Belltown Messenger #76 by Alexander Mayer

in 1853) has held services at Seattle Children’s Theatre during the new building’s construction.

NO. 76

FEBRUARY 2010

Front Page

FODDER I

t’s been more than a decade since the last edition of Belltown Inside Out, our neighborhood’s onetime annual festival. Wait no longer! The first Seattle Founders Day Festival is coming this Aug. 1415. Ben Borgman of Bedlam Coffee’s organizing it. He’s hoping it will include live music, a mini parade, and assorted family friendly activities. Planning meetings are being held at Bedlam, 2231 2nd Ave., 3 p.m. each Wednesday.

FREE

for recovering alcoholics and addicts is now at 2022 Boren. The triangle-shaped building at Boren, Denny, and Fairview was previously the Fairview Club banquet facility,. Before that, it was the HQ of designer-jean company Britannia.

Also now on Denny is First United Methodist Church. Its new building at 180 Denny Way opened Jan. 31 with a cornerstone laying and consecration ceremony. As you may recall, First Methodist put its landmark 1907 building at Fifth and Marion up for sale in 2007, at the height of the real estate boom. A planned site swap with developer Martin Selig, which would have had a new church built at Third and Battery, fell through. Instead, another developer bought the old building, and reopened it as the Daniels Recital Hall. First Methodist (Seattle’s oldest church, founded

Clark

The Recovery Cafe, previously at two successive locations on Second Avenue, has moved again. The drop-in and support center

belltownmessenger.com

Election Wackiness: 3 Flying (Fish) Away: 4 Happiness?: 6 Seattle Funny: 8

Debunking Belltown Belltown ’s Bad Reputation

FEBRUARY 2010

belltownmessenger.com

FREE

Not ﬁne dining, just a ﬁne diner

415 Cedar Street in Belltown

WIDE OPEN 24 HOURS

NO. 76

Alex R. Mayer

HERE IT IS NOW: Been wondering when Seattle would get a permanent, tangible Kurt Cobain memorial other than that bench in Viretta Park? Wonder no longer. Here’s the “giant Cobain-inspired guitar” neon sign for the new Hard Rock Cafe on Pike Street. You know, the bar/restaurant/club/merch shop that was supposed to have opened last summer.

Damaged Goods, the music and second-hand shop we teased about last month, is now open at 2316 2nd Ave. That’s the former BLVD/ Halogen gallery space next to Roq La Rue. Its operator, former Screaming Trees drummer Mark Pickerel, has brought in hundreds of rare LPs, plus select new CDs, vintage clothes, posters, books, outré toys, and art. Pickerel may host occasional gallery shows in the space as well. Also now on Second: Under the Needle Tattoo, moved from Sixth Avenue to 2118 Second. Its colorful storefront bears retro window lettering promising “Books, Supplies, Soft Goods,” a la an oldtime general store.

Freehold Theatre (2222 2nd Ave.) holds its 15th annual Studio Series Feb. 5-27. Each weekend of the festival features a different set of plays, cabarets, and dance/performance pieces created by Freehold staff, students, and alums; the last weekend features bestof-the-fest encores. Call 206-3237499 or contact freeholdtheatre. org/studio/studio-series.

the Market Place Tower on First Avenue. They’re in the former offices of Cranium, the local boardgame maker that got bought and closed by Hasbro.

Two long-stalled Belltown development projects might (just might, mind you) be “on” again. The First and Stewart Hotel, long planned for the parking-lot site at 1900 First, is back in the works, according to developer Touchstone Corp. The 11-story project would include 75 apartments, 100 hotel rooms, and 5,000 square feet of retail space, all inside a “mis-stacked” glass box

structure. Touchstone has started the process for a construction permit; once the permit’s approved, it will be valid for 18 months. SeattlePI.com blogger Lydia Heard believes construction could start late this year or early next. Heard also sees hope for another long-dormant project, a 43story apartment/hotel tower at the northeast corner of Third and Virginia, based on the developer’s recent application for a minor change to its planned underground parking garage. This project’s current construction permit expires in June. –CH b

Because the world needs you now.

Nightlife beat: Rock n’ roll on a DJ night? That’s what Del Rey (2332 1st Ave.) now offers Thursdays under the title “Corgi Love,” hosted by DJs Breelah and Sam Rousso. Copper Cart (113 Bell St.) is now no-cover on Fridays. DJs Sean Majors and Hyperfunk spin a house/dance/pop mix starting at 10 p.m.

Redfin, a real-estate dot-com, has moved from Pioneer Square to

Organizational Psychology graduates Kimberly Lengle, Michelle Van Sant Chamberlain and Rachel Snyder.

Apply for Spring Graduate degrees and B.A. completion program

Discover.AntiochSeattle.edu

antioch UNIVERSITY SEATTLE

2326 Sixth Ave., Seattle, WA 98121 206-268-4202 or 888-268-4477 admissions@antiochseattle.edu

2219 2nd Ave. – Belltown

441-4738

www.belltownbarber.com

HNO NOT AGAIN: Alaska Airlines is sponsoring an official fan site for Belltown’s own Olympic speed-skating champ, Apolo Anton Ohno. The site’s name, “followapolo.com,” reminds me of “Mr. Apollo,” a ‘60s novelty classic by the Bonzo Dog Band (written as a tribute to a fictional bodybuilding teacher): “Follow Mr. Apollo Everybody knows he’s the greatest benefactor of mankind Follow Mr. Apollo Everybody knows that a healthy body Makes a healthy mind.” WASH THE STRESS AWAY? (from the instructions on an outof-print VHS yoga tape): “Imagine water coming in through your nose, and all the way down into your stomach. And as you inhale, your stomach expands outward. The water comes in, stacks on top of itself, until it catches all the way up to the throat.” THE FUTURE’S NOT WHAT IT USED TO BE: “Don’t you agree with me that, in some things, the old fashioned ways are best?”

• February 2010

This line from Barbarella might describe the mini-todo over SIFF Cinema’s “Sci-Fi on Blu-Ray” series. They’re showing 12 Monkeys, Planet of the Apes, 2001, Logan’s Run, and The Man Who Fell to Earth in the modern hi-def home DVD format, projected onto a theater size screen. The folks at the Northwest Film Forum, noting that Blu-Ray’s hidef is still lower-def than film itself, quickly scheduled a 35mm screening of Planet of the Apes the same night as SIFF’s Blu-ray version, then canceled it “in the spirit of community.” THE BIGGER APPLE: A diarist at DailyKos.com, using the nom de web Devilstower, alleges the rumored Apple iPad tablet heralds a new online-media dichotomy: “Apple is building an alternative ecoClark Humphrey system that uses the Internet’s backbone covered with their own cross-device platform.... They have a massive presence in the media realm, but they don’t have anything to offer that competes with the freewheeling world of blogs and the rapidly changing social media space.” Elsewhere, Devilstower refers to the “dinosaurs” of old closedsystem networks such as Prodigy and the original AOL, and implies that’s what Apple’s trying to recreate. I see something else. The Web, for all its expandability and gate-free access, has severe limitations for professional, packaged content. It doesn’t allow for real typography, at least not without complex workarounds. It

Don Ennes

Your Realtor In Belltown Pictures at donennes.mywindermere.com

FEATURED PROPERTY FOR FEBRUARY:

The Parc Very Rare: • 1bd, 1ba, 775sq ft • Gas, Hardwoods • SS Appliances A/C • HUGE private deck • Storage & Parking • MLS #1290

81 Clay Street #722

$465,000 Don Ennes

Windermere Real Estate / Wall Street Inc.

