Another Film at the Rivoli!

OK, so this picture doesn't look like much and apologies for that, but yesterday there was yet another film crew at my building. It wasn't exactly the Rivoli proper; it was at Action Small Appliance. They're my downstairs neighbor. Yay!! I knew something was up yesterday morning when there was all this door-slamming and sounds of equipment being hefted. Later on, about half a billion production assistants showed up to say things over walkie-talkies. I thought for sure that the See Sound was being used for retakes of that Kristen Bell-Aubrey Plaza epic, Safety Not Guaranteed, but no. It's a completely different movie. This one is called Eden. According to the mighty IMDB, it stars Beau Bridges (currently the lesser of the Bridges brothers) and a chick with a very large forehead. I did not see either of them or anybody else in the cast (whose names do not sound familiar) on the sidewalk in front of the Rivoli. Evidently, they had need of a small appliance store and Action suited them fine. It's nice to see the film industry return to Seattle. We kind of screwed ourselves over in the mid-90s and everybody simply shifted up to Vancouver. Having a film set here every so often makes it seem like a city.

The Rivoli at 100 - Part 2!

Part Two: Bad Days, Ghost Stories and Our Crazy Modern World

From the time of its construction in 1910, the Rivoli served as cheap housing for those who worked at the docks and in the downtown area. Its fortunes, as with those of Belltown, fluctuated with the economy. The twenties were booming, the thirties were awful and the forties were again booming. In the fifties, things began to change. Dock work became more mechanized, skilled and higher paying. Thanks to those innovations, there were also fewer jobs available. Also during the fifties, Belltown's most prominent industry, film distribution for all major studios, was also changing. The studio systems that had functioned so efficiently from the teens onward was unraveling. By the sixties, the neighborhood was in a state of flux and by the seventies it was in obvious decline. I have no sources to tell me how the Rivoli fared through these decades or about what happened here and when, but the fact that the place is still standing testifies that things couldn't have been overly terrible. Once the eighties dawned, however, things would take a turn for the worse.

In the early eighties, Belltown was not exactly the ideal Seattle neighborhood. One of the most dangerous places in the entire city was the Pike Place Market at night. The corner of 1st & Pike played host to prostitutes and a wide variety of lowlifes. Belltown had its own bad spots. The Rivoli was one of them. Its absentee owner was determined to sell the building off to developers. As a result, it had sunk into a state of serious disrepair. Many of the units were uninhabitable. You could always tell the occupied units, because they had large padlocks on them. People, many of them local junkies, used to come into the building armed with crowbars to pry apartments open and empty them of their contents. The padlocks seemed to help keep them out. The hallways themselves became dangerous. People were robbed and assaulted on nearly every floor. In 1982, there was a rather infamous murder here. A tenant was killed by her crazy boyfriend. He stuffed her body into the unit's Murphy bed and fled town. After a few weeks, neighbors complained about the smell and the grisly discovery was made. Soon after that, the owner instructed the manager not to rent any more units. He was serious about getting rid of the place and was trying hard to make a deal. The building's population dropped to just four. At the same time, the Rivoli's neighbor, the El Rey, was closed and boarded up. It seemed that a similar fate was awaiting the Rivoli. But whatever deal the owner tried to strike fell through and he once again gave the manager the go-ahead to start renting the habitable units. Those were just over half of the building's apartments. The rest had broken windows, missing appliances, no electricity or something else wrong with them that would make living in them impossible.

By the mid-eighties, things had improved in the neighborhood and its environs. Police sweeps of the Pike Place Market and Belltown had made conditions more bearable. The economy had improved and the Rivoli's new crop of tenants were fitting in well. Many were artists or artisans who customized their apartments to their liking. Some of those units, including mine, remain to this day. No one is exactly sure how, but the Rivoli was picked as one of the main locations for the Alan Rudolph film Trouble in Mind. It's not the greatest film in the world, but it does show the building as it was in 1985. For the next five years, things continued to improve. At the end of the decade, the building was sold to its present owner who turned it into low income housing. This involved giving it a major renovation to make all units habitable. At the end of the project, I moved in. That was 20 years ago. The neighboring El Rey Apartments were renovated a few years earlier and has since become home to some of Belltown's craziest residents.

