Comments on The Price of Progress

The ghost signs of Seattle are fewer and fewer.

you and knute would make an awesome love child.

It's amusing how the consequences of not building The Commons and the Monorail continue to create change just as Dan and I predicted.

Huh?

For those interested, be sure to check out Tom Dobrowolsky's research on ghost signs:

http://urbanarchives.org/projects/Ghost_Signs/

(Hi, Tom!)

Have you seen the repainted "Olive Tower" ghost sign at Boren & Olive Way?

It's fucking rock and roll!

When the last brick building is pulled down for cheap condos, we'll all remember everything The Stranger did to stop rampant, breakneck development in Seattle.

Who cares.

(Note: No question mark.)

Of course, by "cheap" I mean cheaply built, and overpriced.

Argh!! Holy Toledo. Just the other day, I was thinking about when I lived in that Sprite building. And then! da dum cha! I spent a couple of years on the "13th Floor" in Olive Tower! Fuck, and the luminaries of the Seattle scene that I encountererd in the laundry facilities of each building, whoa... members of Fastbacks, The Briefs, Zac Pennington. Okay, neato.

but seriously, i've bucked my anti-bumbershoot stance and attended (by accident/circumstance) the pre-festivities today. I'll have a full report later, but as a teaser, it includes an interview with butterfly guitar man (as featured in a slog folklife post), a sighting of Rainbow Lady - and then a sighting of her pimped out mobile!, a strange banner above a stage saying 'esurance' - i mean i love a made up word, but that sounds like a vita-drink for geriatrics, and lastly a peek into the gallery for Flatstock (It. Is. Brilliant.- none of the posters were up, and the massive bareness was reminiscient of those bland reception desk pics that J Graves posted recently, CHECK it Out before the busyness happens and namecheck guyburwell. Again--- more details of this thrilling day to come at a most applicable post-time.

oh, and the QFC is closed! ~ghostly~ perfect place to eat carrots, drink 40s and scarp a bracelet off of late night concert leavers.

Nothing lasts.

Are you really mourning the loss of an advertisement
(No question mark because my keyboard is broken)

note: on our tour of the Bumbershit grounds, we slipped into Twice Sold Tales. The Mercer St. branch of this fine and steady seattle establishment is my favorite of the 3 i know of.

On their bulletin board is an article about the hub-bub surrounding Junie B. Jones. Since it somewhat nails down my raison d'être, I hereby call death to groot, and onto my new blog!

If only the Stranger had come out strongly against development. That could have put a stop to all this new construction over the last ten years. The Stranger is that powerful.

First the Wonder Bread sign and now a Sprite painting. How will I know what crappy non-nutritious food to buy. This city is going straight down the toilet.

I drove by when the wrecking ball had knocked down the top 1 1/2 stories, the (thick!) brick walls torn away to reveal interior spaces where people once lived. Given the chance, that building would have stood another 100 years.

I once fell in love with a worn old Capitol Hill beauty from 1916.

@14: May I suggest Paxil?

You have got to be kidding! A sprite ad on the side of a shitty brick building? Boo-Fucking-Hoo. Progress is not that bad of a thing, you backwards knuckle dragging soy drinking Seattlites. It's about time we have light rail and the only reason it hadn't been done yet is because everyone was too busy examing their navels for fuz. I mean shit, who cares above ground, below ground, just get us some fuckin decent public transport!
Oh no, but progress is bad. We can't have urban density. No no no. Let's just cut down all the forests and build fucking track houses all the way to Mt Rainier and up the slopes.

ECB, I keep sendin in updates about how they're tearing down the rainer cold storage in Gtown, yet noone at the Stranger seems remotely interested. You want ghost signs? Look no further - altho' at least they're asking their community what they'd like to see...

They're not demolishing the entire Rainier Cold property in Gtown. One building, a large buildings yes, will be coming down.

To be fair to ECB, she's sighing, not complaining.

Has no one ever missed where they used to live, even if he or she is much happier at the new place now? I didn't take ECB's emotion to be anything more than that.

As someone who lives one block from that shitty building, I'm glad to see it go. What kind of an idiot would look at that photo and think, "Wow, I wish we weren't becoming a wealthier, bigger and more dynamic city in which people are willing to throw down millions of their own dollars to improve the city's downtown." Hey, if you want to live in a city that's poor and nothing ever changes, move to Little Rock or Detroit or Omaha. Most cities in the world would celebrate the demolition of an old hellhole about to be replaced by a skyscraper. It's okay to be nostalgic, but don't forget that nostalgia for a poorer Seattle of the past is a luxury most people in this city don't have.