(206) 355-7251 2420 2nd Ave. (&Wall) donennes@windermere.com

donennes.mywindermere.com

Documenting Downtown Seattle

doesn’t allow for complex graphic design. Web-based content can’t command a price partly because readers don’t perceive it something of value. The Web won’t go away any time soon. If it ever does, it will be succeeded by something that does what the Web does best, only better. I’m thinking of chats, social networking, discussion threads, blogs, real-time information, and the whole ongoing mashup of different media from different places and times. But fully integrated, depthheavy works of the communication arts will be better served by the iPad and similar platforms. Until something better succeeds them. THE LAST LAFF: Robin Williams was on the next-to-last Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien. Williams had also been on the next-to-last Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. It’s a tribute to

Clark Humphrey’s

MISC

O’Brien and Williams that neither felt the need to announce this. My take on the whole two-week minicrisis that was the Late Night Wars? Leno should never have been offered five hours a week of network prime time. That immediately lowered NBC to the status of a secondary network along the lines of The CW, and made Leno’s own schtick seem as tired and overworked as, well, it is. No, the Leno primetime show should have been a weekly or twice-weekly franchise. Like Dateline or Deal Or No Deal, it could have become a programming backstop the network could plug into any troublesome timeslot. Now we’ll never know how that could have worked. And we’re not likely to get comedy-variety back in prime time for some time. DEAD AIR DEPT.: Air America Radio, the high-profile attempt to build a national network devoted exclusively to left-O-center talk, suddenly shut down. This is NOT the end of liberal talk radio. The local stations (such as the CBS-owned KPTK in Seattle) that had carried AAR’s shows have also carried liberal shows from other distributors. These shows continue. The remaining AAR personalities are now free to sign with these other distributors. They include the Seattle-based Ron Reagan, the last AAR host on KPTK’s pre-midnight schedule. So what did AAR in? Why did it flail about in fiscal instability for six years? It wanted to start up from scratch as an all-day, coast-to-coast, unified force in broadcasting. That’s not how antenna-based broadcasting works. You’ve gotta start one station at a time, and build each

Clark

2 MISC BELLTOWN MESSENGER #76

CONAN O’BRIEN fans held a hastily arranged support rally in Westlake Park on Jan. 18.

“We’re not likely to get comedyvariety back in prime time for some time.” show in each region. That’s what the conservative talkers did, back in the 1980s and 1990s. JUST DON’T VOTE FOR ‘PLASTIC SURGEON’: Mattel’s got a Web page where you can vote for Barbie’s next profession. The choices offered, of course, disappoint. I mean, Let’s have some Barbie jobs for the modern age: • Twitter Update Ghost Writer Barbie! • Bankruptcy Attorney Barbie! • Life Coach Barbie! • Goldman Sachs Bonus Barbie! • iPhone App Designer Barbie! • Outplacement Counselor Barbie! • Doggie Daycare Barbie! • User Experience Consultant Barbie! • Day Spa Towel Maid Barbie! • Chinese Barbie Doll Assembly Worker Barbie! WILL THIS CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN?: Occasionally, readers ask why I stopped writing the “Junk Food of the Month,” a once popular part of this site. I just fell out of the practice two or three diets ago. But now I am happy to report having seen and consumed Top Pot’s Elvis Doughnut. It’s “a raised sugar doughnut with a maple cream frosting and studded with caramelized bacon bits.” It was only at Top Pot’s Belltown location, and only there one day.

It’s not as gross as it sounds. It’s quite good, in fact. It’s like a sweet bacon pancake at room temperature. A Portland shop offers a similar product on its regular menu. Would Top Pot consider this as a regular offering? Maybe if you ask hard and often enough. THE POSITIVE AND ITS NEGATIVES: You don’t have to open Barbara Ehrenreich’s latest book, Bright Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America to know what it’ll say. She blames positive thinking (and its tendrils in religion, business, and pop psychology) for infantilizing its followers, for leading those now-popped economic bubbles, and for the Bush gang’s drives into war. Like many left-wing essay books, it comprises a long sequence of complaints, with only the briefest hint of possible solutions stuck in at the very end. She loathes uncritical, unquestioning “positivity,” but she doesn’t want people to be hooked on depression or stress either. So what’s left? Social and political activism, she suggests. But I’ve seen plenty of “activists” get stuck in their own emotional trips (self-aggrandizing protests, feel-good “lifestyle choices,” sneering against the “sheeple,” et al.). They get to feel powerful, or righteous, or smug, or superior to the sap masses. And nothing changes. World-changing and personal therapy, I believe, are different thangs. Still, there is a psychological benefit to helping people. That was one of the messages in This Emotional Life, the recent Paul Allen-produced PBS miniseries. Another message was when an interviewee said, “The opposite of depression isn’t happiness. The opposite of depression is vitality.” That meets with something I wrote about the Obama inauguration. The “hope” Obama talked about wasn’t pie-in-the-sky positive thinking. It was acknowledging that work needed to be done, then doing it. LET’S CLOSE THIS with the recently deceased sportscasting legend Bob Blackburn’s longtime closing line to his KIRO-AM sports reports: “This is Bob Blackburn, reminding you that sportsmanship is a part of our American tradition. Be a good sport, whatever you do. So long.” b

belltownmessenger.com

BELLTOWN MESSENGER #76

• February 2010

ZANDER BATCHELDER wants a better boulevard

Bell Street’s New Direction

are too standard for Belltown. There is nothing about them that says, “Come to Bell Street and linger.” Nothing that encourages you to hang out or take a picture. This is especially important when you consider the competition for Zander Batchelder the souls of pedestrians that are nearby at Pike Place and the Olympic Sculpture Park. The designs presented so far evoke the historic regrading of Denny Hill. Somehow they missed

Race of a Lifetime (John Heilemann, Mark Halperin). Yes, Battle … came out last year, but it actually makes a nice pairing with Game Change, which covers the same period. Johnson and Balz, both Washington Post vets, relate their version of the story with an eye for detail and sober reflection, tossing in a few livelier anecdotes for spice (e.g. Hillary Clinton knocking back shots Gillian G. Gaar with John McCain and Lindsay Graham while touring the Baltics). There’s much analysis of strategy, revealing that, for all their years of experience, Clinton and McCain ran astonishingly poor campaigns. As the analytical approach signifies, This Is A Serious Book. Conversely, Game Change focuses on personality. It’s the gossip tome; The Economist recently dubbed it “high quality political porn,” though admitting it was “horribly compulsive.” Heilemann and Helperin have unearthed a wealth of juicy tidbits, albeit from “deep background” interviews, meaning they’re largely anonymous (Battle … is scrupulously footnoted). You could even subtitle the book “Candidates Gone Wild.” There’s the luckless John Edwards, driven by the wife who berates him into the arms of a star-struck videographer who introduces herself to people by saying, “I’m a witch” and gushing to Edwards that he can be right up there with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi. There’s Hillary Clinton spitting out “Unfuckingbelievable!” when her quotes are yet again taken out of context by the fiendish press. There’s Barack Obama … well, he gets a bit of a free pass because he’s The One, isn’t he? (Battle … handles Obama in a similar fash-

the massive Gyro Jack sculpture in the Dog Park that already does this and the fact that the neighborhood has taken up the name “Belltown” and dropped the “Denny

“Bll Street is due for a complete makeover in 2010.” Regrade” handle. Another design echoes Bell Street’s “Film Row” era of decades past. After its own

revamping, 2nd Ave has a lot of these over-thought and too-subtle features that are lost on most people. How many people understand what those red board objects in the sidewalk mean? I can’t say that I do, and I lived on 2nd for over a decade. I think that, like the ‘62 World’s Fair, it should not be retrospective but firmly rooted in the now and looking confidently at the future. Belltown, like Seattle, is a mix of many things. Instead of four blocks sharing one design, I’d like to see eight half blocks each

with their own theme. It could be a physical demonstration of different urban design ideas. I’d like to see eight unique stations celebrating what makes our city tick. They should stand out the way the “Angie’s Umbrella” sculpture at Western and Lenora does. These muses of Music, Science, Speech, Commerce, Rest, Art, Play and History would dance along Bell Street. Some would be passive for quiet Tuesday mornings and some would be active for busy weekends and holidays. b

messenger Archives

s you may have heard, Bell Street is due for a complete makeover in 2010. The city will soon spend $2.5 million from the Parks and Green Spaces levy to create a new pedestrian park along Bell Street from 5th to 1st Ave. The project has generated a lot of interest, drawing hundreds of Belltowners to two presentation meetings. A third presentation meeting is scheduled for March, so there is still time to make your comments. On that note, I’d like to chime in. The designs submitted so far

#76 b FEBRUARY 2010 b Since 2003 EDITOR Clark Humphrey editor@belltownmessenger.com

WRITERS Zander Batchelder, Gillian G. Gaar, Ronald Holden, Bob Oswald, Mary Lou Sanelli, Naomi Stenberg FILM EDITOR Gillian G. Gaar BELLTOWN DINING Ronald Holden PHOTOGRAPHER Louie Raffloer CO-FOUNDER & GURU Elaine Bonow LEGAL ADVISOR George Clark PUBLISHER Alex R. Mayer — 206-331-6031 alex@belltownmessenger.com

Belltown Messenger

õSNAIL MAIL DROP: 2306 4th Avenue Seattle, WA 98121

206-331-6031 For information about advertising contact

Alex R. Mayer 206-331-6031 alex@belltownmessenger.com THE BELLTOWN MESSENGER IS PUBLISHED IN ASSOCIATION WITH PACIFIC PUBLISHING CO. INC.

