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This is a Postscript, updating these earlier “Now & Then” columns:

• June 8, 2023, Marvin Oliver totem poles
• Sept. 2, 2021, Tacoma totem pole

Published in The Seattle Times online on Dec. 23, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 24, 2023

Poles Apart:
The fate of 3 totem poles removed in
Seattle and Tacoma remains up in the air

By Jean Sherrard and Clay Eals

IN SEATTLE, hidden near two poles lying in a Seattle Parks lot in Discovery Park, Marylin Oliver keeps a whisk broom.

During visits from her Kingston home, Oliver retrieves debris from the 50-foot-long carved cedar poles. In November, she left a note asking visitors to show respect.

Commissioned from renowned Native artist Marvin Oliver (Marylin’s late brother) by Seattle architect and preservationist Victor Steinbrueck, the poles stood since March 1984 near Pike Place Market, framing a Puget Sound panorama while paying “tribute to the culture and heritage” of indigenous peoples.

Last April, as part of the city’s reconstruction of Victor Steinbrueck Park, the poles were unbolted from their plinths and delivered to Discovery Park, where they have rested side by side, unprotected from the elements.

Lisa Steinbrueck, a conservator with a master’s in museology — and Victor Steinbrueck’s daughter —worries about their exposure. “If one wanted to slowly destroy the poles,” she says, “this is how to do it.” Oliver adds, “They should be moved into dry storage.”

Unlike the poles, no moss has grown on Oliver’s efforts. Planning for repair, she enlisted Makah carver Greg Colfax, who examined the poles and says that despite significant decay they can be restored.

Seattle Parks, however, recently reversed its long-held position. Having originally committed to repair and reinstall the poles, it petitioned the Pike Place Market Historical Commission to authorize the poles’ permanent removal. At its Dec. 13 meeting, the commission denied that application. Parks will have the opportunity to appeal.

The Oliver/Steinbrueck poles remain in Discovery Park. In mid-December, they were covered with tarps.

Oliver continues to sweep and hope for the poles’ reinstallation. The fate of her brother’s collaboration with Victor Steinbrueck remains up in the air.

THIRTY MILES south, the Puyallup Tribe holds the fate of the severed 1903 totem pole that stood for 118 years in downtown Tacoma before the city removed it from Fireman’s Park on Aug. 3, 2021. That morning, the city chainsawed the pole into six pieces.

Topped by an eagle, the pole reportedly was carved by Alaskan Natives hired by Tacoma businessmen, but by 2021 the city had deemed it inauthentic.

The city initially gave the tribe the pole’s mid-sections, retaining the top and bottom for interpretation by the Tacoma Historical Society. Its director, Jessica Smith, says a display might have examined cultural appropriation. “But we didn’t have the space or funding to stabilize these pieces for pests,” she says. So the top and bottom also went to the tribe.

The tribe confirms it is storing the pieces but hasn’t said what it will do with them. At Fireman’s Park, the pole’s stabilizing frame stands bare. The city says it might partner with the tribe to commission Coast Salish art for the site if grant funding surfaces.

Meanwhile, the historical society, which in 2015 revived “Eyes of the Totem,” a locally produced 1927 silent movie featuring the pole, has deactivated its online film-download portal, citing finances. “The cost,” Smith says, “was higher than the number of people purchasing or renting it.”

“Eyes” provides a “great snapshot” of 1920s Tacoma, Smith says, but it is “one of many parts” of Tacoma’s story, which includes the city’s historically “complicated” relationship with the tribe.

WEB EXTRAS

No updated 360-degree video this week because of technical difficulties. But you can see Jean Sherrard‘s 360-degree video from the Sept. 2, 2021, blog post on the Tacoma totem-pole takedown, and hear that column read aloud by Clay, by checking it out at this link.

Below, you also will see two additional videos. In the first one, Mick Flaaen, part of the team that restored the 1927 silent-film melodrama “Eyes of the Totem,” introduces the film Nov. 12, 2023, at the Blue Mouse Theatre in Tacoma’s Proctor District. The film was made entirely in Tacoma by H.C. Weaver Studios. The Blue Mouse screening was part of the theater’s centennial celebration. The second video is the film itself.

Also, just added on Dec. 24, 2023, an evocative photo!

(Click and click again to enlarge photos)

Published in The Seattle Times online on Dec. 14, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 17, 2023

Rescuing the voice of Seattle Gay News, in print and online

By Clay Eals

Viewed on newsprint, vintage headlines can shock us as if they were published today.

That’s what Tom Rasmussen found recently while diving into copies of Seattle Gay News from 40 to 50 years ago. Tracking down the publication’s historic early editions was his initial goal. But what he saw along the way — such as a Jan. 1, 1982, story about a deadly “gay cancer” (AIDS) — delivered a wallop.

