our Soil DAVID R. MONTGOMERY PROFESSOR, COLLEGE OF THE ENVIRONMENT

OCT. 20

TEN YEARS AFTER KATRINA: Lessons Learned and Unlearned

JED HORNE PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING JOURNALIST AND AUTHOR

OCT. 27

SOCIAL MEDIA USE DURING DISASTER EVENTS: The Evolving Role of the Connected Crowd in Response and Resilience KATE STARBIRD ASST. PROFESSOR, COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

NOV. 3

HOW TO LEAD AND SUCCEED WHEN IT MATTERS MOST: Deploying America’s Veterans in Response to Natural Disasters and Global Crises JAKE WOOD CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, TEAM RUBICON

NOV. 10

A TALE OF THREE SEATTLE TEMBLORS: One Big, One Deep and One Direct Hit

JOHN VIDALE PROFESSOR, COLLEGE OF THE ENVIRONMENT

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Historically, teachers’ unions have been seen by some critics as a way to “protect bad teachers.” What do you say to that?

For years, that was the narrative across the country. “Unions just protect bad teachers. We’ve got to get these bad teachers out of here.” I think we’ve successfully changed that narrative. When I became president, I wanted to challenge the notion immediately that teachers unions don’t care about teacher quality, so I started two different initiatives: the Seattle Teacher Residency, which is a different pathway to certification for teachers and our own teacher pipeline, and a support program for National Board Certification, the most rigorous, postinitial-certification professional development you can do. Now members see the union as the locus of their professional aspirations. But it also takes the issue of teacher quality off the table for the reformers. You can’t beat us over the head with this any more—we are leading on teacher quality. Washington state actually has the highest percentage of National Board-certified teachers in the country. And Seattle leads the state. Ten or 15 years ago, you had school board candidates saying, publicly, “The unions are the problem. We’ve got to get them in line with what we need.” That’s all shifted. That’s not the sentiment out there now. Now the sentiment is “Seattle has great teachers and we want to support them.” E

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

Knapp: Teachers were not just waiting to strike. We were ready to approve a contract on [August] 24th. We were ready to approve a contract on [September] third. But having raised the expectations and set some high goals, it was clear that members were not going to accept just anything. I think the real answer is that we’ve been building our membership engagement and our power here very self-consciously in the past three years since I’ve been president. And, sure, things happen in a certain way. You’ve got severe underfunding of public education at the state level. You’ve got the region coming out of recession. Seattle is booming right now—more than any other city in the country, perhaps. And our members are determined not to be left behind. But it had a lot to do with us being ready to be in a position to do something like this. Three years ago, five years ago, 10 years ago, I don’t think SEA was ready to do that.

meeting, said, “What’s going on here? We know that a lot of the elementary schools are fine with their budgets. They’re just voting ‘No’ out of solidarity.” And I just sat back and said, “Yeah, that’s exactly right.”

This interview has been edited for length.

sbernard@seattleweekly.com

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n early 2015, Kelly Welker began to notice that the gritty air she was accustomed to breathing near her home on Flora Avenue South, in Georgetown, was grittier than usual. Within a few minutes of leaving her house, it would get into her eyes and burn. It would get into her sinuses and burn. It began searing her throat and coating her tongue, leaving a chalky, metallic aftertaste. The sinus pressure went from her face to her ears at night, and the burning feeling settled deep in her chest. “I even went in for a CT scan,” she says. “I felt like I had to take a running start to breathe.” Soon her 4-year-old son’s eyes started turning red and raw, too. Welker and her husband and son all began to have nosebleeds. She was constantly wiping a pale, powdery dust from her kitchen table and floors. It settled in thick layers on her car and windowsills and shelves. One day, eating lunch with a neighbor, Diana Bodwin, at the corner of East Marginal Way South and Corson Avenue South, the two women noticed clumps of dust gathering in their hair—“white chunks in our hair,” Welker says, “falling from the sky.” And it wasn’t just Welker and Bodwin noticing this—it was most everyone who lives in the roughly three-by-four-block rectangle just off East Marginal Way South, the only slice of Georgetown that’s zoned residential. Bodwin remembers coming home one night and within half an hour developing a debilitating headache, so painful that she couldn’t bring herself to clean up the white dust that was accumulating on her son’s Legos. Another day, driving down East Marginal, Bodwin’s young son suddenly started rubbing his eyes and screaming from the backseat, “My face hurts!” It burned, Bodwin says. “As soon as it hit you, it burned. It burned your airways and it burned your throat.” Sacha Davis, a Georgetown resident since 2000, ended up in the hospital with her 5-year-old daughter, who’d had a severe asthma attack for the fourth time that year. Still others thought they had colds, or sinus infections, or allergies. But if they left the area for a while—even just up the hill, to West Seattle—the symptoms would disappear. “We were joking about it!” Welker says, Mist is sprayed appalled. “The neighbors, we were going outon refuse at CDL side and saying, ‘Oh, do you have that metalRecycling. Misting lic taste in your mouth again?’ And someis one strategy to times it tastes like plastic. So, ‘Do you have mitigate dust in that plasticky taste in your mouth again?’ ” the area, but some A former cross-country runner and partneighbors say it’s time nurse, Welker has a sturdy build, thick, not enough. gray-blonde hair with a platinum streak, and a determined, strident voice—the kind of person who has no qualms making everyone at a public meeting stare uncomfortably at their shoes if she needs to speak her mind. And in this case, she did—along with Bodwin and half a dozen other neighbors who had the energy and the anger and the time. “I just couldn’t take it anymore,” she says. “We shouldn’t be living like this.”

» CONTINUED ON PAGE 10

Georgetown Dust Bowl » FROM PAGE 9

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up from about 1,180 in 2000, are not like those who lived here in the early part of the 20th century. They no longer work at the facilities they live next to. Instead, since the median home price in Georgetown is still about two-thirds that of the rest of the city, most residents are here because they’ve found a home they can afford. And in Georgetown, it turns out—one of the few affordable places to live in the fastest-growing city in the country—sometimes it’s difficult to breathe.

Welker knew that the air quality in Georgetown wasn’t great. But what she witnessed this past spring was markedly different than what she’d seen in the decade since she moved to the neighborhood. This was a visible, clammy, eye-burning plume of dust settling on her neighborhood like a shroud. “I eorgetown is arguably was walking home one night, and I saw the dust in the oldest neighborhood in Seattle—“the birththese huge floodlights,” she says. “So I followed it.” place of King County,” in fact, since its first The trail led her to a nondescript building on non-Native settlers beat the Denny Party, who East Marginal Way South: a construction-debris landed at Alki Beach in November 1851, by two recycling facility called CDL Recycle, a subsidiary months. By the time Georgetown was annexed to of Woodinville-based Drywall Recycling Services. Seattle in 1910, it had already been crisscrossed Drywall, she would later learn, is believed to cause by the region’s first railroads and crammed with many of the symptoms Georgetown residents were industrial and commercial activity that included a experiencing: persistent throat and airway irritasteam plant, a brewery, and two dozen saloons. In tion, difficulty breathing, asthma attacks. 1913, engineers began dredging and straightenWelker called the company directly, but that ing the nearby Duwamish River to make room didn’t yield much. “We don’t produce dust or mist,” for barges and shipping vessels. What was once she says she was told. She proceeded to file dozens meandering river became industry-ready mudof complaints with the Puget Sound Clean Air flats. It was then that factories, steel manufacturAgency, Public Health–Seattle/King County, and ers, and shipbuilders took up residence alongside the state Department of Ecology. She spoke with the new canal, beginning what would be an era representatives from of environmental degraSeattle Public Utilities, dation, with companies from the mayor’s office, regularly leaking oil, sul“I just couldn’t take from Puget Soundkeeper furic acid, and raw sewage it anymore. We shouldn’t Alliance, and several more into the surrounding soil from CDL Recycle. She and water. be living like this.” made calls, wrote e-mails, The Boeing Company took photos and videos. arrived in the 1920s, and She had troubling phone conversations with some by the end of World War II had built nearly 7,000 agency representatives, who, she claims, told her B-17 bombers in Georgetown. Its manufacturthings like “Nothing will change until you make ing plants leached (and at times actively dumped) this a political issue” and “Well, at least you don’t thousands of pounds of toxic chemicals into the live in San Bernardino or Beijing. You can still see.” Duwamish, including sludge full of polychlorinated The dust persisted. She grew obsessed. On byphenyls (PCBs), now a known carcinogen. April 22 she created a Facebook page called the At the time, few batted an eyelash at slinging 6900 Flora Dust Bowl, named after her block, as a “500 pounds of acetylene generator waste per way to document the effects all this was having on day” into the river, as a Department of Ecology her community. It quickly became one of the most survey from 1945 notes. But public perspectives thorough and up-to-date repositories of informaon environmental health have shifted considertion about environmental health those few blocks ably since. Studies now suggest that if you live in have ever seen. Georgetown or South Park, your life expectancy In late May, a friend of Welker’s, angry on her is 13 years shorter than it would be if you lived elsewhere in Seattle. Georgetown’s air is also consistently pegged as the city’s worst. In 2013, a report by the University of Washington and Puget Sound Sage found that there are far higher concentrations of diesel exhaust and other trafficrelated air pollutants in Georgetown and South Park than anywhere else within city limits. Today, the neighborhood’s small line of houses is still flanked by facilities like Seattle Iron & Metals, which occasionally coughs out giant plumes of blue or black or orangyKelly Welker says her red smoke; Boeing Field; and the family’s life has been rerouted Duwamish, now a bona fide Superfund site being painstak- overturned by increased air pollution in her ingly cleaned by the EPA and the neighborhood. Washington Department of Ecology to the tune of $342 million. Freight trains, sometimes stacked with coal or crude oil, create so much noise that houses rattle each time they pass, and nearby Eighth Avenue South, which isn’t fully paved, often sees dieselfueled trucks barreling down its flanks, churning up dust and filth. The roughly 1,600 residents who live here now,

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Georgetown—just a handful of blocks sandwiched between Corson Avenue South and Ellis Avenue South, plus a few more alongside the Georgetown Playfield. All around the neighborhood (minus some areas zoned for commercial use), from Lucille Avenue to the other side of the King County airport and from Interstate 5 to the Duwamish, is zoned industrial—and has been for at least 40 years, says Tom Hauger, Comprehensive Planning Manager at the Seattle Department of Planning and Development (DPD)—as far back as he’s seen zoning records, anyway. “And there’s been a potential for conflict that whole time.” Bryan Stevens, who does industrial permitting at the DPD, says that while it’s tough to get a hold of zoning maps that far back, he has seen a map from the 1940s showing every corner of Georgetown zoned as “manufacturing—essentially today’s version of industrial zoning. It wasn’t until sometime after that that some areas

were reclassified,” he says, “likely to match the existing development that was on site.” The city, in other words, chose to do what was probably deemed a good thing at the time: zone the quasi-residential areas as officially residential. Industry has come a long way in 60 or 70 years, though—and so have residents’ expectations. That “potential for conflict” Hauger notes has led to real conflict, again and again. The CDL issue was hardly the first community-wide struggle with industrial encroachment. “As long as I’ve been in Georgetown, it’s that kind of tension,” says Sacha Davis. “It’s that push and pull between the interests of the businesses and the interests of the community.” And historically, she says, industry has had the upper hand by numbers alone—the residential slice of the pie is just so small. “It’s not just that we can be overlooked; we have been. It can and does happen, regularly. People forget that we live here.” In 2003, for instance, Southwest Airlines proposed bringing all its Seattle air traffic through the small King County International Airport at Boeing Field. (It was a multi-year battle, but ultimately the proposal didn’t move forward.) In 2007, the Greg Nickels administration proposed building a wastetransfer station in the neighborhood. (Residents, again, protested, and the plan was abandoned.) When the South Park bridge was being rebuilt a couple of years ago, Georgetown saw a massive influx of detoured truck traffic crossing the First Avenue South Bridge instead. “All of a sudden we had lines and lines of semitrucks going down East Marginal, spewing out diesel fumes a block from my house,” says Davis. A few years ago, Kathy Nyland, now director of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods and a 13-year Georgetown resident, remembers an intense, caustic, burning smell from some kind of smelter on South Orcas Street. “Oh, I’ve seen some things, let me tell you,” she says, laughing, “Some things I don’t want to remember.” There’s the endless litany of acute events, and then there are the long-term fears. “We’re living with the legacy of Boeing, what they dumped in the soil around us,” says Davis. “We’re living with the legacy of the Duwamish—taking a totally normal river and straightening it—and the dumping that happened there. I don’t know what kind of soil my house is sitting on. I just don’t know.” This legacy isn’t news to most Seattleites. And in Georgetown, it’s become almost laughable—if it weren’t so terrifying. Residents often joke about “the smells of Georgetown,” which are constant and ever-changing. On August 12, one resident posted on the 6900 Flora Dust Bowl Facebook page: “I know this is a dust bowl page, but where is that smell coming from we’ve all been smelling for the last month or two? It’s been making me sick this last week.”

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behalf, sent a flurry of e-mails to a dozen Seattle media outlets as a last-ditch effort to get some eyeballs on the issue. “There’s a big dust plume at the end of my street, and there’s nothing we can do but report it,” Welker told me at the time. “And we keep reporting it. And we’re not getting any relief.” The media blitz that resulted brought a lot of attention to East Marginal Way South—for a couple of days, anyway. Georgetown was suddenly crawling with reporters, microphones, and cameras; headlines like “South Seattle Residents Complain of Industrial Dust” and “Georgetown neighbors say dust clouds causing health problems” flooded the airwaves. CDL Recycle president Brian Thompson kept telling reporters, over and over, that they were doing their best. “We’re not trying to make everybody hate us,” Thompson said then. “We’re trying to do a good thing here. We’ve invested a quarter of a million dollars in dust suppression this year.” Georgetown residents now have the ear of the mayor’s office, the Department of Planning and Development, the Department of Neighborhoods, Seattle Public Utilities, the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, the Seattle/King County Public Health department, and a slew of other departments and agencies. CDL Recycle’s managers are putting together an impressively thorough dust-mitigation plan that could soon result—if all the city permits go through—in an entirely new building designed to enclose the dusty work they do. In the meantime, the company has made minor adjustments that have made a big difference; most residents’ health issues aren’t nearly as acute as they were in the spring. And most agree that CDL Recycle is doing its absolute best to be a good neighbor. But its best might not be enough. “I do believe that everyone is acting lawfully,” Welker says. “That’s the devastating part.”

Georgetown Dust Bowl » FROM PAGE 11

“I love living in Georgetown, I’ve lived here for a long time, I have the best neighbors,” says Davis, echoing several other Georgetown residents. The community itself is tight-knit—in part, some say, because they’ve had to band together against the encroachment of industry and crime, over and over. “But when I leave [the neighborhood temporarily], there’s a huge sigh of relief, because I’m able to get away from this.”

he physical stress of breathing drywall dust or taking a deep whiff of melting vinyl takes its toll, but so does the fear that somehow all this is going to end up shortening your life, or your children’s lives. And for those who choose to do something about it—to engage in what seems like a never-ending battle against industrial impact in the neighborhood— it can be exhausting. “Georgetown is constantly defending itself— constantly,” says Julie Johnson, mother of two and Georgetown resident since 2006. Not everyone can spend the time it takes to file complaints, to call representatives, to knock on local businesses’ doors to get answers, to “be really noisy,” she says. Welker says her effort in this case has been possible only because, for the time being, she’s working part-time. “It’s hard to live in a neighborhood like this and feel like you’re constantly fighting,” says Davis, “And we are. It’s endless. As soon as we get something resolved, something else pops up.” To wit: The current draft of Seattle’s Freight Master Plan, set to be finalized this fall, will add at least 500 load-bearing diesel trucks each day to Ellis Avenue South, one of the roads directly bordering Georgetown’s residential zone.

process can be—for residents, regulators, and businesses. While the agency is, essentially, the Puget Sound region’s sole air-quality cop, it has only one line of recourse when it comes to dust: According to the state’s Clean Air Act, the agency can issue financially punitive tickets to those businesses that allow “fugitive dust” to leave their property. The fugitive-dust rule, however, can go only so far. “The regulation for dust is a classic,” says Pedroza, who tells me gleefully that he’s about to Mario Pedroza, supervising inspector for the retire. “It says, ‘Use reasonable measures to miniPuget Sound Clean Air Agency, which covers mize dust.’ It’s not a zero-dust regulation. If we King, Kitsap, Pierce, and Snohomish counties, go there, and there is some dust being regulated, has been on the enforcement side of things and it seems reasonable what they’re for more than three decades. He plays it by doing, it’s not a violation.” the book, but he is the first to admit how Plus, despite the flurry of infuriating the air-pollution violation complaints Georgetown residents launched toward the agency this spring, and the pile of photos and videos (in 2015, according to public records from the agency, there have been about 25 complaints from CDL’s Georgetown location), there is no way for Puget Sound Clean Air to issue Julie Johnson any kind of ticket unless one of their moved to inspectors catches a business in the act. This Georgetown spring, in Georgetown, they were never able in 2006. to do so. Residents’ complaints can only alert inspectors to the issue, nothing more. Which makes it seem, to residents like Bodwin, that “all the people with all the regulatory authority feel like their hands are tied. All of them. OK, they have to be there when the problem is happening. But bullshit! If they were out there any day in April or May, they would have seen a

“It’s not just that we can be overlooked; we have been. It can happen and does happen regularly.” massive problem, because there was a massive problem!” Of course, says Pedroza, people are frustrated. He gets this all the time. “They live there, they’re there 24/7. ‘We want you to come and park your car here so you can wait for it to happen.’ We have 12 inspectors that cover four counties and almost four million people. We don’t have the ability to do that. We simply do not.” What they can do—and have done, in this case—is put pressure on a business to clean up its act (which often works, he says, as businesses don’t often survive if they “go rogue”). Still, even if a clean-air inspector is able to find a violation, the agency can’t simply shut down a business’ operations. The company can contest the violation and appeal any decision in court. Plus, ticket or no, actually resolving the issue is another matter entirely. The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency is the air-pollution police, not the agency that designs solutions to dust problems—that’s divvied up among a variety of city departments. “From the public’s point of view, we’re friggin’ useless,” says Pedroza. “From their perspective, we just stay here in our little office and watch the world go by. And that’s frustrating for us, too, because we like to solve problems. But some of them are not amenable to quick solutions.” The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, for instance, installed temporary air monitors for three weeks at three sites in Georgetown’s residential zone, including one on Welker’s lawn, following