Because of its age and checkered past, the Rivoli has earned a place on the Seattle Ghost Tour. I've heard the stories, because the guides give their spiel right under my window. I'm flattered that the place where I've lived for two decades is garnering such attention, but I'm afraid to say that all the tales are untrue. The Rivoli is definitely not haunted. Honestly, it isn't. The apartment where the notorious murder took place in 1982 is right across the hall from me. My former neighbor lived there for 18 years and never saw or felt or noticed anything strange. She left because she'd been living here for 18 years and felt it was time for a change. Likewise, the tour claims that two guys died of AIDS in the building. Actually, they both passed away in hospice care, not in the building and, believe it or not, one of those poor fellows occupied the other apartment across the hall. It's not haunted, but it does seem that people who live there stop paying their rent for unknown reasons. Finally, the tour spins the yarn about haunted toilet. It goes something like this: in the early eighties, a crazy woman named Christine lived in the building. She was quite desperately lonely. She was in the habit of clogging her toilet with paper towels so that the building maintenance man would visit her. She later died in her apartment. To this day, the toilet in that unit mysteriously clogs at odd times. Absolutely not true. Yes, there have been crazy people who have lived here, but there was never a "Christine" in the mid-eighties, there wasn't a maintenance man - the building was way too cheap to hire one - and there is no haunted toilet. But it does make a good story, as do all the others. Take my word for it, though, this place isn't haunted.

In the twenty years I've lived here, Belltown has changed quite a bit. It went from a place where all the bums knew your name to a fortress of shiny condos peopled with temporary dotcom millionaires to a crack-saturated hellhole to the relatively tame club and restaurant mecca that it is today. Some of those things overlap, but whatever Belltown has gone through, the Rivoli has seen all of it. The apartments are small and drafty, but there are a few people who have called this place home for even longer than I have, so it does have its appeal. What does the future hold for the building? Well, it beats me, but some ultra-blogger in his jet pack might be celebrating its 200th anniversary in a century's time. This place is built surprisingly solid. So the next time you're passing by on 2nd & Blanchard, you'll know that a lot has happened here over the last 100 years.

The Rivoli at 100!

Part 1: In the beginning...

On January 1st of this year, my building, the Rivoli Apartments, quietly turned 100. Buildings are like racehorses, their birthdays are always January 1st. But I challenge you to find me a 100-year-old racehorse. The Rivoli's century of survival has been as unlikely as it is unusual, but despite all that, it continues to keep watch over the southwest corner of 2nd & Blanchard for now and into the foreseeable future.

Way back 101 years ago, 2nd Avenue looked like this:

This shot was taken from around Bell Street; the Moore and Josephinium are those big buildings in the distance on the left side of 2nd. Notice anything different? Yeah, there's a big ol' hill across the street! That's pretty much how things appeared at the time the Rivoli was built the following year.

The building's architect, A.H. Albertson, came to Seattle working for the prestigious New York firm Howells & Stokes. His original task was to develop the University of Washington's downtown properties, but he stayed on and designed the Northern Life Tower, St. Joseph's Church, the Seattle YMCA and numerous other buildings. How he ended up designing the Rivoli is a bit of a mystery, as he was obviously more interested in projects much grander than building an apartment building for dock workers. Whatever the reason, I'm glad he did it. I really love this old wreck of a building.


As you can see, the Rivoli's front is pretty ornate, considering its utilitarian purpose. Here you can find marble, wrought iron and terracotta all accenting the functional brick design. This is quite a contrast from its next-door neighbor, the El Rey Apartments (also built in 1910), which has almost zero ornamentation and far less charm. What you see in the picture above is only about 25% of the Rivoli, because it's an L-shaped building that wraps around a functional two-story structure that contains Cafe Zoe. The rest of the building is much more plain. But the ornate entrance counts for a lot.

