Most Viewed Stories in Visual Arts

Seattle art critic Matthew Kangas said one of the weirdest things I have ever heard anyone say in public yesterday, at the press preview for SAM's new exhibit Alexander Calder: A Balancing Act (October 15-April 11, suggested SAM admission $9-$15). Trying to make a point about Miró's influence on Calder, he said, "If you take away the metal, it's a Miró painting."

Strictly speaking, if you take away the metal, there's nothing to paint. But more to the point, taking away the metal would be like trying to appraise cubism without all those angles. As the subtitle A Balancing Act implies, Calder's art has to do with the kinetics of taking up space. If much of 2D art is about the line, Calder's sculpture is about the line's tensile properties--in his work, the line bends, coils, springs, and supports.

Seattleites who aren't familiar with Alexander Calder probably are and just don't that he's the sculptor who produced "Eagle," the painted-red steel piece that's become the icon of SAM's sculpture park. But Calder also... (more)

Lines stretched everywhere at a sold-out SAM Remix Friday night. (The Seattle Art Museum's next Remix event will be at the Sculpture Park on August 27. Sign up for more information.) I'd dropped in at a Remix before, which had a lively, museum-at-night wine-and-cheese feel, but this was an event. I could tell because people were dressed up. For further evidence, check the #samremix Twitter stream.

From 8 p.m. to midnight, the museum was thronged with people dancing to KEXP's DJ Riz, drinking, designing a cover for the Stranger, singing karaoke, taking "highly opinionated tours" from celebrities, and watching Warhol films. The art tours began at 8:30 p.m. with Seth Aaron Henderson, designer and the winner of Project Runway's season seven, and wrapped up at 10:45 p.m. with musician and man-about-town Sean "Harvey Danger" Nelson. Henderson also gave a talk about his favorite works at SAM, and Nelson performed live.

The "Pop Culture Fashion" runway show drew a big crowd to the South Hall, and brought dayglo outfits, Warhol homages, punk rock DIY, and...well, the slideshow below will do a better job of this than I can. It was presented by the New York Fashion Academy, and featured creations by Anna D Designs, Mille Vixen, Samara Clothing Co., Evolve, Cameron Levin Couture, The House of Gina Marie, Lady Konyaku, Lekkerlife, Reyes Clothing Co., Jesse David, and Yurkanin Design House. (Complaints about my photography should be addressed to the heavens, while shaking a fist.)... (more)

Merry Christmas, if you're into that kind of thing! Thanks to all to our readers--we hope you're enjoying the holidays wherever you are. And thanks to zenobia_joy, who uploaded this photo of Christmas Eve on Capitol Hill to our SunBreak Flickr pool.

It ain't champagne, but it'll do for baptizing the new year around here. Thanks to longstanding friend of the Sunbreak Troy J. Morris for heading to Winlock, spotting this tap, and adding the proof to our Flickr pool.

Nikon is getting ready to roll out a new dSLR and Seattle-based photographer Chase Jarvis was the lucky bastard to get to play around with it before anyone else had a look. Instead of grabbing the D7000 and taking thousands of shots of cute kittens, he gathered some friends, a remote controlled helicopter (omfg!), a score performed by Joshua Roman, and a white cargo van to make a film in Seattle that pushed the camera's HD video capabilities.

Aside from being a nice little movie (to me, it reads as a clever counterpoint to the one that announced the high end Canon 5D Mark II), the clip and its associated blog entry  does exactly what I'm sure the honchos at Nikon hoped: it already gearheads drooling over specs and queuing to preorder one for themselves. An unintentional side effect of the tech hype, though, might be showing off some worthy Seattle bands like Sera Cahoone, Head Like a Kite, and Victor Shade whose music appears in amazing road test video's soundtrack.... (more)

George Tsutakawa's Centennial Fountain, in Seattle U's Quad

As a relatively young city, Seattle doesn't have a large number of major art collections in public or private hands. Though our art benefactors have been generous and shown a fine eye for great art, Seattle can't stand up to the magnificent art collectors and collections in cities like San Francisco, New York, or even Los Angeles.

So local art lovers have to do a little more legwork to enjoy the pleasures of seeing art. One great source for viewing art is to take in the fine art collections in the corporate or organizational world. To take in one of these fine collections, start at Seattle University's central campus on Capitol Hill.

