MISCmedia for 3/16/01
More Disappearing Acts

AS YOU CAN TELL from the "Recent Highlights" listing below, we've spent the week discussing noted Seattle institutions that are going away. Sometimes, it seems one can't document them as fast as they go.

Today, some more disappearances. I'll miss 'em all.

Disappearance #1: The Wonder Bread bakery and thrift store was more than a source of solid union employment to a once run-down area. Its giant neon was a beacon, drawing you toward Seattle's least whitebread neighborhood. A year after the company moved to the Tacoma suburbs, the Wonder plant is being replaced by a "mixed use project" (i.e., probably luxury housing above retail). At least seekers of cheap baked foods and snacks still have the (alas, Ding Dong-less) Gai's thrift store just up the street.

Disappearance #2: The First Hill Food Center (which I've called the "First Hill Foo Center" after its occasionally incomplelely lit neon sign) was one of Seattle's last surviving first-generation supermarkets (6,000 square feet or less). It was an indie (albeit allied with the Associated Grocers wholesale consortium) in a retail environment increasingly dominated by chains. Its beautifully rundown building also housed a martial-arts school, where the young Bruce Lee is believed to have once studied. It's also going away for a condo-retail combine, to include a new supermarket that just won't be the same.

Disappearance #3: Pistil Books and News was the kind of walk-in gathering place every neighborhood needs. It was Capitol Hill's chief outlet for small-time zines (including mine). Its used-book selection was carefully curated to local tastes. It hosted regular readings and get-togethers. But it never provided its owners with much in the way of fiscal profits, and a looming rent increase gave them the excuse to get out (moving toward online old-book sales).

NEXT: Music to acompany the mattress mambo.

ELSEWHERE:

• A Wired piece a few years ago speculated on what might happen if artists, ravers, and other boho-types got together and all moved into an abandoned big-box strip-mall store. Now, it looks like the opportunity may be at hand, in hundreds of locations across the country....

RECENT HIGHLIGHTS:

• Goodbyes to film critic John Hartl and the outre-music zine The Tentacle.
• A last lingering look inside the OK Hotel.
• Seattle as a city that works (and works and works).
• The terrible beauty of the freeways.
• The end of our little makeover parable.
• PBS discovers marketing to kids.
• Courtney Love reinvents herself as an anti-major-label crusader.
• Handicapping the Seattle mayoral race.
• The local Mardi Gras ought to be just as dumb and naked, just less fight-prone.
• Fun, sort of, with earthquakes.
• Hardcore porn producers tone down their works for a new mainstream market.
• Comparing a couple of WTO protest videos.
• That integral aspect of the Seattle zeitgeist, complaining.
• Previewing a whole empire of MISCmedia products.
• Does the "Northwest Lifestyle" personality type even exist?
• An amateur experiment in age-regression therapy.
• A fantasy-fandom HQ pulls a disappearing trick.
• A photographic ode to the wonders of snow in Seattle.
• How a conspiracy theorist might view the power-crisis mania.
• Complaining about the Filmlooked versions of Red Dwarf.
• Learning to like Valentine's Day.
• Parts one and two of a cash-strapped single mom's travails thru the welfare bureaucracy.

ARCHIVES:

• 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995, and 1986-94 columns
• Reviews of literature & art, nonfiction & culture criticism, movies & videos, and music & noise
• Longer articles and essays
• Some slightly weird little fiction pieces
• X-Word crossword puzzles, now with on-screen solving
• Cyber Stuff, links to cool and/or useful sites
• A listing of many Things I Like (and a few things I hate)
• The origin and future of MISCmedia