The Rivoli's apartments are small. They were originally intended to house dock and other low-wage workers for cheap. Cheap places are small. But the building's saving grace is its high ceilings. Most of its units are studios. Combine a studio with a high ceiling and you can feel a bit like you're living in a box, but try living with a low ceiling - it's downright claustrophobic. I have one of the few one-bedroom apartments that the Rivoli offers. It's tiny - just a bit over 400 sq. feet. Yeah, it's small, but its location can't be beat and rent is still relatively cheap.

I had always believed that it was built as a walk-up. After all, it's only three stories tall. I was wrong. There was an actual working elevator for at least 60 years. When the building fell into disrepair in the sixties and seventies, it broke down and the then-owner decided to build over all traces that there had ever been an elevator.

The Rivoli was built halfway through a population explosion that increased Seattle's size threefold. It and other buildings in Belltown offered small apartments to both manual laborers and office workers. Over time, many of these places have disappeared and been replaced by condo towers, but the Rivoli has managed to avoid the wrecking ball. Next week, I'll explore why it's survived for so long.

Tune in next Monday for Part 2: Bad Days, Ghost Stories and Our Crazy Modern World.

Last Night's Action

As I mentioned a few days ago, I've been very lucky at cards recently. I'm not sure why, but it's happening. After a disappointing seventh-place finish in trivia last evening (the bonus question was about Project Runway; nobody on my team watches that show; we missed it), I went down to the basement for a game. It seemed like the thing to do. The Olympics at the time were about women doing tricks on snowboards and falling. Yawn! I can do that! Where's my silver medal?? Anyhow, this is the fourth game we've had here at the Rivoli this week. The turnout was a healthy 15 people and we got down to it shortly after 10:00. For a long time, nobody except my soon-to-be-former-neighbor Josh was making any money. Stacks were getting shorter and people began making daft bets. I was there to call them. And I was lucky enough to win - again and again. I knocked out so many opponents that I lost count. It must have been at least 10. I'm not sure. All I know is that I knocked out three people in one hand and another two the very next hand. I wasn't like I felt that I couldn't be defeated. I had good hands and I thought that I could afford to call anybody's all-in bet. Luckily, the cards broke my way. It could have easily gone against me.

Meanwhile, Josh was also making money, though he wasn't knocking anyone out. With seven people still at the table, he started negotiating with me about how we were going to split the pot. That makes for some super-terrible luck. I didn't want to hear it. I've had games where I hold an insurmountable chip lead and see it all evaporate in minutes. The reason? I start thinking about how I'm gonna spend all that money I haven't yet won. So yeah, negotiating before the table is down to the final two is poisonous.

I managed to knock a few more people out and then it was Josh, Danelle (another neighbor who is relatively new to poker) and me. Josh kept chiding me to knock Danelle out, so we could split the pot and he could hit the bars. It was about 12:30 by now. As things were, I started getting really lousy cards. I couldn't do squat. Finally, Danelle knocked Josh out in two hands. We split the $150 and I got my name on the wall, which is how we keep track of past champions. After two second places and a fourth just this week, I won. Praise Allah! My winnings for the week are $235. By the way, Josh holds the record for most consecutive wins with four. I'm pretty sure that it will be a long time before anybody breaks that streak, as luck is a very fickle thing.

OK, so I didn't mean to turn this blog into a poker symposium. I also didn't intend to feature French and Russian pop music, but here we are. Don't worry, though, my luck will soon turn and I'll go back to my dependable, losing ways and I will write nothing about that. I promise.

