Will someone please respond with a review of “Forever Amber,” the film listed on the old Colonial Marquee. (Click to enlarge.) This holiday recording was done by Seattle Camera Club member Horace Sykes on Dec. 22, 1949. For the freshest among you, it looks north on 4th Avenue from Pike Street when passenger railroad service was still profitable for the old trans-continentals. Note the illuminated signs. Does anyone remember Gasco? Some happy day we will put up a few score of Sykes recordings taken from his many camera adventures in the west, which prove that this orchid enthusiast was a master of the picturesque and knew how to compose a picture.
(Remember to practically always CLICK to enlarge – and then click again.)
An easy pleasure it is again to devotionally brag about “The Mountain That Was God.” The biggest volcano in the Cascade Mountains was sometimes wrapped in theology, a divine sublimation to escape the merely mundane controversy over what to call it. The naming battle was waged for many years between the Seattle forces who favored retaining Capt. Vancouver’s name for the mountain, Mt. Rainier (Rainier was an admiral in the English Navy and fought briefly against the colonoists during the Revolutionary War), and the Tacoma forces whose name for it was considered by some to be the name or more like the name which the local natives used for it, which is Mt. Tacoma or Mt. Tahoma or something in that range. Readers of this page from a few months past may recall that this was the point of view (from Wallingford’s northwest corner of First Ave. NE and NE. 45th Street) we took of the mountain every day for a month last summer. The camera that took this view of it, however, has a bit more pixel zip – 10mg worth – and a strong optical zoom as well. Consequently, here the Holy Names Academy dome on Capitol Hill is almost crisp. The cross atop it breaks the horizon between the big mountain (Rainier/Tacoma on the right) and the little one (Little Tahoma on the left). The picture was taken in the early evening today, 5/15/2009, so the sun was from the northwest and set the north face glowing with pink smudges that may remind some of the early 20th Century landscapes of Eustace Paul Ziegler (1881 – 1969), an artist who was once very popular hereabouts and in Alaska. [By a crow’s and Google Earth’s yardsticks it is 62 miles from the Wallingford corner described above to the summit of the mountain.]
THEN: The January, 1941 opening night of West Seattle’s Admiral Theatre, at – or near – SW Admiral Way and California Ave. SW, attracted an inaugural crowd of 1000 to a program that included a tour of the theatre. (Pix Courtesy Museum of History and Industry, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection)Today's Admiral Theatre on a special night last Sunday
With a little effort we may imagine – an exertion ordinarily expected inside a theatre – that the exterior of West Seattle’s Admiral looks something like a ship; at least, that is how its architect B. Marcus Priteca intended it. So in this scene of its grand opening on January 22, 1942, the marquee with its neon anchors break over the sidewalk like a ship’s bow. Above it portholes, guardrails, nautical flags, and a mast (the crow’s nest is out of the frame) playfully elaborate the nautical fantasy
Another exterior view from the early 1940s, this time with the crows nest.
Priteca, famed architect of the fantastic, launched his movie palace career in Seattle with the theatre impresario Alexander Pantages. Designing theatres nation-wide for the Pantages chain or circuit, his Seattle creations included the Pantages (later renamed the Palomar), the Orpheum, and his lone downtown survivor, the Coliseum – “survivor of sorts” for it is long since home for a clothing store named for a fruit. For a neighborhood theatre, Priteca’s Admiral, a name its owner John Danz let West Seattleites choose by contest, was sumptuous. . . (Planned months before the start of the Second World War and opened a month after Pearl Harbor, the Admiral name, although tied to Admiral Way, was also a nice fit for wartime enthusiasms.)
Before cut in two for a duplex, the Admiral’s interior was both lush and grand.
In anticipation of its inaugural night, the West Seattle Herald exclaimed, “It transcends every preconceived idea of motion picture theatres, and will amaze everyone with its new beauties, its new revelations in comfort, sight and sound.” The nautical excitements continued inside with fluorescent murals of underwater scenes, a grand mural of Captain George Vancouver’s 1792 landing on Puget Sound, a ceiling sparkling with lantern projection of the signs of the zodiac, and usherettes ship-shape in naval uniforms.
Forty-seven years later the Admiral struck the bottom-line when, without warning or comment, the expansive Toronto-based theatre chain Cineplex Odeon closed it. And eleventh-hour leak of their intent brought out the pickets in a protest for the preservation of West Seattle’s unique example of the art of motion picture theatre design. Cineplex Odeon bought the Admiral in 1986, raised the prices, cut the staff, and let the place run down. Then, intending to build a multiplex theatre in a new mall planned near the West Seattle side of the new high bridge to West Seattle, the corporation put the Admiral on the block. Understandably, the preservationists found the last night’s bill “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” appropriate.
On another January night 47 years after its opening, West Seattle citizens protest the sudden closing of the admiral. Appropriately, or ironically, the film that was playing when the theatre went dark was “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.
Clay Eals, then the recently departed editor of the Herald and the just-installed president of the Southwest Seattle Historical Society, and editor of “West Side Story,” the Herald’s 1987 oversized history of the Duwamish peninsula, was one of the preservationists struggling to save the Admiral. In six months of energetic organizing, the historical society secured city landmark status for the movie house.
