Sunday, June 24, 2007

Beacon Hill Garden Walk

Today a couple of my new buddies from the neighborhood watch and I went on the first annual Beacon Hill Garden Walk. We made it to 10 out of 25 gardens, some of which are pictured below.

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God bless this man.

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They can see the Starbucks headquarters (see the top of the mermaid's head?).

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Georgetown Old Skool Carnival and Artopia

Yesterday was the Georgetown Old Skool Carnival and Artopia. First we went and got some lunch at Muy Macho in South Park, another south-end neighborhood. Univision was showing La Muerte de un Gallero, a 1970s movie about Spanish cockfighters.

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Then we stop at Crosscut Hardwoods to look at fancy wood before going to Home Depot to pick out 82 10-foot-long 1x2s of clear cedar for the screen we're building in front.

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Another photo of Crosscut. You don't need to see a photo of Home Depot, do you?

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OK, now off to the carnival. We often say that we're within "walking distance" of Georgetown, but we've never actually walked there... until now.

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The carnival is full of weirdos, hurray!

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We're here a little late, so I'm not sure what went on in these booths earlier in the day. (Longtime readers may recognize that fennel, which I've shot twice before.)

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Performance art?

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The previous night at a party we met a drummer who said he'd be performing music as accompaniment to some experimental films at Christoff Gallery. This is it.

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No more performance art or experimental films until we get a beer. Jules Maes is packed.

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OK, now we're ready for more art.

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This is about the time I pass Kathy Nyland, leader of the anti-dump effort (and a million other Georgetown movements), and give her a high-five.

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The old cranky-pants guy who runs this metal shop shoos me away as soon as I take this picture.

"Why?" I ask.

"Because I'm a weird old man," he said. "I don't go around taking pictures of your stuff, and I don't want you taking pictures of mine."

Fair enough. But here's the one photo.

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Nice jacket, dude.

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I start hoping I run into someone I know well enough to bum a ride back up the hill from. But the people we talk to -- a waitress who served us nachos the night before in Ravenna, a woman who hosted a party we went to a month ago -- are not ride-giving types, not like my brother-in-law (hi, C!) or my neighbor-friend-coworker.

Sabey has their work cut out for them in renovating the old Rainier Brewery to fancy condo/office/boutique space, or whatever their plans are.

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These girls are singing and playing guitar outside the Georgetown Brewing space.

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And these girls are collecting money for a squat in Berlin.

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More art.

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I like these cast-vinyl-on-PVC works by Mike Poetzel.

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Here's a picture I took of that last scene a couple months ago.



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The power tool races are packed all evening.

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Throughout the carnival planes buzz past us. This was not taken with a zoom. And in real life, the plane seemed closer than this.

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They were all headed for Boeing Field right next door.

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Time to go home. I understand why people complained so much when I-5 went in, tearing neighborhoods apart. I hate walking over I-5. It's not a "let's go for a walk" walk, you know what I mean?

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And here's the hard part.

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Our next-door neighbor's son has spent the day taking down the laurel hedge. Oh, jeez.

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Before, it was even taller than our hedge. (Here's a photo from a couple months ago.)Now it's nothing.



Not that I have any love for English laurel, but I didn't really want another house in the line of sight from our living room. Oh, well. Maybe this will put a fire under us to do something about the backyard.

Then we're off to Party 2 of 3 for the weekend. Kirsten and Phyllis are there.

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Some people I don't know.

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The host is enjoying his meticulously organized garage.

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I get a beer and start talking to a couple I kind of know. I find out that he worked on the TV show Real People and she worked on the magazine Tiger Beat in the early 1980s.

I ask her if she met Rick Springfield, Ricky Schroeder, Leif Garrett, Scott Baio, and John Stamos.

Her answers were yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes.