MISCmedia for 11/1/00
Haunted Ground, Part 2
by Guest Columnist Donna Barr

(YESTERDAY, our guest columnist started to explain how her adopted home of Bremerton, the town across Puget Sound from Seattle, just might be the most surreal town on the planet. Today, she continues.)

A FEW STRAINS of "pedigree" pets--especially Siamese cats, Pekingese and Pomeranian dogs, and pit bulls--are used in a Ponzi-scheme breeding system, to make a little cash.

A "Bremerton purebred"--one of several unoffical local strains, unrecognized by the regulation kennel clubs--a female, is bought, impregnanted, and then her kittens or puppies sold. No attention is paid to inbreeding; an uncle may be bred to a niece, with a hand-job to help 'em along, so long as saleable young are produced.

If they don't sell, they're dumped into a Humane Society and Animal Control system already overloaded by the transient naval population, and its habit of leaving its pets behind when it is transferred. The local naval commanders don't do anything about the problem. Females who aren't profitable are put down.

Pit bull fighting is common--it's nothing to see a big uncut male missing an eye, or with a gash that runs half the width of his neck. And I don't know any vet, even in Bremerton, who sews up wounds with dental floss.

The pit bull puppy-mill in the place across the alley didn't get broken up until we had an attack. The big stud-dog tore after a little dog that was being walked down the alley, and when the little dog's owner tried to save him, he got the stud-dog's teeth in his ribs. The little dog was usually walked by a twelve-year-old boy whose throat was about rib-high. The dog was destroyed and the mill run out by the landlord.

Drug dealers aren't much of a problem, not even the gangs that come in with the Navy ships. The block-watches are pretty easygoing. So long as a drug dealer doesn't set up a crack house, or let the kids cut the crack on the front table with the door open, if the dealer doesn't bring in customers all night, with cars coming and going and running up on the sidewalk, people will leave them alone. And no drive-bys. The block-watches know they're not targeted, but the problem with druggies is they can't shoot--and whenever a bullet goes loose, all the kids in the neighborhoods become bullet magnets.

So if the dealers will just go down to the Callow Safeway, where a nice big concrete-pit parking lot has built to contain the bullets, then nobody will bother them. If they show up on the street, the old Detroit trick--the sign that says "Drug Parking, Fifteen Minute Limit"--will make them leave. Or you can sit on their cars and drink beer. They hate that. What is it with drug dealers that makes them think they don't have a neon-green sign on their forehead that says "Get your smack here"?

Bremerton is only an hour from Seattle, and only an hour from the Olympic Penninsula, so you can go do the city or go camping without a lot of driving.

Getting out of town once in a while is important. You can drive out to the reservation and buy really great fireworks, at places like Ill Eagle and Pyro Mama's. M-100s and nearly professional-level rockets, the kind that wake up all the dogs in the neighborhood and make Bremerton look like a war-zone, with all the blue smoke floating through the trees. My husband and I always get the impression that the locals sell 'em with the attitude of "Go ahead, you dumb white folks--blow your hands off." Which we think is pretty funny, after what the U.S. government got away with up here, burning down Old Man house for one.

Once the U.S. officials tried to stop the white folks that were coming off the reservation with fireworks, and they ran into the reservation chiefs and their back-ups, who told them to get the hell away from their customers.

Everybody thought that was pretty funny.

All the plastic car fish-logos are here: Blank Christian, Darwin, Survival, Alien, 'n Chips, and Gefilte.

Bumper sticker: The Christian Right is Neither.

The black drag queen dresses fine, but he seems to have a hard time finding quality shoes.

TOMORROW: A Halloween roundup, among other short items.

ELSEWHERE:

• The "real" Eve and Adam lived 84,000 years apart, geneticists claim. (That sort of thing can just ruin a relationship....)
• The next great retro graphic-design fad awaiting modern-day ripoffs: early Soviet children's books....

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• Pondering why old fake architecture is more fun than new fake architecture.
• Parts one and two of a guest columnist's apologetic for moving to the 'burbs.
• How to improve Northwest Bookfest.
• Remembering The Rocket.
• Ralph Nader's serenaders.
• Some of the ingredients in a successful magazine.
• Looking at a few former rock clubs.
• Fun at the High Tech Career Expo.
• Whither CNN?
• Imagining the effects of a movie-industry strike.
• Imagining some potential fictional characters for the column.
• Could any band other than the Grateful Dead live without "intellectual property" protection?
• A more positive second opinion on the Sounder commuter train.
• A Pokemon guide to the Presidential election.
• The simplest, stupidest business motivation book ever written.
• Parts one, two, three, four, five, and six of our look back at 1975 Seattle.
• A new way to try to get users to pay for web content.
• The dying days of the Olympic Games as we know them.
• A few remaining non-retail buildings downtown.
• What's wrong with Sound Transit.

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