This past Sunday, May 3, 2009, Clay returned to the stage of the Admiral as master of ceremonies for Seattle’s part in the nationwide celebration of folksinger Pete Seeger’s 90th birthday. The lesson was – and the song was sung, too – “We Shall Overcome.” In 1989, the people, Clay Eals and Priteca’s creation also overcame. The Admiral, after a three-year closure followed by the theater’s purchase by the preservation-minded Gartin family, reopened in 1992 and shows films and hosts live shows to this very day.
When going out
Beware the snout.
First open the curtain
And be certain
No cloven hoof
Waits on the roof
Or tail that screws
Hides like the Sioux.
Beware that the fog
Brings no hog,
And flee all grunts
When out on hunts.
If you must plow
Avoid the sow
And little squealers
With your four-wheelers.
If offered pork
Put down your fork.
And keep all lard
From off your yard.
In place of ham
Pull cans of spam.
From friends with bacon
Be you forsaken!
So you are fine
And own no swine.
Still keep your digs
Locked to loose pigs.
Gourmand and glutton
Now gnaw on mutton.
As with birds before
So now eschew the boar.
I have two requests of you blog users or visitors.
First the Camellia.
I am researching the Camellia, a flower we see in abundance hereabouts at this time of year. I would like you to share with me any attitudes or impressions or old stories about this flower.
Second the Cat.
Please help me with a caption for this photograph of a cat on a porch.
Today was the first of the few days when petals rain from this Wallingford Landmark: the two rows of cherry trees that meet at the southeast corner of 46th Street and Corliss Avenue North. At least when compared to 2007, this year the budding, blooming, and sprouting is about a dozen days later than it was then. The top photo was recorded today – April 17, 2009 around 6pm. The bottom one was also recorded on April 17, although two years ago. In about five days the petals will have all fallen from these trees. On this day in 2007 the trees were already well along in showing their leaves. (click to enlarge)
Walking through the Good Shepherd P-Patch last Saturday [April 4, 2009. I give the full date for future generations.] I came upon Blackie and Blondie. Their three protector-handlers told me that these were not flying ducks but running ducks. And certainly after a quick study it appeared that these elegant ducks with their long legs and long necks and generally lean compositions were not burdened by any thing – like big wings – that might inhibit running. Although made for it, Blackie and Blondie still did not run around the P-Patch that Saturday afternoon, but neither did they waddle. They kept near their tenders and were very graceful without exception – another quality of running ducks, I learned. They stayed in the P-Patch watching for snails and worms but more often settling for grass as their tenders pulled up parsnips nearby. Asking If I might take a portrait of their happy family in this peaceable kingdom, they allowed. Asking further if they might write more revealing captions for these portraits, they agreed – that they might. I have named the group of five portraits, “How To Carry Two Running Ducks Home” because that is where they were soon heading after our meeting. They live near by the P-Patch. I learned that running ducks are best carried backward. But there is more to know about all this, like insights into a running duck’s intelligence – they are not as smart as chickens – which hopefully will be explained and the tenders named and so admired for their duck nurturing and handling.
With the sun watching I walked Wallingford for about three hours, again repeating the about 400 subjects I have chosen for eventual animation but also recording discoveries like these.
Clothes drying in sunSack in StreetDEX/APEX Bus Stop
While certainly welcoming, perhaps broader meanings for this sign come from within. It reads: “DOORS Take a Look! Prices to Please!” and hangs beside a ceramic grouping of John the Baptist baptizing Jesus. I was of a habit to silently continue: “Please remember, I am the way, the truth, and the light.” Or: “Please knock and it shall be open unto you.” Or both.
The friendly if surreal tableau was a fixture at St. Vincent De Paul on Fairview Avenue along the southeast shore of Lake Union. It was propped overhead on beams and set about halfway down the “Grand Boulevard” on the left side. If you ignored the arrow and took a sharp left instead, eventually, if you watched your head and kept going, you might reach a curtained inner sanctum in which were kept the damaged statues. (The pictured group of busts on pedestals printed here is a simulation only.)
Roman busts on pedestals
I have recently recovered – stumbled upon – Kodachrome slides of the sign with John and Jesus, as well as four other St. Vinnie’s details from a 1967 visit. I’ll use them now to reflect on the pleasures and past uses of one fondly remembered thrift store.
It may also be well-timed. Some of us – but not all – are now more likely to need a discount and ready to also “use the used,” which is to recycle other people’s stuff. Sadly, this fountain of surplus value – Our St. Vinnie’s by the Lake, which was one of the best – is long gone, replaced by yet another bistro…..(click to continue)
While walking the neighborhood this afternoon
I passed below the first bulletin of Spring
Blooming higher than the crocuses at my ankles.
They have been bowing to the sun for a week.
Now I remember the row of warm
And sometimes hot late Februaries
We thrived on in the early 1970s –
The first Fat Tuesday parade in our prime
From Pike Place Market to Pioneer Square
On a winter day at room temperature.
Walking further I came upon
Some withered leftovers of October
Protected in the green cemetery of a bush
Like a Coast Salish sarcophagus in a tree.
