June 2007

Two months ago no one was sure there would be a Pride parade at all. Instead despite ongoing divisions between organizers, Seattle saw its fullest Pride weekend ever. I ended up participating in three separate parades/marches and three rallies. If there are this many major events (plus all the great smaller events) next year, maybe someone could devise a punchcard of some sort. Get the whole card punched and you get a prize of some sort.

Everyone will have a have a Monday morning quarterback (or drag queen) perspective on whether Pride weekend worked or not. Here are a few thoughts:

Bears,Bath&Beyond was my personal favorite from Sunday’s parade. They won the grand prize from the Stranger.

The downtown route cemented its popularity. Last year was NOT a beginner’s luck, one-time fluke.

I’m not sure there should necessarily be a march down Broadway. It was OK, but paled when compared in scale to the Downtown parade. Maybe Broadway and Capitol Hill build a queer street festival or other different event. There should be something in Seattle’s most queer-identified neighborho1od.

To the organizers of the Saturday and Sunday events:

• Great job. Maybe you could collaborate on Pride 2008.
• Don’t exhaust the non-profits that end up spreading themselves (mostly volunteers, by the way) too thinly over the weekend.
• Don’t compete
• Complement each other. There’s plenty of Pride to go around.

This is an awesome annual end-of-school-year event that showcases stories written by kids at Beacon Hill Elementary. I got to be a listener again this year! I joined with two other adults to hear six students read stories they had written and illustrated (other teams of adults listened to small groups of kids in shifts throughout the morning). Boris, a first-grader, wrote about fishing (he even described cleaning and cooking the fish he caught). Colby, another first-grader, wrote about cars. Frankly, he knows much more than I do. Qi Qi, first-grade, wrote about "Animals That Hibernate," focusing primarily on bears and woodchucks. All the kids did a great job reading and talking about why they wrote about the subject they chose. Thanks to Powerful Schools and Powerful Writers for their work. It makes a huge difference for these kids to have constant support.

I spent the first part of the week in Portland at the 45th International Making Cities Livable Conference. The conference focused on "True Urbanism: Designing for Social and Physical Health." A great combination of themes as we watch our neighborhoods change and worry about what humanity we gain or lose through every change. The conference was heavy on academic speakers and a little lighter on practical application in cities. In general, the overarching message was that European cities were lucky enough to mature way before "car culture" while most cities in the Unites States have matured with the growth of car dependence and our scale reflects not a loss of humanity so much as a complete lack of it. The lecturers focused their slide presentations on the old centers of Freiburg and Sienna, places with five or six story buildings, narrow cobbled streets and public plazas. A healthy community, they advised, comes about through low-scale buildings, frequent transit, and places made with kids in mind.

Not exactly rocket science, right? Actually, I'm thinking growth management is actually harder than rocket science. The conference played on this Europe good/U.S. bad dichotomy, which is emotionally attractive, but not that useful. We need to find ways to house, employ, educate and otherwise support a growing number of people. It's more fun in the city if we do that with all kinds of people. In Seattle we have our quirky and beloved single-family, detached homes gridded out from tighter, denser neighborhood business districts (as in, a busy arterial). How can we adopt the conference academics' preferred low-scale development when we have a parallel goal of constraining sprawl? How far up should you grow before you must grow out? And how do we preserve the character and affordability of Seattle's old "streetcar" neighborhoods when they developed early in the last century at low-low-scale? Most of us just know we don't want to be another Los Angeles.

Turnout was great for last night's public comment meeting on possible nightlife regulations. Seattle Nightlife Music Association did a great job of turning out music fans and club owners who really care. Residents of some neighborhoods with a lot of nightlife action turned out to tell how nightlife action that's "above and beyond" can impinge on their rights and turn dangerous. Not surprisingly, clubs said they don't want new regulation and many residents said the city must impose new regulation. In addition a lot of people made really smart observations and suggestions. One speaker used public testimony to impose a new rule for his own clubs.

- A Queen Anne resident commented that we heard from the "elite of the industry" at the meeting rather than the "bottom feeders." He was right. We heard from great places like Skylark, the Rendezvous, Jules Mae's, and Hattie's Hat. Maybe it's typical of all decisions like this that only the good, engaged people show up and get involved.

- One speaker made the pitch that we need to change the culture of drinking. A lot of us make a distinction between going for a drink with friends after work and "going out drinking." Belltown seems to get more of the latter than it used to attract and that means problems for clubs and for the neighborhood. There's an element of personal responsibility and cultural attitudes involved in this.

- Everyone agreed that more police, visible and preferably on foot or bike, is part of the answer. The new officers added this year by City Council and the proposal by the Mayor to add more over the following five years should help. The proposed restructuring of beats and shifts may be part of the answer, as well, if it puts more officers on the street when we need them.

- Most speakers strongly opposed the Mayor's proposal that clubs have responsibility for incidents that occur within 50 feet of their club. This "impacted public area" strikes me as impossible to for a club to control, if not dangerous for a club to try and control. I think the 50-foot proposal should be dropped.

- One speaker told urban dwellers to buy earplugs or move to Magnolia if they want peace and quiet at night. Good sound bites, but the reality is we will have more residents living near nightclubs over time and in more neighborhoods. There is a level of urban noise people should expect if they live Downtown or in parts of Capitol Hill. There's also a level of noise from a DJ or band that can be controlled and prevented from booming out into nearby homes.

- There were lots of other great comments (approximately 60 people spoke), but the biggest applause erupted for the owner of Jules Mae's and the Tin Hat. John LeMaster described the Mayor's nightlife proposals as an attempt to "86" bars from Seattle. So, John publicly 86'ed the Mayor from Jules Mae's and the Tin Hat.

Please don't 86 me, John.

Kudos to the Cascade Bike Club and Group Health for all the great work that went into Bike to Work month in May and into the Group Health Commute Challenge. City Council's two teams of riders joined with literally hundreds of teams around Puget Sound. I pedaled as part of SCKATOW and Councilmember Tom Rasmussen headed up Contenders with Da Fenders. In the end SCKATOW edged Contenders by a little over 200 miles (1,263 miles to 1,027). Congratulations to SCKATOW riders (Krista Bunch, Ketil Freeman, Casey Hanewall, Joe Marquez, Norm Schwab and David Yeaworth) and to Contenders (Brian Hawksford, Kieuh-Anh King, Meg Moorhead, Ben Noble, Sara Nelson and Peter Harris).

CBC calculates that pedaling one mile in your commute saves a pound of CO2 from being released into our atmosphere. Great job to everyone who rode in May. Keep it up. It's great for the environment and for your body. Ride safely!