The Poker Report

I don't write about it much, but I play a lot of poker. I started playing about two and a half years ago in the Rivoli's basement with my neighbors and their friends and their friends and so on. At the beginning, I was fantastically lucky (because I didn't know any better), then terrible for a long time (once I'd learned all the rules). Over the last three or four months, I've done really well. There are up to five games a week (usually only about three) and I've ended up either winning or splitting the pot almost each week. If I recall correctly, I've only been out of the money two weeks in the last four months. Since Saturday, I've done quite well: I took second on Saturday, fourth on Sunday (I knocked out five people and lost to some freakish luck) and second again last night. There were 19 players and the take for that was $95 - half of $190. What made it special is that there was one hand where I landed four aces. It's the first time I've ever done that. What's even better is that I knocked somebody out with it. Usually, when you have these really good hands, it's tough to get anyone to play. Earlier in the evening, I scared everybody away from my full house with a tiny bet. But my opponent took the bait and soon she was sitting on the sidelines, watching the action. I knocked out three others over the course of the evening. There are some people who are good table company. They have funny stories or weird things to say or whatnot. If you take their money and knock them out, you feel just a little bit bad. There was a guy at the table last night who wasn't one of those people. He was either quite dumb or mildly retarded or both. He seemed to have no short-term memory. He would ask what the blinds were every single hand. I'm not kidding. Every. Single. Hand. It was like playing cards with a goldfish. He also never knew when it was his turn, so he'd just drop chips on the table whenever he felt like it. After more than an hour of this nonsense, I started to get a little cranky at his dumbness. I tried to figure out a way to get rid of him. His style was completely reckless, but he managed to win big over the course of the evening. He also lost big, too. His biggest hit came when he walked into my pocket tens. I won the hand, 15,000 of his chips and knocked out the Rivoli's manager. But this guy was still in the game and he recovered somewhat over the next half hour or so. Yet he never knew what or where the blinds were or when it was his turn to bet. When guys annoy me like that, I try like hell to knock them out. In the past, this has always resulted in disaster. I generally lose everything. But I didn't rush things along and finally chose the right moment and knocked him out with three kings. It was really sweet. After that, all I had to do was wait for Angelique to knock out Kevin Bucket and then split the pot with her. She knocked me out on Sunday with some impressive luck. Last night, she was just as lucky, winning a series of really daft all-in bets. I could have continued on and tried for an undisputed win, but I've tried that as well once or twice and lived to regret it. I'm just fine with second place. Since the beginning of the year, I've had one first and about six second place finishes. I'm starting to feel like I can play the game reasonably well, so I just thought I'd mention it.

Super Bowl Party!

Yeah, it was really glamorous out in front of the Rivoli yesterday afternoon. Take a look:

There's Martin, some guy, I.D. and Kevin. Not pictured: me. The bratwursts were delicious. The game was great. And to make things even more excellent, I won $10 from I.D. on it. So yes, even though we watched the game in a cheerless basement, it was still very fun.

Happy Anniversary, Igor!

Why, thank you, Igor! It's nice of you to remember! It's kind of weird to imagine that I moved into the newly-renovated and still-marginally-decrepit Rivoli 19 years ago today. Of course, I was a different and much more foolish person. It was also the beginning of the nineties. I'll just come right out and state the complete obvious: Belltown was different. It had friendly bums. Real artists actually lived here. Crack was not freely available. And it was very difficult to get kicked out of bars - you could yell, scream and swear, and nobody would do a thing about it. That's why there was always so much yelling, screaming and swearing coming from Belltown's bars.

If I'm not mistaken, the sun also shone with greater intensity back then. Also, most women were better looking. The streets were paved with platinum, if I recall correctly, which made driving very dangerous, as platinum is quite slick. Old people would stand around and tell us how to behave and we paid attention - rather than risk a whoopin'. Everything was perfect just as it was. In conclusion, cars back then looked pretty much the same as they do now.

That's how things were 19 years ago.

This Morning

As usual, I got up early this morning and to go to the gym. It was particularly tough getting out of bed, because I've felt pretty lousy over the last few days. Yesterday, I damn nearly passed out after my last set of dips. Things started turning white, but I fought through it. I felt pretty terrible for the rest of the day, though. There was a little of that feeling lingering when I woke up. But I've found that pretending like everything's fine is the best way to keep these morning rituals intact.