“Every week there would be pages like this,” says Rasmussen, a Seattle City Council member from 2004 to 2016. “It was chilling because ‘Who’s next?’ It was a plague. There was no awareness of what was causing it. There was no cure. It was this sudden sense of hopelessness. They were real people, and how young they were. These were people whose life should have been ahead of them, and they didn’t make it.”

One of Seattle’s earliest openly gay elected officials, Rasmussen three years ago began marshaling public and private institutions for the mammoth task of locating, sorting and archiving thousands of past editions of the paper and digitizing them to coincide with the paper’s 50th anniversary next March.

This quest pairs with a second golden milestone: five decades since the Seattle City Council’s vote on Sept. 10, 1973, to add sexual orientation to protection from employment discrimination.

Sponsoring that ordinance was council member Jeanette Williams, a human-rights advocate for whom Rasmussen worked as an aide decades before his own council stint.

Adding to this season of celebration, Seattle Gay News this fall acquired an enthusiastic new publisher, Mike Schultz. He rescued the paper from potential oblivion following uncertainty triggered by the 2020 death of 37-year owner George Bakan.

Notably, Schultz is reinforcing an abbreviated brand forged recently by Bakan’s daughter, Angela Cragin. Much as AARP did with its publications, Seattle Gay News adopted “SGN” as its name, reflecting the wider LGBTQ+ swath of its traditional coverage. It also hints at Schultz’ expansion of SGN’s service area beyond Seattle to Spokane, Bellingham and the Washington coast.

“We’re pulling in more of our queer community that otherwise didn’t necessarily have a voice,” he says.

Schultz plans a beefed-up, more timely online presence for SGN while retaining a regular print run. The continuing editions will augment physical SGN collections housed at a half-dozen repositories. This cheers Rasmussen, who cherishes the history of local LGBTQ+ progress and grew up on print.

“A physical newspaper is as close as you can get to being there,” Rasmussen says. “There’s something about holding a newspaper that was created at that time that is so tangible. It just helps you understand.”

WEB EXTRAS

Thanks to University of Washington communications librarian Jessica Albano, Angela Cragin, Rick McKinnon and especially Tom Rasmussen, Mike Schultz and Maggie Bloodstone for their invaluable help with this installment!

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

You also will find 2 additional videos and, in chronological order, 17 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), SGN and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

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Published in The Seattle Times online on Dec. 7, 2023
and in PacificNW Magazine of the printed Times on Dec. 10, 2023

A controversial streetcar line — ‘Tramzilla’ vs. First Avenue?

By Jean Sherrard

Sometimes, as with this week’s “Then” photo, an image is worth at least a hundred words of caution, beginning with “been there, done that.”

Today the city is pondering a proposed $300+ million streetcar line to fill the center lanes of First Avenue. Catchily branded by its supporters as the “Culture Connector,” it would unite two long-dangling streetcar lines between Westlake and Pioneer Square.

Part of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s Downtown Activation Plan, the new line aims to be “a catalyst for economic vitality,” revitalizing arts and entertainment and improving access to museums, concert venues, galleries and businesses.

Unanswered questions linger, however. Several arise from our striking 1919 “Then” photo. Streetcars crowd First Avenue’s center lanes where they cross Pike Street while early automobiles jam into single lanes north and south.

As we pore over the old image, we hand today’s community talking stick to business owners such as Jim Harvey, proprietor of Pike Place Flowers in the Market, whose small shop delivers bouquets around the city. For Harvey, downtown congestion already is a huge concern. First Avenue reduced by half, he posits, inevitably would crowd other streets. “Delivery will become a traffic nightmare.”

The proposed 1.3-mile line also would eliminate most left-hand turns from First Avenue and remove 194 of 230 street parking spaces. What’s more, 29 commercial vehicle load zones would disappear.

That would leave Rob Thomas, vice president of the Showbox, Seattle’s iconic, oft-rescued concert venue, in a quandary. “Producing 180 shows per year, each with its own tour bus and trucks full of equipment, seems impossible without streetside parking,” he says. “This could put us out of business.”

A mile south in Pioneer Square, Phil Bevis of Arundel Books worries over the upheaval of a $300 million project so soon after completion of nearby waterfront redevelopment. “Three more years of construction,” he sighs. “We call it Tramzilla.”

Our bustling 1919 photo offers a deep lesson to longtime downtown developer Howard Anderson. “First Avenue has always been one of our most lively downtown streets then and now,” he says. “It’s a historic street, filled with thriving businesses and friendly locals, that connects two historic districts.”

Yet in 1941, the city’s last “antiquated” orange streetcar had been replaced with diesel buses and electric trackless trolleys. More than 230 miles of steel tracks were torn out and scrapped. Roads throughout the city were repaved for rubber-tired vehicles.

Anderson’s point is, simply, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. He nominates an alternative “culture connector,” comparatively inexpensive and more quickly achieved: “No streetcars needed. Just add buses.”