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

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the CDL complaint. These monitors are designed to measure smaller particulates—the ones that are, scientifically speaking, the most likely to cause longterm health problems—but not the larger ones that make life in Georgetown so unpleasant on a daily basis. And the short-term experiment found the air quality to be “good” in both Georgetown and other parts of South Seattle—“good,” that is, according to federal EPA standards. Clearly, this kind of thing “drives people crazy,” says Pedroza, before mimicking the stolid affect of a rule-abiding inspector: “ ‘There is no violation of federal standards of this pollutant in the air.’ ‘Does that mean it’s healthy?’ ‘There is no violation of federal standards.’ ‘Does that mean it’s unhealthy?’ ‘There is no violation . . . ’ ” He interrupts himself with a laugh, then mocktears his hair. These portable air monitors, he says,

actually unique for him “given the proximity of the Georgetown neighborhood and the industrialized area—it’s more challenging in that respect.” The most responsive party during this whole debacle, according to resident Julie Johnson, was CDL Recycle. “It’s not Puget Sound Clean Air, it’s not anyone from the mayor’s office necessarily, it’s CDL,” she says. “And thank God! If they weren’t good neighbors, this would be a different story.” Welker believes CDL is trying, too, but her experience has often led her from anger to apathy. If she calls, e-mails, and sends photos, and if inspectors come by and routinely find nothing, she feels bereft of any recourse that exists for an environmental health issue like this. “I don’t think they go anywhere—it’s just a repository of information,” she says, half sarcastic, half exhausted, noting the dozens of complaints she’s filed with multiple agencies this year. “What’s the point? If [the dust issue] is not hap-

The Duwamish River has long attracted heavy industry to its shores.

pening now, they’ll just come out and tell me it’s not happening now. And it feels very much like it’s designed that way. That might be the point of the whole thing. ‘We’re not doing anything for you. So give up, lady.’ ”

Diana Bodwin is a single mother, with bright

eyes and a confident stance; she describes herself as a “straight shooter.” She works in medicine, has two advanced degrees, and has lived in Georgetown for seven years. She was as distraught and livid a few months ago as Welker still is, although now, she says, she’s “a lot more calm about the whole thing.” At the time, though, the massive headaches, the layers of dust, her son’s burning face, and the sheer helplessness of it all contributed to a sort of panic, then a malaise. All the while, friends and acquaintances she vented to about the issue kept giving her the same irreverent response: Why don’t you just move? “You feel really invisible, and you feel really like you don’t matter, like you don’t exist,” she says, getting heated. “ ‘Make more money.’ I was told that I should get married, and then I could have a partner and me both putting most of our paychecks toward a house, and then I could live in a neighborhood where I don’t have problems like this. I was told, ‘Well, you live in an industrial area; what do you expect?’ I was told so many horrendous things in those days when I was feeling so upset and depressed about this. People were just like, ‘It’s your own fault.’ ” Bodwin, like many of her neighbors, moved to Georgetown because it was cheaper. “I bought here because I could afford to buy here,” she says. “I didn’t buy here because I think it’s really great to be in the middle of a bunch of industry. Nobody thinks that! We would all pick the nice, clean places that don’t have the problems that we have. But Georgetown was at the top end of my

On August 17, about six months after residents first started noticing burning eyes and throats and sinuses, the Georgetown Community Council held its monthly meeting at Coliman, a Mexican restaurant on Corson Avenue South. It was a hot, muggy evening, and there was no PA system. Residents unable to hear over the roar of the industrial-sized fans making the place bearable hollered at whomever was speaking to talk louder. Welker emceed, and the room was packed not only with residents, but with representatives from the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, the City of Seattle, CDL Recycle, the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition, and the federal EPA. There were several presentations—from a police officer, from CDL General Manager Mike Sheldon, from inspectors at Puget Sound Clean Air. And for the most part, things seemed civil. Still, Welker spoke up. “I don’t think I’m the only Georgetown resident who has more than, like, five air filters,” she told everyone, fiercely. “I know people who have them in every room and it’s not doing anything.” Welker says she has had it with suggestions that she do more to filter her air, putting the onus on her instead of on industry. And soon she’ll be getting a whole lot more shifts at work. She still has a small child. She won’t have time to work on any of this— to file complaints, to manage the Dust Bowl Facebook page, to actively participate in meetings, and to advocate ad nauseam, as so many Georgetown residents have, for better industrial buffers. “Is it always going to be about air filters?” she demanded at the meeting. “Or is someone going to say something about zoning?” According to Comprehensive Planning Manager Tom Hauger, and to city zoning maps, Georgetown already has an “industrial buffer”

zone. It’s “currently applied around a portion of the Georgetown perimeter and limits some of the uses that can go there,” Hauger says. To many Georgetown residents, however, such a distinction is invisible. Finding a way to install industrial buffers that are truly effective from the residents’ point of view—such as “green walls,” foliage barriers designed to block dust and filter the air—is a conversation the community has wanted to have for years, according to neighborhood czar Kathy Nyland. But will this, the most recent battle in a long, long war, make that conversation finally happen? “I don’t know,” she says. “I have no idea.” “I’m still sort of waiting and holding my breath,” says Johnson, pointing out that her faith in the community to work together on issues like these hasn’t faltered, but “I just have to have faith that the regulating systems and the city government will do the right thing here.” It’s possible that city and agency reps will just “show up at the meetings and make it feel like, ‘Yeah, you’ve got our attention,’ but nothing is actually happening.” And, unfortunately, “Something as simple as the air you breathe,” she says, “is not

“If it’s going to be that bad . . . then there shouldn’t be a residential area here.” something you can wait a long time to start to notice improvement on.” Today, at Welker’s house, the indoor air filter is consistently coated in black grime. She still wipes down her dust-laden kitchen table every few hours, and strongly considered buying dust masks for her family. Sacha Davis’ asthmatic daughter is doing well, for now, but her son was off his allergy medication for only a week in the spring before he had to get back on it. And, as usual, “Everything that you put outside gets covered in soot,” says Johnson, including her infant son’s high chair. But some, like Johnson, see the CDL dust issue as an opportunity. The City of Seattle just launched a interdepartmental team focused on public health in the Duwamish River Valley. “Environmental justice” is a concept that the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency is finally trying to put into action in their work. (The day I visit their office, the phrase is all over the conference room’s whiteboard.) CDL Recycle will attend every Georgetown Community Council meeting for the foreseeable future, particularly regarding progress on the enclosure they aim to build in the next few months. All of this— including the Georgetown Community Council meeting itself—is an “opportunity for industry and government and the community to be working together to come up with creative solutions,” says Johnson. “Suddenly we could be looking at Georgetown as a model for something, instead of this neighborhood that’s on the defensive.” Steve Lee, Mayor Murray’s senior policy advisor—the man leading the new interdepartmental team focused on health in the Duwamish River Valley—chimed in at the Council meeting when things were getting heated. Welker had raised her voice, echoing her neighbors’ concerns about the Freight Master Plan that would send more diesel trucks down the roads that sandwich Georgetown’s residential area. “The air filter is black on my ceiling—right now,” she said, thumping the table. Lee’s voice was hoarse but calm. “The complexity of the issue is just becoming clear to me. I understand there’s a problem; I don’t have a solution. But I’m here,” he said, folding his arms and taking a step back. “So let’s consider this a start.” E

sbernard@seattleweekly.com

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

are new for the agency, and, like many such things, don’t (and probably won’t) give communities the answers they’d like. “Some people will think automatically that because it’s there, they’re going to know what [the pollutant] is, and where it’s coming from, and whether it’s going to harm them or not. And it can do none of that,” he says. “It just gives us some background information.” The community’s frustration—measured in the hoarse timbre of Welker’s voice, or the dozens upon dozens of complaints and e-mails and phone calls, or the hundreds of Facebook posts—is tangible. “I don’t care who you are,” Welker says. “You can tell me until you turn blue. If we have white chunks falling from the sky on our heads when we’re just eating a sandwich, there’s no way that I believe that anybody in this city, state, or county is actually regulating anything having to do with the environment.” Leonard Di Toro, an inspector with the King County Public Health Department, was among a variety of inspectors who visited the CDL facility and found no, or very limited, violation of anything at all. Residents find this hard to believe. But the facility, he says, is typically scheduled for inspections four times a year, “and given the concerns the community has had, we’ve changed our protocol on this site: We’re inspecting them once a month.” But, alas: “We’re not experts on dust and particles. We focus on the physical controls of dust leaving the site,” such as tarps or other barriers. “Puget Sound Clean Air are more the experts in that.” As for health concerns, it’s impossible to prove actual correlation, so it’s tough to know where to go or whom to ask. Even the public health department—the people who, residents think, should be the authority on health issues—don’t have responses to any medical questions. Health concerns, Di Toro says, “are being addressed in the sense that people in the community point to the source and we’re looking into that.” But this kind of thing is

range when I bought. I was just glad to be in a place and be in the game.” In 2000, the median home sale price in Seattle was $225,000. Today it’s much closer to $500,000, and Zillow predicts that number will jump to nearly $550,000 by mid-2016. Home sale prices in the 98108 zip code, which includes Georgetown and South Park, are still well below that, at about $350,000. (By comparison, the median in both Wallingford and Magnolia is almost $700,000.) “People who have lesser budgets, who can’t afford the $900,000 house in Ballard—because yeah, that’s what it is now!—are looking to the south end,” says Matt Martel, a real-estate agent for the South Lake Union–based agency Findwell. In his experience, though, most people aren’t thinking about air quality. While homes don’t often go for sale in Georgetown or South Park (both are very small residential areas, after all), when they do, he says, “People still want to look at them. And those are multiple-offer situations in those neighborhoods—the same thing they’re doing in Ballard, but at a much lower price level.” “I was naive,” says Johnson, who moved to Georgetown from a rental in Wallingford nine years ago. “I didn’t think about air quality when I first moved to Georgetown. I was just excited that we could afford to buy a house somewhere in Seattle.” And while there was always a certain amount of pollution in the neighborhood, and residents expect it to a certain degree, Bodwin says this spring’s event “crossed a big line”—no neighborhood should be “assaulted” like this. “It was a complete violation of my living space. I was literally covered in drywall dust. I had to take all the cushions off the couch. I had to pull everything out and wipe everything down. I can’t live like that. That’s not fair. I don’t care if I live near industry. If it’s going to be that bad, and that’s the level that we’re going to tolerate, then there shouldn’t be a residential area here.”

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

14 RANG-006 Seattle Weekly Sept30.indd 1

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food&drink

The Lager’s Lot Amid the IPA craze, Rhein Haus took a chance on Jürgen Knöller and his strictly German-style beers.

GEOFFREY SMITH

BY DANIEL PERSON

THE WEEKLY DISH17 RESTAURANT REVIEW 18 BEER HUNTER19

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hen the Capitol Hill bierhalle then known as Von Trapp’s opened in 2013, its beer list was something of a gamble on Seattle’s appetite for lagers—a style of beer that in many ways represents the antithesis of the IPA that was still very much king of the Seattle beer scene. “We had 24 taps, and we knew we wanted to have a large portion of that be dedicated to lager style,” says Rich Fox, operating owner of the restaurant now known as Rhein Haus. “We acknowledged the spectrum that existed in the ale world, but we thought we could be selective in what we offered; rather than have 12 IPAs, have two.” While the restaurant had no problem sourcing its IPAs and other ales within city limits, selling German beer meant selling German beer—brewed by companies like Veltins and Köstritzer and shipped to America—simply because not very much lager was being produced locally. But after a wildly successful opening—affirmation that customers would respond to a lager’s

much that they made Bayern’s Helles Lager their house beer, the flagship brew on which they would hang their Bavarian bona fides. More than two years later, they haven’t looked back—and neither has Knöller, with whom I sit down to talk German beer. “What killed the lager was the Miller, the

Anheuser-Busch, the Coors. It was mass-produced and held up by advertising,” Knöller says in his lilting German accent over dinner at the 74th Street Ale House in Phinney Ridge, which also carries his beers. For the most part, beers come in two categories, ales and lagers. Ales utilize top-fermenting yeasts, which are quicker to brew and tend to have that bitter finish many beer lovers savor. Lagers use bottom-fermenting yeasts, take longer to brew, and are notably milder and smoother. The American craft-beer movement has long held the perception that lagers are too boring to be distinctive and, worse, too close to the swill cranked out by giant American brewers, all of which make a very bland form of lager. It was against mass-produced lagers that the craft-beer movement defined itself. At Fremont Oktoberfest this year, 25 IPAs were served, a number that outstripped all other types of beer and bordered on cultural insensitivity, given Germans’ general disdain for ales. But through it all, Knöller has stuck with his lagers and the Reinheitsgebot. Bayern brews a few beers with top-fermenting yeast, but even those are aged longer than most ales to eliminate anything like a RHEIN HAUS bitter or hoppy finish. 912 12th Ave. Such resolve against German food the overwhelming market Informal demand for ales, IPAs in particular, strikes me as remarkable, but Knöller downplays it. “There have always been smooth and complex flavors—Fox and his partners trendy beers. Before the IPAs, it was the Belgian revisited their lager list to see if anyone stateside could help meet the demand for German-style beer. wits, those were really big,” he says. “I never really thought to follow one fad or another. I would do “We really wanted to find a local representamy own stuff.” tion of a good lager style,” Fox recalls. “When That patience might finally be paying off, as we reached out to some of our distributors, they the fad seems to be coming to Knöller and other introduced us to Jürgen.” brewers of lager. Fox says Rhein Haus seems to This was Jürgen Knöller. And for Fox, “local” meant Missoula, where Knöller helped start Bayern have caught the front end of a rising tide, evidenced by a recent uptick in the number of local Brewery in 1987, well before the American craftbreweries adding lagers to their roster. Stoup beer movement bloomed. But while the market has has one, and Seattle Beer Week’s official brew become considerably more crowded in 28 years, Bayern has remained unique in the Northwest sim- this year was Silver City’s Sieben Brau, a nod to that brewery’s consistent work in the lager field. ply because it brews lagers almost exclusively—no In April, Seattle Met ran an article titled, simply, IPAs, no pale ales, no Belgians, no stouts. “Why Lager Is the Next Big Thing.” Furthermore, Knöller—born in Bavaria, “We felt that the timing was right, and that’s trained as a master brewer in Germany— borne fruit,” Fox says. “Just look at the average proudly follows the German Beer Purity Law, microbrewer’s beer offering [in 2013] compared to or Reinheitsgebot, originally passed in Bavaria what they do now. A lot of them are offering lager in 1516, which strictly limits which ingredients style . . . That was part of our sentiment—the timbrewers can use to make beer. ing was right to show people the alternative.” Rhein Haus liked the idea of having a direct, Jürgen agrees that lagers have come in from the stateside supplier of authentic German lager. They cold: “Lagers have a chance again.” E also liked Knöller’s style, especially his environmental ethic (among other things, the brewery dperson@seattleweekly.com gives credit for returned bottles—a big deal in In celebration of Oktoberfest, Jürgen Knöller Missoula, where there’s no glass recycling). will host a ceremonial keg tapping But most important, they liked the beer—so at 5 p.m. Saturday at Rhein Haus.

The Weekly Dish

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By Nicole Sprinkle

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It’s tailgating season, and 3 Howls Distillery is setting up a tailgate tasting on October 5 at their SoDo location just blocks from CenturyLink and Safeco fields to celebrate the Seahawks game that night. The party begins at noon and includes free tastes of their booze (including a signature “Hawktail”) and “BBQ bites smoked with wood from [their] whiskey barrels” prepared by Skillet’s Nick Novello. There will also of course be a big screen to watch the pre-game festivities. If you’ve missed Jason Harris’ former Ballard Japanese restaurant, Bloom, you’ll be pleased to hear he’s doing a ramen pop-up tomorrow (October 1) with 30-minute seatings between 7 and 9 p.m. at the Pike Place Atrium. The occasion, to celebrate

the harvest moon, features an array of appetizers; ramen, of course; and dessert. The event is BYOB, and Harris recomends sake. Tickets are available on Dyne.

Cream Scones

My mother visited recently, and, to the joy of our household, made her signature cream scones, a recipe she got many years ago from the Beaconsfield Inn in Victoria, B.C. What sets these scones apart is the use of cream instead of butter, making the result lighter and less dense—a texture somewhere between a muffin and a biscuit. With the final parade of peaches and blueberries at my local farmers market, we chose those two to make a warm batch of these babies for breakfast. Ingredients: 2 cups all-purpose flour 1 tablespoon baking powder ½ teaspoon salt ¼ cup sugar ¾ cup fresh, dried, or frozen fruit 1¼ cups heavy cream 2 tablespoons melted butter 2 tablespoons sugar Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. Butter a baking sheet. Sift dry ingredients into a large bowl. Mix in fruit. Make a well in center, add cream, and mix lightly by hand. Spoon dough onto a floured baking sheet. Roll out to about 1½-inch thickness. Using a 2½-inch round cookie cutter, cut out scones. Place on baking sheet and brush with melted butter. Sprinkle with sugar. Bake 15 to 20 minutes (slightly less if using a convection oven). Scones should be very lightly browned around edges; do not overbake. E nsprinkle@seattleweekly.com

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The highly anticipated Ernest Loves Agnes has finally opened in the former Kingfish Cafe space in Capitol Hill. While the new owners—Guild Seattle trio Joey Burgess, David Meinert, and Jason LaJeunesse of Lost Lake Cafe and Comet Tavern—used the former copper bar to outfit their new tables, everything else is completely redone. The Italian restaurant pays homage to Ernest Hemingway in its name (Agnes was a nurse he fell in love with while recuperating during WWI in Milan) and design, using photos of Hemingway’s home and street in Key West and pages from the writer’s books as bathroom wallpaper. The menu, under the direction of Mac Jarvis (formerly of Lost Lake, Smith, and Lola), features a fantastic variety of housemade pizzas with toppings like peach and ricotta; pastas, including squid-ink ravioloni filled with spiced lobster mushrooms and sheep cheese; and entrées such as whole grilled trout with grilled broccolini and pepperoncinis.