Seattle U has done a great job of integrating art into the public areas of many of its buildings, and a tour of some of the best art is both fulfilling and easy; it won't take more than an hour to see the best works. All buildings are open weekdays during business hours, and most are open outside of that, even on the weekends, so there really isn't a bad time to go. After, pop into Cafe Presse or Stumptown for refreshment and post-viewing conversation.

Start your tour at the far north end of the campus, just off Madison. The first work of art is a building, the award-winning Chapel of St. Ignatius designed by Bremerton-born architect Steven Holl.

The chapel is a magnificent work; surely one of the finest examples of modern architecture in the city. Holl followed his brief closely on this building. It subtly draws you in with clean, simple lines, and then invites contemplation. It's a spiritual house, but not overly tied to any one religion. Seattle U is a Jesuit school, but the chapel invites all to worship and pray.

... (more)

It's just as well that I can't afford to collect Andy Warhol. One piece just doesn't do it. You can fill half of Paris's Grand Palais with portraits and a museum in Pittsburgh with assorted pieces and still not see the same piece twice.

Or you can stay closer to home: love fear pleasure lust pain glamour death opened yesterday at SAM. It's a smart, focused selection of Warhol pieces curated by Marisa Sánchez.

She steers away from the overly familiar and focuses on Warhol's non-paintings—photobooth strips, Polaroids, sewn portraits, screen tests—and non-iconic subjects. No Marilyns, no soup cans, no neon-cow wallpaper.

Warhol's genius—or was it just a knack?—was taking a simple set of rules and milking them for all they were worth. He repeated ideas the way Letterman repeates punchlines, and was just as successful at making lightning strike the same place twice, three times, four times, or more, long after you'd think that spot had no spark left in it.

A case in point is the highlight of the show: twenty of Warhol's Screen Tests. The idea behind the Screen Tests was simple: Sit someone in front of a nondescript background and film them for three minutes. Just sitting there. Doing not much. Project the films at 16 frames per second so they last four and a half minutes.

The first time I saw any Screen Tests was last year at SAM, when Dean & Britta played their collection of songs composed for 13 Most Beautiful. "Most beautiful" was an apt title, and not just because Jane Holzer brings the hubba hubba. The Screen Tests are some of the loveliest films I've seen, but it's maddeningly hard trying to pin down why, because for the most part nothing happens. But nothing makes me feel more like L.B. Jeffries, James Stewart's character in Rear Window, and at their best they give Warhol's subjects a moment where they're as lovely as Grace Kelly's entrance in that film.... (more)

"There's a point I've been hitting in the last few years--I'm finding dance very ephemeral, as many people would say. You do it and it's gone. And you need people, you need space, there are a lot of different limitations," Leah Schrager told me, sitting on the back patio of a Park Slope bar recently. "And this, I can just do."

Schrager was explaining the odd process that's taken her from graduating with a double-major in dance and biology from the UW back in 2007 to this coming weekend, when her first art show, called Pretty Whatever, opens at CoCA Ballard this Thursday (reception at 6 p.m.; show through August 7), 2,500 miles from Gowanus, Brooklyn, where she now calls home.

A native of someplace called Steamboat Island, which I am assured is nearer Olympia than Shelton, Schrager has had an oddly eventful artistic career since graduating. While she performs with a few small companies in NYC and apprentices with Zvi Gotheiner's ZviDance, in Seattle, she's best known for her role as the body of "Rimas," filmmaker and artist Linas Phillips' (Bass Ackwards) mentally challenged brother in Lasagna, or: How I learned to stop slipping towards the prison of permanent darkness, a collaboration between Phillips and theatre artist Jim Fletcher, which went up at On the Boads in January 2009. Aside from a couple walk-ons, either as whatever female was required at the moment or to appear as an alien at the end, she mostly trotted around stage with a television for a head, through which Rimas appeared as video.

But of course, performance opportunities from artists you run into in airports (as was the case between Schrager and Phillips, travelling from New York to Seattle; they'd met previously through working with 33 Fainting Spells) don't come along every day. As Schrager pursued her dance career in New York, she began turning to other creative outlets from which the work in Pretty Whatever grew out of.

