City The Blue House
I walked past the Blue House on Republican last night—the place where angry ingrate Kyle Huff murdered the ravers that made the mistake of trying to befriend him. The landlord is apparently getting the house ready to rent again, and it looks like one of the ways they hope to distance the house from its recent history is by de-bluing it. The blue aluminum siding—which gave the house its name, and that we chose to feature on the cover of the Stranger the Thursday after the shootings (instead of an image of Huff)—is being stripped off. There were only a couple of blue aluminum slats still in place (you can see them in upper left hand corner next to the second story window).
Some blue slats that had been pulled down were laying on the ground and resting on the bushes. I thought about taking one of the slats, but immediately thought better of it. I didn’t want to seem ghoulish. I didn’t want a souvenir. But I wondered if some of the people who knew the victims, or appreciated the special, welcoming place they had created behind those blue slats, might like to have a slat, or a small piece of one, to remember their friends by.
They’re there now, on the ground, for the taking.
Thanks for bringing up the name of Kyle Huff again. The media has an important job to do in creating celebrities out of our murderers. Why not get some of that blue siding and imprint "The Stranger" logo on it and auction it off?
The Stranger did so much to make the murders into a real social event, sending Eli all the way to Montana to interview red necks, and passing along every bit of gossip about the murders. What better way to keep up interest than encourage people to fetishize pieces of the house where the killings occured?