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hen popular family brunch and dinner spot Grub closed last winter in Upper Queen Anne, owner Sharon Fillingim, in a farewell Facebook post, introduced and welcomed the restaurant taking its place, Bounty Kitchen. Fillingim, not involved with the new restaurant, described Bounty as a “modern neighborhood cafe dedicated to quality food in both flavor and harvest. Bounty is committed to improving the way people eat, and our menu is chef-driven with a focus on healthy eating. We produce all of our food in-house with 100% organic produce for our innovative salads, housemade dressings, soups, and sandwiches.” I felt my hopeful anticipation fall like a badly made souffle. A health-food joint I lamented. Blech. But my jaded perspective was completely jettisoned. The space was cheerful, the food delicious and, yes, healthy. It’s hard to sing the praises of salads and juices, yet I must. This is not one of those ubiquitous create-your-own-salad places where you burn more calories standing in line than you end up eating. Nor is this home to the tiny, precious single-ingredient presentations that proliferate at trendy, overpriced restaurants. Instead, think of a heaping bowl of lemongrass + basil salad ($12) with red cabbage, romaine, savoy frisée, carrots, bean sprouts, bell pepper, cilantro, mint, lemongrass, green onion, cucumber, and pea sprouts—all these fresh ingredients popping on their own yet commingling in vegetarian harmony—dressed in a peanut vinaigrette, a far cry from the too-sweet peanut dressings that dominate the salad and Thai-food universe. Besides salads, a large portion of the menu consists of “Great Bowls of Goodness.” Ignore the corny label and dive into a Marrakesh Market Bowl ($12), which is more or less a salad with a base of kale and arugula and an ingenious “cauliflower cous cous”—essentially minced cauliflower (why didn’t I think of that?). This is built out with dried currants and apricots, sliced almonds, charred peppers and onion, mint, cilantro, and a preserved Meyer lemon vinaigrette. It offers a surprise in every bite, and leaves your mouth pleasantly tingling long after you’ve finished it (though expect a slightly different incarnation for fall). A warm Potlicker Bowl fared just as well, with collard greens floating in a

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broth with blackeyed peas and the drippings from the braising of the greens. While a traditional Southern potlicker sauce is distinguished by the pork flavor found in those drippings, this vegetarian version uses a little maple and spicy pecans to achieve that savory lushness. A polenta cake made from Southern grits holds center court and is topped by a poached egg, scallions, and a Creole salsa with a smoky bite courtesy of chipotle peppers. Along with bowls and salads, Bounty Kitchen— which requires diners to order at the counter, but serves to your table—has also winningly capitalized on the toast trend. I realize that while it’s cruel to extol the virtues of the just-retired-for-the-season strawberry toast, it deserves a tribute before next summer. A Macrina baguette is toasted and smeared with ricotta, topped with the sweetest strawberries the season had to yield, a handful of arugula, and a drizzle of white balsamic vinegar. The result of the super-sweet strawberries in the ricotta was a jammy taste and texture; coupled with the warmth of the bread, it evoked childhood nostalgia for morning toast and jam. Not to fear, though: That sublime version is being swapped out for one with pomegranate and orange ricotta. On the savory side, the avocado on rye toast with a poached egg—Weekly staff writer Ellis Conklin’s breakfast staple—is always available. I’m not into juicing, but it felt right to get one to accompany all the other wholesome stuff I was ingesting: Orange vanilla is a winner. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to fit onto my plate any sandwiches but, given the quality of everything else, it’s hard to imagine they’d be duds. Though the menu differs greatly, Grub fans will find a familiar interior in some respects (it’s still airy, and a large communal table dominates). But there’s plenty of new features, including a knock-out in the middle of the ceiling that exposes wooden beams, quaint wallpaper illustrated with hens and roosters, and a wall of plants potted in blue and white porcelain and old-fashioned metal cake molds. It’s simple but inventive, just like the food. E

nsprinkle@seattleweekly.com

BEER HUNTER

Best Fall Brews in Top Bottle Shops

Our beer columnist polls local bottleshop staffers to find out what they’re most excited to drink this season.

BY JACOB UITTI definitely a shift toward an increase in ABV,” says White. “Most people now are turning from specialty sour beers to stouts and barrel-aged, over-the-top strong beer.” West Seattle’s The Beer Junction, which carries about 1,400 beers inhouse along with a few hundred ciders, is also preparing for the colder months, and they’ll be holding a Pumpkin Ale festival, called Pumpkin Junction, October 17–31, featuring 25-plus rotating taps of pumpkin beer, cider, and meads. “People are already buying a lot of pumpkin beer,” confirms TBJ retail associate Brian Greggs, “more than I anticipated.” In fact, TBJ is so well known for their pumpkin ales that they have their own version brewed for them by Ballard’s Reuben’s brewery. The shop also has around 30 more pumpkin beers in stock. But if you’re like the many folks who veer away from pumpkin spice in their beer (and I don’t blame you), TBJ has a myriad of fall harvest ales—including Hale’s take on the style—which tend to be on the maltier and nuttier side of the spectrum. Another great version in stock is Abita Pecan Harvest Ale from Louisiana. Perhaps what’s very best about fall and winter in Seattle is that cozy feeling of putting on a movie, sitting on the couch with a loved one or three, and relaxing in this Northwest haven. And how better to do that after a long day than have a few great brews ready to quaff, plucked from one of the many great bottle shops the Emerald City has to offer. E

beerhunter@ seattleweekly.com

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

ne major benefit of living in the hops capital of the U.S. is that whenever you turn (or swipe) the page on your calendar, you are entering a new beer season. These days, as summer departs for the chillier months, Seattle’s premier bottle shops—The Beer Junction, Chuck’s Hop Shop, and Bottleworks—are stocking up on some of the most coveted fall and winter favorites. Wallingford’s Bottleworks, which stocks anywhere between 900 and 1,000 beers and features 16 taps, lined their shelves with fresh-hop beers in September. Next up: pumpkin ales for October and darker, stronger beers, like Fremont’s Kentucky Dark Star—an 11 percent ABV (alcohol by volume) bourbon-barrel-aged Imperial (read: strong!) Stout, for when it gets really cold. “Also, ciders will be picking up because people tend to think of apples in the fall,” says Bottleworks manager Shaughn O’Keefe, who says some of his personal favorites in the store are a red cider from Snowdrift in Wenatchee, which looks like a rosé because it’s made from apples with red flesh, and Northland’s White Wood Cider from Olympia. Jordan White, manager at Chuck’s Hop Shop on East Union, which sells from 1,000 to 1,200 bottled beers with another 50 on draft, says his store tries to be picky when it comes to seasonal stocking. “Everyone makes pumpkin ales and Oktoberfests, so we try to select the cream of the crop.” Some of those top concoctions, according to White, include Silver City Oktoberfest, Elysian’s Punkuccino, and Dark O’— what he calls “sit around the fire and drink ’em” beers. Among dark beers White intends to carry are “big” barrel-aged beers like Deschutes Black Butte XXVII, one of the brewery’s annual releases and the imperial version of their Black Butte Porter. “Every day there’s a new product on our shelf,” he says. On draft, he adds, the shop will also feature some new IPA’s, like Alpine’s Nelson IPA from San Diego and Bale Breaker’s Imperial Bottom Cutter IPA from Yakima. “When the winter months hit, there’s

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

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Photo Credit: Original Broadway Company. Jefferson Mays as Asquith D’Ysquith Jr. in a scene from A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder. Photo by Joan Marcus. Photo Credit for Sound of Music, How to Succeed, Sleeping Beauty Wakes, and Paint Your Wagon: Mark Kitaoka.

arts&culture

COMIX 23 CONVERSATION24 REVIEWS25 CALENDAR31

n 1965, America was at a turning point. The Beatles played their first stadium concert, Bob Dylan went electric, Malcolm X was assassinated, Martin Luther King marched to Selma, NASA launched probes to the moon and Mars, and men first walked in space. Here in Seattle, the Space Needle had been pointing to the heavens for four years. And on September 30, saxophonist John Coltrane and his ensemble would weave together all these threads at a 225-seat jazz club on the corner of First Avenue and Cherry Street and make history. The venue was named the Penthouse, though it was on the ground floor of a ramshackle hotel. Owner Charlie Puzzo, a bartender with a penchant for the promiscuous, liked to name his clubs after nudie magazines. His other bar was called the Playboy. Puzzo usually booked his favored mainstream jazz artists, like stately but nimble-fingered pianist Oscar Peterson or bossa nova cool saxophonist Stan Getz. But this booking was different. By the time Coltrane arrived in the city for his week-long Penthouse residency, he had been catapulted into the mainstream with a sound that led Downbeat to name him Jazzman of the Year with the Record of the Year, A Love Supreme. But Coltrane wasn’t settling. At the peak of his popularity and having just celebrated his 39th birthday on September 23, Coltrane was veering his band away from that sound, on a mission to ascend levels of consciousness through music. The night of Monday, September 27, started

like any other. At the club’s threshold, a sharply suited Puzzo charismatically ushered elegant audiences over carpeted floors to tables and booths, packing them as densely as possible. The club served beer and wine from a bar at the back, and the long red-brick side walls were dramatically lit in circles of brightness. The ceiling above the elevated stage was covered in mirrored tile so the audience could both look up at the musicians onstage and down on them from above.

Coltrane and the Cosmos Fifty years ago, the hottest jazz artist in the world arrived in Seattle and charted a new course. HUGO VAN GELDEREN, VIA WIKIMEDIA

BY STEVE GRIGGS

At the ebony grand piano perched McCoy Tyner. A prolific composer and arranger, his percussive chords of perfect fourths and fifths defied traditional major and minor modes, allowing his improvised harmonic movement to shift in and out of the expected. At the drums sat the regal Elvin Jones with a toothy grin. His four limbs magically manifested an ensemble of Latin percussionists. It was said that Jones’ swing was so deep that even atomic clocks slowed down or sped up to get into the groove laid down by his size 13EEE feet. He was not subservient to any soloist, but would lift every musical idea with punctuation and propulsion. Embracing the upright bass was little Jimmy Garrison, whose sound was anything but. He plucked and strummed at the low end of the strings, always colluding, never colliding, with the bottom notes of Coltrane’s tenor saxophone. Caressing a second upright onstage was Donald Garrett. His bow skills contributed long high notes complementing Garrison’s low short ones. He also played clarinet and kalimba. Beside Coltrane stood Pharoah Sanders, also with a tenor saxophone hanging from his neck. A wizard of sound effects, he could purr like a cat or screech like nails on a chalkboard. In the audience was an old friend of Coltrane’s, saxophonist Joe Brazil. They had met a decade earlier, when Brazil had a house in Detroit and Coltrane came through with trumpeter Miles Davis. Coltrane attended some of the many late-night jam sessions in Brazil’s basement and practiced there during the day.

» CONTINUED ON PAGE 22

arts&culture Coltrane and the Cosmos » FROM PAGE 21 Brazil moved to Seattle in 1961 for a job at Boeing. By the time Coltrane visited Seattle, his first and only visit, Brazil was working as a computer programmer in the Applied Physics Laboratory at the University of Washington. While the rest of the band stayed at a downtown hotel that week, Coltrane moved in with Brazil to work on music and hang out. It was Brazil who, during Coltrane’s visit, drove the band to the Lynnwood studio of country and Western drummer Jan “Kurtis” Skugstad. Coltrane arrived there in search of new sounds that went beyond A Love Supreme. He was also beginning to infuse his music with feelings around spiritual beliefs, an approach that went too far out for many fans and critics as rumors of LSD use tainted the artistic quality in the ears of many listeners. Coltrane had also been studying Eastern philosophies and practicing yoga, and just a month before entering Skugstad’s studio named one of his sons Ravi, after Indian sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar. In the studio, those influences emerged as Brazil joined the band on flute. They recorded 30 minutes of music that opened and closed with readings from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita—a recording that would later be released on Impulse! Records as Om. The public transformation of John Coltrane had

only just begun when patrons settled in for that first Penthouse performance. At a table near the stage that Monday night were Bill Owens, Puzzo’s booker, and Ed Baker, a reporter for The Seattle Times. In the hushed conversations anticipating the music, Owens whispered to Baker: “This will be like nothing you have ever heard.” Baker’s review would run in the

newspaper two days later. “Coltrane’s sound is like nothing else,” he would write. “It is wild, furious, dissonant, scornful of conventional rules of harmonics, indifferent about melody.” After patrons were seated and the band began, Puzzo left the club to take in the fights. When he came back from the boxing bouts hours later, the band was onstage, sweating and swinging for the fences. Puzzo leaned close to the perky ear of one of his bunny-clad waitresses, “They’re playing long for a Monday night,” he said. “Are they on the third set?” “They haven’t stopped once since you left,” she shouted back over a loud drum solo. The long, continuous performance produced meager receipts, so afterward Puzzo sat Coltrane down and demanded that he take two breaks a night. That way the tables could turn over and the waitresses could take more drink orders. Coltrane complied. Most of the time. One exception was Thursday, September 30. That night, Coltrane followed his muse. Combining Afrocentricity, magical reality, and science fiction, he lit the fuse on Afrofuturism—which years later would explode when jazz pianist Sun Ra declared “Space is the Place” and funk bassist George Clinton established the “Mothership Connection.” Seattle disk jockey Jim Wilke sat near the stage that night, set to broadcast the first 30 minutes on KINGAM. His introduction of the show, broadcast from the club, went out over the airwaves like a countdown to liftoff. Meanwhile, Coltrane had hired Skugstad,

who had a studio with portable equipment, to record the evening’s performance. With all the club, radio, and studio gear, there were more microphone stands onstage than musicians. Coltrane briefly borrowed Wilke’s headphones to check the broadcast sound. Handing them back, he informed the DJ that the song was going to last longer than the half-hour broadcast. Meanwhile, Skugstad kept feeding fresh reels into his recorder, capturing every detail of the performance. The first set on Thursday clocked in just shy of two hours, with the first number lasting an hour and a half. According to The John Coltrane Reference, a comprehensive chronology and discography, that first song, a Coltrane original named “Cosmos,” had never been recorded before and would never be reprised. “Cosmos” includes long sections of ensemble improvisation, a bass duet, a bass solo, a kalimba solo, hand percussion, and even loud vocal groans. Audience applause marks the transition points, but the music never pauses for more than five seconds. Coltrane’s concepts for composition and improvisation were expanding. He had explored similar long ensemble improvisations three months earlier while recording of a piece titled Ascension, which would later be released by Impulse! These recordings may have been test flights for the Seattle performances. Another concept that Coltrane originated ten months earlier on A Love Supreme involved connecting ensemble passages with bass or drum solos. Live, at the Penthouse, Coltrane adapted these solo passages

Combining Afrocentricity, magical reality, and science fiction, Coltrane lit the fuse on Afrofuturism.

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

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to introduce or segue between songs in his repertoire. So, following the hour-and-a-half “Cosmos,” a lengthy bass solo bridged the transition into the full ensemble’s otherworldly rendition of the title song from a popular 1945 movie, Out of This World. The unconventional performance of “Out of This World” had a deep impact on at least one listener. Teenage Seattle drummers Gregg Keplinger and Dave Guilland had snuck in to the Penthouse to get a glimpse of Elvin Jones, hiding behind a coat rack near the front door to avoid the bouncer. Three years earlier, Keplinger had been moved to tears by the beauty in Coltrane’s first recorded rendition of “Out of This World.” The band onstage was still developing the song, but with more energy and abandon. Keplinger hyperventilated, he later recalled. The slower tempo, wider harmonic backdrop, and freer solo improvisation, he said, was “blowing his brain cells apart.” No commercial recording has ever presented this music, sequenced correctly, in its entirety. Pieces of the September 30, 1965 two-hour set have been sliced up, renamed, and issued by Impulse! in 1971 as Live in Seattle and by RLR Records in 2011 as The Unissued Seattle Broadcast. The dissection is likely due to its release after Coltrane’s untimely death in 1967 and the fact that he created this recording without a producer. Coltrane would return to planetary themes during his final year on Earth, in his saxophone and drum set duet recording Interstellar Space with the songs “Mars,” “Venus,” Jupiter,” and “Saturn.” It is in Seattle, though, that the journey began. The Penthouse is gone, and so are many of the musicians. But the planet continues to orbit the sun, as it has 50 times since Coltrane’s journey. E

music@seattleweekly.com

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conversation

Hand-Drawn Heritage

Tess Martin’s mission to amplify Northwest animation. BY KELTON SEARS

little about each other’s animation communities. Another part of the mission of Haptic: I find a lot of young animators aren’t aware of what was going on in their own cities even just in the ’70s. I’m working to create a database of every single animated film ever made in the Northwest.

I know Bruce Bickford is an OG PNW animator, but what other historic local animators should people know about?

KELTON SEARS

There was a lot going on in the ’70s. Bruce Bickford, of course, his most famous stuff was with Frank Zappa, but he never stopped. He’s a living legend. There was a man called Bob Hutchinson who is still around, and he made some of the first paper cut-out animations on film in the ’70s and won an Emmy for a chalk animation he did, but nobody knows him now. In Portland we have Will Vinton and Bob Gardiner who won the 1974 f you asked people to point to the spirit of “North- Oscar for Closed Mondays, which was kind of the west animation,”most would shrug at you. Local first Claymation film to do so, and Jan Gratz who animator Tess Martin of the Seattle Experimental won in 1992 for her pioneering “claypainting” Animation Team (SEAT), hopes to change that film Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase. There’s Jim with this week’s launch of Haptic Animation Amplifier, Blashfield from Seattle who has this really distinct a new nonprofit designed to provide much-needed cut-out style using found magazine material and infrastructure for the Northwest’s animation heritage, Xerox stuff. He made this film called Suspicious present, and future. In anticipation of HAA’s Friday Circumstances in the ’70s. The Talking Heads saw it launch at the Local Sightings Film Festival, I sat down and asked him to make the music video for “And She Was,” which launched this decade-long with Martin to talk about the strange,singular role career making music videos for all sorts she plays as the world’s unofficial Northwest of bands, including Michael Jackson. animation ambassador. Haptic Animation But he was originally inspired by SW: Last time we talked was right Amplifier Launch a woman named Maxine Martell, before the SEAT shorts showcase, Northwest Film Forum, 1515 who was in Seattle experimenting Strange Creatures. 12th Ave., nwfilmforum.org. with Xerox animation as well. These Martin: That was August 2013! I Free. 6 p.m. Fri., Oct. 2. films were a turning point because put together that program right before they were so experimental. I moved to the Netherlands. I showed that shorts program in Brussels, Hungary, The Northwest animated films in Bratislava, Vienna . . . I kind of made myself a particular? mini-tour with a bunch of Central European counI think what’s different about the Northwest is tries after premiering it here in Seattle. I screened it that we don’t have a school churning out animation about a dozen times.The last time was in Rotterdam, graduates, which means almost everybody is selfwhere I live now. taught and making it up as they go. Animation from I’m still in Rotterdam—it’s a bit complicated, here, there’s kind of no boundaries or rules, which but basically I wanted to keep doing this Pacific is really fun and exciting. The work is really a breath Northwest animated shorts program and touring of fresh air, especially when you start going to these it, but I had bigger ambitions as well. I realized I film festivals and you see work and can immediately needed to be more legitimate to make that hapgo “Oh, yeah, that’s from so-and-so school.” pen, so I decided to start a nonprofit that supports What’s it like being the PNW animation independent animation in the PNW. Part of our ambassador abroad then? mission is doing this international distribution, but I definitely get a lot of “Oh! What’s happening I also want to concentrate on helping to preserve in the Pacific Northwest? Is there stuff happenthe history of animation in the area, because there’s ing?” Most people only know about Laika from not really any organization that does that federally Portland [the stop-motion animation studio or regionally. behind Coraline, ParaNorman, and The Boxtrolls].