Dubbed "phoems" by Schrager, the work in show is the simple combination of photos and text. The earliest material, which she began concocting in fall 2009, paired shots from her dance and modelling portfolio with snippets of text from her journals. From there, Schrager cast a wider net, repurposing Facebook status, collaborating with other photographers, and developing an increasingly large body of work which has previously shown in small venues in New York and Kyoto, Japan.

Often, the relationship between text and image is vague at best. In one image (most of which are simply known by their text), a voguish, vaguely Eighties looking editorial shot of Schrager blowing a kiss is counterpointed with the phrase, "People loved it. I'm fucked."

"I was sitting in a theatre, watching a dance performing that I was writing a review of," Schrager recalled, "and people really loved it. So that's what I wrote in my notebook." Months later, searching for text, she came across it and it became part of the body of work.

Other pieces are strongly biographical. While Schrager seems to have moved beyond some of the earliest pieces, which paired cityscapes with her poetry about her travails as a young artist in New York, the more subtle ones will probably show up in the up-to-fifty works in Pretty Whatever. One of the earliest, in fact, is a simple photo of the Brooklyn Bridge with the attendant text: "My pen has run out. I guess I live here now."

"One day I was writing in my journal and my pen ran out," she recalled simply. "And it was two weeks or a month into living here. And my living situation was pretty bad. I was subletting--no! I was waiting to sublet a place, and this woman just kept putting me off, for like two months. She'd be like, 'You can move in in two weeks,' and then, 'You can move in two more weeks...'" She shook her head trying to recall the details, but overall, the anecdote reveals a lot about her development in creating visual art: from the earliest, heart-on-her-sleeve poetry and drama images, Schrager has proved willing to relax and let more subtle combinations of visual image and textual content come together.

Some of the most interesting works in Pretty Whatever, in fact, are the least autobiographical, relying instead on the almost random interplay of repurposed images and texts. At one point, Schrager moved on to creating pieces based on people's Facebook statuses, and indeed, when I first saw some of the images in Pretty Whatever, what most struck me was their similarity to the randomness of Facebook news feeds, with the mixture of inane and emotional, random and sentimental all jumbled up together.

Schrager agreed, and admitted that she's been trying to plan some sort of surprise based on the concept for the show's Thursday night opening at CoCA's gallery space up on Shilshole Bay. I'm not sure if you have time still, but it's probably worth RSVP-ing via Facebook.

Coffee table books, especially ones on photography, are one of my favorite things. So when I heard that Seattle photographer and social artist, Chase Jarvis was due to publish his latest labor of love SEATTLE 100: Portrait of a City, (published by Peachpit, a division of Pearson) it prompted me to get in touch and arrange some time to talk about his passion for democratizing creativity. The book is available now through Amazon, Borders and Barnes & Noble.

The two-hundred-plus page body of work is "a curated collection of leading artists, musicians, writers, scientists, restaurateurs, DJs, developers, activists, entrepreneurs, filmmakers, and more, all of whom are defining and driving culture in Seattle." As Jarvis points out, the list is not the definitive list, but a list and one that he hopes will be expanded through future contributions on the related website.

If you have a similar interest, you’ll agree that it’s a rarity to find a book by a photographer of Jarvis's caliber for such a reasonable price. Then when you learn that Jarvis specifically negotiated the price and committed to donate his proceeds to www.4CULTURE.org , a local non-profit which provides public support of cultural programs, you just feel good about the purchase.

Jarvis's philosophy is broadly appealing. Local businesses Theo Chocolate and Small Lot wine distributors jumped on board with contributions to the project in the form of a special edition chocolate bar and custom blend red and white wines. Darin Williams of Small Lot commented, "It was an easy decision. We signed up for the project because of where the proceeds were going. Generally, people pay attention to where they spend their money to support local businesses that's why I love this community."... (more)

A trio of shows opens tonight at Roq la Rue (2312 Second Ave.) with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. Ana Bagayan, an Armenian-American artist based in Los Angeles, paints oddly disturbing (in my opinion) pictures of vacant-eyed children interacting with the cute, fuzzy citizens of the animal kingdom. Ryan Heshka is a long-time Roq la Rue artist with a fondness for retro-sci-fi imagery re-imagined with a twisted, surrealist bent. And finally there's the enigmatic artist Tin, who has a mini-show of four recent pieces of Steampunk-themed art.