BELLTOWN ADVERTISING Carolyn Trujillo — 206-461-1285 mptsales@nwlink.com

ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Leilani McCoy — 206-461-1293 pacsales@nwlink.com

Mondo Culture-O

Candidates Gone Wild ion.) Oooh, and does John McCain ever gnash his teeth over that double standard! He gets so discomfited he selects Sarah Palin as his running mate, and we know how well that worked out. Though Game Change actually conjures up some sympathy for Sarah, thrown into the spotlight with no time to get her sea legs, and then increasingly marginalized by the campaign as she becomes a liability. Nonetheless, it was still unnerving to read that Palin thought her se-

“Why would any intelligent, sane person ever want to run for public office?” lection as Veep-to-be was part of “God’s plan.” Given the outcome, one wonders if in fact God chose her to give her a lesson in humility. One of the ironies of the story is being reminded how Democratic leaders were afraid Clinton was too polarizing a figure and thus pushed for Obama to run. Yet partisan gridlock nonetheless remains firmly entrenched in DC, preventing anything meaningful from be-

ing accomplished. Which brings us to the moment when those fissures really started becoming apparent, during the (Bill) Clinton years. Ken Gormley’s massive The Death Of American Virtue: Clinton Vs. Starr (the main text is nearly 700 pages) traces the persecution of the president from the Whitewater debacle (more the fault of would-be developer Jim McDougal than either Clinton) to a blow-byblow account of the impeachment proceedings. What’s striking about the attacks on Clinton is how they set up the now familiar template of attacking candidates simply because you don’t like them; hence they must be bad people. It’s a template based solely on inspiring knee-jerk reactions, appealing to a mob mentality. Whatever happened to having rational discussions about why a particular candidate’s policies are bad, and most importantly, what your candidate has to offer that’s better? Instead we have screaming matches between pundits on the cable networks that have basically transformed all news magazine shows into “infotainment.” After Republicans were unable to hobble Clinton via a money scandal in Whitewater (two independent counsels, including Ken

Starr, couldn’t find anything to prosecute), Clinton handed them a goldmine in the form of a sex scandal (and quite why Clinton chose to imperil himself when he was already being persecuted would be a book in itself). Yet even this didn’t bring the man down and the sore feelings have festered ever since. The triumph of Gormley’s book is that he managed to talk to many of the main players: Clinton, Starr, Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp, Paula Jones, Susan McDougal (Jim’s wife; he died in 1998). This means you’re presented with the viewpoints of each side. Indeed, Gormley plays it straight down the middle so well, whether you’re a Clinton or a Starr supporter you’ll feel your own view is the one that’s most justified. In other words, this scathing, heartbreaking, always thoroughly absorbing book is unlikely to change anyone’s already firmly held preconceptions. And there’s another subtext to all three books, one which, it could be argued, does a great disservice to our country. Because they each pose the question: after seeing what they’d be put through, why would any intelligent, sane person ever want to run for public office? b

Fair Use™

s I write this, it’s one year on from Barack Obama’s historic inauguration. But we still can’t get enough of dissecting his long road to the White House, as evidenced by the books Battle For America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election (Haynes Johnson, Dan Balz) and Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the

• February 2010

belltownmessenger.com/delicious

Messenger Archives

4 BELLTOWN DINING BELLTOWN MESSENGER #76

RONALD HOLDEN watches a Belltown institution depart

The Fish is Flying

hen Chris Keff launched Flying Fish at the corner of 1st and Bell almost 15 years ago, Belltown was still called the Denny Regrade, a culinary wasteland considered far too sketchy for a classy restaurant. To be sure, Marco’s Supper Club and Macrina Bakery had just opened to keep her company, but the concept of a local seafood restaurant with Asian overtones was considered, well, “too Ronald Holden San Francisco.” But Keff had paid her dues: the Four Seasons in New York, McCormick & Schmick and the Hunt Club in Seattle. Her flavors were new and honest, with (for the time) unusual fish (branzino, opah) and exotic preparations (curries, stir-fries, lemongrass). Within a couple of years, the Fish was ranked one of Seattle’s top restaurants and Chris herself was named Best Chef in the Northwest/Hawaii by the James Beard Foundation. Flying Fish caught on, took hold, and prospered. From the start, it was a hip spot, and as the line snaked out the door and her management responsibilities grew, Chris recruited talented and unassuming chef Steve Smrstik to watch the stoves, and an experienced, New Zealand-born wine guy, Brian Huse, to build an awardwinning wine list and run frontof-the-house. A four-year fling with a romantic South American (Fandango) didn’t work out; Keff retreated to what she knows

best, Northwest seafood. Kitchen managers came & went (Smrstik was succeeded by Angie Roberts; Huse by Guy Kugel), an oyster happy hour remained (4-6 nightly, 50-cent oysters). And she turned her interests to sustainable agriculture and organic farming. On the restaurant’s 10th anniversary, the menu for the first time carried these words: “All of our raw ingredients are organic or harvested from the wild.” Then, last month, prompted by a query from Belltown Messenger publisher Alex R. Mayer, Cornichon sent Keff an email:

Hi Chris, Cornichon has ears & spears in many places, & hears that FF is planning to leave 1st Ave for fresher waters. But where? and when? Info much appreciated, Happy holidays, This was the reply:

Hey Ron--no hard info as of yet. Will let you know as soon as I do. Hope you have a very happy holiday. Chris And there she was, standing at the passe on New Year’s Eve, making sure that every plate prepared by her kitchen crew passed muster. Cornichon was on hand and posted this next day. 10:00 Full house at Flying Fish. At the passe, Chris Keff doesn’t exactly deny rumors that the restaurant is moving to South Lake Union. “No hard info,” she says. Turns out, it’s true. Flying Fish has been reeled in by Paul Allen’s Vulcan Real Estate, developer of South Lake Union, which he

Belltown’s Best Cuisine of India Open s 7 Dayek A We

Tandoori Hut Cuisine of India

2616 2nd Ave Belltown

206-443-6002

TandooriHutofSeattle.com Daily Lunch Buffet M-F 11-3, Sat 11:30-3 Candlelight Dinner 3-10 Nightly

Dine In • Take Out • Catering • Parties — FREE Dinner — Buy One Dinner Entree & 2 Drinks at Regular Price, Get 2nd Dinner Entree of Equal or Lesser Value FREE! (Value Up To $10) Dine-in only. With coupon only. One coupon per party. Expires 3-15-10

wants to make into a serious urban neighborhood. To that end, he’s importing home-grown restaurants like the Fish. More power to him, and bravo to Keff as well. Just be sure you keep the Oyster Happy Hour! Who might be next? The obvious choice is Tom Douglas, who already has half a dozen outlets downtown, all along the axis of Virginia Street. The Vulcan properties are only three blocks away. A new Palace Kitchen isn’t that far fetched, though we hear it’s more likely to be a bigger Dahlia Bakery. Newcomers

They come, bleary or hopeful, waking up or winding down, to Belltown’s newest spot, The Night Kitchen. Hard to believe the stir, 40 years ago, caused by the illustration of little Mickey’s pee-pee when In the Night Kitchen first saw light of day. Avalon Zanoni, Art Institute grad, chef & baker, brushes aside all the

“Flying Fish has been reeled in by Paul Allen’s Vulcan Real Estate.” gender-squeamishness and concentrates instead on NK’s role-playing possibilities. In the space formerly occupied by Entre Nous, she and her stouthearted team have just launched Seattle’s first overnight restaurant that is, unlike greasy 24-hour diners, aimed at a sleepless hipster mainstream as well as underserved denizens of the alternative LGBT universe. Yes, plus night owls, insomniacs, club-goers and shift workers. Downtown location (216 Stewart, two blocks from the Market), no phone but a twitter feed (@night_kitchen), opening hours from 6 PM until 9 the next morning. There’s a new lounge with a mural full of visual puns (the Space Needle is an upside-down whisk) and board games (Food Wars). And, as soon as the liquor license comes through, a bar where Australian Zach Setter can do more than practice his lemonade-making skills. Meantime, Zanoni and her

crew are busy turning out steakfrites, chicken pot pie and duck pork burgers. You get the feeling Maurice Sendak would be proud, mighty proud.