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Are there distinct regional animation scenes around the U.S.?

There are pockets, but I feel like they’re attached to certain schools that produce lots of graduates. There’s a pocket around L.A. of CalArts grads, and you could say the same for the Rhode Island School of Design. There’s kind of a New York scene, but I actually don’t know how cohesive they are as a community there because it’s so big and competitive.

Would you say the NW has a cohesive animation community? Is there a common spirit?

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I think there is! But I’m not sure the different communities in these cities are as aware of each other as they should be. That’s part of the mission of Haptic. It’s silly that Portland and Seattle are only three and a half hours away and we know so

Showing these local films in Eastern Europe, do they take well to the experimental Northwesty animation vibe?

Most people love the programs. The comment I get most is “These films seem very free.” I think it was a student at this school in Hungary, she was saying how they are taught animation, they have the weight of all these masters who are so famous in their own country, so they are constantly being compared to these masters. When you’re talking Eastern Europe, it’s these dark, existential puppet films about these big ideas, but she was saying “These films seem very free. Sometimes it works, sometimes they don’t, but they are really fun to watch and seem very fun to make.” E

ksears@seattleweekly.com

reviews

MUSIC

Harvest Tunes

synths over a strong 4/4 pulse. Once you’re out of its womby first half, the record starts to pick up, dropping harder, more consistent beats that match great with your body’s natural biorhythms—the album wakes up with you. (ctpakrecords.bandcamp.com)

Skate witches, morning music, and more soothing sounds from this crisp, lovely September.

Midday Veil

BY KELTON SEARS

This Wilderness Seattle’s Midday Veil has always made records that sound huge, but This Wilderness is notable because it’s both huge and funky—a very potent combo indeed. David Golightly’s trademark cosmic synth voyages and Emily Pothast’s deep esoteric musings on eternity are still here, but Garrett Moore’s drumming is the most polyrhythmic and ass-shakable it’s ever sounded on tracks like “Babel,” “Empire Is No More,” and “I Am the War.” That latter track’s Donna Summer-esque space disco jam even breaks down into a great robot vocoder section. As if it weren’t already funky enough, the band recruited legendary Parliament-Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell to funk up their junk in the studio. But it wouldn’t be a Midday Veil album without some proper séances in there as well. “Universes,” the album’s closing thumb-piano dirge, is one of the group’s most unsettling yet—contrasting lofty philosophy on how “the rise and fall of empires is the rise and fall of man” with twinkling, childlike xylophone lines that buzz and clatter atop groaning, sickly bass frequencies. What better way to close out a great dancey record than with a dark meditation on the impending void that will consume us all? (beyondbeyondisbeyondrecords.bandcamp.com) Hibou

know fall is finally here because on a recent Skitch run down by Lake Washington, I saw a Wicked Witches of the Northwest dog wearing a sweater. Dogs with sweaters A glorious dark-green “Skate Witches” T-shirt are just one of the many great things about caught my eye at the merch table of a recent DIY this season—among others are hot toddies, show. I bought it on the spot, assuming it was a giant fuzzy boot socks, and the musical harvest. reference to the classic 1986 film of that name. Lo Autumn, historically, is a great time for local and behold, I discovered it was actually the name music, when bands that spent spring and sumof a badass all-lady NW skateboarding crew with mer recording finally release the a website full of sick vids and skate nuggets they’ve been sitting on, and zines (theskatewitches.com). The the weather outside makes you all crew’s motto: “For the Girls—Scare pensive and thoughtful and recepthe Boys.” I also found out that three tive to the new sounds. And there of the crew’s “she-redders” assembled THE MONTH’S BEST are quite a few new sounds I found an international skate-punk superLOCAL RELEASES myself warming up to this month. group called Skitch that occasionally I wouldn’t call myself an “ambient plays at half-pipes and underground techno” connoisseur by any means, but maybe venues. The Van B.C./Seattle trio recorded its first because of the weather, I fell in love with some proper EP, Wicked Witches of the Northwest, at the local strains of just that. And thanks to some Vera Project and just released it this month. clever drum machine, I also broke through my Woo-buddy, it’s crunchy, grungy, and mean, negative gut reaction to surf guitar, something and I love it. “Beyonce” and “Tinder” might be I never thought I’d do. If a dog can wear a the best-named tracks, but the self-titled “Skitch” sweater, anything is possible. With that aphoat the center of the EP is my favorite song on the rism in mind, let’s get to the good stuff. record, both for its menacing opening bass riff

The Heard Herd

and its staccato lyrical call to arms: “Don’t want a man, don’t want to hold hands, ain’t got no plans, I just wanna skate. We’re not a girl band not a girl band not a girl band.” If the developers at Activision are reading this, y’all should probably just dump Tony Hawk, give the Skate Witches their own video game, and have them soundtrack it too. (skitchxoxo.bandcamp.com) WMD

Protection From Enemies In 2015, categorizing most music by genre is both boring and near-impossible, given all the healthy crossover going on. Instead, I find it more helpful to categorize music by feelings, seasons, and time of day. You could call Seattle electronic producer WMD’s Protection From Enemies ambient techno, but I think of it more as a beautiful morning record—one I’ve had the pleasure of waking up with many times this month. The appropriately titled “Warmth” undulates, glimmers, and unfolds—the sonic equivalent of a light beam breaking through your window. “Incandescence” rides a similar wave, washing you out with sun-drenched, amniotic

Thaddeus David

The Rise: White Summer The latest EP from Moor Gang’s Thaddeus David is produced entirely by Portland’s Aviel Ben Yamin, and shines because of it. There’s a unique sensual spaciousness in the beats that makes David’s personal reflections seem more intimate, like he’s in the same small room as you. That feeling might also be in part due to the sparse R&B sprinklings throughout, like the cooing melody that buoys “The Rise: Intro” or the slowed-down, crystalline reworking of INOJ’s “I Want to Be Your Baby Lady” on the album’s best track “At Night.” While David’s lyricism is a far cry from Drake’s sappy confessionals, Yamin’s moonlit production style pushes this record into Take Care territory, an unusual but welcome addition to Moor Gang’s repertoire. (thaddeusdavid.bandcamp.com) E ksears@seattleweekly.com

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

LAUREN SIMMONS

Midday Veil

Hibou Former Craft Spells drummer Peter Michel picked up a guitar and decided to set out on his own two years ago under the name Hibou. His 2013 Dunes EP came at the crest of the warbly surf-throwback sound that has taken over the indie world—one that, admittedly, has grown a little tired. But on Michel’s debut self-titled LP, he finally won me over. Michel is still hangin’ 10 on that surf sound, which he infuses with his own C86-style, but what makes this record is the drum machine. The drum machine kills, especially when it goes into superoverdrive on “Above Us” and “Sunder” or when it’s melded into tropi-funk bliss on “Hide Away.” There’s a certain teen-anthem majesty a wellhandled drum machine can achieve, and at its best, Hibou sounds like the final scene of a long-lost John Hughes film set on an island. (Barsuk Records)

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FILM

Red Panic? No—space castaway Matt Damon keeps calm, and that’s the problem.

BY ROBERT HORTON

WELL GO USA ENT.

Cassel’s Gregori (with Anastasia Prystay) and Chabriel at left as Alexander.

The Revolution at Home

Trapped in a creepy commune, a young follower dares to question Daddy.

BY BRIAN MILLER

whose hold on the women is more carnal than spiritual. (Didn’t Rasputin have it both ways?) It helps here, in this closed system, that Cassel retains his fundamental sex appeal: Even if there were adult male rivals to his polygamous rule, it’s hard to believe his worshipful wives would leave him. The kids are a different story. Alexander is moved to action by the stubborn, almost autistic resolve of fellow child warrior Leo to correct Gregori’s teachings and save the chickens from slaughter. (Allegory alert!) The kids’ young brains, unlike their mothers’, are still plastic and expanding; and Chabriel has the gift, like a lot of child actors, of transparently communicating doubt and disappointment—not just in Gregori but his mother, too. Alexander is coming to know the world, which is to question the world. On one level, Alexander is the freedomfighter and Gregori the corrupt old tyrant, like Ceaușescu, Milošević, or Tito. On another, you wish Partisan were more pointed in its writing, more connected to an outside, modern world that still produces such men as Gregori. Western democracy and the Internet haven’t changed things in Syria, Zimbabwe, or Kazakhstan. Mad Max: Fury Road basically told the same mythic story with much more action and budget, yet both movies leave you with a sense of unfinished business. Kill one false prophet/patriarch, and another will rise to fill the power vacuum. Gregori was probably a sweet young boy once, too. E

bmiller@seattleweekly.com

film@seattleweekly.com

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

one day become a rival. The other kids adore Greincent Cassel was for a time a gori, who uses VHS tapes to reward his pupils on matinee idol, stealing leading roles karaoke night. (There’s an improvised, provisional and ladies’ hearts (Monica Belquality here, darkly antipodal to Michel Gondry’s lucci’s among them), but at 49 he’s sunny, handmade worlds.) hardened into a classical French cop’s Why don’t the women complain? or gangster’s mug. He’s got the Are they refugees or prisoners? charisma to play both sides of Grand Illusion What’s outside the compound the law, as in Trance, The Crimson Cinema walls? Was there some kind of Rivers, and Eastern Promises. 1403 N.E. 50th St., 523-3935. war or societal breakdown? Klei(English-language roles came $5–$8. Runs Fri., man and co-writer Sarah Cyncomparatively late.) You can see Oct. 2–Thurs., Oct. 8. gler explain nothing, leaving us to why Australian director Ariel Rated R. 98 minutes. judge whether Gregori’s us-versusKleiman, in his feature debut, them rhetoric is heroic or insane. gravitated to Cassel’s ambivalent He falls somewhere on a continuum allure. Here’s a guy who could from Masada and Mormon settlers to Ruby draw followers—in this case a compound full Ridge and Waco. Gregori changes appearance of women and children—for purposes good or throughout the story, sometimes sporting an Old ill. And at first we’re not sure what to make of Testament beard—one thinks of Mel Gibson in Gregori, what place this is, or what time. Shot his post-Malibu purgatory—but never resorting partly in the nation of Georgia, Partisan is a to Scripture. The beard also recalls Oliver Twist’s sparse, fabular tale that suggests Eastern Europe after communism—no cell phones or computers, Fagin, ruling over a mob of obedient criminal children. Partisan draws on many such yellowed crumbling apartment blocks, and a general air of pages (including the Pied Piper and J.M. Bardisconsolate poverty. rie’s Lost Boys), yet the Moog horror synth score The movie spans a dozen years from the birth burbles and bubbles like a ’70s giallo. There are of Alexander ( Jeremy Chabriel), its main action a lot of influences here, and an impressive widebeginning near his 11th birthday. His mother screen command, even while the story remains (Florence Mezzara) is one of Gregori’s harem, frustratingly hermetic and oblique. whose members never leave the communal cloister. The kids are home-schooled by Gregori in a manner than combines kindness and strict Gregori’s use for the kids is eventually revealed, dictates. (“Rules are important. Without rules but he’s no would-be messiah like Jim Jones or we will become like them.”) Impish, disobedient Charles Manson. He’s more the post-Soviet Alexander is the talented young cub who could mobster (whatever the setting), a magnetic thug

he movie begins with a hurricane on Mars, a life-threatening debris storm, and a spaceship that might not be able to lift off in the chaos. And that’s the easy part. After the rocket finally blasts from the surface, an astronaut— presumed dead—is left behind on the Red Planet, and he’s got to figure out how to stay alive by himself until a very improbable rescue mission could pick him up. That will take many, many months, if it happens at all. So The Martian is a problem-solving movie: How will castaway Mark Watney (Matt Damon) figure out the fundamental problems of food, shelter, and communication? The movie doesn’t waste much time worrying about issues of loneliness; after we’ve spent time with Watney, who has a complete lack of introspection and neurosis, it’s no wonder. The Martian is based on Andy Weir’s science-heavy 2011 novel, adapted by Cloverfield screenwriter Drew Goddard. It spends a lot of time back on our planet, where nervous NASA honchos played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kristen Wiig, and Jeff Daniels are plotting out a rescue mission. There’s also the departed spaceship, slowly making its way back to Earth and peopled by the usual diverse crew: Jessica Chastain, Michael Peña, Kate Mara, et al. It’s typical of the movie’s dim regard for the audience that along with all this action, Watney talks constantly (he has a video diary), as though to keep us from spending too much time without exposition. The guy never shuts up—an understandable reaction to isolation, yes, but here mostly a storytelling crutch. The movie has already been widely hailed as a good old-fashioned yarn, and an upgrade for director Ridley Scott. The Martian does back off from the wilder visions of Scott’s Prometheus and The Counselor, and it’s a more conventional movie in every way, so . . . hooray? I like movies about solving problems, Damon gives a skillful performance, and Scott’s ability to put you in the middle of a howling Martian gale is impressive. But man, is The Martian corny. Its jokes are telegraphed a mile away, and its many inspirational moments are underscored by hearttugging reaction shots. I’m amazed Opens Fri., Oct. 2 Scott resisted at Cinerama, Sundance, the temptaArk Lodge, Majestic Bay, tion to put and others. Rated PG-13. 141 minutes. a dog on Mars so he would have something to cut to in those moments when the audience might not know what to feel. For that, we get disco tunes on the soundtrack, a reminder of something Guardians of the Galaxy did much better. If this is an upgrade, our standards might be too low. E

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Tommer Peterson’s mostly unadorned stage. White rtists often look to myths as shortcuts costumes—some made of paper—by Ali Rose to an audience, a bit like Hollywood Panzarella are hard to see against the all-white set. looks to sequels and remakes. In More problematic, a huge percentage of stage the best cases, such coattailing on time is occupied by Dave’s historical scenes, which the familiarity and cultural resonance of mythic involve scads of characters speaking shrill, clichéd, source material allows you to skip the exposition buffoonishly accented purple dialogue. Though and take more interesting gambles within that framework. (The audience, in theory, will already be some bits are funny, this becomes tiresome quickly and unbearable by the 90-minute mark. pre-bonded with a story it knows and loves.) (The play runs two and one-half hours, Perhaps this is why Paula Vogel (How I including intermission.) All the Learned to Drive), formerly head of Washington performers seem capable, and the Brown graduate playwriting some are downright enchantprogram and now helming Yale’s, Ensemble Theatre ing—including Leah Salcido assigns myth-based writing exer12th Avenue Arts, 1620 12th Ave., 325-5105, Pfenning as labile Leda, Martyn cises to her MFA students. $15–$25. 7:30 p.m. G. Krouse as dim Tyndareus, One former student, Sarah Mon.–Thurs. Ends Oct. 12. and Higgins as the surefootedly Ruhl, got spectacular results awkward Dave. But director Ali adapting the Orpheus and Mohamed el-Gasseir leaves way Eurydice myth to a context of modtoo many long stretches of trumpedern vernacular and circumstance; her up melodrama and “Who cares?” bickering Eurydice was a hit for ACT in 2008. In this that could have profitably been cut (or at least Washington Ensemble Theatre production of better sculpted for meaning). More than once I 99 Ways to Fuck a Swan, Vogel’s more recent wished for a safe word to escape this torture. student Kim Rosenstock takes a more ambitious if Luckily, the scenes of Dave’s life are more less successful approach to a mythic tale. That old entertaining and useful, however meandering. story is simple enough: Zeus comes down from He goes to a job interview at a specialty porn Olympus in the form of a swan to—depending company, sees his shrink, writes, and tries to on your perspective—rape or seduce Leda, who’s ignore the call of the wild from the sexy cat next already married to the King of Sparta. door. And it must be said that 99 Ways does Rosenstock then refracts the sexually perplexing finally generate a little steam toward the end, as myth through four parallel comedies set in differDave and Fiona swap shame-filled confessions ent eras. In the contemporary (main) one, sheepish and begin to let down their public masks. kink-er Dave (Ryan Higgins), ambivalently courts But whenever things get real (hence vulnerhis playwriting teacher Fiona ( Jonelle Jordan) able and likable), those melodramatic historical while trying to cure his cat fetish. The other three hordes from Dave’s imagination come back like stories we see enacted are written by Dave (carants at a picnic. Zeus be damned! Their tedious toonishly badly) as homework for Fiona’s class, yapping chronically postpones a dramatic climax. and take place in 1) the ancient Greece of Leda’s marriage to boorish Tyndareus; 2) renaissance Italy, It’s frustrating, and perhaps that’s the point. Do fetishes, those outbreaks of blinding mayhem, serve as Michelangelo paints the swan scene; and 3) to keep us from what we really want? If so, how will Edwardian England, where the painting hangs in the magic of theater resolve this intolerable matter? the home of a stuffy mogul and his wife. By looking elsewhere, I suppose. Deviance In concept, exploring the shame and comedy and alternative-ism (niche pleasure-seeking) are of deviance through what the Leda myth means by now old-hat in theater (and dull-diadem in to a series of personable pervs sounds servicemythology). There’s more insight to be gleaned able, if not exactly ravishing. In practice, though, about bestial obsession from strong-themed, it founders on multiple fronts and loses dramatic coherent plays like Peter Shaffer’s Equus or momentum. Some of this is logistical, with chaotic, Edward Albee’s The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? than vignettish scenes cut too quickly. Shifting locations from Rosenstock’s fractured mishmash. E are indicated by stationary placards, and arbitrary scribble-board messages get ripped off to litter stage@seattleweekly.com