Bless you Simple Insomnia for adding this glorious, green-lipped dose of Solstice Parade sex appeal to our Flickr pool.

"One of the things I love about Seattle is how the Space Needle is visible from such a variety of locations," says ozmafan. We love that too.

Meet Heather, courtesy of lwestcoat, one of my fave Flickr pool contributors.... (more)

Kiki Smith, "Untitled (Head of Guanyin)," at the Henry Art Gallery. Photo courtesy of The Pace Gallery.

Who knew? May 18 is International Museum Day. In a program sponsored by the Association of Art Museum Directors, museums all over the world host special events, discussions, and free or reduced admissions. May 18 having fallen on a Tuesday this year, the Henry Art Gallery--Seattle's only participating institution--has delayed recognizing the event until the more convenient weekend. Today through Sunday, admission is free! (See here for hours of operation.)

So take advantage of the chance to see some of the great work currently on display. Vortexhibition Polyphonica is an ever-changing exhibition of art from the permanent collection curated by guests to create a polyphony of artistic voices through the contrasts and themes that arise from bringing together diverse works. And of course there's also I Myself Have Seen It, a show of photography from artist Kiki Smith, as well as a collection of six portraits by German artist Thomas Ruff.

Flickr group contributor lwestcoat reminds us that it is, in fact, the season for nuptials with this lovely shot. Congratulations to MJ and Alexis from everyone at The SunBreak--they officially tied the knot last weekend.

Part of Alanna MacGowan's "Eat/Gather." Courtesy of the Henry Art Gallery

The sign next to Jenny Kam’s Hedonism says it all: "Please touch," placed at the farthest possible point from a more familiar sign reminding viewers, "Please Do Not Touch."

This sign lays at the invisible line between the 2010 University of Washington MFA Thesis Exhibition, on view at the Henry Art Gallery through June 27, and Vortexhibition Polyphonica, also on view at the Henry. It speaks volumes about what art is now, as opposed to the boundaries customarily laid between viewer and artwork, observer and artist.

What is the difference between a piece of student work hung unceremoniously in an art school’s hallways, awaiting critique—waiting to be altered, to be bettered—and a piece by an artist hanging with purposeful intention on a gallery’s white walls? There is no one better than a student artist to blur the distinction.

The effect of working in an academic settingwhere a student may spend as much time discussing their work with others as they do creating—is hard to ignore. Students accustomed to engaging in conversation with other students and advisors become artists who create work that directly engages with the viewer.

If you need more evidence that students represent the ideal ambassadors of changing perceptions regarding what is fine art, look no further than the design students that account for eight of the twenty-two theses hanging on the Henry’s walls. After all, by displaying the work of these eight design students alongside more traditional media—and in today’s world of contemporary art we’re not just talking oil paintings, but conceptual, video and installation art—page design becomes fine art.

A thesis is an argument, and these eight design students have proven their point. Design is art, and a designer is an artist—"fine" in any possible sense of the word.

Lauren Deger's Understanding Color makes no subtle point of this, as her thesis draws parallels between art, poetry, and science. Deger’s complex color study presents itself as easy to follow charts educating the viewer about the complexities and implications of color. At first glance, they are simply pleasing to look at, but they draw the viewer in, and then they start to get conversational.... (more)

This Friday, March 12, from 6 to 9 p.m., Roq la Rue is having its opening night for the second annual Lush Life invitational group show. Featuring works by 18 separate artists "that contain an opulence or richness, either in subject matter or technique," Lush Life 2 serves as a sort of primer course in the pop surrealist work Roq la Rue specializes in. The show features everything from Brian Despain's steampunk paintings to Travis Louie's ephemeral old-fashioned photorealistic paintings of alternate realities. Michael Brown's animal paintings pervert Margaret Keane's famous "big eye" paintings by making them far too human and soulful, while Andrew Arconti and Madeline Von Foerster ape classical painting styles while adding in surreal twists. The show also goes beyond paintings to include sculptures by Kris Kuksi, Mandy Greer, and Boomer Torvik.

