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Published in The Seattle Times online on Aug. 22, 2024
and in Pacific NW Magazine of the printed Times on Aug. 25, 2024

Forty-two years ago, Jack Mackie took dancing to the street

By Clay Eals

For Jack Mackie, life is better when we’re dancing. It’s “a cultural imperative.” He’s no professional hoofer. Grinning, he insists, “I’m just a bad shower dancer.”

But get the wiry artist along Broadway on Capitol Hill and ask him to follow its eight sets of embedded bronze dance steps, and the 78-year-old doesn’t hesitate to cut a concrete rug. Doesn’t matter if it’s the waltz, tango, lindy, mambo, rhumba or foxtrot weave. He can’t resist.

That’s because he’s the one who conceived and installed the sidewalk steps 42 years ago, back when he remembers Broadway as a plain, four-lane arterial, devoid of street trees and needing a boost.

Bolstered by the city’s 1% for arts program started in 1973 and a move to bury Broadway’s electrical cables, Mackie first proposed the project to the Seattle Arts Commission in January 1979. “Hopefully, the dance steps will be a catalyst,” he said. “A pedestrian could find someone on Broadway and dance on the sidewalk.”

“Yeah, and get arrested for insanity,” spouted dissenting commissioner Norm Hoagy, who favored spending money on music.

That wasn’t the only flak. When the project neared installation, KING-TV reporter Greg Palmer interviewed Mackie onsite, where they encountered pickets with “No Dance Steps” signs. Art McDonald of rival KOMO-TV went further, opining against the installation. “He was saying,” Mackie recalls, “that someone’s going to get knocked over, someone’s going to get hurt.”

Of course, no reports surfaced about such injuries. In fact, the steps seem to have generated only affection — evident when KING-TV’s local comedy show “Almost Live!” made them a key part of a circa 1990 “Speed Walker” sketch. Chasing a Dick’s Drive-In burger bandit, Bill Nye as the title character could not stride north on Broadway without pausing to gyrate to Mackie’s golden mambo.

Each dance site, roughly 12 square feet, features shoeprints, arrows and “L” and “R” letters to guide the feet of would-be light-fantastic trippers. The instructions, Mackie insists, are accurate, gleaned from an Arthur Murray studio. Two of the eight combinations, which Mackie playfully labeled “bus stop” and “obeebo,” are entirely his own inventions.

For the inlays, Mackie got help from renowned bronze artist Chuck Greening, whose expertise ensured the steps would show little wear over the decades. Mackie also is proud that the inlaid concrete has never cracked.

Formerly of Capitol Hill, Mackie lives in Edmonds. Visiting Broadway today, he likes to hang back and observe. “Ninety-nine percent of the people walk by,” he says, “but then sometimes somebody will come, and  there they go, dancing down them damn steps again.”

Will you?

WEB EXTRAS

Big thanks to Gene Gentry McMahon and especially Jack Mackie 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.

Below, you also will find a video interview of Mackie, 12 additional photos and 3 historical clips from The Seattle Times and Seattle Post-Intelligencer online archive (available via Seattle Public Library), Newspapers.com and Washington Digital Newspapers, that were helpful in the preparation of this column.

Below are a dozen photos of the mambo installation, taken in 1982 by Charles Adler (courtesy Jack Mackie)