April 9th, 2006
Walking around in Freemont, recently, I discovered Touchstone Bakery was closed up. No "we have moved to . . . " sign - place was just empty. It was one of the last hippie joints left in that formerly great part of town. They made the best bread there - sunflower buckwheat. It made the greatest toast you ever ate. The place was full of alternative, underdog pamphlets and posters and really nice folks wearing do-rags who understood if you were too broke to pay. "It's o.k., take care of it next time . . ." I imagine many a down-and-outer got a meal there. The pastries were delicious, heavy, inexpensive, and filled you up.
Yesterday we were walking around in the "New and improved" U. district. All the CD stores that used to blast music and the funky book stores are gone. Ten years ago the place was alive with kids in the streets - hordes of them. They were laughing and busting balls, panhandling, dashing across the streets, eating greasy, delicious food in soulful little holes-in-the wall. You could, on occassion, catch a whiff of weed wafting across the vapour.
Yeah, I know - just another old fart being wistful about an imagined lost age. Oh Atlantis! Not really, though. I spent plenty of time in the U. District in the '90's - I know what I'm talking about. When I was active on the east coast restoring Victorian-style houses in the '70's, the area we loved was populated by a half-nuts group of ecclectics. We were of every sort of diverse lifestyle. We loved the houses to the point where we bought them, moved into a dangerous neighborhood, living in construction-zone shells, sacrificing all our time and money and often a marriage to work on those behemoths, suffering freezing temperatures, break-ins, and huge fuel bills. We fought urban renewal (aka low-income housing), charges of eliteism (hah!) and all sorts of hardships. And we had great parties! We succeeded. The area became fashionable about the time Reagan started stinking up the white house. Developers came in and built expensive condos. Guess what? None of the original group of crazies - the ones who made that area great - could afford to stay there (the city raised taxes through the roof). So who replaced us? Asshole neocons, driving around in their Beemers who didn't give a shit about their neighbors or anything else. Oh, the glories of the rich!
Freemont and The U. District have gone from the wonderland of vivid pre-meanie Pepperland to the gray, humorless, proto-paranoid world of the ugly-minded Neocon. Bereft of the thrilling feeling of possibility that used to exist when Clinton ran the country.
Prediction: Bush will resign in disgrace like Nixon - only worse.
Walking around in Freemont, recently, I discovered Touchstone Bakery was closed up. No "we have moved to . . . " sign - place was just empty. It was one of the last hippie joints left in that formerly great part of town. They made the best bread there - sunflower buckwheat. It made the greatest toast you ever ate. The place was full of alternative, underdog pamphlets and posters and really nice folks wearing do-rags who understood if you were too broke to pay. "It's o.k., take care of it next time . . ." I imagine many a down-and-outer got a meal there. The pastries were delicious, heavy, inexpensive, and filled you up.
Yesterday we were walking around in the "New and improved" U. district. All the CD stores that used to blast music and the funky book stores are gone. Ten years ago the place was alive with kids in the streets - hordes of them. They were laughing and busting balls, panhandling, dashing across the streets, eating greasy, delicious food in soulful little holes-in-the wall. You could, on occassion, catch a whiff of weed wafting across the vapour.
Yeah, I know - just another old fart being wistful about an imagined lost age. Oh Atlantis! Not really, though. I spent plenty of time in the U. District in the '90's - I know what I'm talking about. When I was active on the east coast restoring Victorian-style houses in the '70's, the area we loved was populated by a half-nuts group of ecclectics. We were of every sort of diverse lifestyle. We loved the houses to the point where we bought them, moved into a dangerous neighborhood, living in construction-zone shells, sacrificing all our time and money and often a marriage to work on those behemoths, suffering freezing temperatures, break-ins, and huge fuel bills. We fought urban renewal (aka low-income housing), charges of eliteism (hah!) and all sorts of hardships. And we had great parties! We succeeded. The area became fashionable about the time Reagan started stinking up the white house. Developers came in and built expensive condos. Guess what? None of the original group of crazies - the ones who made that area great - could afford to stay there (the city raised taxes through the roof). So who replaced us? Asshole neocons, driving around in their Beemers who didn't give a shit about their neighbors or anything else. Oh, the glories of the rich!
Freemont and The U. District have gone from the wonderland of vivid pre-meanie Pepperland to the gray, humorless, proto-paranoid world of the ugly-minded Neocon. Bereft of the thrilling feeling of possibility that used to exist when Clinton ran the country.
Prediction: Bush will resign in disgrace like Nixon - only worse.
posted by SeattleJohn at 11:19 AM
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