Proudly Serenading Our Corporate Masters

I was walking by the Crocodile and I saw this:

Should I be very afraid? Sasquatch isn't until the end of May, but why not start celebrating right now? My primary question has to do with the corporatization of rock music and here it is: Has there been an "independent" music festival over the last 10 years that didn't have prominently-displayed corporate sponsorships? For Sasquatch, you can rock out courtesy of Jack Daniels. It's right there on the sign! And does anybody else think that it's slightly unnecessary? I mean, the festival is gonna happen even without Jack in the mix. I dunno, I guess I'm from a generation that constantly scrutinized its rock stars for signs of impurity. If somebody's music was "too commercial," that meant they had lost their cred. That's why I watch that stupid Eric Clapton phone commercial with low, mordant laughter. When I think of his (mostly mediocre) work from the sixties and seventies, I think, "Wow, that guy's just counting the days before he can sell out." That kind of weird thinking is completely absent from today's music culture. From what I've seen, rock musicians are as likely to court sponsorships as any snowboarder or motocross rider. The thing is, there's enough money in rock 'n' roll to sustain musicians without corporations stepping in. Now, jazz and classical music need company bucks a lot more desperately, because they're quite unpopular (as compared with rock) yet culturally necessary. But rock gets sponsorships from companies who want to show off. They want to be linked with rock to appeal to certain lucrative segments. I'm sure that musicians could refuse those sponsorships, but why turn down free money? And one thing's totally for sure, nobody's gonna write a song for the Sasquatch Festival ridiculing Jack Daniels. My point? There's already enough money to be had in rock music. Keep the corporations out. If I was one of those performers, I'd feel pretty strange about strummin' my gee-tar for the greater glory of Jack Daniels or Budweiser or Coke or Pepsi.

Anyhow, this probably makes me sound like some old crank. Fair enough. Gosh, did I just go off on a rant? I guess I did.

Fighting the Blight!

Even before the invention of writing, people have painted or scrawled things on walls, caves and rocks to show that walked upon the Earth. These days, the same thing happens, but it's a contributing factor to the blighted look of any urban landscape. You've seen it before - tag upon tag of indecipherable turns and squiggles that only make sense to other taggers. Belltown's surfaces get tagged perhaps more than any other Seattle neighborhood. As a resident, it's a little difficult to watch, because tags tend to accumulate. This is the building across the street from me:

Yeah, not pretty. If they don't do something about them, they'll continue to amass. But hey, these guys sort and grade gems, so maybe it's to their advantage to look low-rent. It attracts less attention. All I know is that it generally takes them months to deal with the tags. Many places have a much quicker reaction time: Cafe Zoe at 2nd & Blanchard, for instance. Back in September, they received this rather large gift:

The next day it was gone:

It was tagged again in November. The response was similar. It hasn't been tagged again. The Crocodile reacts similarly; they get rid of tags as quickly as possible. They haven't been tagged in months. So first off, using these two places as prime examples, eradicate the offending scrawls as quickly as possible. Taggers will find somewhere more permanent to lay down their paint and they'll keep away from your walls.

Here's another example of what happens when you ignore the problem and hope that it'll all magically vanish. The Cristalla is a condo high-rise at 2nd & Lenora. Last October, their rather stark south wall was host to some of the neighborhood's worst graffiti:

Yeah, that's about a hundred feet of badness. You'd think that the management would have sprung into action and done something about it immediately. After all, most of these higher-end condos and apartments sell themselves as urban oases. But they did nothing. More graffiti showed up:

More followed:

And so it remained for months. Finally, they did something about it:

They probably could have saved themselves time and effort if they had dealt with the initial batch of scrawls when it first appeared. But they didn't until their gleaming residence started looking like an abandoned building. And now the solution looks nearly as bad as the original problem. I guess they were waiting for another condo tower to go in next to them, but the way the economy is, that's not happening anytime soon, so at last they had to do something.

You'd think that with the wide variety of people wandering around, all thinking various thoughts and doing various things, that there's no point in having nice things within their reach. Actually, I've found the opposite to be true. Two examples: first, the doors of the Crocodile. Back in May, the newly-reopened Crocodile installed some very fancy door handles:

At the time, I remember thinking that something terrible was going to happen to them very soon. Not only to them, but to the doors they were attached to. Nothing of the sort has happened. They remain there unmolested; nobody has tried to pry them off or carve their initials into the doors or anything. The second example concerns the lowly traffic light utility box. You've seen them; they stand about so high and in Belltown, they are a constant attraction for stickers and tags. Well, late in the summer, the city started painting them. I'm not sure why it only involved a few of them in Belltown and downtown, but that's how it worked out. Here's one at 2nd & Virginia:


I took these pictures a while ago, but the scene is exactly the same. Nobody has messed with this box in months. Ordinarily, if it was painted the standard gray, it would be covered in tags and stickers. There are a few more of these boxes in the neighborhood and almost all have been left alone.

All of this leads me to conclude that common urban blight (i.e. graffiti and other visual noise) can be largely avoided by doing two things:
1. React quickly when graffiti shows up. Eradicate it immediately.
2. Don't be afraid to expose nice things, whether they're decorations, fixtures or artwork to the public. They'll hold up.

Most often, taggers will only mess with places that appear not to care. This neighborhood has its share of problems, but graffiti is avoidable.

So Long, Santa Mural!

It's about time. I don't know whether you're aware of this, but Christmas is over. The news took some time to reach certain mural-painting powers, so for the last few weeks we've been looking at Santa Claus in a sailboat with some kind of vague accompanying slogan. Well, no more. There's a new Adult Swim ad in town:

This obviously doesn't feature Santa, but what the heck is it all about? Here's a closer look:

I still don't know what they're trying for. Here's the deal: if you already know Adult Swim, you're aware that it's brilliant and you watch it (if you have cable, which I don't). But if you have no idea what it is, does this explain anything. I say no. It's irreverent, yes, but it details nothing about the show or its component parts, many of which are hilarious - especially The Venture Bros. This doesn't diminish Adult Swim in my eyes, I'm just puzzled that with all the zillions of channels out there, they can be as vague as this. That's all.

So now I'm going to be trying to make sense out of this every time I walk past it for the next however many months that it stays up. I don't think I'll be able to do it.

Crypto-Croc

The other day, I saw these guys painting something on the 2nd Ave. side of the Crocodile. It looked like some kind of mural. Observe:

In case you can't see, there's Santa Claus in a boat and the words "do you still care" across it. It's a statement, not a question, because there's no question mark. Marketing genius alert! This who thing confused me at first, but it turns out that it's an ad for Adult Swim on Cartoon Network. Even I know what that is, although I possess no cable. Right now, I'm in the middle of season one of the Venture Brothers. It's kind of totally hilarious at times. I have no idea what specifically the mural-thing is referring to, but I'm sure it can't be as bad as its own advertisement.

Problem Solved!

Like I said, those Croc guys don't mess around. In fact, they had that ugly tag painted over yesterday. Will it discourage dumbass taggers in the future? Probably not, but I do admire the Crocodile's swift and terrible reaction to such visual assaults.

Yes, the Crocodile will get tagged again. And when it is, I'll keep track of how long it takes them to eradicate the offending scrawl. No pressure, guys. None at all.

Croc Tag Watch - Day 1

It's still there, but I have faith the powers at the Crocodile will eradicate it once they notice it's there and find the key to the paint locker. I firmly believe this.

The Clock Is Ticking!

One of the differences between the old Crocodile and the new Crocodile has been the attitude towards tagging. Under the old regime, the building would accumulate tags like drunken tattoos until it began to look genuinely derelict and abandoned. It was only then that they'd remove all (or most) of the visual crap and start the process again. The new Croc has a much more swift and decisive way of dealing with such nonsense. Tags are quickly painted over and forgotten about. Just to illustrate my point, let's see how long it takes them to get rid of a recent addition. Some tagger deemed it very important to scrawl his mark on the club's Blanchard side sometime early this morning like so:

Just for yucks, let's see how long it takes them to get rid of it. Today is Day Zero. Get going, guys!

Igor's Excellent Crocodile Show

Dear Internet,
Last night I went to a show at the Crocodile, therefore I am now cool. Please begin treating me with reverence. Thanks.

Yr pal,
Igor

P.S. Additional cool points: I was on the guest list. Suck on that.

Yes folks, it was my first time at the new Croc. I have to say that its layout is way better than the old version. The stage is bigger, there's an upstairs and the audience area is comparatively huge. The group was Davy Knowles and Back Door Slam - please, make any sex joke you want; I didn't name these guys. Davy is a guitar phenom from the Isle of Man, but the new and improved Back Door Slam (tee, hee, hee!) is all from Seattle. That's just the way things worked out. I know two of the three Slammers, one remotely, one well. Here are some cell phone pictures that emphasize the grittiness of last night's show:

This is Ty. He and I and the devastatingly handsome Chris Symer played the successful wedding last Saturday. But he's a rocker here.

This is Ty playing fast; notice the blurry fingers. In rock music, fast is always good.

Here's an arty shot. Ty needs a haircut, because he looks like a hippie.


This is Paul. He and I played together briefly in a big band that lasted about two weeks before expiring. This was back when he had hair. I doubt that he remembers me.


This is the drummer. I think that his name, like most drummers, is "Drummer."


This is Davy. As you can see, he's quite presentable for a Manx. Ty speaks very highly of him.

Here he is being all blurry.

This is him being blurry with Mike McCready from Pearl Jam.

Those are the pictures, but how was the gig itself? Really quite good. Davy's got the chops and the presence to go far. He's only 21, so I think he's got a bright future. Oh, Back Door Slam (har, har, har) was quite good, too. Their best tune of the evening was a Junior Wells cover. I forget what it was called, but it was pretty amazing. They played for a very long time. It was a fine show. Once it was over, I was back out in the real world, staring at the Croc's lovely doors:

Then I made the long walk across the street to the Rivoli to collect my thoughts.

What the Hell?

Via Tribunali here at 2nd & Blanchard knocked down their own wall. Observe:


What gives? Were they feeling angry or something? This is not a good thing to do in Belltown. It's kind of the business equivalent of the wolf caught in a trap gnawing his own leg off, no? On the one hand, he's free of the trap; on the other, he's a three-legged wolf. For Via Tribunali, they've shed the tyranny of that wall, but now, anybody on earth can walk in, steal their salt shakers and tag their pizza oven.

UPDATE: OK, it seems that they're installing a garage-type door, so that VT patrons can be closer to nature. Uh, I'm not sure that's a super-good idea, because, quite frankly, that alley smells. If the wind is right, I can smell it from here - and it's like a block away. It is the aroma of old booze and broken dreams. Well, they must know what they're doing. They've got five locations. But I'm guessing this is the very last modification they're making on the Crocodile, because there's nothing left to modify.

Nice Things in Belltown

Just how unobservant am I? Well, I've been walking past the Dahlia Lounge at 4th & Virginia for many years and only this week did I notice this mosaic:


There it is, right outside the front door. I didn't even notice. But this isn't about me. It's about the niceness of the mosaic. Sure, it's a basic design, but I like it quite a bit. It really classes up the place - which was already pretty classy to begin with. I mean, it's a Tom Douglas restaurant (one of four in a two block radius), so it's automatically yummy. That's a given. But the thing that makes me even more partial to the mosaic and its adjoining restaurant is that the work is right there in public. It's not walled-off or glassed-off or behind bars. It defies all dumbass taggers with its very presence. I had a very close look at it when I took these pictures and guess how many times it's been tagged. Zero! Like I always say, more nice things in Belltown on full public display will make it a far better place. Yeah, we like our nice stuff so much that we just leave it out for everybody to look at! That's the kind of people we are!

And while we're on the subject, 2nd & Blanchard's finest and only rock club, the Crocodile, has replaced its cheap, glass front doors with some solid wooden gates, but best of all, they have those spectacularly cool crocodile-shaped door pullers. Look:

Every time I walk past these, I just marvel at them. I say hooray for the Crocodile. Even though those wooden doors look pretty out of place (maybe it's just because they're new), at least they've got those super-excellent brass crocodiles on them. So the big question is this: Is Belltown slowly getting nicer or is this increasing niceness being compensated by things being worse somewhere else - say, like, on 3rd Avenue? I'm really not sure.

The Croc's Nice Things

You know, here in the 2nd & Blanchard vortex, it's tough to have nice things out in the midst of the public. Any given nice object will get tagged or broken or stolen or peed on in no time. That's why I was really surprised to see these highly decorative things on the Crocodile's club entrance between 2nd & 3rd:

What do you call them? There must be a name for them! They're door-pullers or something? I think they're pretty classy - and yes, that's class with a "C." There are buildings in this neighborhood that don't even expose their front doors to the public (cough, cough, The Castle, cough, cough), but putting such impressive hardware on display with no gates or private security protecting them is a small but important act of optimism. The Croc is betting that this neighborhood's larcenous scumbags will just walk on by and not bother the brass crocodiles. They're trusting unregulated humanity to do the right thing, although I do believe that those crocodiles are bolted in with titanium fittings. Maybe if these things survive, other places around Belltown can also show nice stuff to the public without it getting destroyed or stolen. It's a tall request, but not a totally crazy idea. For the moment, though, I give those door handles two months, tops.

Old Croc vs. New Croc

When I first moved to Belltown in 1990, the space that the Crocodile occupies was a defunct Greek restaurant. I think it was called the Athenian or some such. Well, some lawyer-lady (who later married REM's Peter Buck) got the bright idea to open up a club there and the rest is history. The Crocodile Cafe became ground zero for grunge. Yeah, all that stuff was going on right across the street, but I didn't really get in on it. Even if I'd had the money to go see those shows I probably wouldn't have gone. I'm not really a "going-to-shows" kind of guy. I've only seen a handful of shows there, but I did used to go in to have breakfast on the weekends. I stopped doing that in the mid-nineties after I kept finding pieces of metal and glass in my food. For those 10-plus years, we coexisted peacefully. The Croc did its thing; I did mine. And that was just dandy.

It was pretty surprising when it closed in December 2007. I mean, people were always lined up to get in, even on weeknights, and it just seemed like the place would go on and on like that forever. No such luck. Yeah, apparently they went broke.

I knew that something would come back in that space. It just took a while. In the meantime, it became a graffiti magnet and a local eyesore. Dumbass taggers from miles around wanted to leave their scrawl on the building. I don't have any pictures from that sad time, but believe me, it looked just awful. Well, in October a bunch of worker-guys showed up and completely gutted the place. The subsequent renovation seemed to take forever. It finally reopened last month. The sign out front is the same but a few things are different. First off, the restaurant is gone. It's been replaced by a pizzeria. I don't think that's a bad thing at all. The inside has been totally restructured. Support columns have been moved around to give a better view to the stage, which I'm told is larger than the old one. They added an upstairs area and changed the club entrance from the front to the side. And finally, they replaced the giant plate glass windows with slits. The old way of sealing off the club for big shows was for them to put up these large plywood panels to shut out the outside world. Now they don't have to. While I can see the logic in that, the new design has given the place a little of the "haunted castle" look. You can't see in, so you've got no idea what you're getting yourself into. You be the judge.

Before:

From 2nd...

From Blanchard.

After:

From 2nd...

From Blanchard.

Here are a few additional shots:

This one looks down Blanchard toward what is now the club entrance. Yeah, I'm still getting used to the lack of windows.

This is the entrance to the pizzeria in the alley. Yeah, that alley is pretty gross.

So, what's the verdict?