Pa-ride Pa-rade

When you're as miserable as I am, one way to cheer up is to hang out with thousands of happy gay people. It didn't work, but I took photos.

A few years ago, the Pride Parade moved from Capitol Hill to Belltown. It really sparked a lot of controversy at the time. After all, Capitol Hill has a thriving gay community and Belltown does not. I don't even think Belltown has a single gay bar. But it does have a fine parade thoroughfare in the form of 4th Avenue, so who's gonna let something minuscule like a complete lack of gay culture stand in the way? In retrospect, I think it was a good idea to come down to hideous Belltown. It greatly increases the visibility of the event, plus it doesn't totally snarl up traffic like the old parade down Broadway did. But today, yes, there was pride all over the place. There was also much, much shirtlessness, but that sort of thing is to be expected. Here are some pictures:

Proud gay rainbow flags...

...proud gay softball float...

...proud gay Vikings...

...proud gay schoolbus...

...proud gay outdoor people...

...proud gay political pandering...

...more proud gay political pandering..."Medved" means "bear" in Russian...

...proud gay bears..."Bear" means "medved" in English...

...proud gay good-time blasphemy...

...more proud gay good-time blasphemy...

...proud femmes...

...proud pansexual Flying Spaghetti Monster, and lastly, what pride parade would be complete without a giant rollerskating penis?

This guy was really tough to photograph because every time he stopped, people would run out of the crowd, hug him and get their pictures taken. Luckily, I have some leftover cell video footage of him from last year's parade - oh, and there's also some dork on a Segway:

It must be nice to be that popular.

So no, seeing all these happy gay people didn't make me gay. It also didn't make me happy. Sorry, it doesn't work that way. I still like girls. Girls don't like me. And that is at the epicenter of my whole predicament.

4th Avenue: Mission Accomplished

In case you were curious, 4th Avenue is all done. Witness from 4th & Cedar:

For blocks and blocks, there's nothing but Sweet Lady Blacktop, instead of rubble, manhole covers and sadness. And just to point out the obvious: 4th Avenue now goes with everything. Black is the new "dresses-over-jeans." God, I'm glad that trend is over!

Bottom line: wear anything you want when you walk down 4th. But don't over-accessorize. Class dismissed.

Speaking of 4th Avenue...

This is the current state of things:

...and:

...and:

Well, you get the idea; the top layer of pavement is gone. It's like that from Virginia all the way to Denny. If you still own an SUV, driving down 4th almost feels like offroading - y'know what you bought that SUV for in the first place.

Anyhow, I will provide you with action paving photos at the appropriate time.

Rant Avoided!

Here I was going to go off about how badly they'd put 4th Avenue back together. I was gonna use this photo as justification for everything. Observe:

That's 4th, between Virginia & Lenora. They've been doing some very intense work along this street for two months now and I just wanted to highlight the fact that they couldn't even manage to make the new roadway at the same level as the rest of the road. But that's not really an issue any more. Sometime shortly after I took this picture, they came in and stripped off all the old blacktop. So they're repaving. Any weirdness/dumbness like in the above photo was just temporary and no reason to get bent out of shape (like I did a few days ago).

Apparently, your beloved 2nd Avenue is getting a similar repaving treatment later in the summer. It shouldn't be as maddening and chaotic as it usually is.

Dept. of Crappy Patch Jobs - Your Tax Dollars at Work

Sorry about no posts yesterday. I was up in Snohomish being a temporary country boy. Anyhow, so I was walking around on Friday. I come to 4th & Battery and this just jumps out at me:


It might be a little tough to see, but the middle part of the road is at least a few inches lower than the area around it. Tell me that they're not done with this! It's shoddiness incarnate! You take for granted that city engineering guys would know how to make a flat road, but I'm starting to have my doubts. Large stretches of 4th Avenue have been obliterated and replaced by weirdly-sloping concrete slabs (sorry, no pictures; just go down to 4th & Lenora to see what I mean). I have no idea what the city is up to, but the clear answer is becoming "no good." I like 4th Avenue, but after these "renovations," what man would have her?

Nature's Bounty of Belltown Road Projects

Spring is here! You can tell because that's when Belltown's larger street projects begin. Your 4th Avenue is having all kinds of stuff done to it, most noticeable of which is its closure at Pine Street. Although most of the action is taking place around Stewart Street, some pretty serious work is happening all the way to Wall Street. I'm pretty sure this has something to do with the new Escala at 4th & Virginia. It's a very big building that probably requires more city services than the parking lot that stood there previously. So they're coming in, busting up the asphalt, digging down two feet, then filling it in. Observe:

Here's 4th & Virginia. The Escala is just off to the right, across Virginia and not in the picture. You'll see that two lanes are blocked off.

You can tell they're serious. They've brought in the heavy stuff. This is from 4th & Lenora. The fabulous Cinerama Theater stands in the background.

More heaviness dappled by the righteous Sunday morning sunshine between Lenora & Blanchard.

Look, look! Blanchard Street gets the honey bucket! Score!

A little minor action at 4th & Bell.

And on it goes down to Wall.

But wait! There's more. We've also got stuff going on at 2nd & Bell.

First off, there's this giant hole in the sidewalk covered up with steel plates.

This seems like too much equipment for that size of a hole.

There's even more on the other side of the street. And look! They've got their own honey bucket. Class!

OK, so the work on 4th seems to be going quickly, especially considering how massive it is. The 2nd & Bell stuff? Who knows? About a year ago they were doing similar work just a block away at 3rd & Bell and that lasted over six months. We shall see..

Seattle Math

OK, let's say they're doing an extreme repave at 4th & Stewart (Belltown's southern border with downtown). The effort looks a little like this:

For the sake of getting it done, the city closes 4th at Pine Street, which looks like this:

And when you add those two things together, what do you get? This:

That's right, chaos. I'd say the backup goes almost all the way back to Chinatown. But don't worry, it'll be done by the weekend. It kind of has to be...