Repeat Offense

Click to examine.

Bellevue, 520, Microsoft, oh my!

Is it too much to ask that they just rename them The Eastside Times and The Eastside Post-Intelligencer?

Makes You Appreciate Your Job

A group of about 20 people in dark blue uniforms stood outside Big 5 Sporting Goods at 7:30a.m this morning. Some smoked, some watched passing pedestrians, all looked a little bored.

A man sat on a chair just inside the entryway, as if guarding the place from a mob of employees politely waiting for the signal to attack.

One older man in thick-rimmed glasses and a dark blue polo embroidered with a small "WIS" logo explained that they were counters.

Counters? I asked. Inventory counters, he answered. They are part of an international corporation of merchandisers — WIS International, to be exact — and they would count each and every piece merchandise in the store today, including the fish hooks.

By 11a.m. the counters were gone and regular customers were the only ones examining sporting goods.

Apparently Big 5 — and other big retail stores like Wal-Mart, Walgreen and Home Depot — have companies like these perform physical counts at least once a year to check their actual inventory against their computer systems.

According to Hoovers.com, WIS International employed 7,000 and made an estimated $349 million in sales with more than 200 offices on four different continents. The company is a subsidiary of American Capitol, an investment firm with an annual sales of $700 million, headquartered in Bethesda, Md.

Counting positions for WIS are on practically every internet job-search Web site. It's almost surprising that such a labor-intensive job is still around with all of the technology these days, but that's just what the company profits on — the inconsistencies between real life and its digital counterpart.

A Primer In Guerilla Housing Tactics

Max Rameau and other homeless occupied and set up homes on an empty lot in Miami for six months in 2006. Development had forced the city's homeless population out, so Rameau and his organization Take Back the Land decided to make use of the unused. While the settlement is no longer there, the group now finds homes for people in government-owned, abandoned and foreclosed houses.

Rameau explains his unique strategy in an interview published in Real Change News last week:

Where do you think the movement for housing justice should be focused now?

I think it’s important for social justice movements to identify core, root problems, and not lose the forest for the trees. Not to get so caught up in the individual scenarios that are going on in the individual communities that you lose sight of the bigger picture. And I think the core issue here that we’re dealing with as we approach the post-gentrification phase, in which gentrification is no longer an effective economic cycle, is the importance of land and community control over land.

The issue of community control over land really transcends the issue of gentrification, transcends the issue of housing, because land is used for more than just housing. Land is really that core, fundamental issue that those other issues sit on top of. We need to keep that big fundamental issue in mind, so we don’t lose track of what we’re really fighting for, particularly as material conditions dictate changes in our strategies and tactics.

Five years before Rameau and others occupied the abandoned lot in Miami, writer and musician Eric Lyle led other San Franciscans to take over a large building on Market Street and set up a free breakfast cafe and concert space. The building had been empty since 1997, and though police removed them from the building one month later, the building remains empty and unchanged.

Lyle explains his reason for leading the takeover in his book, On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City, released this year:

I'm just saying that I'm tired of being expected to self-identify as someone under attack, someone who is powerless and who is being forced out. We wanted to do shows that asked, 'What do we WANT the city to look like? How can we make it happen? If we really had all the space everyone says they need to do stuff, what exactly WOULD we do with it?' We wanted to do shows that remind people of the power that they actually DO have.

Seattle seems to be behind other big cities in the gentrification cycle. Do these two advocates have something to teach Seattleites about creating accessible space?

Did You Know...

Spend a little time on the Seattle Police Department Web site, and you never know what you'll find out.

For instance, I don't live in Rainier Valley, I live in Sector George.

And have you seen the futuristic police cars? Both the Seattle Police and the University of Washington Police have them. It's a bit of a flashback (forward?) to Demolition Man.

Well, maybe just a little.















Don't get me started on all the ways Parking Enforcement Officers get around. I mean, they have segways, tricycles, those little cars, their feet...

City Council Advisory Committee Takes First Steps Towards Cultural Overlay Districts

A newly formed advisory committee to the City Council held its first meeting yesterday to discuss how Seattle might preserve affordable arts space through a type of neighborhood planning called the Cultural Overlay District.

