Monthly Archives: June 2010

Our Daily Sykes

OUR DAILY SYKES #53 – A Framed Sunrise

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Horace Sykes wrestles with our grandest cliche, "The Mountain That Was God," Mt. Tahoma, Mt. Tacoma, Mt. Rainier. This is at Sunset, and Sykes sort of beats this commonplace by framing it all in a nearby landscape. The odds are only one in 365 that Horace took this photograph on June 6. (Stop. They are much better than that, because for many months in the year one cannot reach Sunrise - it is closed.) The significance of the date - June 6 - follows with the next blog insertion.
Uncategorized

THIS DAY – actually yesterday – IN HISTORY: Some Notable Events from the Sixth Day of the Sixth Month!

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D-DAY: THE LANDINGS ON THE BEACHES OF NORMANDY, JUNE 6, 1944. This however is flying low over Paris sometime later. The street is named at the bottom. In the distance is the Arch of Triumph and beyond it the Louvre. On the upper right horizon is the cupola for the Pantheon, which is but three blocks from the home of our very own Berangere Lomont on the Rue Genevieve, the Patron Saint of Paris, whose (or one of whose) birthdays we also celebrate on THIS DAY IN HISTORY - JUNE 6. The picture here is uncanny, or at least strange. (Click TWICE to Enlarge) Except for a few military vehicles and scattered pedestrians there is little moving below. The scene is one of several low altitude fly-byes and all of them have the same silence or poverty of commotion. Paris was liberated over a few days in late August. As soon at the Germans left (those that did not simply stay for the surrender on August 25th) the streets of Paris were very busy with parades, general celebration and also some shaming of Parisians who had cooperated with the Germans.
Fifty Five years before D-Day, 35-or-so Seattle City blocks were razed by its Great Fire of June 6, 1889. This view looks north on First Avenue in the block between Yesler Way and Cherry Street. The ruins on the left are on the west side of First (or Front Street as it was then still named).

HERE FOLLOWS the 2-page limited edition of the Next Day’s Post-Intelligencer for June 7, 1889.   So that you might more easily read them these are big files and will take a bit longer to download.  Once they appear please – as with all else – CLICK TWICE TO ENLARGE and read the next days reports.   Thanks one again to RON EDGE for providing these.

NOW WE INSERT a BLOGADDENDUM – another EDGE CLIPPING.  In a caption to the Post-Intelligencer’s own description of its efforts to get out their two-page paper, Ron Edge points out its heroic qualities.

I was thinking that the heroic effort by the PI staff to print this little one page hand trimmed paper could itself be the significant event for the 7th of June. What an effort was made to get this little edition on the street the very next morning produced on borrowed foot presses and no sleep.
Flip side to the Front Street Great Fire shot printed just above. Soon after the fire, photographers were selling scenes like this one on the streets and from their studios - those studios that survived. Here the fire's notable survivors are listed.
Four years after D-Day Genevieve McCoy (named for the patron saint of Paris) was born on June 6, 1948. Genevieve "Genny" answered my request for a caption to this setting. "I was born on D-Day but in 1948. You are 71, 9.5 years older than I. This is me preparing for my Junior Prom at Holy Names in 1965. It was my first self-selected formal dress. I was a month or so shy of 18. Wasn't I cute 45 years ago? (We agree.) My mother must have taken the picture, just before I left for the prom."
If we imagine that the 85 faces shown here include no second and third renderings of the same person then the odds would be a little more than one in four that one of them would have been born on the sixth of June. These odds are much better than those we might calculate for how likely it is that any of these 85 (so to speak) are named Genevieve, although one or more of them may be named for someone or something else's patron saint.
BELIEVE IT OR NOT. It was on June 6 that Gene Woodwick gave me a copy of her latest book, "Ocean Shores." Inside the front cover is this note. "June 6, birth date of Ed Woodwick, father of Larry Woodwick, husband of Gene Woodwick, and father for their five children."
Seattle Now and Then

Seattle Now & Then: Lost Landmarks at Pier 51

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(click photos to enlarge)

THEN: Thanks to Seattle Public Library librarian John LaMont for finding Werner Lenggenhager's 1961 record of the stern-wheeler Skagit Belle waiting between now-long-gone Piers 50 and 51. At the water end of Yesler Way, this slip was the pioneer-era site of Yesler's Wharf.
NOW: To help understand the setting south of Colman Dock, Jean's "now" shot is much wider than Werner's "then."

Many Pacific readers will remember the Polynesian Restaurant built at the water end of Pier 51 in 1961, in time for the following year’s infusion of tourists for the city’s Century 21 World’s Fair. Some minority of you will also remember the Skagit Belle, a stern-wheeler parked beside the same pier for yet another food attraction in time for the fair.