If there's a more fun way than a Remix to visit the monumental Picasso exhibition ongoing at SAM, I'm not sure what it could be, and I suspect it isn't likely to be legal. Museum members get a special entrance and a lounge all their own, but regular people like you and me can also buy tickets (and do, the Remixes frequently sell out) and enjoy the slightly illicit thrill of taking over a museum for the night, having a drink or two, and discovering a wide range of amusements. 

Here's what you missed from last night's extravaganza:

The evening began with people milling about, drinking wine and listening to the marimba-playing, chanson-française-crooning Erin Jorgensen. There was a French culture theme on account of the Picasso exhibit coming from the Musée National Picasso, but it was also Seattle-French, like it had just biked down from Café Presse on Capitol Hill.

After Jorgensen came the Harlequin Hipsters, "Seattle's premiere partner dance improv troupe." That description seems complete but it does leave out the hula hoops.

I am notoriously bad at matching face to names, but if you want to give it a shot, here are the Hipster players. As you can see, they supply the ambiance.

Then arrived the sassiness of the Heavenly Spies, whose can-can dance mastery can be viewed at the Can Can. (That's them in the first photo, up top, too.) Pernod Absinthe was sponsoring the event so as you watched the dancing, a woman circulated among the crowd offering a sample absinthe spoon.

But it was not all DJ TigerBeat's dance music (with impromptu singalong by Seattle's young and chic to "Livin' on a Prayer"); up on the fourth floor you could wander the galleries to harp accompaniment, only to notice the songs were oddly familiar--anything from arrangements of Katrina and the Waves' "Walking on Sunshine" to The Eagles' "Desperado." Chilling.

You could watch video of a Dutch girl very hard trying to sketch a Picasso.

You could play trivia. If you're wondering about the sailor hats at the far table: The first 50 people wearing a sailor's outfit got in free. Almost everything about the museum experience is improved by having 50 people in sailor outfits wandering about.

You could have your portrait taken.

Or you could take the Portrait Challenge, and draw one yourself.

Portrait Challenge accepted! Kanye and bug-Kanye.

Crowds thronged the Picasso exhibit itself, of course. Everyone got a ticket with a 20-minute window, so that you could still move about. The exhibit comes with accompanying audio narration, which you listen to on "wands" that are about the size of an opened clam-shell cell phone. They're very popular, but you can also see that the attentional bottleneck that makes cell phone listeners bad drivers extends to walkers, too. The Remix may be over, but the Picasso exhibit runs through January 17.

ticktock dance vs. Perseus. Photo by Nikolai Lesnikov.

ticktock dance, ticktock vs. Perseus (Sat., 4:45 and on, Karkeek Park, free). A couple months ago, ticktock dance came to New York to perform as part of an aerial dance festival. The idea behind "aerial dance" is to bring the choreographic vision to what's otherwise an--dare I say it--ossified circus art. Lots of people love the idea in concept--who wouldn't?--but in practice, it's often a failure. The aerial artists on hand at the festival performed one band gimmick after another. Except for ticktock.

Comprised of lovelies Liza Rose and Jill Marissa (of the Aerialistas) and Bridget Gunning (a frequent collaborator of Keely Isaak Meehan's Manifold Motion), ticktock's work is fascinating and boundary-pushing, making broad use of the space and thinking far outside the circus box when it comes to making a show. All of which is to say that whatever the crew is planning to do when they install themselves on Miguel Edwards' Perseus statue in Carkeek Park this Saturday for a series of performances at 4:45, 5:45, and 6:45 p.m., it's going to be worth seeing.

Josephine's Echopraxia, It doesn't matter if it has been said before some things bear repeating (Fri. & Sat. 9:45, Project: Space Available, free). I saw a bit of Marissa Rae Niederhauser's current show at Project: Space Available when I was in Seattle last, and it was, to put it bluntly, disturbing. A series of tableaux vivants, entitled It doesn't matter if it has been said before some things bear repeating, the first iteration featured Niederhauser performing being subjected to a brutal domination by one of my favorite local actors, Paul Budraitis.