I got dressed, assembled my least smelly gym clothes along with my disintegrating running shoes and headed for the gym at 3rd & Pike. On the way to the Rivoli's front door, I could see that somebody was sacked out in the doorway. That's not unusual. People often crash there. They also often pee there. Sometimes they do both at the same time. The best thing to do is just leave them alone. They'll eventually be on their way. But as I went out, I noticed that this was the same Real Change Mama who thought my raccoon painting was a cat and was prepared to give me a whole 40 cents for it. This happened during the Sunday portion of the sidewalk sale. Of course, no business was transacted, but it was pretty nice to talk to somebody who, though she was a bit dense, was at least sane. (You'll recall that crazy people were out in droves that day.) She didn't linger long and was soon gone.

I've lived in Belltown for 19 years and I've heard ever single kind of hard-luck story imaginable. My verdict: everybody's got one. Hell, even I've got one. In fact, I have several. So yes, I'm immune to tales of woe. But I can't help thinking that maybe I should have let the raccoon (or kitty, depending on your perspective) go for 40 cents. Maybe this would have improved Real Change Mama's life by some small measure for a short amount of time. I mean, she didn't realize that it was (and still is) a terrible painting. At the same time, the cynic in me says that if I'd sold the piece to her, she probably would have gotten tired of carrying it around by that afternoon. That's very plausible. Finding it in a greasy puddle in some alley would have made me feel like a first-class chump.

I guess that brings us to the heart of the matter. It's an essential dilemma of living in a neighborhood like this. You certainly want people to be less miserable. You want all the people selling Real Change to succeed. But you don't want to feel like a fool for helping them - especially if their lives never get better. And many of them don't. Some of these vendors have been selling for years and they're still homeless. Others are demonstrably crazy. You can buy all their papers every day and they'll still be nuts. How does that help anybody? Still others are just scammers trying to get beer money. They're easy to spot, because they're generally charming in a very sociopathic way. That's what my experience has taught me. That's also why I never buy Real Change. I'm always nice to the vendors, but I never buy it. It just doesn't seem to do any good.

That was my conclusion as I headed up 2nd Ave. The raccoon picture wouldn't have helped Real Change Mama on any fundamental level. She would have discarded it soon enough. It's not like I denied her a basic human right by asking $5 for the painting. Still, it's too bad she has to spend the night in the Rivoli's doorway. I'm sure there's a compelling tale about how she ended up there. And I'll bet good money that it begins with a tale of tragedy and woe.

Advanced Notice!

I just thought I'd give all two of my readers advanced notice of a great and momentous event: The Rivoli Summer Sidewalk Sale 2 - This Time It's Personal. It's happening Saturday/Sunday, August 1st & 2nd, from 8am till 2pm. If you're like me, you missed the first sidewalk sale (I was in Idaho, what's your excuse?), but you'll want to get in on this one mainly because I have a whole lot of stuff to unload. What kind of stuff? Oh, just something like 800 78rpm records, maybe a few hundred albums, CDs, Mackris v. O'Reilly t-shirts (all brand-spanking new), books and maybe even some bad art from my vast collection. At this juncture, I don't know whether any of my neighbors are joining me, but with all the stuff I've accumulated, it should take up most of the sidewalk. But some of my neighbors possess fantastic clutter, we're talking kayaks and canoes and equally improbable items. I'll try to rope them into this, too.

So come buy my stuff at 2127 2nd Ave. on August 1st & 2nd. I'll send out more reminders as the blessed day approaches.