This view of the two is by Werner Lenggenhager, the helpful Boeing retiree who, beginning in the 1940s, wandered the city and the state with his camera. This photo is stamped Oct. 28, 1961. The Polynesian is up but not completed, and the stern-wheeler is waiting south of the pier before it was moved to the north slip, fitted for a restaurant and painted like a vaudevillian in pink and blue.

Through its 20 years at Pier 51, the Polynesian was Seattle’s grandest example of Tiki décor, an exotic mix of island styles, perhaps best associated here with the chain Trader Vic’s (not Joe’s). The Polynesian was lost to public domain in 1981 and the expansion of the ferry terminal, Colman Dock.

The Skagit Belle was also short-lived. Built in Everett in 1941, it was the last commercial stern-wheel steamboat on Puget Sound. Soon requisitioned for war service, it wasn’t returned to the Skagit River Navigation Co. until 1947. Three years later it joined the Skagit Chief and the steel-hulled W.T. Preston in a race of stern-wheelers for Seafair. The Preston won. After grounding on a sandbar, the Belle was repaired in Bellingham for her fateful trip to the fair.

The ship sprang a leak in 1965, its pumps failed, and it sank to the bottom, though still tied to the pier. There it languished through eight years of tides and litigation until hauled away in pieces in 1973.

WEB EXTRAS

Jean adds a few photos taken nearby that same afternoon in early April.

Colman Dock from the south
Colman Dock, wide
A dockside park
Dock with Olympics
Dock with Olympics
Ferry ticket gate

Anything to add, Paul?  Yes Jean I did have, and added them too.  But I also neglected to publish them.  The result – all were erased.  I’m off to bed now and will do it all again in the morning.  “It” is several slides of both the Skagit Belle and the Polynesian during the 1960s.    Tomorrow then and nighty bears* to all for now.

* “Nighty Bears” is a welcomed substitute for the commonplace “Good Night.”  It was taught to many of us by Bill Burden in the late 1970s and we have – as extended family – continued to use it.

Polynesian under construction looking east from the end of Pier 51. Note that the Tiki carvings and staining has been applied to the beams before construction. (Photo by Frank Shaw - like the rest of the colored scenes used here.)
Like the above scene this was also recorded on May 6, 1961.
May 29, 1961. The ends of both Pier 50 with the last remnants of its pier shed, and Pier 51 with the Polynesian, as seen from the Pergola at the foot of Washington Street. The Harbor Partorl boat can be glimpsed through the railing.
June 26, 1921. Century 21 is open and the Bounty visits pier 51 and the completed Polynesian. How appropriate.
Feb. 24, 1962. In place now on the north side of Pier 51, the Skagit Belle is still waiting for its make-over.
The sternwheelers paddles, Feb. 24, 1962
Feb. 24, 1962. Another view of its unpolished rear with Colman Dock beyond.
Frank Shaw, it seems, took no slides of the Skagit Belle during Century 21, or following it when the vessel gave its last work as a restaurant. This is one of several recordings of the sternwheeler after it sprung a leak. It dates from June 19, 1965.
May 19, 1965 With Ye Olde Curiosity Shop to the rear.
June 19, 1965 With Pier 51 parking to the rear.
June 16, 1965 With the Exchange Building (1931) and the Norton Building (1959, Seattle's first highrise glass curtain) beyond, left and right respectively.
June 30, 1969: time passes, the litigation continues and the Skagit Belle decays, witness to the struggle of making it on the waterfront.
Pages 38 & 39 out of The Seattle Greeter for Sept. 1962 includes the Polynesian's claim "for an evening quite unlike any other . . ." and a partial list of local bars. Note also that after reading 39 pages of the local attractions that are considered exciting by their owners and the editor at the lower right corner we are instructed that before visiting any of these Seattle attractions one must "See America First." Such is the grandiose excitement of a night on the town. (This is another Edge Clipping with thanks to Ron . . . Edge.)

None of the ABOVE should be confused with any of the BELOW.

The Skagit Chief at the south end of the old Port of Seattle headquarters at Pier 66.
The Skagit Queen nosed into Rosario Beach ca. 1910.
The Skagit County Courthouse in Mt. Vernon ca. 1910. Below is Jean's ca. 2007 repeat of the courthouse long after the humiliation of losing it curvaceous top floor.

Jean's repeat of the Skagit County Courthouse ca. 2007.

