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(Published in Seattle Times online on Aug. 29, 2019,
and in print on Sept. 1, 2019)

A West Seattle sign that won’t wear out its welcome

By Clay Eals

Long ago I learned a simple yet profound way to help newcomers grasp the mystique of West Seattle, where I live. You can practice it as you read this text.

Raise your right hand, palm out, as if waving to a friend. The bulk of your hand is the rest of Seattle. Your partly extended thumb is the West Seattle peninsula. (Some call this the “reverse Michigan.”) Arguably, the story of West Seattle is about getting from the thumb to the hand, and vice versa.

This maxim ran deep in the hearts of local business leaders who in 1986 celebrated, in our “then” photo, the installation of a wooden welcome sign to be seen by westbound traffic on the Fauntleroy Expressway where it curves toward the peninsula’s business hub, the Junction.

The West Seattle Chamber of Commerce worked with the city for three years on the sign project before its fruition, and the context was potent. The high-level West Seattle Bridge had just opened — eastbound in November 1983 and westbound in July 1984 — and even appeared on the sign.

For decades, motorists had suffered delays caused by frequent openings of two low bridges (similar to the Ballard, Fremont, University and Montlake spans) built in 1924 and 1930 over the busy industrial Duwamish Waterway. Relief followed the fabled 1978 ramming of the northern span by the freighter Chavez, which rendered the span inoperable, triggered a flow of federal funds to build an elevated bridge and snuffed a bridge-related secession campaign. During construction, drivers braved four years of dizzying detours. All of this reinforced a citywide sense that West Seattle was a hassle to visit.

Of course, the new high bridge made it easier to get to West Seattle, but the reverse also was true. The bridge aided locals’ trips to suburban malls.

For the Junction core, 1986 generated other rumblings:

• The pullout of JCPenney after 60 years as an anchor.
• Declining public-school enrollment, due in part to desegregation busing, which led to the razing of a nearby elementary school to make way for a competing retail center.
• An impending tax on merchants to support a Business Improvement Area.
• A prolonged zoning debate over maximum building height (85 feet bested 65 feet, in a 5-4 city council vote).

In this milieu, the welcome sign was more than … welcome.

It stood sentinel for nearly 33 years, but the elements took their toll. In 2018, Adah Cruzen, widow of local business pioneer Earl Cruzen, contributed to the chamber some of the “extra zeroes” he’d bequeathed her for a steel replacement, installed last spring.

To some, West Seattle still may seem remote, but the new sign’s greeting promises to endure.

WEB EXTRAS

To see Jean Sherrard’s 360-degree video of the “Now” prospect and compare it with the “Then” photo, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column!

Below are a video of the May 8, 2019, unveiling of the new sign, an extra image from 1948, plus, in chronological order, two clippings from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) and one from the West Seattle Herald that, among others, were helpful in the preparation of this column.

 

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(Published in Seattle Times online on Aug. 22, 2019,
and in print on Aug. 25,, 2019)

A willing suspension – from sky-high to high drama

By Jean Sherrard

Since 1972, Seattle summers have opened and closed with multiday festivals: Northwest Folklife on Memorial Day weekend, and Bumbershoot on Labor Day weekend. Hosted at Seattle Center, both events signal a change of seasons. They also inherit the legacies of the Century 21 Exposition (aka the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair), whose revitalizing alterations “Now & Then” has oft explored.

Our “Then” photo, looking northwest during the fair, features one station of the Union 76 Skyride, located at the former corner of Second Avenue and Republican Street. Traversing 1,400 feet and reaching the height of a six-floor building, its bucket-shaped orange and blue cars provided a bird’s-eye view as their overhead wheels rolled above the grounds. When I experienced the still-operating ride two years later, the three-passenger limit meant my father stayed behind while my mom, little brother and I floated and gloated.

Built by Von Roll Iron Works of Switzerland, then the world’s largest producer of aerial tramways, the Skyride became one of the fair’s most popular and — for only 50 cents — affordable excursions. (Union 76 gas stations offered buy-two/get-one-free tickets with every fill-up, recalls historian Alan Stein.) The Skyride’s southern station also stood only steps from the Monorail.

Visible from the Skyride, the Seattle Playhouse — built for the fair in only 34 days — beckoned from Mercer Street. The venue showcased national and international acts, from the Julliard String Quartet and Japan’s Bunraku Theatre to the Pacific Ballet and Hal Holbrook’s one-man show “Mark Twain Tonight!” Reportedly, Holbrook suggested it as the perfect location for a repertory theater.

The newly formed Seattle Repertory Theatre took up Holbrook’s challenge in November 1963, fronting inaugural productions of “King Lear” and Max Frisch’s “The Firebugs.” Original troupe members included Marjorie Nelson and a young John Gilbert, later stalwarts of the local acting community. (Nelson married prominent architect and preservationist Victor Steinbrueck, neatly squaring the circle.)

In the early 1980s, the Skyride’s northern station bowed to what we might call a theatrical suspension of disbelief, when the Rep departed the aging Playhouse to create state-of-the-art digs on a nearby corner lot. As an aspiring actor, I witnessed this vision beginning to assume reality when I was fortunate to be cast in two plays in the inaugural season.

