Sunny Afternoon in Columbia City

An Anchor porter at Lottie's Lounge.



Love the old license plate holders.



Ten years ago I hitched to work every day. I paid cash.







Smoked tukeys.



Gather has a beautiful neon art installation of found letters from signs. It's shocking how many brands you can recognize just from the font and color. Like the "a" from Radio Shack.



The "x" isn't really an "x." It's that Cingular character thing.



This target will one day grace the roof of artist Jeremy Bert's Boulevard Park home. If you don't see it at Gather, you should be able to see it from a nighttime flight in or out of SeaTac.



(I just now realized that I've admired Jeremy's work at McLeod Residence before.)

Then a trip to the last Columbia City Farmer's Market of the season.







This is what I bought.



I doubt there will be a day this nice again for the rest of the year.

Free Seattle: Volunteer Park Conservatory

My pal Chuck in San Francisco recently blogged about a free thing I should do with my free time here in Seattle: visit the Volunteer Park Conservatory. So I did.



It was nice and warm in there. I should go back in December.











































Then walked around Volunteer Park on this beautiful fall day.

More Cheap South End Fun: Western Bridge

Friday I finally checked out Western Bridge, a free art "venue" in Sodo.

I love their stealth front door -- clever!



The main exhibit right now is this huge white-on-white painting that stretches across the walls and onto the floor. It looks like shadows of trees coming in through big, high horizontal windows. Which confused me a little at first since the building does have big, high horizontal windows. Except it's on 4th Ave. South, so there are no trees around. (Also, a shadow would bend at the corner.) It's like a trompe l'oeil for the stupid and/or unobservant.



Another exhibit featured very dark photos of the banks of the Amazon. I didn't love the art, but I did love the building itself and decided that I wanted to live there.



This feeling got much stronger when I wandered into the living area upstairs.



The other two patrons were hesitant to enter this section, as it didn't seem like people were supposed to come in. But I told them they had to because it was the best part.

The tub is sunken into the cement.





This place belongs on the hipster street of dreams.









And it's just two blocks from Costco!

Western Bridge is open noon to six, Thursday - Saturday. It's located at 3412 Fourth Avenue South. 206-838-7444. Admission is free.