ANGELA STERLING

DANCE

Wheeldon’s Tide Harmonic

Sirens and Slapstick

Frivolity and serious footwork mark PNB’s season opener. BY SANDRA KURTZ

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

ally—the casting calls for a very tall woman and acific Northwest Ballet opens its season a shorter man, so that she towers over him at key with a trio of works that illustrate three moments. Their duet brings Balanchine’s musicdifferent moments in ballet history. hall experience into play, as she sits on his head From a treasure of the Ballets Russes to and he lifts her with the top of his back. As the a contemporary hybrid with a mid-century comedy Siren preens in front of her mark, she’s something in between, See the Music gives us an historical of a contortionist, twisting the two of them into triptych of the art form. erotically fraught tableaux, he her willing particiThe program starts with the most recent work, pant. We know how this all ends, but BalChristopher Wheeldon’s Tide Harmonic, anchine has created such truthful and which he crafted for PNB in 2013. tender characters we still watch. Wheeldon is one of the dancemakMcCaw Hall The role of the Prodigal, with its ers we point to when people ask 321 Mercer St. (Seattle technical and acting challenges, is “Who comes after Balanchine?” Center), 441-2424, a plum assignment. Both BenjaHis work reflects both his claspnb.org. $30 and up. 7:30 min Griffiths and James Moore sical training and his fascination p.m. Thurs., Oct. 1–Sat., give wonderful performances. with musical theater. Tide is most Oct. 3; 1 p.m. Sun., Oct. 4. Griffiths is new to the part, and definitely in the ballet category, he appears very freshly coached. yet it’s rich with images that reach Moore, returning from injury, seems beyond the studio to the natural to have spent all his months in rehab world. Wheeldon puts us in the midthinking about this role. His crisp focus, the dle of a storm from the beginning: women way that sections link together, and the timing of churning the air with their arms, men scuttling his gestures demonstrate the depth of his reflection. across the stage in busy chains of steps. Joby TalSirens Lesley Rausch and Laura Tisserand give bot’s score is full of clangorous percussion, which themselves over to the vamp: Both are very good at reinforces a sense of driving energy. Matters slow being very bad women. down a bit in a central duet full of unusual choices (the man is bent over, while his partner reclines on his back). Here Joshua Grant and Maria Chapman By the time Jerome Robbins made The Concert in show us how long phrases go together to create a 1956, he had already spent crucial time in Borscht sense of development in the work. Belt hotels, learning comic pacing and performing As those dancers drift offstage, the original in novelty acts. The timing in this good-hearted themes return and Tide gallops to an end. Among satire of human behavior, acting out the audience all this agitation are some beautiful moments of fantasies at a piano concert, could replace the clock quiet, especially a sliding step for the women. They in your smartphone. In a series of vignettes, we glide their feet back and forth on little curving watch a dithering ballerina stir up trouble between a paths that make the rest of their bodies sway like man and wife; a self-effacing nebbish find his inner seaweed—a welcome breath before the surge. caveman; and a group of dancers who are never If Tide Harmonic is a view of current ballet, Prodquite in step. (For the latter, it’s like we’re reading the igal Son is an evocative look into the past. George scrambled thought balloons over their heads.) Balanchine created it in 1929, the year after he Here Robbins has created the dance equivalent began to forge his neoclassical style with Apollo. But of Walter Mitty’s daydreams. Both casts are espeProdigal Son looks back to the Russian constructivcially fine (including PNB pianist Allan Damists of his youth and the acrobats and contortionists eron as the valiant onstage recitalist). But special he saw while touring the German music-hall circuit. commendation goes to Sarah Ricard Orza as the Prodigal is a blunt, expressionist work, with wafty ballerina and her husband Seth Orza as the shapes that feel like they were hewn out of rock beleaguered husband. In one of his fantasies, he’s or clay. The ballet follows the essence of the Bible all kitted out in military finery and leading a registory—we see a young man eager for independence, ment in a brisk mazurka, a cigar clenched firmly impatient with his father, and excited by new expein his teeth. If they ever revive You Bet Your Life, riences. Finally he meets the ultimate temptation he’s a shoo-in for Groucho Marx. E in the Siren. She overwhelms him, almost literdance@seattleweekly.com

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

BELLEVUE SQUARE

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PICKLIST

of a recently deceased grandfather’s not-veryvaluable but deeply symbolic heirloom chai necklace that survived (with him) through the Holocaust. Did we mention this is a comedy? Which cousin more deserves the precious keepsake? Daphna is the aggressively “good Jew” who casts grad student Liam—who’s illadvisedly brought along his shiksa girlfriend Melody (Molli Corcoran), from a ski trip, no less! Do Jews even ski?—as the bad variety. However pious Daphna (birth name Diana) may claim to be, she batters poor Melody mercilessly (“live water-birthed in a Talbot’s,” she calls the Gentile interloper). And Liam (birth name Shlomo) must defend himself, his faith, and his punching bag of a girlfriend. (Daphna to Melody: “Where did your family come from before they moved to Delaware to commit genocide?”) Eventually Liam’s meek brother Jonah (Ben Phillips) reluctantly enters the fray, directed by Shana Bestock. Let’s hope your Passover gathering isn’t anywhere near as fractious, or familiar, as this one. (Through Oct. 25.) Seattle Public Theater, 7312 W. Greenlake Dr. N., 524-1300, seattlepublictheater.org. $5–$34. 7:30 p.m. BRIAN MILLER

OCTOBER 3

Saturday COURTESY OF SANKAI JUKU

Bob Forrest

SEPTEMBER 30

Wednesday Paul Weller

45th St., 877-784-4849, stgpresents.org. $38.50. 8 p.m. MARK BAUMGARTEN

OCTOBER 1

Thursday SLU Art Walk

Yes, it’s First Thursday in Pioneer Square (see our listings on page 34), but there’s also art afoot tonight in SLU. For starters, you should check out James Coupe’s General Intellect at Aktionsart (also on page 34). MadArt is offering a pop-up

prelude show for Rick Araluce’s forthcoming rail-tunnel-themed The Great Northern (which will be built onsite with volunteers). The Seattle Storefronts program features window installations by Austin Stiegemeier, Stephen Rock, Danielle Foushée, and Elizabeth Arzani and Krisna Schumann (see storefrontsseattle.com for map; walking tour departs Mercer and Terry at 6 p.m.). The Sound & Fury Morris and Sword dancers will perform at 6:30 p.m. in Whole Foods Plaza, and there’s even a beer garden in Amazon’s Van Vorst Plaza (on Boren near Top Pot Donuts). Other art venues include Cornish, Glazer’s Cameras, Amazon Design Studio, and Immanuel Lutheran Church. At the latter, consider seeing Naomi Ishisaka’s Black Lives Matter exhibit and a photo show, Through Our Eyes, documenting homelessness and recovery—certainly topical, given the pace of growth and displacement in the neighborhood. South Lake Union, sluartwalk. com. Free. 5–8 p.m. BRIAN MILLER

Sankai Juku

Seattle audiences have been following Japan’s dance troupe Sankai Juku since the 1980s, as the company has continued to deepen its work in the butoh tradition. Its newest creation, Umusuna: Memories Before History, reaches back to elemental bonds with nature and the four elements. “Umusuna” translates as “the place you were born,” and through its contemplative, minimalist movement vocabulary, the work links us to our source as humans. (Through Sat.) Meany Hall (UW campus), 543-4880, uwworldseries.org. $50–$55. 8 p.m. SANDRA KURTZ

Common Area Maintenance

Before locals referred to any neighborhood getting gentrified as “the new Capitol Hill,” they

used to call Capitol Hill “the new Belltown.” Belltown’s bar-bro takeover predated Pike/ Pine’s plague as the epicenter of Seattle’s supposed cultural death by a number of years. But wait, what’s this? A new mixed-use artist studio and gallery, in Belltown?Culture, here? I can’t believe it! Yes, you better believe it, folks, THERE’S HOPE FOR OUR DOOMED CITY YET. Thanks to the efforts of multidisciplinary artist Timothy Firth, Seattle’s groundzero neighborhood for cultural whitewash is now home to the beautiful Common Area Maintenance, a former appliance-repair shop Firth renovated and retrofitted into a refuge for the local arts community. (Dude even put a woodshop, library, and movable articulated walls in there—so crafty). The shared work studios have already been rented to a number of artists who’ve been working in its cozy confines since the summer, and the gallery space has already hosted a number of public events, readings, and shows, but tonight is the official grand opening. For a great First Thursday surprise, bring your most cynical art buddy to Belltown and shower him or her in champagne at CAM. They’ll be all the better for it. Common Area Maintenance, 2125 Second Ave., facebook.com/common artspace. Free. 6 p.m.–2 a.m. KELTON SEARS

OCTOBER 2

Friday Bad Jews

There’s nothing fiercer (and potentially funnier) than an interfamily squabble, unless it’s an interfaith squabble. Joshua Harmon’s 2012 comedy is both those things, as devout Vassar student Daphna (Anna Kasabyan) battles her secular cousin Liam (Ian Bond) for possession

Book Co., 1521 10th Ave., 624-6600, elliottbay book.com. Free. 7 p.m. DAVE LAKE

Bollywood Mania

India is home to some of the world’s oldest and most complex classical dance traditions, but also to a wild movie-musical industry that takes elements from those heritage dance works and spins them into astonishing variations. Bollywood dance combines Busby Berkeley’s “I’ve got a barn, let’s do a show” innovations, the energy of hip-hop dance, and a freewheeling sample of Indian culture. (The closing train-station dance number of Slumdog Millionaire is but a mild example.) Choreographer and performer Dhawal Doshi has taken this several steps further, appearing on pop-culture programs like The X Factor ; here he’s joining forces with dancers from the local community for an evening pulled from the movie screen. Rainier Valley Cultural Center, 3515 S. Alaska St., 725-7517, rainiervalleyculturalcenter.org. $20–$25. 7 p.m. SANDRA KURTZ E

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

The most rebellious thing about Saturns Patterns, Weller’s latest solo album, is its glaring lack of an apostrophe—take that, you punctuation Nazis! To be fair, it’s been a long time since Weller rode the post-punk wave with The Jam, a band that melded British punk attitude with ’60s R&B and sharp suits. The suits have continued as part of the Weller persona—along with a well-coiffed mane—but his music has evolved, first into soul (with The Style Council in the ’80s), then house music in the ’90s, and now on Saturns Patterns into a mélange of psychedelia and blues-rock. It is, by far, the strongest collection of songs that Weller has laid to tape in the new millennium. The psychedelic turns here swell with warmth and a kind of sweetness, the blues-rock numbers are spirited (if somewhat more derivative), and all the songs are deeply indulgent and sometimes sprawling. Not that Weller is getting sloppy. Word is that the set will be tightly knit and, most likely, without any hits from the Jam or Style Council days. (Villagers open.) The Neptune, 1303 N.E.

Sankai Juku returns to Meany Hall.

His face seems a good representation of his life: pockmarked and weathered, with deep wrinkles etching the signs of a life fully lived, from drug addict to drug counselor, indie rocker to reality-show star. Forrest started his career leading the ’80s band Thelonious Monster, coming up in the same Los Angeles scene that birthed Red Hot Chili Peppers and Jane’s Addiction, whose members Forrest frequently partied with and, later, helped get sober. In 1996, after 24 attempts at rehab, Forrest finally got clean from heroin, cocaine, and alcohol, and decided to dedicate as much energy to recovery as he had to playing music. A new career (drug counselor) and new band (The Bicycle Thief ) followed. He went on to star alongside Dr. Drew Pinsky in the reality series Celebrity Rehab, and his life was the subject of the 2013 documentary Bob and the Monster. With his memoir Running With Monsters new in paperback, touring behind his first-ever solo LP, Survival Songs, tonight he’ll play an acoustic set and sign copies of his book. Elliott Bay

CALENDAR

St., Issaquah, 425-392-2202. $40–$68. Runs Wed.–Sun.; see villagetheatre. org for exact schedule. Ends Oct. 18. (Plays in Everett Oct. 23–Nov. 15.) SOUND Azeotrope premieres Don Nguyen’s drama exploring the clash between deaf and hearing cultures, in American Sign Language and spoken English, with supertitles. ACT, 700 Union St., 292-7676, acttheatre.org. $25–$30. 7:30 p.m. Thurs.–Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. Ends Oct. 4. STILL LIFE Subway bombings complicate people’s lives in Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich’s comedy. Calamus Auditorium, Gay City, 517 E. Pike St. Runs Wed.–Sat; see forwardflux.com for exact schedule. Ends Oct. 3.

STEVEN STERNE

SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER

Kasabyan and Bond as warring cousins in Bad Jews.

THEATER

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

Openings & Events

THE ADDAMS FAMILY Sitcom becomes musical. Burien Actors Theatre, 14501 Fourth Ave. S.W., Burien, 242-5180, burienactorstheatre. org. $10–$20. Opens Oct. 2. 8 p.m. Fri.– Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. Ends Nov. 1. ■ BAD JEWS SEE THE PICK LIST, PAGE 31. BLACK FLAG Jet City’s “interactive pirate comedy” asks for your help with the details. 5510 University Way N.E., jetcityimprov.org. $12–$18. Opens Oct. 1. 8 p.m. Thurs.–Fri. Ends Nov. 20. BURLESCO DIVINO Lily Verlaine and Jasper McCann’s Italianflavored burlesque/theater show. The Triple Door, 21 Union St., 838-4333, thetripledoor.net. $35–$50. 7:30 p.m. Wed., Sept. 30–Thurs., Oct. 1; 7 & 10:30 p.m. Fri., Oct. 2–Sat., Oct. 3. CAMPFIRE Unexpected Productions improvises ghost stories. Market Theater, 1428 Post Alley, unexpected productions.org. $10. Opens Oct. 1. 8:30 p.m. Thurs. Ends Nov. 19. THE CONSTRUCTION ZONE

A reading of SuperTrue by Karen Hartman. ACT Theatre, 700 Union St., 292-7676, acttheatre.org. $5–$10. 7 p.m. Tues., Oct. 6. THE EDGE Bainbridge Island’s own improv troupe. Bainbridge Performing Arts, 200 Madison Ave. N., Bainbridge Island, 842-8569, theedgeimprov.com. $12–$16. 7:30 p.m. Sat., Oct. 3.

EXPLORING THE WORK OF QUIARA ALEGRIA HUDES A read-

ing of new work by the author of the book of In the Heights. ACT Theatre, 700 Union St., 292-7676, acttheatre. org. $10–$15. 7 p.m. Sat., Oct. 3. GREAT SOUL OF RUSSIA A reading of Chekhov’s The Wood Demon by The Seagull Project. ACT Theatre, 700 Union St., acttheatre.org. $10– $15. 7 p.m. Wed., Sept. 30. LISTENING GLASS Seattle Immersive Theatre invites you to 2724 Sixth Ave. S. to watch a realistic-aspossible police interrogation. seattle immersivetheatre.org. $35. Opens Oct. 1. 8 p.m. Thurs.–Sun. Ends Oct. 30. NIGHTTOWN Radio theater made out of stories and music. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., sandboxradio.org. $18–$25. 8 p.m. Mon., Oct. 5.

POUND Marga Gomez’s solo show

about silver-screen lesbian lust. Theatre Off Jackson, 409 Seventh Ave. S., brownpapertickets.com. $15–$25. 7:30 p.m. Sun., Oct. 4.

SHE-RA: STRIPPER OF POWER!

Evilyn Sin Claire, Scarlett O’Hairdye, and others star in this ’80s-cartoonthemed burlesque show. Annex Theater, 1100 E. Pike St., annex theatre.org. $20–$30. 7:30 p.m. Thurs., Oct. 1–Fri., Oct. 2. THE TEST CASE Arne Zaslove directs Jim Lobsenz’s heavenly courtroom drama (with Thurgood Marshall, Socrates, and Gandhi participating). Mock Trial Courtroom, School of Law, UW campus, brownpapertickets.com, law.washington.edu. $10–$25. 7:30 p.m. Fri., Oct. 2–Sat., Oct. 3. TWILIGHT REALM Unexpected Productions’ improv parody of The Twilight Zone. Market Theater, 1428 Post Alley, unexpectedproductions. org. $10. Opens Oct. 4. 8:30 p.m. Sun. Ends Nov. 22. A VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE

Arthur Miller’s 1955 drama involves a dark family secret, a love affair, and jealousy that alter a working-class longshoreman’s life. Braden Abraham directs. Seattle Repertory Theatre, Seattle Center, 443-2222. $17 and up. Opens Sept. 30. 7:30 p.m. Wed.–Sun., plus 2 p.m. weekend matinees; see seattlerep.org for exact schedule. Ends Oct. 18. WATERFALL This new musical love story, set in the 1930s and based on the Thai novel Behind the Painting, will debut on Broadway next year. 5th Avenue Theatre, 1308 Fifth Ave., 625-1900, 5thavenue.org. $15 and up. Previews begin Oct. 1, opens Oct. 15. 7:30 p.m. Tues.–Wed., 8 p.m. Thurs.– Fri., 2 & 8 p.m. Sat., 1:30 & 7 p.m. Sun. Ends Oct. 25. WORST TRIP EVER IN ALL CAPS!!! Jet City takes off on hilari-

ously negative online travel reviews. 5510 University Way N.E., jetcityimprov. org. $12–$18. Opens Oct. 3. 10:30 p.m. Sat. (except Halloween). Ends Nov. 21.

Current Runs

■ AMERICAN IDIOT Though this

rock musical’s source material, Green Day’s angry album about post-9/11 America, was recorded in 2004, its lyr-

ics gained currency six years later on Broadway. The pardonably puny plot has aspiring rockers Johnny, Tunny, and Will fleeing their ho-hum suburban lives. However, this leads each to their personal Dante’s inferno. Under Eric Ankrim’s expert direction, the energetic 32-person ensemble encapsulates the gloom of a generation growing up in a polarized, post-Patriot Act America. ALYSSA DYKSTERHOUSE ArtsWest, 4711 California Ave. S.W., 938-0339, artswest.org. $19–$39.50. 7:30 p.m. Wed.–Sat., 3 p.m. Sun. Ends Oct. 11. THE ART OF BAD MEN Vincent Delaney’s new WWII POW camp drama is based on interviews with actual prisoners—German ones, from a camp in Minnesota. theLAB@Inscape, 815 Seattle Blvd. S., map-theatre.com. Name your own price. 7:30 p.m. Thurs.– Sat. plus Mon., Oct. 5. Ends Oct. 17. ■ BLOOMSDAY Spritely 20-year-old Caithleen (Sydney Andrews) is leading a Ulysses walking tour through “James Joyce’s Dublin”; on the tour is visiting American academic Robert (Peter Crook), who loathes the book. In the confusing first act of Steven Dietz’s premiere, the playwright is toying with time, though the purpose of this temporal tango is frustratingly murky. MARK BAUMGARTEN ACT Theatre, 700 Union St., 292-7676. $15– $20. Runs Tues.–Sun.; see acttheatre. org for schedule. Ends Oct. 11. BOOTYCANDY “Robert O’Hara’s fearless, uproarious satire about growing up gay and black.” Cornish Playhouse, Seattle Center, 3155838. $25. Runs rather irregularly Tues.–Sun.; see intiman.org for exact schedule. Ends Oct. 3. BRASS The first chapter in Louis Broome and John Longenbaugh’s England-set, steampunk-tinged serial. Theater Schmeater, 2125 Third Ave., 800-838-3006, battleground productions.org. $10–$29. 10:30 p.m. Fri.–Sat. Ends Oct. 10. ■ BRECHTFEST Brunch theater meets Germany’s angsty, class-conscious modernist playwright thanks to The Horse in Motion. The Can Can, 94 Pike St., thehorseinmotion.org. $25–$35. 11 a.m. Sat.–Sun. Ends Oct. 4. THE COMEDY OF ERRORS opens Seattle Shakes’ 25th season. Seattle Repertory Theatre, Seattle Center,

733-8222. $27–$50. 7:30 p.m. Wed.–Sat. plus weekend matinees; see seattle shakespeare.org for exact schedule. Ends Oct. 11. DRACULA A new adaptation of Bram Stoker’s vampire classic. Taproot Theatre, 204 N. 85th St., 7819707, taproottheatre.org. $20–$40. 7:30 p.m. Wed.–Thurs., 8 p.m. Fri., 2 & 8 p.m. Sat. Ends Oct. 24. GREEN WHALES Forward Flux presents Lia Romeo’s comedy about a woman who looks much younger than she is and falls for a suspected pedophile. Calamus Auditorium, Gay City, 517 E. Pike St. Runs Wed.–Sat; see forwardflux.com for exact schedule. Ends Oct. 3. JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR

Webber/Rice’s 1970 monster hit rocks the Gospels. Seattle Musical Theater. 7120 62nd Ave. N.E., Building 47, seattle musicaltheatre.org. $20–$35. 7:30 p.m. Fri.–Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. Ends Oct. 4. KNOCKING BIRD Umbrella Project premieres Emily Conbere’s psychological thriller about a couple’s troubled post-car-accident life. West of Lenin, 203 N 36th St., umbrellaprojectnw.org. $15–$25. 8 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. Ends Oct. 3. ■ THE MEMORANDUM When Václav Havel wrote this 1965 satire, his target was the communist bureaucracy. This adaptation is aiming a little closer to home—maybe South Lake Union. In a generic modern office, Josef Gross (Galen Joseph Osier) receives a memorandum seemingly written in gibberish. But it’s Ptydepe, a new language that has been adopted by the company to promote efficiency—and the MacGuffin that launches a searing critique of bureaucracy that should delight word nerds and office drones alike. MARK BAUMGARTEN 12th Avenue Arts, 1620 12th Ave., 800-838-3006, strawshop. org. $18–$36. 7:30 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. Ends Oct. 10. ■ 99 WAYS TO FUCK A SWAN SEE REVIEW, PAGE 26. SKID ROAD: ASH TO GOLD

Seattle’s lowdown roots, improv-style. Market Theater, 1428 Post Alley, unexpectedproductions.org. $12–$15. 8:30 p.m. Fri.–Sat. Ends Oct. 31. SNAPSHOTS A revue built on the songs of Stephen Schwartz (Wicked, Godspell). Village Theatre, 303 Front

Tennessee Williams’ lurid tale of sexual secrets and a monstrous mom. Theater Schmeater, 2125 Third Ave., 324-5801, schmeater.org. $22–$29. 8 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. Ends Oct. 10. SWEENEY TODD Sondheim’s slasher opera salutes penny dreadfuls. Renton Civic Theater, 507 S. Third St., Renton, 425-226-5529, rentoncivictheater.org. $20–$25. 7:30 p.m. Thurs., 8 p.m. Fri.– Sat., 2 p.m. Sun. Ends Oct. 3. ■ TEATRO ZINZANNI You may be part of the production as Teatro ZinZanni channels silver-screen glamour in its new dinner show. Teatro ZinZanni, 222 Mercer St., 802-0015. $99 and up. Runs Thurs.–Sun. plus some Wed.; see zinzanni.com/seattle for exact schedule. Ends Jan. 31.

WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT LOVE Book-It begins

its 26th season with Jane Jones again directing her adaptation of Carver’s famed 1981 collection (updated from its last staging in 1998-99). Though fame came late, Carver was this state’s biggest literary star, an icon of Northwest letters. BRIAN MILLER Center Theatre at the Armory, Seattle Center, 216-0833. $25–$50. 7:30 p.m. Wed.–Sat., 2 p.m. Sun., plus other matinees; see book-it. org for exact schedule. Ends Oct. 18.

DANCE

■ PACIFIC NORTHWEST BALLET

SEE REVIEW, PAGE 27. ■ SANKAI JUKU SEE THE PICK LIST, PAGE 31. ■ PAT GRANEY COMPANY They dance Graney’s Girl Gods, which our Sandra Kurtz says “now digs further into family relationships. [Graney] asks rhetorically, ‘How do women deal with rage? They stuff it under the rug.’ ” On the Boards, 100 W. Roy St., 2179888, ontheboards.org. $23–$25. 8 p.m. Thurs., Oct. 1–Sun., Oct. 4.

■ BOLLYWOOD MANIA DANCE FESTIVAL SEE THE PICK LIST, PAGE 31. SAVANNAH FUENTES This flamenco dancer’s new show, with live music, is “Northern Lights.” Columbia City Theater, 4916 Rainier Ave. S., columbiacitytheater.com. $23. 8 p.m. Wed., Oct. 7.

CLASSICAL, ETC.

TERRA NOSTRA A multimedia reimagining of Christophe Chagnard’s orchestral work about climate change, presented by Sustainable Seattle. Impact Hub, 220 Second Ave. S., sustainableseattle.org. Free. 6:30 p.m. Wed., Sept. 30. BOLLYWOOD MASALA ORCHESTRA Music and dance in

the Indian film tradition. Benaroya Hall, Third Ave. & Union St., seattle symphony.org. $35–$70. 7:30 p.m. Wed., Sept. 30. ■ JOHNNY GANDELSMAN Town Music, Town Hall’s Joshua Romancurated music series, opens with Bach’s solo sonatas and partitas from this violinist. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., townhallseattle.org. $10–$25. 7:30 p.m. Wed., Sept. 30.

SMCO STRING QUARTET

Seattle Metropolitan Chamber Orchestra musicians play Debussy and Ravel for the opening of SAM’s Impressionist exhibit. Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave., smcomusic. org. $5–$10. 7 p.m. Thurs., Oct. 1. SEATTLE SYMPHONY Strauss’ Don Quixote and Brahms’ Third. Benaroya Hall, Third Ave. and Union St., 215-4747, seattlesymphony.org. $21–$121. 7:30 p.m. Thurs., Oct. 1; 8 p.m. Sat., Oct. 3; 2 p.m. Sun., Oct. 4. WILHO SAARI Traditional Finnish music on the kantele. Brechemin Auditorium, UW School of Music, UW campus, music.washington.edu. 7 p.m. Fri., Oct. 2. GIRSKY STRING QUARTET

Playing Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Schulhoff for Resonance’s “First Friday Salon” series. Resonance at SOMA Towers, 288 106th Ave. N.E, Suite 203, Bellevue, 425-443-2585, resonance.events. $20–$25. 8 p.m. Fri., Oct. 2. ■ THE ESOTERICS Contemporary choral music by Aaron Jay Kernis; the winners of the ensemble’s composition competition; and director Eric Banks. St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, 4805 N.E. 45th St., 8 p.m., Fri., Oct. 2; Holy Rosary Catholic Church, 4210 S.W. Genesee St., 8 p.m. Sat., Oct. 3; Grace Episcopal Church, 8595 N.E. Day Rd., Bainbridge Island, 3 p.m. Sun., Oct. 4. $15–$25. theesoterics.org.

■ THE MET: LIVE IN HD

Metropolitan Opera performances at a movie theater near you. Verdi’s thundering melodrama Il trovatore opens the series. See metopera.org for venues. 10 a.m. Sat., Oct. 3.

ORCHESTRA SEATTLE/SEATTLE CHAMBER SINGERS Splashy

faves by Handel and Tchaikovsky, plus Vaughan-Williams’ Dona nobis pacem. First Free Methodist Church, 3200 Third Ave. W., osscs.org. $10–$25. 7:30 p.m. Sat., Oct. 3. ■ CHORAL ARTS Composer David Lang transformed a Hans Christian Andersen tale into a tragic oratorio in The little match girl passion. St. Joseph Parish, 732 18th Ave. E., choral-arts.org. $20–$25. 8 p.m. Sat., Oct. 3. SEATTLE BAROQUE Handel’s Water Music and suites by Telemann. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., 325-7066, earlymusicguild.org. $20–$39. 8 p.m. Sat., Oct. 3. ■ CLARINETTISSIMO Sean Osborn’s annual celebration of the instrument, with workshops, vendors, and public concerts (6 p.m. Sat., 7 p.m. Sun.) Seattle Pacific University, osbornmusic.com. Free. Sat., Oct. 3–Sun., Oct. 4. ATRIUM STRING QUARTET

Schubert, Tchaikovsky, and more. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., russianchambermusic.org. $10–$30. 2 p.m. Sun., Oct. 4. MUSIC NORTHWEST “Irish Songs of Mischief and Sorrow” for voice and piano. Olympic Recital Hall, 6000 16th Ave. S.W., musicnorthwest.org. $16–$18. 3 p.m. Sun., Oct. 4. MUSIC WORKS NORTHWEST

British, French, and American chamber music for flute, voice, and piano. Resonance at SOMA Towers, 288 106th Ave. N.E, Suite 203, Bellevue, 425-443-2585, resonance.events. Free. 3 p.m. Sun., Oct. 4. ROBERT MCPHERSON In “Federal Way to the Met,” this tenor traces his career in song. Knutzen Family Theatre, 3200 S.W. Dash Point Rd., Federal Way, robmctenor.com. $20. 7 p.m. Sun., Oct. 4. DAVID JONIES Hindemith, Widor, and more from this Chicago organist. St. James Cathedral, 804 Ninth Ave., stjames-cathedral.org. $15. 7:30 p.m. Tues., Oct. 6.

DEBORAH LOPEZ

Elizabeth Gilbert, at the Benny.

AUTHOR EVENTS

■ JONATHAN EVISON A 78-year-

LIST, PAGE 31.

JIM BUTCHER The Aeronaut’s Windlass opens his “The Cinder Spires” series. University Temple United Methodist Church, 1415 N.E. 43rd St., 634-3400, bookstore.washington.edu. 7 p.m. Sat., Oct. 3. JEANNINE HALL GAILEY The Robot Scientist’s Daughter is her memoir in poetry about a childhood in Oak Ridge, Tenn. University Book Store (Bellevue), 3 p.m. Sun., Oct. 4. ■ MICHAEL MCGREGOR Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax is his biography of the poet. Elliott Bay, 3 p.m. Sun., Oct. 4. ANNELIES ZIJDERVELD Steeped: Recipes Infused With Tea might tempt you. University Book Store, (Mill Creek), 15311 Main St., 425-3853530, bookstore.washington.edu. 2 p.m. Sun., Oct. 4.

EMILY BEDARD, LJ MORIN, LAURA DA’, & JEANINE WALKER

Readings from this year’s Jack Straw Writers Program participants. University Book Store, 7 p.m. Fri., Oct. 2. ANDREA HUTTON, breast cancer survivor, presents Bald Is Better With Earrings. Third Place, 6:30 p.m. Fri., Oct. 2. SETH KANTNER Essays from the extreme Northwest in Swallowed by the Great Land: And Other Dispatches From Alaska’s Frontier. Elliott Bay, 7 p.m. Fri., Oct. 2.

■ SEATTLE CITY OF

LITERATURE Ryan Boudinot edited this anthology, subtitled Reflections from a Community of Writers, several of whom read tonight. Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Ave., 322-7030, hugohouse.org. 7 p.m. Fri., Oct. 2.

Friday, October 2 at Richard Hugo House

■ LARISSA MACFARQUHAR

Thoughts on altruism in Strangers Drowning: Grappling With Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Overpowering Urge to Help. Town Hall. $5. 7:30 p.m. Fri., Oct. 2. BONNIE WALLACE The mother of Disney star Dove Cameron shares practical advice in The Hollywood Parents Guide. University Book Store, 7 p.m. Fri,. Oct. 2. KEVIN ARTHUR HART A Thousand Screaming Monkeys is his memoir of alcohol and drug addiction. Third Place, 6:30 p.m. Sat., Oct. 3.

DENNIS MILAM BENSIE covers gay life in Flit: A Poetry Mashup of Classic Literature. University Book Store, 7 p.m. Mon., Oct. 5.

■ THAISA WAY & RICHARD

HAAG She wrote The Landscape Architecture of Richard Haag: From Modern Space to Urban Ecological Design about the architect whose best-known work is Gas Works Park. University Book Store, 7 p.m. Mon., Oct. 5.

■ RUTH REICHL of Gourmet magazine is hosting two dinners (5:30 & 8:30 p.m.) for My Kitchen Year: 136 Recipes That Changed My Life, her first published cookbook in 40 years. The Walrus & the Carpenter, 4743 Ballard Ave. N.W., thewalrusbar.com. $125 (incl. book). Mon., Oct. 5. THE QUEER DETECTIVE RETURNS A chat with Nicole

Kimberling, L. A. Witt, and Jove Belle, local writers of LGTBQ-themed mysteries. Seattle Central Library, 7 p.m. Mon., Oct. 5. STEVE TOLTZ His debut, A Fraction of the Whole, made the Man Booker Prize shortlist; Quicksand is his followup. Elliott Bay, 7 p.m. Mon., Oct. 5. FISTON MWANZA MUJILA This Congo novelist’s debut, Tram 83, newly translated from the French, made a splash. Hugo House, 7 p.m. Mon., Oct. 5.

■ ANNE-MARIE SLAUGHTER

Unfinished Business explores why women still have primary responsibility for caregiving. Town Hall. $5. 7:30 p.m. Mon., Oct. 5. JON SCIESZKA Frank Einstein and the Bainturbo is the latest in his series about a kid genius. Third Place, 7 p.m. Mon., Oct. 5. ■ HARRY BELAFONTE This actor and activist talks with Valerie CurtisNewton. Meany Hall, UW campus. $5 (sold out). 7:30 p.m. Tues., Oct. 6. ■ ELIZABETH GILBERT She ate, she prayed, she loved, and the popular essayist’s latest is Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. Presented by Seattle Arts & Lectures. Benaroya Hall, Third Ave. & Union St., lectures.org. $10–$75. 7:30 p.m. Tues., Oct. 6. GEOFFREY HILLER Daybreak in Myanmar is his book of photographs. Seattle Asian Art Museum, 1400 E. Prospect St., seattleartmuseum.org. $5. 7 p.m. Tues., Oct. 6. KERRY ELEVELD From this Advocate journalist: Don’t Tell Me to Wait: How the Fight for Gay Rights Changed America and Transformed Obama’s Presidency. Town Hall. $5. 7:30 p.m. Tues., Oct. 6. MARTIN LIMÓN The Ville Rat is his Korean-War-set murder mystery. Seattle Mystery Bookshop, 117 Cherry St., 587-5737, seattle mystery.com. Noon Tues., Oct. 6. PAUL BARACH He tells of his walk of the 750-mile Shikoku pilgrimage trail in Fighting Monks and Burning Mountains: Misadventures on a Buddhist Pilgrimage. UW Club, 4020 E. Stevens Way (UW campus), bookstore.washington.edu. $39 (incl. dinner & copy of book). 7 p.m. Tues., Oct. 6.

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

old widow’s Alaska cruise becomes a voyage of self-discovery in This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance! University Book Store, 4326 University Way N.E., 634-3400, bookstore.washington.edu. 7 p.m. Wed., Sept. 30. PHILIP WARBURG The rise of solar power is outlined in Harness the Sun. Town Hall, 1119 Eighth Ave., 652-4255, townhallseattle.org. $5. 7:30 p.m. Wed., Sept. 30. LAUREN GROFF Her novel Fates and Furies tells of a troubled marriage from both sides. University Book Store, 7 p.m. Thurs., Oct. 1. MICHAEL SCHEIN John Surratt, the Lincoln Assassin Who Got Away is his bio of one of Booth’s accomplices. Seattle Central Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., 386-4636, spl.org. Free. 7 p.m. Thurs., Oct. 1. JEAN HEGLAND Still Time is a novel of the life of a Shakespeareloving scholar. Elliott Bay Book Co., 1521 10th Ave., 624-6600, elliottbay book.com. 7 p.m. Thurs., Oct. 1. ALVA NOË Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature tells of the connections between the two. Town Hall. $5. 7:30 p.m. Thurs., Oct. 1.