The result has, like the World’s Fair, become a gift to Seattle. Through the decades, by showcasing a steady diet of star-studded, groundbreaking and world-class theater, the Rep has, like the Skyride, become a high-wire act.

(To learn about Bumbershoot’s early years, check out our 2001 video history BumberChronicles. Also, my 1980s radio adaptation of Don Quixote for NPR features actors Nelson and Gilbert)

WEB EXTRAS

Check out further details in our Seattle Now & Then 360 video.

To hear a snippet of our Globe Radio Repertory adaptation of “Don Quixote”, featuring Marjorie Nelson and John Gilbert, click here. Marjorie delivers a lovely performance as Quixote’s concerned housekeeper Maria and John portrays Father Pero Perez, a long-time friend, with all the mastery you might expect. In this introductory scene, Maria approaches Father Perez to inform him that her master has returned from another delusional adventure and plead for his help. Both actors knock it out of the park.

The back story here might also be of some interest. In 1984, after being injured (a torn hamstring) at the Rep while playing Charles the Wrestler in “As You Like It”, I decided to move into radio production.

With partner John Siscoe (owner/operator of the Globe Bookstore in Pioneer Square), I wrote an adaptation of “Don Quixote” and together we pitched it to NPR Playhouse. Our subsequent productions appeared through the early 1990s, and were largely funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts. We were fortunate to work with some of the finest actors in the country, most of whom were based in Seattle.

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(Published in Seattle Times online on Aug. 16, 2019,
and in print on Sept. 8, 2019)

Stones roll from the covered Kingdome to the open air

By Clay Eals

So much was it a city symbol and massive gathering place for sports and spectacle that it is difficult to believe we are going on 20 years since the Kingdome departed — in a planned implosion, no less. Even harder to fathom may be that relative newcomers are unaware of the shortcomings (and, yes, charms) of what resembled, from afar, a giant, concrete hamburger.

Long before retractable roofs came into fashion, the Kingdome satisfied our drenched desire for a commoners’ cathedral we could swarm to and revel in, comforted that our “Seattle sunshine” could not cancel or interfere with our fun. In other words, there were no rainouts.

Dow Constantine remembers it well. Our King County executive was a 19-year-old University of Washington sophomore when he saw the Rolling Stones’ sixth show in Seattle, on Oct. 14, 1981, the first night of back-to-back concerts. Among 71,000 packing the Kingdome, he was down front in what was crudely called “the pit.” The Greg Kihn Band opened, followed by the J. Geils Band. The Stones took the stage at 10:55 p.m. and finished about 1 a.m.

This milieu radiates from our atmospheric “Then” image, captured by Mike Siegel, in one of his first photos for The Seattle Times. Constantine stands near left, eying the wilder youths to his side. His subdued expression speaks volumes.

“Near the stage, the crowd was pretty aggressive,” he recalls. “You had to stand your ground against the force of thousands pushing to get closer.” He adds, with no little irony, “We thought it was the last time we would get a chance to see the Stones because they were so old.”

The Oct. 14 and 15, 1981, shows also hosted scores of overdose cases, along with a deeper tragedy. A 16-year-old girl died when she lost her balance and fell backward 50 feet from the outside 200-level ramp onto a landing. Most fans, and probably the Stones, didn’t learn of the death until after the Oct. 15 show. It was the first fatality in the Kingdome’s then-five-year history.

While no one inside felt moisture from the sky, as always there was — beyond the haze and the substitution of rumbling echo for sound — the disquieting feeling, in spite of the stadium’s enormity, of being trapped by the absence of sky.

That was no deterrent for Constantine, a lifelong music fanatic who graduated from grade-school trombonist to arts and music champion as an adult. He nurtured his obsession by volunteering in 1981 at the campus radio station, KCMU (now KEXP), eventually snagging plum DJ shifts.

Fast-forward nearly 38 years, and we find Constantine once more in the front row at a Stones show, their 12th in Seattle, this time on the Kingdome’s footprint at open-air CenturyLink Field. “No pushing and shoving,” he says. “Very much an all-ages, good-vibe, bring-the-grandkids crowd.”

The Kingdome may have lasted only 24 years, but the Stones — and Constantine —roll on.

WEB EXTRAS

Here is a bonus, extended interview with Dow Constantine, conducted Aug. 15, 2019, one day after the Stones’ Aug. 14, 2019, show he attended at CenturyLink Field.

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You seemed to be in the front row last night. Were you on the left (west) side of the center runway or the right (east) side?

If I’m going to take the time to go to a show, I’m going to do my best to be in the front. Yesterday I was down front, on the left (so, stage right). In 1981, I was down front, on the right (so, stage left.)

What were the similarities and differences between the 1981 show and last night’s show?

The 1981 tour was in support of the album “Tattoo You,” and the singles “Start Me Up,” “Waiting on a Friend” and, I think, “Hang Fire” were receiving heavy airplay on MTV. They ran through those and a lot of the all-time hits, but also a bunch of less familiar songs from that new album.