The Night Kitchen nightkitchenseattle.com Allow let us rectify a serious oversight and omission from last month’s Bravo Awards. Without fanfare, without a PR machine, two of Seattle’s best cocktailers have moved into Belltown’s Rob Roy. Zane Harris and Anu Apte bought the lounge from Linda Dershang four months ago and have built a following simply by making superb drinks. Cornichon hadn’t poked in since its first week of biz (as Viceroy) many full moons ago, and found nothing of note beyond stale goldfish and an oppressive crush of Young & Restless. Well, the goldfish are still around (fresher now), supplemented by a short menu of bar snacks produced by Zane’s father, a longtime professional chef. The lighting is still dim but the spirits are decidedly brighter. Welcome, welcome, welcome! Rob Roy robroyseattle.com Casualties of war Withdrawing from the battlefield as their lease expires is Belltown Bistro, one of five in the BluWater Bistro group and the only one not actually on the water. (The others are on Eastlake, Greenlake, Leschi and Kirkland; the owners are closing the Kirkland store as well.) Landlord is Belltown’s biggest curmudgeon, Brooke Barnes, who keeps his own name on the liquor license to give himself more leverage with his tenants. Remember the old Belltown Pub? The exodus when that lease expired five or six years ago prompted manager Tim Buckley to start his own pub in Lower Queen Anne (only to roar back into Belltown some years later with Buckley’s Belltown), and others to join Ivo Yonev at the old Firefly (changing the name to Lumette). Given the tendency along First Avenue, I’d look for a Twist-y, Blush-ing boutique nightclub in the Bistro space before long. Bruce Pinkerton has closed his Urban Wine Bar at the corner of 2nd and Denny. No surprise, really, given that he’d already moved his Designed Dinners into the new

space on Elliott Avenue that he named Urban Cafe. Regardless of what their website says, Mike’s East Coast Sandwiches is no longer crowding into that tiny space on Cedar in Belltown, by the way. They’ve moved into larger quarters in the International District. Blush opened on New Year’s Eve to the glare of portable searchlights and a phalanx of oversized security guards. Inside, a DJ could be seen spinning tunes. Anything’s an improvement on Whym, we suppose. We hear persistent stories that Ventana’s not long for this world. They were packed on New Year’s Eve, but you could shoot a cannon through the place on weeknights without causing the slightest bodily harm. Trouble is, Ventana shares a kitchen with Twist, a club that seems to be doing just fine. They also go, quietly into that good rainy night of warm fellowship and hot food, from Emerald City to The City. Quietly sipping a last americano at Muse on Queen Anne. Jonathan Kauffman, Seattle Weekly’s food and restaurant writer for three years, moves on, moves back, actually, to the same paper he left, no longer relegated to the East Bay suburbs. The joke was on SF Weekly: Kauffman found more good eats in the ethnic enclaves of the “hinterlands” than downtown, and he brought that same sense of discovery to Seattle, finding figurative Peruvian treasures in the strip malls of White Center and caches of Korean cuisine beyond Crossroads. A critic like Jonathan – fair, honest, curious, a former cook who respects the hard work that goes into a restaurant – benefits not just his readers but the entire community. Helps that he’s a damn good writer, too, having won Best Newspaper Restaurant column from the Association of Food Journalists in 2009 and James Beard winner three years earlier for his work at the East Bay Express. His successor in Seattle, James Sheehan, is another James Beard winner and author of Cooking Dirty, subtitled “A Story of Life, Sex, Love and Death in the Kitchen.” Sheehan’s been at the Weekly’s sister paper in Denver, the Westword.

Pike Place Market Creamery

Ronald’s blog: cornichon.org Raw Milk • Local Eggs • Goat Milk

Like nothing else in Seattle

Soy and Vegan • Yogurts

Open 7 days a week

Butters • Cute Cow Gifts

Pike Place Market: Seattle’s Own since 1907

1514 Pike Place #3 (30-minute zone for easy in & out parking)

(206) 622-5029

Milk in Glass Bottles & mooooore

belltownmessenger.com

BELLTOWN MESSENGER #76

• February 2010 FEATURE

ALEX R. MAYER is foiled by the Google Voice service

Debunking Belltown’s Bad Reputation

ast Friday I set out with some friends to counteract all the bad press our beloved Belltown has been getting from folks who don’t understand what city living is like. And while seeking out Belltown’s reputed tossed salad of alkie crackheads and sexed-up weekend warriors, I spoke some of my thoughts about that into voicemails, which were then transcribed into text and emailed back to me by the new Google Voice service. An exciting new offering from Google. Perfect for someone like me Alex R. Mayer who can’t type. (Note to self: begin dictating acceptance speech for the National Book Award into phone.) I invited Clark (fifty-something), Elaine (sixty-something) and Ronald (indeterminate age) to join me (don’t ask) for a Belltown romp. Certainly not the typical neighborhood shiny-shirted chug-andpuke weekend clubber crowd, this group. Some of us have been making an appearance at the Two Bells Tavern (and before that the Virginia Inn) every Friday night for decades, long before the current herd of glossed-up Belltown club rats were born. Belltown’s reputation is now being tarnished 24/7 in the shadowy world of neighborhood blogs. The new online-only SeattlePI. com has some unedited citizen-run blogs going at their Insidebelltown section, including stuff (often repurposed from other blogs) from Cyd Gillis, Ronald Holden and Igor Keller. There’s one Belltown newbie who writes there, David Nelson, who is wary of leaving his house after 9pm, and that irks me. “The lack of sufficient police patrolling allows bad things to happen at night. Shoot, I’m at home by 9 pm,” he said in one of his many Belltown-related posts, perhaps implying that the SPD neglects the neighborhood. Nelson is a former Marine. He’s learned twelve different ways to kill a guy with his bare hands. Do you have to be a freakin’ Navy Seal to venture out on the streets and clear the way for the Marines? Do you have to be Delta Force? Or would Rambo himself get his ass kicked out there by those low-level crack dealers on the northeast corner of Third and Bell that we walked by several times throughout the night without incident? Many of Belltown’s 10,000 residents avoid going out after 9; is it really that bad out there? Granted, the 1:30-2am scene in Belltown is often rough, but that’s not the focus of this article. When the bars let out and the booze and drugs that the clubbers have been sucking down throughout the night mix with cigarettes and testosterone and cheap perfume from Wal Mart, it’s a sure-fire catalyst for violence. We’ll save that for another feature. Maybe a police ridealong or something. “Enough of this lollygagging, it’s time to get the Google voice-recognition software humming and head out on the town!” I barked into my cell phone as I walked down Pike Street. Just another distracted jerk wandering around interacting with a computer while shutting out the real world. One in a million. At least I wasn’t holding a latte, or wearing a corporate ID badge around my neck while walking with two of my identical buddies while holding a latte. The first message I received af-

ter signing up for Google Voice was a political robocall which Google garbled from “Please remember to vote yes on both these levies” into “Please remember to vote yes on both Israelis.” A hot button issue: those Israelis increasing our school taxes and such. I’m assuming that the CIA or NSA or whoever is actually tracking terror suspects and other hardcore criminals has better speech-recognition technology than this. Google Voice is an English-destroying engine. Perhaps the Chinese have hacked the service and are mutilating our native tongue as a way of corrupting our morals. Or maybe the government censors over there are doing it strictly for kicks. There are other products on the market that almost certainly provide better service than Google Voice (see sidebar) but they are not free. More distractions: Elaine and I stopped at Loving Hut in Seattle’s Little Vietnam to fuel up before meeting the other cross coots of our group. The Hut was known as

“Would Rambo himself get his ass kicked out there by those low-level crack dealers?” Vegan Garden until recently, but the same Buddhist vegan owners run the place. I ordered the clear mung bean noodle soup and Elaine had the Lemongrass Tofu Vermicelli and we got the golden rolls and sip tea. I told my voicemail that I was getting a “spicy noodle platter”; it interpreted this for me as “spicy from google platter.” Corporate advertising has now so permeated every aspect of life that it informs me I referenced a giant corporation when talking about noodles to myself in a supposedly private conversation. No wonder the service is “free.” We’re not learning anything about Belltown crime at Loving Hut way up on Jackson Street, so we head out into the night with bellies full of peppery animal-free goodness.