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calendar VISUAL ARTS Openings & Events

RIK ALLEN AND DANTE MARIONI Working in glass, the for-

mer often uses sci-fi imagery, while the latter creates delicate tabletop vessels. First Thursday opening reception. Traver Gallery, 110 Union St., 587-6501, travergallery.com. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Fri. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat. Ends Oct. 31

ANNUAL PRINTMAKING EXHIBITION Local include Gary

Groves and Kristina Hagman. First Friday opening reception. Roby King Gallery, 176 Winslow Way E. (Bainbridge), 842-2063, robyking gallery.com. 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tues.Sat. Ends Oct. 31. ■ ART AIDS AMERICA An exhibit chronicling 30 years of art made in response to the AIDS epidemic, with works by David Wojnarowicz, Shimon Attie, Bill Jacobson, and dozens more (many of them sadly deceased). Opens Sat. Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific Ave., 253-272-4258, tacomaartmuseum.org. $12–$14. 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Tues.–Sun. Ends ANGELA CHINA She makes voluptuous fun of pin-up girls, magazine imagery, and high heels in Red Bottoms. First Thursday opening reception. Treason Gallery, 319 Third Ave. S., 914-5236, treasongallery.com. Call for hours. Ends Nov. 2. BETWEEN PLACES Michael Boonstra, Sarah FitzSimons, and Andrew Myers consider notions of terrain and location. Also on view: Nola Avienne’s MRI-derived art in Bain Maps. First Thursday opening reception. SOIL Gallery, 112 Third Ave. S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), 264-8061, soilart.org. Noon-5 p.m. Thu.-Sun. Ends Oct. 31 CALL OF THE RAVEN A group show, in a variety of media, celebratingthe famous trickster of Native American folklore. First Friday open-

ing reception. Raven’s Nest Gallery, 17508 Vashon Highway S.W. (Vashon Island), 567-5826, vashonravensnest. com. Call for hours. Ends Oct. 31. EGO That’s his name, and he offers new work in The Time Is Never, influenced by tattoos, metal, and death. Also on view: mythological musings by Grady Gordon, in a show called Been Seeing You Around Lately. First Thursday opening reception. Flatcolor Gallery, 77 S. Main St., 390-6537, flatcolor.com. Noon-6 p.m. Wed.-Sat. Ends Oct. 31. JOYCE GEHL The paintings in Seeds celebrate growth and the natural world. First Thursday opening reception. Patricia Rovzar, 1225 Second Ave., 223-0273, rovzargallery. com. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Sun. Ends Oct. 31. JAMIE HARRIS Distortions features new glass work from the New York artist. First Thursday opening reception. Vetri Glass, 1404 First Ave., 667-9608, vetriglass.com. 10 a.m.6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sun. Ends Oct. 31. ■ PAUL HORIUCHI The late local collage master is represented by various torn-paper works. First Thursday opening reception. Woodside/ Braseth Gallery, 622-7243, 1201 Western Ave., woodsidebraseth gallery.com. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sat. Ends Oct. 24. RICHARD HUTTER He renders stilllife objects including flowers, fruit, and ginger jars in the collage-like paper works of Dream Conservatory. First Thursday opening reception. Lisa Harris Gallery, 1922 Pike Place, lisaharrisgallery.com, 443-3315. 10 a.m.- 5:30 p.m. Mon.-Sat. Ends Nov. 1.

■ INTIMATE IMPRESSIONISM

Out come the big guns in SAM’s fall behemoth: Manet, Renoir, Monet, Cézanne, Degas, Pissarro, Gauguin, van Gogh, and more. Traveling from the National Gallery, the 68 works have a net worth approaching that of Bill Gates. Opens Thurs. Seattle Art

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“It’s very voyeuristic. It’s very weirdly intimate,” says artist and UW professor James Coupe of his new storefront video installation in the heart of Amazonland. Eighteen screens are playing a selection from a database of 3,000 videos measuring 60 seconds each. General Intellect was created, Coupe explains, using an Amazon service: Mechanical Turk, which matches up menial but intelligent tasks—such that a computer couldn’t do—with a global pool of pieceworkers. “It’s about making them visible. Ingrained in the system is exploitation,” he says of these anonymous contractors. To create this piece, he

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COURTESY JAMES COUPE/AKTIONSART

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

JELLO UNDERGROUND

COURTNEY LIPSON AND PRESTON SINGLETARY offer

new works in glass and silver, most with a Native American flavor. First Thursday opening reception. Stonington Gallery, 125 S. Jackson St., 405-4040, stoningtongallery.com. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Fri. (weekends vary). Ends Oct. 31. AUSTIN GREGORY OHM He shows sculptures and paintings in Towers. First Friday opening reception. Bainbridge Performing Arts,

FUSSY EYE BY BRIAN MILLER

SONNY KNIGHT & THE LAKERS WED, SEPT 30 $10

Museum, 1300 First Ave., 654-3121, seattleartmuseum.org. $12–$19. Weds.-Sun. Ends Jan. 10. JEFF JACOBSON He paints “detailed yet dreamlike paintings feature grotesquely surrealist organic forms” in Aphotic Ilk. Also on view, portaits of women by Casey Weldon, which have an almost eye-searing 3-D intensity. Up in the loft: works by Samantha Wall. First Thursday opening reception. Roq La Rue, 532 First Ave. S., 374-8977, roqlarue.com. Noon-5 p.m. Wed.-Sat. Ends Oct. 31. RICHARD JOLLEY He creates busts and figurative art in blown glass. Also on view, delicate glass sculptures from Rob Snyder. First Thursday opening reception. Abmeyer + Wood, 210 Second Ave., 628-9501, abmeyerwood.com. 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Mon.-Sat. Ends Oct. 31. EUNICE KIM She shows 10 years of prints, mostly abstract and monochromatic. Also on view: Mexican skeleton-themed prints (calaveras) by José Posada. First Thursday opening reception. Davidson Galleries, 313 Occidental Ave. S., 624-6700, davidsongalleries.com. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Sat. Ends Oct. 31. ■ TERRY LENESS He paints colorful, compassionate vistas of gentle decay—old motels, rusting cars, abandoned suburbs, etc. First Thursday opening reception. Linda Hodges Gallery, 316 First Ave. S. 6243034, lindahodgesgallery.com. 10:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Tues.-Sat. Ends Oct. 31.

designed a list of jobs—or “human intelligence tasks,” aka HITs in Amazon-speak—to be performed at a flat fee of $3 for eight one-minute videos. “Relatively speaking, $3 adds up to more than minimum wage,” he notes—roughly $24 per hour. And Coupe’s 13 “database queries” are deliberately simple and domestic, consonant with what his subjects would ordinarily be doing with their downtime. Examples include date night, eBay, boredom, and reading. The video quality is poor, but General Intellect gives us a discomfiting view into the global sweatshop economy. We see “a kind of diaristic quality,” says Coupe, an exploration “of what makes us human, which no algorithm can generate. In a somewhat Marxist tradition, he’s assigning a market value to this athome surplus labor. But the same question applies to us all: What’s our time really worth? (The gallery is housed in an old building soon to become apartments filled with Amazonians.) Aktionsart, 201 Westlake Ave. N., aktions art.org. Free. Noon– 5 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. Ends Oct. 3 (or later).

200 Madison Ave. N., 842-8569, bainbridgeperformingarts.org. Call for hours. Ends Oct. 31. REBELS OF THE FLOATING WORLD Jonathan Wakuda Fischer

COURTESY OF THE ARTIST

The Ghost Ease

MUSIC Wednesday, Sept. 30

It has been over a year since the members of ISKA DHAAF left the safety of Seattle for the unknown in New York, the momentum of the band’s excellent debut, Even the Sun Will Burn, keeping the duo together even as life events threatened to tear them apart. Since then, the band has been cultivating its contemplative surf noir and working on a follow-up. The duo will be playing some of those new songs tonight. With Jarv Dee, OC Notes. Barboza. 8 p.m. $12 adv. 21 and over. MARK BAUMGARTEN

Thursday, Oct. 1

■ Ever since Led Zeppelin professed

its undying allegiance to Aleister Crowley, legions of bands have pretended to be wizards. Seattle’s MIDDAY VEIL certainly has the look down, sporting an enviable collection of hair and beards. But is their magick real? If my review of the group’s latest opus This Wilderness (see page 25) didn’t convince you of its sorcery, let me lay this one on you: After the band returned from its U.S. tour last weekend, lead singer Emily Pothast rushed off to deliver a presentation at the Esoteric Book Conference entitled “Eternity in an Hour: Sacred Geometry, Mysticism and Multidimensionality in the Art of the Apocalypse.” With Zen Mother, Boyfriends, DJ Explorateur. Chop Suey. 8 p.m. $7 adv./$10 DOS. 21 and over. KELTON SEARS

Friday, Oct. 2

One hundred years into the future, local schools will use CHILDBIRTH’s informative Women’s Rights in history classes to teach students what Seattle was like circa 2015. Classes will learn about the era’s unusual dating rituals (“Siri, Open Tinder”), the cultural fallout from the Great Brogrammer Migration of 2014 (“Tech Bro”), shifting attitudes in child-rearing practices (“Cool Mom,” “Since When Are You Gay?”), and the carefree ennui that defined the Millennial Generation (“Breast Coast [Hangin’ Out],” “Nasty Grrls”). Watch history unfold at tonight’s record release. With Wimps, Universe People, Mommy Long Legs. Chop Suey. 9 p.m. $7 adv./$10 DOS. 21 and over. KS

■ On his most recent Scorpion

Cache EP, Portland producer SPF666 takes his fascination with classical Japanese gagaku (imperial court music), negative space, dembow, thundering percussion, and club music, and melds it all into brilliant left-field bangers. Also, tonight’s supporting lineup offers some of the best dark electronic music Seattle’s got to offer, including the graveyard rave of Youryoungbody, the glimmering performance-art gloom of Nightspace, Naavi’s aquatic pop, and R-Pal, the DJ behind one of the best mix cassettes I’ve ever picked up from Vermillion’s HISSSS tape night: the impeccably titled TECHNODAD. Kremwerk. 9 p.m. $5 before 10 p.m., $10 after. 21 and over. KS Local nine-piece GRACE LOVE & THE TRUE LOVES has spent the

past year winning hearts and minds in Seattle thanks to the group’s fiery, swing-for-the-rafters, Daptones-style soul. Led by Love’s hypnotic presence and acrobatic voice, the band has drawn crowds based solely on its energetic live performances thus far. But the group is finally bottling some of that magic for home listening on its self-titled debut record, which it will release tonight as part of the Macefield Music Festival. Tractor Tavern. 6 p.m. $25 (single-day pass). 21 and over. KS

Saturday, Oct. 3

■ Steven Hefter works as a therapist

by day, which seems fitting for a Portland songwriter who, under the delightful moniker ST. EVEN, crafts artful folk numbers that are delicate and sensitive and therapeutic. Last year, he released his second fulllength album, an eponymous collection filled with soft orchestration and songs that fit nicely in the Bill Callahan school of sad-bastard songwriting. Come and get healed. With Animal Architects, Michael Pearl. Cafe Racer. 9 p.m. 21 and over. MB

HEY, 12TH MAN. If there are two things I know you love, it’s tailgating and smooth Canadian funk-pop. So you’ll be happy to hear that Microsoft is throwing a “Tailgaming” weekendlong party, leading up to Monday’s Seahawks vs. Lions game, that kicks off on Saturday with a $0 concert from CHROMEO. This duo is so

funky, they use light-up prosthetic women’s legs with high heels as keyboard stands. Don’t tell Russell Wilson about that, though. He’s saving it for marriage, and Chromeo’s baby-making music might prove a bit dangeRuss in preserving that effort. Seattle Center Memorial Stadium. 8 p.m. Free. All ages. KS

Sunday, Oct. 4

It’s been a challenging few years for DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE front man Ben Gibbard. First he got divorced and then he lost his long-time collaborator Chris Walla, who left Death Cab in the middle of recording the band’s eighth full-length record, Kitsugi. Fortunately, Gibbard has a thing for turning life’s turmoil into transcendent pop, and much of the new music he’ll play during this three-night stand is among the band’s most introspective and moving, if not its catchiest. But that’s what the back catalogue is for. With Tacocat. The Paramount. 8 p.m. $53.50. All ages. MB

Tuesday, Oct. 6

For RUFUS WAINWRIGHT fans, there is Big Rufus and Little Rufus. Big Rufus fills concert halls with operas and symphonic works, while Little Rufus fills clubs with cabaret-style pop songs. It’s a good bet that Little Rufus will show up at the Showbox tonight, playing the hits. The 42-year-old songwriter has signaled that he may be transitioning away from pop and firmly into the realm of the orchestral. So it’s a good time to see Little Rufus. The Showbox. 7 & 9:45 p.m. $59.50 and up. 21 and over. MB

Wednesday, Oct. 7

Portland’s THE GHOST EASE calls its tunes “heavy dreamscapes.” It’s an apt descriptor—one moment the trio’s guitarist and vocalist Jem Marie is lilting through whimsical birdlike melodies; the next, bassist Laurence Vidal and drummer Nsayi Matingou are plunging into heavy, grungy distortion spirals. That classic Northwest-style loud/quiet/loud has attracted some of the region’s musical legends, like producer Steve Fisk (behind the band’s new album Raw) and K Records. With Never Young, Lisa Prank, Sharkie. The Funhouse. 7 p.m. $10. All ages. KS

Since leaving Death Cab, Chris Walla has moved to Norway where, according to Interview, he is busy assembling IKEA furniture and readying the release of his second solo album, Tape Loops (due out October 16), which is exactly what it sounds like. “It was calming while I was working on it,” he told the magazine. “In some ways that was the point.”

SEATTLE WEEKLY • SEPTEM BER 30 — O CTOBER 6, 2015

and Louie Gong present work drawing from hip-hop, indegenous culture, anime, and the mysical realm. First Thursday opening reception; artist talk Saturday at 3 p.m. ArtXchange Gallery, 512 First Ave. S., 839-0377, artxchange.org. 11 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tues.-Sat. Ends Nov. 28. TERRY RISHEL A noted commercial lenser (often associated with the studio of Dale Chihuly), he photographs local nature and urban scenes in Light Dynamic. First Thursday opening reception. Frederick Holmes & Co., 309 Occidental Ave. S., 682-0166, frederickholmesandcompany.com. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sat. 11 a.m.- 6 p.m. Sun. Ends Nov. 2. RAY SCHUTTE The painter “explores and challenges minimalist concepts” in Lichen, with accompanying poems by Mary Kay Tipton. In the back gallery, colorful depictions of women by Li Turner First Thursday opening reception. Gallery 110, 110 Third Ave. S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), 624-9336, gallery 110.com. Noon-5 p.m. Wed.-Sat. Ends Oct. 31. ALICIA TORMEY Her Sojourns features big bright colorful abstractions, some suggesting flowers or paint flowing in water. First Friday opening reception. Hall|Spassov Gallery, 800 Bellevue Way N.E. (Bellevue), 425453-3244, hallspassov.com. 11 a.m.8 p.m. Tues.-Sat. Ends Oct. 31. ROBERT TWOMEY The Serious Business of Children features “speaking, listening, and drawing machines that communicate with one another using synthesized voices and drawings in a process of continuous translation from word to image.” Also on view: Matthew Whitney’s cartography installation A Line Amongst Other Lines. First Thursday opening reception. Gallery4Culture, 101 Prefontaine Pl. S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), galleries.4culture.org. 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Mon.-Fri. Ends Oct. 29. BRAD WINCHESTER shows new work in a show called For These Reasons, in which he suggests, “Step back/outside and look at the house you built. It’s weird, man.” First Thursday opening reception. Punch Gallery, 119 Prefontaine Pl. S. (Tashiro Kaplan Building), 621-1945, punchgallery.org. Noon-5 p.m. Thurs.Sat. Ends Oct. 31. RICKIE WOLFE She creates delicate wire sculptures in Hives, Lines, and Shadows. Also on view, small white-on-white works from Jeffery Cortland Jones. First Thursday opening reception. Gallery I|M|A, 123 S. Jackson St., 625-0055, galleryima. com. 10:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Tues.-Sat. Ends Oct. 31. IRENE YESLEY Abstract works on paper and plexiglass. First Friday opening reception. The Island Gallery, 400 Winslow Way E. (Bainbridge), 780-9500, theislandgallery.net. Call for hours. Ends Oct. 31. ■ ERIC ZENER Swimming pools, sunbathers, California light, and diving boards figure in the invitingly sun-bright paintings of Voyagers, rendered in hyper-real acrylic colors. First Thursday opening reception. Foster/White Gallery, 220 Third Ave S., 622-2833, fosterwhite.com. 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tues.-Sat. Ends Oct. 24. LISA ZERKOWITZ Ephemere presents her new sculptures. First Thursday opening reception. Bryan Ohno Gallery, 521 S. Main St., 4596857, bryanohno.com. Free. 11 a.m.– 5 p.m. Ends Oct. 31.

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(Inglourious Basterds, Beginners) tries her hand at directing, as two French schoolgirls fall in love. (NR) SIFF Cinema Uptown COMING HOME Zhang Yimou’s latest collaboration with leading lady Gong Li proves a sentimental snooze, with a marriage interrupted for 20 years by the Cultural Revolution. (PG13) Pacific Place & Sundance GABO: THE CREATION OF GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ

The late Mexican titan of letters is profiled in a new documentary. (NR) SIFF Film Center

■ GOING CLEAR: SCIENTOLOGY AND THE PRISON OF BELIEF

Prolific documentarian Alex Gibney (Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine, The Armstrong Lie) goes after L. Ron Hubbard and company, in an account based on Lawrence Wright’s rather damning book. Xenu does not approve. (NR) Sundance NORTHERN SOUL Elaine Constantine’s British dramedy is set in the depressed northern reaches of England in the early ’70s, where American R&B music arrives like sweet slvation. (NR) Sundance SAVING MR. WU Andy Lau stars in this true-crime thriller, based on the 2004 kidnapping of a Beijing tycoon. (NR) Pacific Place SHANGHAI In pre-WWII China, international intrigue entangles Gong Li, John Cusack, Ken Watanabe, and Franka Potente. (NR) SIFF Cinema Egyptian

Local & Repertory

■ BIG SCREEN CLASSICS A somewhat complicated schedule (see siff.net) continues with Marcel Camus’ music-filled 1959 Oscar winner Black Orpheus, which adapts the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice to the favelas of Rio during carnival week. Here, lovely peasant girl Marpessa Dawn is the beauty who enchants a handsome streetcar conductor. Beautifully photographed by Jean Bourgoin, the film is also notable for having introduced Antônio Carlos Jobim to a wider international audience; he and Luiz Bonfá supply the terrific bossa nova score. (NR) BRIAN MILLER SIFF Film Center (Seattle Center), 324-9996. $7-$12. 7 p.m. Mon. (Series ends Nov. 30.)