Belltown Murals - 3

There are only three murals in Belltown. Two are bad. One is not. This is the one that isn't bad. And it happens to be right smack on the side of the Rivoli here at 2nd & Blanchard. Have a look:

In case it's not entirely clear, it's a U.S. soldier in front of some generic brown people and they're all in front of something that's burning. Over all of that are the words "How much longer?" Unless you're on top of the Humphrey across the street, this thing is notoriously hard to photograph, but funny thing, it's not very hard to see and understand. Because all my shots were coming out weird, I borrowed this one from Seattle Daily Photo. Thanks, guys. Anyhow, this mural was painted sometime in 2004 when it was becoming abundantly clear that the Iraq War was spiraling out of control and that the leaders of this country were a bunch of delusional creeps and idiots. And honestly, for years and years, I'd hear the bad news coming out of Iraq and think "How much longer?" myself. This mural didn't make the situation better; it only made me realize that I wasn't the only one who thought that this conflict was terrible, tragic and, perhaps most goading of all, unnecessary - all those civilians and all of our soldiers killed in order to make a few people rich and a few others feel like they were in charge. Perhaps the worst feeling was the realization that all of this was being done in my name for some very small reasons. I'm an American, this is my country's war, all this bad stuff is happening based on myopic reasoning and general cluelessness and for years, things only became worse. It was heartbreaking all around. Six years later, things have gotten better because the morons who started it all finally realized that the original advice they got about restoring order was the best. In the end, everything calmed down after we started paying people off, not because of all the 2,000 lb. bombs we dropped. Yeah, it was far too late to make a difference for thousands.

Here we are more than five years after this was painted and it's still poignant. We may be steadily drawing down from Iraq, but now there's Afghanistan to worry about. I'm already thinking about how much longer that's going to take. I heard this thing on NPR this weekend with this guy who wrote a book about Afghanistan called The Graveyard of Empires and I can't help thinking that we're next in line for some very hard lessons. Of course, leaving is out of the question, because we'll just have to go back in another 10 years. Some problems are so elaborate that any solution is bad.

I didn't mean to get all political, but this mural does inspire strong feelings in me. I think that it represents the conscience of all those who were mocked and ridiculed for their opposition to the war by this country's leaders and commentariat. I was against it from the beginning, but didn't think that this great nation would be stupid enough to go through with it. After all, as Americans, we are sensible, intelligent and downright nice people who know when a bunch of lying goons is trying to pull one over on us, right? Well, you know what happened. And the people who perpetrated this are all still walking around. Oops, I'm getting all political again. Actually, I never stopped being political.

Let's just say that I love and treasure this mural. Its mission of provoking an emotional response in at least one viewer has been accomplished. I'm proud that it's on the side of my building.

Check out that Whimsy!

Last night, the Rivoli had a sidewalk barbecue. Some of my neighbors cooked things on the world's flimsiest grill. Others drew on the sidewalk. Here's is my favorite:

Hey you kids, an octopus doesn't meow in French! Why, I never!

I actually roused myself and went down. The gathering was deemed a success by guests and organizers alike. More are being planned.

The Bad Old Days

I got up early yesterday morning and headed to the gym. On my way out, I went past two people, a man and a woman, loitering around the entrance. I knew exactly what they were doing - waiting for the right time to spark the pipe. I have no idea whether their poison was crack or meth, nor do I care. It's just that I've seen that behavior so many times that there could be no mistaking it.

You know, I would listen to some non-Belltown resident describe the neighborhood as "up-and-coming" without interruption or objection for more than my first 10 years living here. I really wanted to believe that there was a bright new tomorrow for me and my neighbors. I wanted cool things to do and nice places to go and I wanted them all to be built down the street. And indeed, it seemed to be just around the corner. Then along came 2001. That's when Belltown became Crack Central.

Anytime, night or day, there it was - knots of guys ducking into doorways to hit the pipe. The Rivoli's got three doors and most of them were blocked by crack smokers at any given time. Every time, I'd go out, I'd have to make my way through a crowd of crackheads. Coming back, there was always a different group standing there. Seriously, it didn't matter what time it was, there were always crackheads in the doorway, either lighting up or waiting to light up. There was an unlimited supply of them. And the weird thing was that both the dealers and their clients weren't from the neighborhood. Belltown was just a place where they met to do business and get high.