Our Daily Sykes

Our Daily Sykes #52 – Roadside Grade

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Back and forth we may attend here to the flowers overgrowing the roadside regrade and the fence post supporting two barbed wire lines against a sky that may be about to let go. Close-ups like these are rare for Horace Sykes. Putting a flowering plant in the foreground of his subjects is not. But almost always behind these intimate "decorations" is a sweeping landscape in a picturesque composition. Of all the subjects Sykes recorded this will be among the few for which we may have no hope of ever knowing its place. Although forever unknown I feel that is also forever profound. It has something to do with the post and the two wires. How they climb. Perhaps one has to be afloat to feel this. I do not mean elevated by any substance but rather by temperament. A woman or a man of feeling will see something profound here. Perhaps. The light is even.
From Paris

Enthronement at the Market {Intronisation au Marché Maubert}

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Our beloved Paris correspondent, Bérangère Lomont, sends us the following report from the 5th arrondissement, which we offer in both English and French for our international viewers:

It is not Halloween, nor an operetta.
It was last Saturday at the place Maubert market in the fifth arrondissement, a strange medieval vision really, “la Commanderie du clos de Montmartre” came especially to enthrone the baker Monsieur Moisan, a creator of organic breads  and Patricia, owner of the café “village Ronsard” located on place Maubert.

Ce n’est pas Halloween, ni une opérette,
C’était juste samedi dernier Place Maubert à Paris dans le 5ème,  nous pouvions assister à une scène  étrange venue du Moyen-Ange ,  “la commanderie du clos Montmartre” venait exceptionnellement pour introniser le boulanger Monsieur Moisan qui est éditeur, créateur de pains biologiques et Patricia la propriétaire du café ” village Ronsard”  situé Place Maubert.

Le clos has many missions – one is to perpetuate a tradition of fraternity and wine, they organize meetings in this spirit all over the world…
In Montmartre they make the wine according to the rules of art and every year there is a great celebration during the harvest.

“La commanderie du clos ” a plusieurs missions : l’une de perpétuer une tradition fraternelle et vinicole , et organise dans cet esprit des rencontres dans le monde entier…
A Montmartre leur  vin est produit dans les règles de l’art, et chaque année les vendanges sont une grande fête.

Here are a few photos {Quelques photos}:

First Enthronement {Premiere Intronisation}: Monsieur Moisan

Monsieur Moisan raises his hand while reading the commandments (10, perhaps?); the man in blue is a very famous owner of a cabaret in Montmartre and very well known to be generous, so once a month he invites retired neighbors to have lunch in his cabaret. {Monsieurs Moisan lève la main pendant la lecture des commandements de la confrérie (10 ?) , le monsieur vêtu de bleu est " Michou " le célèbre propriétaire d'un cabaret à Montmartre, et il est bien connu pour sa générosité , ainsi il invite à déjeuner chaque mois les personnes retraitées de son quartier au cabaret.}
Second step in the ritual: to drink some precious nectar. {Deuxième étape du rituel, il faut boire le divin nectar de Montmartre}
Third step: the enthronement and the medal. {Troisième étape, l'intronisation avec le cep de vigne et la remise de médaille}

Second Enthronement {Seconde Intronisation}: Patricia

Patricia (next to Michou the man in blue) listens to the Commander. Her parents once owned a little restaurant called "le petit Gavroche " in the Marais - it was my favourite restaurant for years. Besides being inexpensive, everyone felt at home there. {Patricia est à coté de Michou l'homme en bleu et écoute le Commandeur , ses parents possédaient un petit restaurant qui se nommait "le petit Gavroche", c'était l'un de mes restaurants préférés, le moins cher, et c'était comme à la maison.}

Our Daily Sykes

Our Daily Sykes #49 – Zabriskie Point Confirmed (Thanks to Ron Edge)

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(Click to Enlarge) Far below in another "daily sykes" Mr. Steve Silver of cheesecake and desert photography skills identified a Sykes scene as possibly from Zabriskie Point, about which some of us know only the film from the late 1960s that explored the adventure in which many of us among that sum were involved away from the theatre. If memory serves, it ended sadly if not tragically. But might this also be footage from Z-Point (the locals sometimes shorten it in their mud rooms) or something like it? RON EDGE of edge clippings answers with this link to a trailer for the Antonioni film Zabriskie Point. Ron remembers seeing it in 1970 at the Ridgemont Theatre. If you take a moment to follow the link http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/index/?cid=189731 you will - if all works out well - find that an image of Z-Point very much like this one appears at the head of the trailer. The rest of the production is sensationally silly. Trite. The film was a little better. As I remember we anticipated something better. Something as good as Blow Up, and earlier London-based film by Antonioni. Just paste http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/index/?cid=189731 in to the browser if it does not click open.
Our Daily Sykes

Our Daily Sykes #48 – Grand Canyon of the Colorado

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Unlike the Sykes view of Grand Canyon (on the Colorado) shown earlier, here he looks into the canyon and not unto the clouds. It seems like a diorama or stage set with the seemingly arranged delicacy of the foreground - but watch your step.
Another of Grand Canyon, but for Horace Sykes a rare look at the tourists too. Perhaps the qualities of the composition overwhelmed his disposition to avoid human subjects.