EDUCATION, INC. Charter schools battle teachers’ unions in this new documentary. (NR) Keystone Church, 5019 Keystone Pl. N. Free. 7 p.m. Fri. (See meaningfulmovies.org for other movies around town.) HAROLD AND MAUDE Hal Ashby’s 1972 countercultural touchstone may now seem somewhat adrift, since that dominant, Nixon-era culture has disappeared. Suicidal Bud Cort falls for lively Ruth Gordon, each of them learning valuable life lessons along the course of their, ahem, romance. One indication of how times have changed is the score by Cat Stevens, as he was then known. Another is how Cort, then dressed like a dweeb of his era, could almost pass for a Williamsburg hipster today. (PG) B.R.M. Central Cinema, 1411 21st Ave., 686-6684, central-cinema.com. $7-$9. 7 p.m. Fri.-Sat. & 3 p.m. Sat.-Sun. ■ LIFE OF BRIAN A single-joke satire of organized religion, including Hollywood’s, the 1979 Life of Brian is set in Jerusalem A.D. 33. Terry Jones’s Sunday-school travesty follows the career of the unintentionally messianic Brian of Nazareth. It’s a hearty burlesque in which the three wise men signal their presence with a discreet belch and lisping Pontius Pilate (Michael Palin) can’t stop babbling about his “fwiend” Biggus Dickus. Graham Chapman is appropriately nonplussed in the Gene Wilder-ish role of Brian while, tricked out in fake beards, the rest of the gang (John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle) pop up as centurions, prophets, and wiseass members of the rabble. (R) J. HOBERMAN. Central Cinema, $7-$9. 9:30 p.m. Fri.-Tue.

■ LOCAL SIGHTINGS FILM

FESTIVAL Always a favorite showcase for rising directors in the greater Pacific Northwest, this year’s fest offers 15 features and 50-plus shorts. (Various panels and workshops are also on the schedule.) The regional conceit means indie efforts on small budgets, but with that—and VOD, Vimeo, etc., which didn’t even exist when LSFF was launched in 1997—comes the freedom to be eccentric. But the whole point of LSFF is to make room for those who don’t fit into any category beyond region. (NR) Northwest Film Forum, 1515 12th Ave., 267-5380, localsightings.nwfilmforum.org. $6–$11. Ends Sat., Oct. 3.

MANHATTAN SHORT FILM FESTIVAL Ten shorts are screened

from directors aroundthe world, with you the viewer voting for your favorite. (NR) Varsity, 4329 University Way N.E. $10.25. See manhattanshort.com for program info. Runs Fri.-Sun. PHOTOCINEMA Screening over two days are the fascinating documentary portrait Finding Vivian Maier, the much softer Sebastião Salgado tribute/hagiography The Salt of the Earth, and Frame by Frame, a new chronicle of photojournalists in Afghanistan. (NR) SIFF Film Center. $12. See siff.net for showtimes. Tues., Oct. 6-Wed., Oct. 7. POST ALLEY FILM FESTIVAL

Over two dozen short films are screened, most from local directors. Filmmaker Q&As and evening reception are on the schedule. (NR) SIFF Film Center, postalleyfilmfestival.com. Passes $10-$20. 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sun.

SEATTLE LATINO FILM FESTIVAL

Among features, docs, and sundry shorts, topics include LGBT rights in Cuba, the expat Cuban musicians who enlivened New York’s postwar jazz scene (Calle 54), and girls soccer in Chicago. (NR) Varsity, EMP Museum, and other venues. See slff. org for ticket info and schedule. Runs Fri., Oct. 2-Sun., Oct. 11. A TRIBUTE TO WES CRAVEN The late horror meister is represented (on successive nights) by A Nightmare on Elm Street and The People Under the Stairs. (R) SIFF Cinema Egyptian, 801 E. Pine St., 324-9996, $7-$12. Midnight Fri. & Sat.

Ongoing

BLACK MASS At 52, Johnny Depp is no longer pretty, and playing balding Boston gangster James “Whitey” Bulger signals his entry into character work. The problem is that a lot of better actors—some in this picture—have gotten there first. Depp’s method has always been comic aloofness, most fruitfully employed in Tim Burton confections, which bear no connection to actual life. Bulger’s story, here spanning 1975–95, is entirely earthier and more prosaic. A violent petty hoodlum with no redeeming qualities, Bulger was sheltered by the a corrupt FBI agent (Joel Edgerton) handlers until a Boston Globe exposé sent him underground for 16 years. (His San Diego arrest occupies a brief postscript.) Depp gives a fine, disciplined perfor-

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Johnny (Ronald Zehrfeld), but he thinks she is dead and doesn’t recognize her with her new face. He has an idea, however—the rat. If this mystery woman will pretend to be Nelly, they can claim her inheritance and split the money. Based on Hubert Monteilhet’s 1961 novel Return From the Ashes, Christian Petzold’s thriller feels like something out of that era. The resulting masquerade has many perverse moments. And Phoenix is an extremely well-made picture, even if its serious, sober approach is just a little on-the-nose. But the final 10 minutes truly redeem whatever shortcomings the storytelling had to that point. It’s a knockout of a finish. (NR) R.H. Crest SICARIO We’ve had depressing dramatic sagas from Steven Soderbergh (Traffic) and Oliver Stone (Savages), and this new one from Denis Villeneuve isn’t lifting the mood. Instead, a feel-bad spirit of arid futility and double-dealing informs the efforts of Arizona-based FBI agent Kate Macer (Emily Blunt) to put a dent in the border trade. She’s recruited by some shadowy government spooks (Josh Brolin, Benicio Del Toro, etc.) who refuse to name their branch of service (easily guessed). She’s flattered to be on their team, even if her partner (Daniel Kaluuya) is more sensibly skeptical. On her new assignment, Kate radiates an angry sense of WTF bewilderment. She’s better than this. Our side is supposed to be better than this, yet she’s confounded by everything she sees: Gitmo-style torture, illegal cross-border raids, killings on the sly (“sicario” means assassin), and a general cozening up to the bad guys. French-Canadian director Villeneuve rubbed our noses in Pennsylvania vigilantism-gone-wrong in Prisoners; now he grids our faces further into the smothering sands of American sanctimony. Kate—and the audience—are left with a grim imperative: Get over your moral qualms, or get out of the game. (R) B.R.M. Meridian, Lincoln Square, Sundance, Ark Lodge, Thornton Place, Kirkland, Bainbridge, others WELCOME TO LEITH Guess who’s coming to burn a cross on your lawn. Noted white supremacist—now there’s a tagline for a business card—Craig Cobb decided a North Dakota town would be just right for seeding a nationwide racist movement. So in 2013 he moved to tiny Leith, population 24 or so. Buying a few bargain-basement properties, Cobb hatched a plan to get other white-power advocates to settle there, take over the town council, and live the dream. This crackpot is the central figure of this documentary account of what happened when the residents of Leith found out what Cobb was up to. Co-directors Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker include interviews with Cobb, who isn’t shy. A couple of things deepen this film. One is the sense that even without its white supremacist, Leith would be a fascinating location for a documentary. Seemingly untouched by the North Dakota oil boom, the town is a collection of quiet people and abandoned shacks. (There’s one black resident, understandably perturbed by the new neighbor.) Its sole business is a bar that might’ve been the set for scenes in Nebraska—the Alexander Payne film or the Bruce Springsteen album. The story rounds off in a quiet way, resolved yet unresolved. You can’t help thinking Cobb or his equivalent is about to spring out from under the next available rock. (NR) R.H. Grand Illusion

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worry about Kingsley going back to the South Asian well—kindly accent, sage wisdom, infinite forbearance, etc. Playing an angry, jilted, selfish New Yorker suddenly confronted by her lack of a chauffeur (i.e., her cheatin’ husband), Clarkson is an awful lot of fun when mad and spitting F-bombs left and right. And we’d rather see more of her midlife dating misadventures; this is a movie that would be measurably improved by some cheap Tindr and eHarmony jokes. Its heart, though, is the Brief Encounter tension between the pious, honorable instructor and his slightly naughty student. But this is not the movie to push Darwan—or formula—out of the comfort zone. So in its comfortably therapeutic, How Wendy Got Her Groove Back kind of way, the picture works—no better or worse than a Lifetime original. (R) B.R.M. Vashon MEET THE PATELS This amusing documentary by Ravi and sister Geeta Patel (the latter mostly unseen) tracks a particularly fraught moment in his family’s life. Ravi is 29, and his parents—humorous dad Vasant and anxious mom Champa—are antsy about him meeting a nice Indian woman and getting married. They come from a culture of arranged marriages, and since that system’s already in place, why bother with the complicated American dating game? Eventually So the Los Angelesbased Ravi, who recently broke up with a redhead from Connecticut, reluctantly agrees to travel to India and make the dating rounds—where practically everyone asks him why he isn’t married yet. Meet the Patels is a funny, lightweight look at the weight of cultural traditions. (Ravi has never told his parents about dating white women, it seems.) What keeps me from loving it is the way the storyline feels forced onto the documentary form. I couldn’t help sensing that Ravi was flirting with the idea of an arranged marriage because it would make a funny, lightweight documentar. Which it is. (PG) ROBERT HORTON Sundance ■ MERU Co-director Jimmy Chin (with his wife, E. Chai Vasarhelyi) joined Conrad Anker and Renan Ozturk for two attempts on the unclimbed Shark’s Fin line on Mount Meru, in India’s Garhwal region of the Himalayas. First ascents are rare these days; what’s left are the sketchy, dubious routes. As he traces his Meru fixation from a comfortable home in Bozeman, Montana, with a concerned wife and three sons, Anker seems ghost-haunted by two dead friends. The third expedition feels like a grudge, unfinished business, with Anker the Ancient Mariner of the trip. (Chin and Ozturk start the film relatively unscathed, but a fateful winter in Jackson Hole radically changes their perspective.) Widely published in Outside, National Geographic, and beyond, Chin keeps his camera unwaveringly focused on alpine fundamentals: the constant anxiety about weather, the weight of the gear, the dwindling food and fuel, the nervous pride when taking the sharp end of the rope, and the somewhat sociopathic requirement to forget loved ones back home. (R) B.R.M. Guild 45th ■ PHOENIX At the end of World War II, heavily-bandaged Nelly (the soulful Nina Hoss) emerges from Auschwitz. She’s been disfigured by a gunshot wound to the face; her friend Lene helps nurse her back to health, urging Nelly to claim her postwar reparations and join other surviving Jews in Palestine. Nelly, however, is fixated on her husband

t or

mance in what’s otherwise a familiar, listless Mass. Journeyman director Scott Cooper has made a tired copy of too many gangster movies we’ve seen before, including Martin Scorsese’s South Boston crime saga The Departed (no masterpiece). Black Mass lacks all the period pep of American Hustle, where we actually cared about its delusional cons. Here we just wait for their corpses to fall. (R) B.R.M. Lincoln Square, Meridian, Majestic Bay, Sundance, Thornton Place, others EVEREST Almost 20 years after Jon Krakauer’s book about the Everest disaster of ’96, followed by a flood of rival accounts (and a bad TV movie), its lessons are well established. Respect the mountain, defer to the weather, stick to your turnaround time, and make sure your logistics are buttoned up. Director Baltasar Kormákur and his screenwriters respect Krakauer’s book and try, unsuccessfully, to condense its sprawling cast of characters. Among them are guide Scott Fischer (an unusually hammy Jake Gyllenhaal, looking like a Spin Doctors roadie), client Doug Hansen (gentle John Hawkes, doomed), Krakauer (astringent Michael Kelly), guide Rob Hall (calm, stoic Jason Clarke), and worried women on the radio/phone (Keira Knightley and Emily Watson). There are no Cliffhanger heroics or R-rated hijinks in Base Camp, and most everyone is treated fairly. Even brash Texan Beck Weathers (Josh Brolin) finds a little redemption. The facts are laid out with graphics relating the altitude, day, and time; and the endless calls to Base Camp provide de facto narration, too often telling us what we’ve just seen higher up the mountain. This isn’t a good climbing film (try Meru for that); it’s more like a Grand Hotel melodrama in the Death Zone. (PG-13) B.R.M. Sundance, Lincoln Square, Meridian, Thornton Place, Bainbridge, others ■ GRANDMA There is a lot of contrivance in this one-day quest for $630, cash, in an L.A. where no one seems to have a credit card or easy access to an ATM. Likely because writer/director Paul Weitz knows it’s a thin conceit, he keeps things brief and economical throughout. We’re simply plunked into the dilemma of Elle (Lily Tomlin) and her pregnant teen granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) as they try to scrounge up funds for an abortion. Elle, a lesbian and fierce old-school feminist, isn’t one to cite statistics or throw shame in Sage’s direction. She doesn’t lecture or scold the girl. (Sage’s corporate lawyer mother, played by Marcia Gay Harden, is a different case.) Grandma is one of those indies with a very familiar Hollywood arc. Its main pleasures aren’t in the writing, but in the against-the-grain texture of Tomlin’s performance. Her Elle is salty, self-righteous, and pissed at the world for reasons not immediately clear. (Grief, it will emerge, is one.) We need more difficult women like her at the movies; television is doing a better job. And special mention goes to Sam Elliott, who delivers a knockout scene at Grandma’s midpoint, meeting Tomlin’s fury with his own courteous rage. (R) B.R.M. Guild 45th, Lincoln Square, Ark Lodge, Kirkland, Lynwood (Bainbridge) LEARNING TO DRIVE This is a very small film, greatly padded from an old New Yorker essay by Katha Pollitt, and it doesn’t leave much elbow room for Patricia Clarkson (as heroine Wendy) and Ben Kingsley (as her Sikh driving instructor Darwan) to navigate. Both stars generate enormous goodwill, even while you

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I’ve always loved history, but it’s an intimidating and often boring subject. Back in 2000 or so I got totally baked (see the theme emerging here?) and attended a play called Dirty Blonde at ACT Theatre about the legendary Mae West. It was full of wonderful dialogue and real-life characters, and gave me an idea to “interview” historical figures in a modern-day setting; how fun would it be to talk to Cleopatra about her keys to suc-

cess (and fling with Caesar!), quiz Dr. Freud about his mommy issues, or ask Beethoven what was on his iPod? The editors of mental_floss magazine agreed to run my indica-induced idea as a regular column, and these oft-stoned sessions were turned into a book, The Dead Guy Interviews: Conversations With 45 of the Most Accomplished, Notorious, and Deceased Personalities in History (Penguin, 2007). As Churchill once said, “History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.” EGGPLANT THEORY

My final example is less entrepreneurial—or ganjapreneurial, I should say— but still an important stoned epiphany: Turns out I’m an Eggplantatarian. The concept came to me years ago when I found myself high as a kite in a Thriftway produce aisle; before me was a gleaming colony of Purple Brain Pods, also known as aubergine, garden eggs, or eggplants. As I gazed at the violet enclave of nightshade, I felt the hum of their consciousness; I could see the ages—some older with fine lines in their black skins, others smooth as a baby’s butt. I carefully grasped one of the purple perennials, and could sense its throbbing heart. Solanum melongena! It pulsed and wobbled. I felt like I could communicate with Eggie as it vibrated gently in my palm. “Don’t eat me, Human. I’m meant for greater things . . . ” So now any time an eggplant (aka Guinea squash!) is present—at the store, in a home, or, God forbid, on a menu (murder via parmigiana di melanzane)—I share my clearly out-there theory about my mindful Eggplant friends. No doubt people think I’m insane on the subject, but they also feel that way about Tom Cruise and Scientology, 9-11 conspiracy theorists, and the UFO crowd, so I’m in good company. “Sure,” I say with downtrodden eyes, “you can order the baba ghanoush, if you don’t mind beating and charring and eating an intelligent species for dinner. But I’ll have to pass, as I now need to live up to my cosmic awakening.” Luckily, I never did really like the taste of eggplant, anyway. So I got that goin’ for me . . . I’m stoned now. Perhaps it’s time to come down from my high . . . and return to Earth. Or perhaps I’ll elevate once again, and attempt to come up with a new invention or book or—better yet—a device that allows humans to communicate with eggplants! E For more Higher Ground, visit highergroundtv.com. BRIANNA CASHIN

THE DEAD GUY INTERVIEWS

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’m clearly not as bright as Steve Jobs or Carl Sagan or Oprah, all of whom used weed at some point to energize their already wildly firing synapses. (As did President Obama, Stephen Jay Gould, Margaret Mead, Bill Gates, George Washington, Maya Angelou, Martha Stewart, et al.) But marijuana has helped spur my own creative process, or, if nothing else, helped me make connections I might otherwise have missed. I’ll give ya some examples.

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In 1989, I went on a brainstorming weekend with my high-school pal Mike Schiller. Our idea was to hole up in the woods and try to come up with the greatest invention ever—something that might actually do some societal good. And, like Steve Jobs, we brought a ton of weed to our imagineering weekend. Between bong hits, we put hundreds of innovative ideas up on a whiteboard: a real-estate company for energy-efficient houses; a volunteer-recruitment and matchmaking firm; The Home-Eco Audit Kit; Organic Meals on Wheels. After running out of ideas (and cannabis), the two of us decided on a board game about ecology called EarthAlert: The Active Environmental Game. A combination of Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary, EarthAlert even had spots on the board where you could earn “oxygen units” by actually doing something then and there to help save the planet, such as turning off lights that didn’t need to be on, eliminating junk mail, or writing a letter to the president about an issue that concerned you. Our slogan: “Saving the Planet Has Never Been So Much Fun!” The game (printed on recycled paper, of course) was a mini-success, and led us to follow-ups including The Doonesbury Game (with cartoonist Garry Trudeau) and Hear Me Out, which was sold at Starbucks. Speaking of Starbucks, Mike and I should have gone with our second choice from that weeded weekend: A chain of sustainable eco-coffee shops. Woulda made us billionaires.

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Employment Computer/Technology

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