BUDDHA BELLTOWN

Then we inhale more vegan tofu noodle soup at Buddha Belltown, a dive bar which makes Thai food on the side. Elaine knows the lady who cooks in the back, and she does us up right. Now we have what my friends in the Navy call a “drinking base”: a belly full of food to soak up the night’s alcohol. And so the drinking began, and the wandering around. Peoplewatching ... eye candy ... the unwashed and barely-washed masses and the very clean, too ... all of them mingling and mixing and walking and having a good time. A city! A night in Belltown and all the ambient noise that that entails provided for some fun Google Voice hogwash and garbled bullcrap (see “Google Voice is a Balderdash Engine” sidebar for complete transcript).

Actual audio message: “Umi Sake house – a line out the door.” Google Voice transcription: “Give me a sucky house line out the door.” You get the idea. Honest mistakes that any computer would make, because computers are idiots. I notice that, as with any Friday night, most Belltown eateries and drinkeries are packed. Friday’s the money night, even in the off-season. Good for them. Screw the crime rumors, say their customers. La Fontana on Blanchard was empty, though. Some restaurants run their course after fifteen or twenty years, yet hang on like ghouls. “That’s what you get for having 35 dollar entrees during the second Republican Great Depression,” I told my cell phone as we walked by, ignoring a throng of panhandlers. Did I give Elaine any kudos yet for being a trooper? She suffers from cold weather-induced urticaria, and gets real uncomfortable when the temperature dips below 45 degrees or so. And there I was dragging her out of the Two Bells for a freezing journey through throngs of scented young girls in cheap low-cut cocktail dresses and spike heels. Sometimes fashion trumps comfort, and warmth is not an option when you’re the type of young lady who feels a need to trot out your giblets in front of a parade of leering, drunken louts. And that was the scene at the Crocodile. We ducked into the back of Via Tribunali for a pizza, where we could continue to watch the chicken-run from the comfort of a warm booth. Nice. After enjoying many “Belltown Ringers” (vodka, tonic and cranberry on the rocks in a pint glass) and several MSE’s (meaningless social encounters), Elaine recapped our night with a final voicemail, saving me from the difficult chore of trying to wrap up this shamefully disjointed article. My style of writing reads like a series of seemingly unrelated paragraphs strung together by a madman held by a chain just out of reach of a clay jug filled with contaminated moonshine. Thank you, Elaine, for putting all this hokum about Belltown being a terror-zone of pimps and pushers and defecators into perspective with one quick, blunt message: “Yeah, we had a good time out in Belltown. It would be better if I was like thirty years younger ... forty years younger. But you know it was nice, people were nice, there were no problems. “I mean you got the thuggies that hang out on one corner but no one even looks at you, nobody pays any attention to you. They’re just out trying to get their little hoo-ha on. You know, if you wanted some whores or something like that it’s good ... out in Belltown. If you want to just look like a whore it’s good, out in Belltown. You know, Belltown is where people go who want to have some fun. What’s the crime in that? Yeah, we had a great time. So next time it will be warmer, since now it’s the dead of winter. We’ll have to do it when it’s hot and the girls that are (barely) dressed in really short short skirts and no sleeves and really high heel shoes will look like normal people.” b Want to learn more about speech recognition technology? See Be Very Afraid: Biometrics Expert Tells All on page 6.

Google Voice is a Balderdash Engine Here are the Google Voice transcriptions of voicemail from our Belltown adventures of Friday, January 22, 2010. To hear accompanying audio go to belltownmessenger.com/022010/googlebalderdash.html. 1/22/10 4:31 PM “We had some spicy from google platter.” Yeah, okay well. The day started out of the meeting in Georgetown and I got a ticket for pulling my truck in the wrong way. $42 and let us up and we went to Wallingford and we’re digging guarding finishing up incredible. You know, I’d like to clear month. The new bulletin. We had some spicy from google platter. Okay, okay. Alright, I’ll talk to you. Thank you and I’m just talking about. So if you are mumbling face. I’ll talk to you message. 1/22/10 5:43 PM “N we got to get the drugs.” Working fine, okay sir. We’ve been busy in guidance. There are 3. Yeah, I’m looking black guys on the corner of Florence and bell and then i said, i’ll people’s is don’t like back in the black and white wire that hanging out on the corner. Did you got an answer for that. N we got to get the drugs. Otherwise, I’d anyone’s doing this and harming anyone, right. So will be out there checking it out okay. 1/22/10 5:47 PM “Monty can get whatever he wants down here.” Hi, So it was about to start class without an exciting day. Already them what we learned about bellsouth Friday nights. And the people of all ages and races so it about their business rich in 4 bellsouth no murders very little crack activity. If I’m dad to that. Hey everything in there if you want to find it, but if you just out of town good time. Bye later then go let. Monty can get whatever he wants down here if you add a. 1/22/10 6:18 PM “Give me a sucky house line out the door ... “ Google buzz of sign fish. Here I am seeing the cause of empty tables out. Not faction stilts respectable the Friday night, love you nanna. Give me a sucky house line out the door Bible. I’m in the field. I decided live coming up and less what it was less X and I live out the door, see what the hell that is pretty good, so 1st avenue early enough, now inside. Tia Lou’s. I’ve actually been in the door right in. We got some of our trying to get the liquor license back. It switching to do it. Yeah, there you go to Amber. Which is. S. We’re doing a bowl backpacks, but, it’s early dining huge conveys his face. You know if you never make it work. Robert Rosser, you betcha. You know that as well. It’s not working so looking across the street at a hot out here. His nobody pretty good, but your room much okay. You know, I know it’s making a fortune in the front your room. I’m sure. Yeah, Green City grow room for more. It’s Friday night. This is so. 1/22/10 8:18 PM “None of this is who’s going to be transcribe properly.” Yes. Okay. Yeah, this is Alex part of it up and Ronald, none of this is who’s going to be transcribe properly because of the background on the okay. Thanks. Thanks. Okay bye.

1/22/10 8:50 PM “I love of God.” Hello that with you about. And yeah, i didn’t know is far greater then what will. Has like there is anything other than jevez somewhere. Alright, I love of God and then what’s going on. We will be this is not a condition, Hello, this is Jim. Although hey bye, huh. 1/22/10 9:45 PM “That’s all abortions.” Okay the. So how said all our database. You know what it is 930. Well house at 350 Full House at Queen City Grill, so he loses close or the other side of street and they are not that popular. 12 bucks for a valet parking area so mister. Yeah. Bye. Okay, 3 cheese day so please fill ages day Delta billiard sidelines sheet. That’s all abortions. Let’s leave from there as fast as possible couple hot dog. I was going to still cops anywhere and of everything about ohh older people leaving a dinner them. Bye. Yeah, if you’re gonna we’re not gonna make it. You can you not gonna make it. 1/22/10 9:53 PM “Nothing President Willy, I think.” Yes, Hello most of the people having fun here actually gives. Hey sooner little bit about any you letter notice. All kinds of people coming down delivery. Nothing President Willy, I think. Thanks. So what is this is Leslie, My wife will be singers, but you’re not wearing underwear just leggings, black. Yes, she wearing anything at all at the black with that. Call stocking Hello Megan, So very nice and loudly all day. We have been really going to come for the back of the crop it out for a really good her up. So things are a lot better. What is they have things gone downhill. Yeah. Also, there’s no yeah, there’s a lot more stuff. Things come and go over there. Specially like you’re here we are. If you have. You know, mister. Okay bye. 1/22/10 10:45 PM “Wonder Tom and you.” Yeah, we have a good time. I’ll be back in town. It would be better for you if I was like 30 years younger are 4 years, gender, but you know and we are still was nice to have a nice there was no problems when you get the think he said to hang out on one corner but no one even looks action no one pays any attention to you. This is out trying to get there. Little Who on. You know if you wanted some whole room or something like that, just good at Bellsouth. If you want to just look like a horror as good at Del Taco you know. I’ll bet on this or what you wanna have some fun. If not, no crime and you have it on. I don’t know if you’ve lived. Thank you. You know, but we had a good time. So next time, maybe it’ll be warmer cos it is so it’s dad went out but will I have to do it. Wonder Tom and you. Does girl center, not even trash and really short short skirts and those sleeves and really high heel shoes look like normal people instead of like if you know like they are not press. I don’t know what’s up with that everybody all the Haitians into how we’re going to the product out because it was just go night. I don’t know about that. What’s up with that most of built out is just go. It’s hanging out, that’d be cool, but you know most of today, I.