The crowd near the stage was tightly packed and pretty aggressive, and you had to set your feet and stand your ground against the force of thousands on the floor pushing to get closer to the band. And we thought it was the last time we would get a chance to see them, because they were so old.

Last night, there was no new album to promote. They just played the hits, plus a couple of deeper cuts from the early 1970s albums, and the crowd loved it. And no pushing and shoving. Very much an all-ages, good vibe, bring-the-grandkids crowd.

How many times have you seen the Stones in Seattle, and which shows?

Not many. I really respect the remarkable accomplishments of the Stones, including their longevity, influence and astonishing number of hit songs they’ve recorded. But my first love among the behemoths of old-time arena rock is The Who.

In music, all of us have our church. And often it just comes down to which band you fell for first. Compared to all those hardcore fans I heard talking about traveling the world with the Stones, seeing them in the 1960s and 1970s, seeing them dozens or hundreds of times, I’m just a tourist, a guest in their sanctuary.

In your King County Council days, you displayed a guitar in your office. Do you still? Was it yours? If not, whose was it?

That was an autographed Cat Power guitar! And I never played it, at least not well enough for public consumption. It came from a Vera Project auction, and after many years I donated it to charity.

Do you play guitar? If so, how long have you done so? Do you play any Rolling Stones songs?

Nope. Hacked my way through the chords (and vocals) of a few songs (Kinks, Clash, Neil Young, etc.) over the years, but there is no earthly way I could be called a guitarist. I’m a fan.

What Rolling Stones song or songs are your favorite, and why?

I love the melancholy charts like “Angie,” “Wild Horses” or “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” But it is hard to argue with “soundtrack of a generation” rockers like “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” or “Satisfaction.” If you wrote any one of those, you’d do best to set down your pen for good and declare victory.

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Below is an alternate “Now” image, plus a fanciful one from the summer of 2018, plus links to a one-hour Dow podcast and a Dow summer playlist, plus, in chronological order, five clippings from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that, among others, were helpful in the preparation of this column.

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(Published in Seattle Times online on Aug. 15, 2019,
and in print on Aug. 18, 2019)

Encircling the quest to share ‘music and the music of ideas’

By Clay Eals

It bears a square shape, but to me Town Hall Seattle has always felt round. This derives from its dome, but also from the sensation of sitting in its Great Hall. Scores of pews angled in a giant half-circle envelop the stage, bringing performer and audience together as one.

Coming to mind are people I’ve enjoyed there, both nationally known (folk legend U. Utah Phillips and a non-singing Linda Ronstadt) and home-grown (speakers at a memorial for newspaperman Emmett Watson, as well as this column’s own Paul Dorpat and Jean Sherrard in their annual “A Rogue’s Christmas” show).

A focus on people bolstered the vision of Town Hall’s founder, David Brewster, when it opened in 1999. In cultivating investors, the civic and journalistic entrepreneur conceptualized it as a gathering place for citizens to share “music and the music of ideas.”

To house his idea, Brewster chose the three-floor Roman Revival edifice at Eighth and Seneca, the former Fourth Church of Christ, Scientist. Built in two stages, in 1916 and 1922, more than 40 years before Interstate 5 sliced the site away from downtown proper, it offered an auditorium with room for 1,000, befitting a faith that once drew crowds to its message that prayer can triumph over sickness. It also was among several local Christian Science churches yielding to new owners and uses as congregations declined.

Initially, Brewster wanted to rename the building Landmark Hall, but it was not yet an official city landmark (that happened in 2012). Having grown up near New York City and familiar with its Town Hall, he decided to adapt the more down-to-earth moniker for Seattle.

His vision took flight. In the ensuing two decades, Town Hall lured more than 1.5 million attendees to nearly 7,000 events featuring artists and scholars, musicians and presidential candidates — as the saying goes, “thinkers and doers.”

To remain viable and withstand earthquakes for decades to come, Town Hall just finished a two-year, $35.5 million interior renovation, improving its underpinnings in ways that are largely and intentionally invisible while also enhancing sound and upgrading ancillary rooms. Matt Aalfs, principal architect, sums up: “We wanted to keep the building’s soul.”

That soul returns to full bloom this September during a 40-event Homecoming Festival. Wier Harmon, executive director since 2005, says it exemplifies an ongoing mission to provide low- or no-cost tickets to a kaleidoscope of events dreamed up by hundreds of local producers and organizations. It’s a quest that touches him personally.

“Town Hall truly speaks to the highest aspirations of this community because it inspires creativity, activism and civic engagement,” he says. “The chance to help a place that’s founded on preserving and celebrating those values has been irresistible.”

WEB EXTRAS

To see Jean Sherrard’s 360-degree video of the NOW prospect and compare it with the THEN photo, and to hear this column read aloud by Clay Eals, check out our Seattle Now & Then 360 version of the column!

Below, in chronological order, are 11 clippings from The Seattle Times online archive (available via Seattle Public Library) that, among others, were helpful in the preparation of this column.

(click and click again to enlarge photos)