And because of all this trade, things were really out of control. There were constant sidewalk brawls, a rash of muggings, a few murders, tons of car break-ins, and the streets were full of jabbering, scary, twitchy people. And the cops seemed powerless to stop the madness. I had lost my job in February 2001, so I was witnessing firsthand what seemed to be the downfall of civilization taking place right under my window. No, Belltown wasn't "up-and-coming;" it was a total pit.

Now, if the crackheads had been smoking weed instead, things would have been a lot better. I don't smoke weed myself, but I know that it doesn't make people violent and crazy. Crack does. It turns people into animals who have no regard for the consequences of anything as long as they can get high. And after a while, they have to get high just to maintain, and then it's a short walk off the cliff of addiction.

Although crackheads were really unpleasant, the dealers were actually quite polite and well-mannered. It was better for business if they were nice to the locals. After all, this wasn't their neighborhood. They just sold drugs in it to other people who also didn't live here. And so it went for months and months, day and night, rain or shine. If the doorways were full, as they often were, they smoked out in the street in plain sight. That's what it came to.

Except for the occasional bust of some outrageously blatant crackhead, the police seemed less than interested in dealing with the problem. Meanwhile, Belltown residents were leaving their buildings having to wade through piss, vomit, blood and shit left behind by the crackheads. The solution from one end of the neighborhood to the other was to put up steel gates. That's what the Rivoli's 2nd & Blanchard brethren did. First it was the Castle and then the Humphrey. Here's the Castle's:

And here's what the Humphrey has to offer:

Well, at least they have it half-open during the day. After sundown, though, they keep it locked.

The mystery building across the street also followed (and added bars to their windows), and on and on it went until almost every place with a receded doorway had put up a metal gate. The Rivoli was a major exception. Whether it was because the owner was too cheap (which is quite possible) or that it was a conscious decision, I'll never know. But I'm actually glad that even in the midst of all that filth and craziness, they didn't bow to fear and disgust. I'm proud that I live in a place that didn't put up cages against the outside world. I'm a believer that the cage works both ways; it shuts out the scary outside world, but it also seals you in.

By spring of 2001, Channel 13 came out with a series of stories that so embarrassed the police that they had to do something decisive about the crack trade. In these reports, they showed some guy selling drugs out of the 2nd floor of the Palladian at 2nd & Virginia while the cops took a coffee break across the street. They also featured guys getting high within a few feet of a police car with two cops in it. The department had to do some serious damage control and spring into action. Within a month, the problem was solved. I have no clue how they did it. My guess is that they went after those polite dealers. Once the supply dried up, the crackheads went elsewhere.

But it's not like all drug abuse and crime went away after that. No, no, no! It still exists, but most of the hardcore stuff happens in the alleys. I was talking with my apartment manager the other day and we agreed that the stuff that happens on the streets and sidewalks is just retail weirdness. In the alleys, the weirdness gets wholesale. But one thing's for sure, the meager locks at the Rivoli are enough to hold it all back. Surviving 2001 proved that.

So after all that, it's a little tough for me to take offense yesterday morning at two twitchy people glancing around furtively waiting for the right moment to light up. Addiction is its own punishment.

Sizzecond and Blizzanchard!!

Home sweet home!
Behold, the Rivoli! It's where I do my livin', whether I'm jus' cold chillin', cold sleepin', or cold cookin' dinner. In the 2nd & Blanchard environs, the Castle is grander, the Humphrey is newer, but the Rivoli has the most soul.

It's 99 years old and it sure shows. I moved in right after they finished rehabbing the place, because almost half the units were uninhabitable. That was 1990. Rent on my first studio was $255. Today I live in a small one-bedroom that is probably the draftiest apartment in the whole building. My rent is much higher. Sure I've thought about moving somewhere else many times, but I stay at the Rivoli. These days, I can't really afford to live anywhere else, so it's kind of a moot point.

And yes, the Rivoli is totally on the "haunted Belltown" tour. You know something? Some of their tales about this place are actually true.