Local musician and photographer Lexi Lutter responded to this sanitized, slightly saccharine version of Capitol Hill (yourcapitolhill.com), courtesy of our local chamber of commerce and Sound Transit:

with this grubbed-up version (yourrealcapitolhill.com):

The fine print on the left:

Your REAL capitol hill.

We are a group of people who want to preserve what is left of Capitol Hill in Seattle. Not everything should be family-friendly. We work at bars and movie theaters and other shit jobs, and we like it that way. We want input from YOU. We're sick of a small group deciding what this neighborhood should be. Email your upcoming outsider events, stories and photos and whatever else you think captures the grittier side of Capitol Hill to: yourrealcapitolhill@hotmail.com

Lexi explains in an email that the whole thing started as a lark, a jokey response to "something I see as a threat":

I'm a photographer too and can't stand the idea of the whole scheme they're running with that thing. I think a few of the photographers running that site are quite talented, but are missing the point. I don't want the world to think the only photography that counts needs to look like it came from vice magazine or an american apparel ad, but with all the sexiness stripped away. And I always prefer the sleazy to the tame, and I want Capitol Hill to stay that way.

I'd like to think there's room for cutesy ice-cream parlors and bathhouses in the neighborhood, but Lexi raises the specter haunting Capitol Hill in her first post on the site:

To all you folks who hang out and live on "the Hill", do you really want your neighborhood to turn into a daytime retreat for squares? How many more ice cream parlors do you need? ... do you want all of your favorite real rock 'n' roll bands to be run out of their dive bars by a bunch of pussy beardos? Do you want other established businesses on "your capitol hill" to suffer the same fate as The Kincora, and get demolished to make room for condos, only to end up as a parking lot?

Good luck and godspeed to everybody.

See Lexi's photography (including some hypnotic portraits) here.