Already used in other US cities, the district is designed to preserve low-cost art space through cooperation with developers, like special zoning allowances and expediting permit approval.

The advisory committee is made up of developers, residents, business owners, and arts administrators, including Hallie Kuperman, owner of Century Ballroom located in the Oddfellows Hall, and Richard Muhlebach of Kennedy Wilson Development.

“I was pleasantly surprised at the level of discourse and the willingness to cooperate between the committee members,” says Dennis Sellin, Senior Associate at Lund Consulting, the firm facilitating the meetings for the City Council.

“I haven’t seen arts organizers, property developers and owners in the same room and talking the same language before, and I think that is extremely necessary to bring a good recommendation out of this process.”

Rapid development of Capitol Hill and the subsequent flight of arts organizations spurred the local arts community to advocate for creation of the districts in Seattle, which led to the creation of the committee. Arts administrators and fans packed the City Council's April 2 Culture, Civil Rights, Health and Personnel Committee meeting after news that the new owner of the Odd Fellows Hall on East Pine Street and 10th Avenue had raised rents about 200 percent.

But it is not just Capitol Hill residents — representatives from West Seattle and the International and Central districts are also serving on the committee. The committee is expected to focus on Capitol Hill to create a model for other neighborhoods.

The Seattle Department of Planning and Development and Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs may advise the committee, and a subcommittee of the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce Arts and Entertainment Committee, co-chaired by CODAC member Matthew Kwatinetz, will submit a report also.

The City Council will hear the committee's recommendations at a joint meeting of its Planning, Land Use, and Neighborhoods and Culture, Civil Rights, Health, and Personnel in September, before the City Budget is finalized, and will then present them to Mayor Nickels.

For Further Reference:

• CODAC Web site
• CODAC Agenda (7/21/08)
  
• CODAC Members (7/08/08)
  
• Draft of Arts Resources in Pike/Pine District
• Subcommittee of the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce Arts and Entertainment Committee Description (6/18/08)
  
• "Seattle considers new proposal to save Capitol Hill art space." The City Collegian. May 27 2008.
• Century Ballroom Web site
  

Anything-Goes Seating

If you want to see humanity at its most inventive, check out how people sit at festivals.

Not convinced? Well, let's take last Sunday's Chinatown-International District Festival, put on by Seafair, as an example.

Some sat in families.

Some sat enthroned.

Some sat quite authoritatively.

Others were more daring...

and even sat illegally!

Some preferred fire hydrants...

... and even used them as fashion accessories.

But everyone sat with a friend.

Yes, Our Library Is Pretty, Please Give It Back Now

I knew something was up as I pedaled up Fourth Avenue Sunday morning. A motorcycle cop sat staunchly in the middle of the bike lane and one of those new police cars nicely took up the next lane over.

The whole block surrounding the Central Public Library was eerily empty as went to lock my bike in front of the building.

"Kshhshk- biker in front-kshksh," went a man's walkie-talkie as he approached me. They were filming a Hyundai commercial around the library, he explained, and would only need five more minutes.

Maybe he expected me to pedal away in disgust, angry that my precious public resource had been co-opted by gas-guzzling Hyundais. But instead, dear readers, I made lemonade.

It was quite surreal to see the tech guys reattach the signs we citizens take for permanent everyday, as if our lives were the "set," not the other way around.

There was also a stand of potted plants on the corner of Fourth Avenue and Madison Street, which were then loaded carefully into a moving truck. The mind boggles at how potted plants could play into a car advertisement, but marketing guys are tricky these days.

As it was a public space, I brazenly took photos wherever I wanted — I mean, they should understand, being in the film industry and all.

People clustered around a video camera set up on the back end of a minivan, labeled "B-Cam," on the south side of the library.

A friendly man with a French-sounding accent complimented the aesthetics of the library when I ventured near. Yes we love it too, I agreed.

Click.

So folks, if you watch TV, keep an eye out for a Hyundai commercial with a large, pointy building.
It could be your city!