6 HEALTH & WELLNESS BELLTOWN MESSENGER #76

• February 2010

$45 DRY SAFE MOTORCYCLE PARKING (Belltown - Queen Anne) Sick of parking in the rain and having your bike ticketed, turned over, and vandalized? Store your bike safely away from the abrasive weather!

Our garage is safe and dry with a top of the line access system. Clean, spacious and dry, 24 hrs access. Inside a garage with an assigned, marked space. Easy in/out, spacious, well lit inside and outside. Motorcycles are $45 per month. Only a few spots left for motorcycle storage. Park your motorcycle out of the rain and avoid vandals, tickets, thieves, turn-overs and hassles. No storage, motorcycle or motor scooter only. Please do not call if you are looking for storage space for anything other than a motorcycle or motor scooter.

Entry is by garage remote. 24 hr access. Respond to this ad by calling 602-315-2185 or email gaophx@cox.net Thank you.

Be Very Afraid: Biometrics Expert Tells All speech-recognition industry expert and old friend of mine, PJ at Nuance Communications, helped us out with a few questions about Google Voice and the troubling civil-liberties issues mass adoption of this technology might present.

BELLTOWN MESSENGER: It really does take a compu-genius to try and wade through this higher-level telco stuff. As an example: I don’t do texting, but Google Voice not only sends you an email but also a text message, with no option to turn off the feature. Finally I got T-Mobile to disable my expensive text message service. Complicated crap. Would surely be easier if I just switched over to the Google phone (not a free service), as Google so gently prods one to do when signing up for Google Voice. PJ: I’ll jump in and say that you CAN opt to have Google not SMS you. My wife uses Google Voice, but I’m too cheap to buy her an SMS plan, so I went through this. It isn’t completely obvious, though. It took me a bit of searching through message boards before I figured it out: - Google Voice/Settings - Phones - Click Edit button under your mobile phone - Uncheck “Receive SMS on this phone” (mobile phones only) BELLTOWN MESSENGER: Should we be afraid of biometrics? Do governments not use this voicerecognition technology to track the speech of citizens on a mass scale? PJ: Biometrics, such as using a “voiceprint,” can of course be helpful. In typical “Speaker Verification” applications, companies like banks can use your voice as another way to make sure that it really is you before you access your account online, for example. This can add an extra layer of protection against identity theft. In “Speaker Identification,” someone might attempt to identify you simply by matching a sample of your voice against a database of voiceprints. This is a much more difficult task technically, but the government is playing with it (for example, this is one technique they use to determine if that latest audio recording really is Osama bin Laden).

PJ: I should first say that I don’t know the details of how Google does their transcription, but there are some generally accepted methods for how transcription works. In all but the cheapest systems, transcription gets better as it “learns” your voice. For example, if you call me five times from the same phone number, the fifth call should do better, since the system can use what it learned about your voice on the first four calls. Checking back into Paranoia Mode, this means that some entity (Google, the phone company, the government) is building up a model of your voice which might make the Speaker Identification problem I talked about earlier more manageable technically. For commercial customers of voicemail transcription, they may sign up for a higher quality of service, which might mean that live people are listening to the voice-mail you left. The person might always get involved for the first five or so calls (until your voice model is built up) or they might “check the work” of the automated transcription system if the confidence score is low. A friend of mine was curious if Indian transcriptionists were being used on the voicemail transcription system he subscribed to, so he called up and left a message to the effect of “I will meet John Thompson and Fred McMurray at the corner of Chikkapete Street and Doddapete Street,” (these being street names in Indian cities). He found that the street names were transcribed perfectly, whereas the names were misses. Going back to what you said earlier, I think that you should always assume that someone you don’t know may be listening to the message you just left.

BELLTOWN MESSENGER: It’s illegal in many states to record someone’s conversation without their permission, but I’m guessing that if someone leaves you a voice message there’s applied consent: obviously they know they are being recorded. Here’s the legal question: if some random person leaves me a voice-mail message, can I then post it on the Internet, through Google Voice (which makes it easy) or otherwise?

At the end of the day, biometric technology can be helpful or harmful depending on who is using it and what they are trying to do. There are much easier ways for governments to figure out who is using telephone technology than biometrics (for example, by tracking your Caller ID), so I think it’ll be a while before the government tracks you simply by your voiceprint. (And I’m already putting together my plan for a vocal cord replacement business when they do.)

PJ: I’m a technology guy and not a lawyer, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that this is probably a “legal gray area.” Expect to see lots of privacy-related cases before the courts in the coming years as access to personal information becomes more ubiquitous.

BELLTOWN MESSENGER: Now that I’ve gotten the paranoia out of the way, I mean, these days you should take for granted that everything you say and do, on the Internet and off, could be recorded in some form and stored for eternity. So ... is there a live person, say in an office in Bangalore, listening to the voicemail and transcribing it? I notice Google Voice has a delay, and even gives you messages like “your voicemail is being transcribed.”

PJ: It should get better over time as the people who call you frequently leave more messages and get their “models” built up more completely. Having said that, it’ll never work well in situations that an ordinary person would struggle with, i.e. calling from a subway station when the train is going by.

BELLTOWN MESSENGER: When will Google Voice improve to the point where I can get a fairly good transcription of recordings, in all conditions?

There was a company out there who marketed their transcription as giving you the “gist” of the message – not every word would be transcribed perfectly – and I think this is a great way to use

this technology. I’ve been using it for years, and 99% of the time I get enough that I know if I need to call the person back or not. These days I think people who actually dial into a voice-mail system to listen to their messages are chumps. (In a worst case, I’ll just click on the audio file that the transcription service sent me). BELLTOWN MESSENGER: If one were to decide to launch a career as an underground left-wing talk radio DJ but would like his words of wisdom converted into text as well, what software would you recommend? For Mac users. PJ: Nuance’s Dragon Dictation is definitely the best tool out there, but it doesn’t run on the Mac. There is a product called MacSpeech that uses the underlying Dragon Technology. From what I understand, it’s always going to be 1-2 years behind technology-wise from the Dragon product, but it should still be pretty good.

Dragon for iPhone might work for you. There are actually two apps for that one. One lets you do a web search, and that works really, really well. The dictation app is kind of hindered by the ability of the iPhone to run only one app at a time. So you have to dictate into the tool and then make a selection to copy the text to an email or to the clipboard. BELLTOWN MESSENGER: I’ll stick with Google Voice for now. Maybe break down and buy a cheap PC to run Dragon on someday. Not.

PJ: Hey, everyone knows that left-wing talk radio DJs have deep pockets. Buy a PC! BELLTOWN MESSENGER: Nuance purchased Seattle-based jott.com in July. Can you tell me how much Jott was acquired for, and why? What did they have that Nuance wanted?

PJ: I did a quick Google search and determined that “terms of the deal were not disclosed,” so, sorry, I can’t tell you. Jott is an interesting company. They have a voice-mail transcription product (as do Nuance, Google and a few other companies; there’s a race to see who the leaders in that space will be), but they also took a unique approach on what you could do with that information. People use Jott to essentially allow them to make notes to themselves any time inspiration strikes. I think that is compelling, and we’re interested in seeing where you can go with that idea. Personally, I’ve interacted with a few of the Jott folks since the acquisition, and I can say that they are lovely people, like most Seattleites I know.

