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The traffic circle at 14th & Howell is once again a pristine natural wilderness. Elk were sighted this morning, coyotes will be reintroduced soon.
But I wonder… why didn’t the person who hauled off the computer monitors bother to pick up the trash bags, coffee cups, pieces of paper, and chunks of Styrofoam that also litter the site? It’s the story of Seattle: The interesting, thought-provoking trash is gone, the boring, every-day trash remains.
Dan,
How does it feel to have such an influence in the world?
Aw..Dan...you're not boring.
Hey, thats just like my love life!
Even by my standards that's a pretty limited version of the "story of Seattle".
Hair Shirt environmental types who won't let us create public art out of Computer Monitors are lame. I moved here from Cleveland to live in a real city with ART. If I wanted to live in the wilderness, I'd move to Alaska.
Dang, now we won't know what the new note was.. Poop.
The Story of Seattle: People move here and then complain because it's not as good as the places they left. It's a tradition that goes back to the Dennys.
If only Seattle's trash were as creative and vibrant as the trash in, say, Chicago.
The Stranger was started by Chicago transplants, and I love that vibe in the publication. I just moved here from Detroit and couldn't figure out the passive aggressive "Seattle natives", then someone clued me into The Stranger. Hey I'm a Stranger here and there's lots about Seattle that could be improved. Freaking out over a few computer monitors is lame.
No one in Detroit would care.
"Interesting, thought-provoking trash?"
I ride by that intersection everyday and I got news for you all... that "interesting, thought-provoking trash" started as a couple of monitors that had been dumped there because folks were too lazy to dispose of them properly.
I'm all for public guerilla art but that is not what this was. Maybe if the original lazy people had painted something provocative or even beautiful on their monitors, and then the followers who dumped more shit there had done the same, we could have had a really neat community-created public sculpture. As it was, it was an ad-hoc dumping ground for lazy people.
Who(m) did Dan have to **** to get this gig?: Suzzallo Graduate Library at UW has about 12 research terminals that users without passwords can access. Although Internet Explorer is available at these public research stations, filters guide users toward serious and scholarly sites with .gov & .edu extensions. Almost every .com site, frivolous by definition, is blocked.
Although I was able to access google.com, and from there to access (from an enviro site) a "reprint" of a 1996 NYT Mag article about recycling, all links to a 2006 National Review article by Jason Lee Steorts (he establsihes that most of the Antarctic ice sheet is growing, not melting) were blocked. Couldn't get to Steorts via a "reprint" at freerepublic.com, even with a non-.com extension.
I could not access nationalreview.com, freerepublic.com, realclearpolitics.com, drudgereport.com, anncoulter.org, opinionjournal.com, or soundpolitics.com. You know, all those frivilous sites.
But www.thestranger.com/blog? Bingo. No Steorts, of course, but all the serious & scholarly ******' Stranger discourse that we know & love pops right up like a popper. In fact, it's even better than that: www.thestranger.com opens like a Stranger-approved sex worker from the back pages.
typo update: establiSHes; frivOlous
(please tell your tech weenies that we REALLY need a bigger comment font. thanx.)
(or maybe a bigger display via 14th & howell)
I could not access nationalreview.com, freerepublic.com, realclearpolitics.com, drudgereport.com, anncoulter.org, opinionjournal.com, or soundpolitics.com. You know, all those frivilous sites.
The Stranger is a weekly paper that does actual journalism. The above are not.
No need to thank us, Dan, really. This story of Seattle was more about cleaning up some nasty shit. Can you think of another project that is both Dan-Savage-cool and not completely toxic? Build something, Savage. I mean, besides your career. BTW, re: the bag of garbage, that must be fresh because we didn't see it last night. Perhaps that can be start of your new project. That one will be cheaper to clean up.
Hey, I built this here newspaper. Not by myself, but still. And then there's HUMP, of course. Both toxic in their own way, but still...
That must explain it. The pimpin' Humpfest Stranger is so much more professional than Drudge or Buckley.
Have you called Hutch (heard he's unwell) to express get-well-soons & to ask about the bottom line for Focus on the Family's giving to Katrina victims? I can't find the count & the amount, but Hutch is wired in. He'll know 4 sure. Give him a buzz.
Why did someone only clean up the monitors? Maybe because whoever it was was an electronics recycling group (like RePC) who only handles electronics and thus wouldn't normally deal with the other detrius.
But, I have to ask, since I'm an ass, if you care about someone not picking up the trash bags, pieces of paper and chunks of Styrofoam, why didn't *you* pick it up?
Because I wasn't the one having a stroke about the monitors, that's why.
I always kind of figured they'd be there for a while, then someone would clear 'em off—perhaps even the artists, usually an enviromentally aware bunch. The folks having a stroke about the monitors seemed to assume that they would sit there, in their hard plastic shells, until doomsday, slowly decomposing and leaching toxic chems into the ground. That seemed liek a bit of a... stretch.
Still, people like to get worked up, huh? So the artists or litterbugs responsible amused people who enjoyed being amused—every time I dropped by to take a picture, there were people standing around talking about the monitors—and upset people who clearly enjoy being upset and morally superior. So everybody won, huh?
And of course, bitter Seattlites on the scene completely miss the point, by leaving the other trash behind.
Says it all, really.
And your neighborhood still sucks.
The environmental hairshirt crowd in Seattle makes me want to puke. I moved here from Cleveland to live in a real city. The morally superior attitude of Seattle "natives" needs to be shoved back down their throats. In Cleveland no one would even care about computer monitors left on the street.
It's fairly frequent to see "trash" left outdoors on the hill in the summertime ... furniture, decent clothes, ironing boards (to name a few I've seen lately).
It is just *possible* that someone was trying to join this ad-hoc recycle-things-to-your-neighbors campaign.
All the stupid shit going down and *this* gets attention? Oh well ... if you can't win the big ones, pick some little ones, I guess.
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I hope the area ranchers will be able to handle the influx of predators. The ranchers of Capitol Hill have always been at odds with those who might reintroduce native predators long since killed off.