NAOMI STENBERG is contagious

Happiness Theories

am twelve. I have just jumped into Lake Stevens, the lake in the town of the same name, east of Everett. What I don’t know is my day with my school chum, Laura McDaniels, and her family is about to end. In the water, I have a blurred thought: “a bee stung me.” When I haul myself out, I am surprised. The “bee” was broken glass on the lake floor, and it sliced my foot open. I assess the damNaomi Stenberg age, not a mortal wound, but I will need stitches. I do not want to tell anyone. I have fallen in love with the McDaniels, how I feel when I’m with them. I feel happy. Last year, The British Journal electrified media of all facets by publishing a study. Scientists James Fowler of UCSD and Nicholas Christakis of Harvard had tracked the relationships of 5,000 people over twenty years and come up with a simple yet intriguing conclusion. “Happiness is contagious.” According to their findings, if the happy McDaniels hadn’t moved away and I had continued to hang out with them, my lightness of being would have spread to other friends, friends of friends, even other families. Maybe even my family. Okay, they didn’t say that. The authors found “a statistical relationship, not just between your happiness and your friends’ happiness, but between your happiness and your friends’ friends’ friends’ happiness.” By being happy, you could be making people happy you don’t know, someone in Los Angeles, even Peru. I have to admit the theory is beginning to make me a little nau-

seous but I’m going to try to work with it. Imagine a party closer to home, perhaps Belltown. “You may see some people in quiet corners talking one-on-one,” Fowler said, but the gregarious partygoers having multiple conversations would be the happiest. “Those in the center are more susceptible to the waves of happiness that spread throughout the network.”

This could explain why writers and historians have considered Emily Dickinson to be gifted but not particularly happy. She rarely went to parties. If she did, would have hidden behind a plant. “We introduce ourselves to planets and to flowers, but with ourselves have etiquettes, embarrassments, and awes,” she once penciled, probably on a napkin, sitting behind a plant. When I had my singular day with Laura’s family, I was already a huge fan of Dickinson but had not yet begun to emulate her. I was still, metaphorically, holding a martini with three olives in the middle of the dock. My mirror neurons were firing. Now, here’s a theory about happiness that makes more sense to me. According to the Wikipedia, mirror neurons fire “both when

the animal (and human) acts and when the same action is performed by another. Thus, the neuron mirrors the action of the other.” It’s kind of a spiritual thing. Neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran says these neurons dissolve the barrier between “the self and others.” He calls them “empathy neurons” or “Dalai Lama neurons.” I posit that my microscopic Dalai Lamas were exploding with joy that day at that lake, have exploded since in the company of other happy families, happy friends. Not so much lately. Yesterday morning, I heard a housemate whistling outside my bedroom, and felt a little lift. Not a big lift. But my mirror neurons noted it. Just now, I felt a faint urge to whistle. “Social scientists used to have a straightforward, if tongue-incheek, answer to the question of how to become happy,” Psychology Today blogger Dan Ariel, reports. “Surround yourself with people […] uglier, poorer and shorter than you are -- and unhappily married […]. Compare yourself with these people, and the contrast will cheer you up.” I’ve tried that. Not really. I believe I am essentially cheerful, except when I’m not. Francis Crick, a co-discoverer of the DNA molecule in 1953, once said, “Our conscious experience and sense of self is based entirely on the activity of a hundred billion bits of jelly -- the neurons that constitute the brain.” All social and neurological theories aside, I’m not sure how I’ve attracted the circle of mostly happy people who are my friends. I’m rather short. Could be they’re using me as their contrast.b

SeattlesClassifieds.com

174–Electrical Services

171.1–Housecleaning

• February 2010 CLASSIFIEDS

BELLTOWN MESSENGER #76

SILLY SISTERS JOYFUL HOUSECLEANING

The Electric Co.

Flexible, Thorough, Cheerful & Fast! WE ALSO OFFER FALL YARD CLEANUP.

Available Now! Panel changes and service upgrades our specialty! All types residential and commercial wiring. Stephen Brandeis, Master Electrician . 206-633-3896.

WHY WAIT?

ANY TYPE OF YARD WORK Rockery Clean-Up

Skilled Electricians

Pruning-Weeding

Call Us! BIZ#602096864

Lic.#ELECTCI020BN.

206-367-0375

service@elcose.com .................................................

174–Electrical Services

177–Gardening/ Landscaping

Hedge Trimming Hauling-Bark

New Sod, Retaining Walls General Clean Up

Call-Mike

206-242-4378 Visa/Master Card beautGS957PK

178–Gutters

Gutter Cleaning

KEMLY ELECTRIC, Inc.

From CRYSTAL PANES

Residential • Commercial Home Rewiring Specialist Panel Upgrades Service Calls Welcome Call Brian for Estimate 206-782-1670 SENIOR DISCOUNTS

Licensed, Insured

REASONABLE RATES REFERENCES

206-284-5183 206-324-0956 #C600637132 www.crystalpanes.com

Lic#KEMLYE1038DR .................................................

192–Plumbing Services

Acme Plumbing Your Plumbing Specialist For Over 65 Years Complete Plumbing Repairs Water Heaters Multi-Unit Repairs & Service Boiler Work Remodels & New Homes 206-522-0101 Lic#FISCHPC131R1

I CAN OPEN ANY CLOGGED DRAIN ALLIGATOR SEWER & DRAIN CLEANING SERVICE •LOW PRICES •FAST SERVICE 2 0 6 - 7 8 4 - 3 5 5 2 lic#FISCHPC131R1

.................................................

Ballard Plumbing Over 40 Years Experience Service-Toilets, Faucets, Water Heaters Remodels-Kitchen, Baths & Additions Replacement Of Old Pipes with New Copper Boilers & Controls SewersClean, Repair & Replace Old Plumbing? We Are The Experts 2 0 6 - 7 8 9 - 2 7 5 5 lic#FISCHPC131R1 .................................................

Fischer Plumbing “The Plumbers People Recommend” QA & Magnolia Is Our Home Base Over 25 Years of Integrity & Skill Old Plumbing Experts All Repairs: Kitchen/Bathroom Rooter & Sewer Expert Free Estimates www.fischerplumbing.com 206783-4129 Lic#FISCHPC131R1 .................................................

THE PLUMBER, INC. All Residential Plumbing No Job Too Small, Repairs, New Construction, Remodles, Waterines, Drains. 206-949-4363. Email: genetheplumber@hotmail.com. Local with 43 years experience. Lic#: PLUMBI*957C3

199–Windows CRYSTAL PANES Your neighborhood window cleaning service

Since 1985 Professional/ Affordable

windows, gutters, storms, work guaranteed. Licensed & Insured References FREE ESTIMATES Jeff Stein

206-284-5183 206-324-0956

.................................................

Village Plumbing Family Plumbers Since 1890 Magnolia & QA is our Home Expert Plumbing Services Drain & Sewer Repair Low Water Pressure Problems Residential & Commercial All Work Guaranteed 206-282-4303 lic#FISCHPC131R1

www.seattlesclassified.com

#C600637132

www.crystalpanes.com

Please Recycle this Newspaper!

BELLTOWN

Professional & Home Services

cleaning • electrical • construction • painting • plumbing • landscaping • handyman HOME SERVICES

GARDENING/LANDSCAPING

HOUSECLEANING

Any Type of Yard Work

AVAILABLE VARIETY SERVICES Housecleaning, ironing, alterations, cooking, etc. Mary, 206-286-8093

Rockery Clean-Up • Pruning-Weeding Hedge Trimming • Hauling Bark New Sod • Retaining Walls General Clean-up

Call Mike

206-242-4378 Visa/Master Card • beautGS957PK

From Crystal Panes

Flexible, thorough, cheerful & fast!

WE ALSO OFFER FALL YARD CLEANUP.

REASONABLE RATES

Licensed, Insured, References

206-284-5183 206-324-0956 #C600637132

www.crystalpanes.com

Call us! 206-367-0375 BIZ#602096864

Village Plumbing

Family Plumbers Since 1890 Magnolia & QA is our Home

Expert Plumbing Services Drain & Sewer Repair Low Water Pressure Problems Residential & Commercial All Work Guaranteed

206-282-4303 lic#FISCHPC131R1

GUTTERS

Gutter Cleaning H^aan H^hiZgh ?dn[ja =djhZXaZVc^c\

PLUMBING

ELECTRICAL SERVICES

PLUMBING

THE PLUMBER, INC. All Residential Plumbing No Job Too Small

Repairs New Construction Remodels Waterlines Drains

206-949-4363

“The Plumbers People Recommend” QA & Magnolia Is Our Home Base Over 25 Years of Integrity & Skill • Old Plumbing Experts All Repairs: Kitchen/Bathroom • Rooter & Sewer Expert Free Estimates

Local with 43 years experience.

www.¿scherplumbing.com • 206-783-4129

PLUMBI*957C3

genetheplumber@hotmail.com

lic#FISCHPC131R1

I CAN OPEN ANY CLOGGED DRAIN ALLIGATOR SEWER & DRAIN CLEANING SERVICE

WINDOWS •CRYSTAL PANES• Your neighborhood window cleaning service Since 1985 • Professional/ Affordable

•LOW PRICES •FAST SERVICE

Windows, Gutters, Storms, Work Guaranteed

206-784-3552

Licensed, Insured • References

lic#FISCHPC131R1

FREE ESTIMATES Jeff Stein

206-284-5183 • 206-324-0956

Your Plumbing Specialist For Over 65 Years

#C600637132

Service Calls Welcome

Complete Plumbing Repairs Water Heaters • Multi-Unit Repairs & Service Boiler Work • Remodels & New Homes

206-522-0101 Lic#FISCHPC131R1

Panel Upgrades • Repairs Senior Discount

206-782-1670 www.kemlyelectric.com

Over 40 Years Experience Service-Toilets, Faucets, Water Heaters, Remodels-Kitchen, Baths & Additions Replacement Of Old Pipes with New Copper

Boilers & Controls • Sewers-Clean, Repair & Replace

The Electric Co. WHY WAIT?

Old Plumbing? We Are The Experts

206-789-2755 lic#FISCHPC131R1

Skilled Electricians Available Now!

Panel changes and service upgrades our specialty! All types residential and commercial wiring. Stephen Brandeis, Master Electrician

206-633-3896

Lic.#ELECTCI020BN • service@elcose.com

Please Recycle This Newspaper!

Move It!

We Will Run Your Classified Vehicle Ad Until it Sells. Only $29.95, Includes Photo! 35,000 Papers Every Week Call Matt 206-461-1332 or email: class1@nwlink.com

www.crystalpanes.com

To advertise in the Belltown Home Services section contact Matt at 461-1332 or Donna at 461-1305

8 CITY GIRL BELLTOWN MESSENGER #76

• February 2010

MARY LOU SANELLI gets groovy

Seattle Funny

ational Public Radio, let’s not kid ourselves, has an agenda just like any programming. It may be unlike CNN, but only because there are many who prefer listening to the “take me back to a non-existent reality” tone of Garrison Keillor to programming where conflict is the whole show. “Everything Mary Lou Sanelli I hate about people is all over cable news,” my friend Patrick said. “One minute all sparkly fun, next they go for the jugular.” All media plays to this dual-nature of human beings, I think, our need to learn and relearn the same lessons, our capacity for blunders and screw ups, then for penance and shame, which, somehow, doesn’t prevent us from blundering and screwing up all over again. For the most part, once we’ve been shaken out of our recliners, we go back into the world and make the same old mistakes. “Write me something Seattle,” the NPR producer said. “About Pike’s Market. Where they throw the fish back and forth like a baseball.”

Salmon tossing, like no one’s written about those guys before. And it’s not Pike’s Market. It’s Pike Place Market. Pike. With no mark of the possessive. But, of course, I didn’t say so. I just agreed the way any writer consents to any number of requests if they want something bad enough. Which they do. Especially the ones who pretend otherwise. My flinch was just a roll-my-

“There is no competing with vampires in the market place right now. ” eyes reaction to hearing my everyday market referred to incorrectly. Like when someone calls me Italian, with a long I. Really, there is no polite way to correct this misusage of sound. Italian. Soften the vowel. Same with Iraq. It’s not I-raq like “I see you.” It’s more like Ear-ak. Soften the I. I figure if you are spending your savings to visit a country, or invading one, you

Rolling Prices Back to 1999!

WE’VE SLASHED OUR PRICES! All New Models! All New Prices!

Twin Mattresses starting at $89! FREE Delivery FREE Setup FREE Disposal Any Set. $20 Fuel Fee

Of your old mattress

You spend 1/3 of your life on a mattress - shouldn’t you be comfortable?

EVE REST MATTRESS A Family Tradition Since 1949

1408 Elliott Ave. W. · Seattle 206-284-9531 • www.everrestmattress.com Mon - Sun 9AM - 5 PM

should learn how to pronounce it flawlessly. Don’t make t h a t boo-boo. It’s the least we can do. “And make it funny,” the producer added, just before she hung up on me. “Light. That’s what we’re looking for in a commentary these days.” Funny? Light? That’s when I first knew we’d be sending more troops to Afghanistan. As soon as she said the words, I remembered something I read, that throughout the 1940s and early 50s, movie goers wanted relief from war. Humor and chirpy musicals took precedence. Not that I wasn’t relieved she didn’t ask me to write about vampires, the hot-topic out in Forks where even the Chamber of Commerce refers to their city as “Home of Twilight.” Ca ching! “What is this?” I said to a proprietor of a certain Italian restaurant in Port Angeles, “Blood instead of pasta sauce?” See, they used to prop one of my titles on their bar, a book I wrote about being Italian and eating Italian. Now my book is stored in the wayback with the Cannellini beans, while Twilight is in my spot, hardwired for commerce. Nothing ever lasts, I know that. Still, there is no competing with vampires in the market place right now. Bats are no longer working behind the scenes. It made more sense to go with the flow. Even if I refused to exaggerate the fish tossers, I added them, the way you add a pinch of salt rather than a handful. Because writers know how to salt a story. Also, our wounds ... checking our e. every ten minutes, scared of rejection, acting very matter-of-fact cool, when we are just sizzling inside. The volcano that constantly bubbles and can ruin just about everything about writing, about life, if you let it. Then ... what? What’s the worst next insult? I’m sorry, this commentary is not for us at this time. This cold trench of nonpersonal after a phone call from the producer? Producers. They can get writers to do anything. They wield power. Play a mean game. Though, secretly, I knew my smack-of-funny-on-purpose would be turned down because significant other said “Truth?” after reading it. And only someone who’s been married to him as long as I have could interpret how hard he was struggling to say the best thing while fearing he’d already said the worst. “No, lie to me.” “Okay, it’s funny,” he said in his electroneutral WASP-voice and either he didn’t catch my sneer or he decided to ignore it. Either way, I made it clear that my commentary was no longer any of his business. And I don’t know why I feel the need to say this, but I do: Though my story may have been as good as my funny/light/Seattle gets, it is, by no means, as good as my city, my humor, or my writing gets, thank god. It took trying to write Seattle-funny for me to realize this. b

belltownmessenger.com

Best Paw Forward Seattle

...Walk & Train... teaching dogs to behave at their balanced best City dogs need to have the best manners on the street, at cafes and in lobbies and elevators of public buildings. Several packages are available at graduated levels for basic obedience, manners and much more. Individual, smart-walks by trainers are available too. If you need someone to walk your dog, put them in the hands of a caring and experienced professional trainer.

Jim Turcott

Owner & Training Specialist Hours: 9AM-6 PM M-F (206) 380-7776 trainer@bestpawforward-seattle.com

If your dog doesn’t walk this nicely, beside you, on a loose leash, maybe it’s time to call a Best Paw trainer to discuss a Walk & Train Program for 2010....

Ask about our Head Start Program for adopters of Rescue or Shelter Dogs. 10% of proceeds go to Seattle Animal Shelters Help the Animal Fund. American Red Cross Certified

MEDICAL MARIJUANA

PHYSICIAN

Improving your quality of life.

EVALUATIONS

Call now for a conﬁdential appointment.

(206) 324-6602 www.dunsheehouse.org $3 OFF Spa Manicure

NAILS • FACIAL • WAXING

One coupon per customer with coupon only. Coupons may not be combined with any other offer. Expires 2.28.10

Walk-Ins Welcome – Open 7 days 10am-7pm

$5 OFF Spa Pedicure

One coupon per customer with coupon only. Coupons may not be combined with any other offer. Expires 2.28.10

2309 3rd Ave. (Corner of 3rd & Bell, Belltown)

(206) 441-3501

Citysearch™ Top Ten!