The second installation, Your morality tales are ignorant and arrogant and I am sick of hearing them, goes up this weekend, and continues Niederhauser's exploration of the objectification and exploitation of women through troubling imagery. As the show progresses (her residency lasts through the end of October), each previous work will be installed through video and other techniques, so that the show builds on itself. (P:SA is located on 10th Ave. near E. Pike St.; enter the building through the door next to Sweatbox Yoga and follow the hallway back to Studio D.)... (more)

Pablo Picasso was the world’s first truly modern artist, and not solely in terms of technique. Before the term "branding" was a gleam in a marketer's eye, he understood the commercial importance of an artist’s public persona, actively pursued PR opportunities (he was constantly featured in Life and Look magazines), raked in money from appearances in movies and on TV, used the mass production of art as a way to scale his output, and created a complete, complex mythology around his life and art.

However, judging from the Picasso, Masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris exhibit now at SAM (on view from October 8, 2010 to January 17, 2011), he never committed an artist’s worst sin: He never bought his own myth, or let it rule him.

The staff as SAM worked countless hours bringing this exhibition, the first to ever travel from the Musée National Picasso (which is being renovated) and the largest exhibition of the artist’s work in this country since 1939, to Seattle.

It is a testament to Picasso's prodigious talent and output that this blockbuster show, which you would expect to show signature works, or works from a particular period, presents you instead with more personal glimpses of the artist. Picasso’s strength as an exhibition is that it is a collection of works that were in the artist’s personal collection, works he never sold, works he held near, works he couldn’t let go. The exhibition is great not so much for its celebration of his iconographic fame as an artist, but in its celebration of Picasso the man.

Works from every phase of his life are on view. The exhibition includes 150 works, 75 paintings and sculptures, in 12 rooms, each room dedicated to a period of his life.... (more)

He's a lot of fun, but he really can't hold his liquor, the glass is far too large. (From +Russ in TSB's Flickr pool.)

Sneaky kitteh from zenobia_joy in our Flickr pool.

The winner of the 2008 Best Thematic Museum Show award is at the Frye Art Museum through January 3. You've been warned. But even though art critics like it (Jen Graves, Regina Hackett), The Old, Weird America has charms enough for anyone to swing by First Hill and have your head cracked open by its weird old stick.

Slightly hungover, I found myself parked in front of Jeremy Blake's "Winchester" (2002) video--18 loopy, looping minutes of in-and-out-of-focus footage of the Winchester Mystery House, with ghostly, Winchester-rifle-bearing cowboys rippling across the screen, reforming into lurid Rorschach patterns, and dissolving to new elaborations on the Winchester House's whimsical architecture. (The card helpfully explains that a psychic told Sarah Winchester her family was haunted by the souls of all the people killed by Winchester rifles, and that only ceaseless home construction would keep them at bay.) You feel like you've walked into a David Lynch Western.

Barnaby Furnas, John Brown (2005), Urethane/dye on linen, 72 x 60 in.

While the exhibit brings together recent artists who have run folkishly amuck, you can see the category is broadly applied, from the Winchester folk tale, to the summoning of the ghost of ex-slave Bill Traylor in Deborah Grant's "Where Good Darkies Go" (2006), to the post-folk, Civil War gore of Barnaby Furnas.

Eric Beltz's incantatory, shamanistic portraits of founding fathers (the valedictory "Good Luck Assholes" from Thomas Jefferson could win anyone's heart) are across the room from Greta Pratt's "Nineteen Lincolns," which plunges you into the unlikely passions of Lincoln impersonators. Brad Kahlhamer's peyote visions of the Native American thread in this folk tapestry feature piles of skulls, hallucinatory totems and power animals, and The Searchers. McDermott & McGough's Sacred Love and Pain sculpture revisits the closeted suburban male, playing with a dollhouse's scale for an outsized sense of box-canyon erotics.

What it comes down to is not easily corralled. Sometimes the gesture toward folk art is nostalgic, anti-commercial; sometimes it evokes an another era's unmediated self-consciousness--and frequently it's a camouflaged aggression, as if your great-aunt's quilt was possessed by a spirit intent on smothering you, or if grandma dosed your tea. Didn't expect that, didja? It's a cross between a pop-up version of Lies My History Teacher Told Me and someone like Kurfew sampling the Mills Brothers' "Jimtown Road."

You can see a lot of beauty all around you, if you just open your eyes. The following photos were all taken within a ten-block radius of my workplace Downtown. If you're ready, take a walk with me.

This door stands, embedded in the middle of this building's outer wall--several feet above the alley with no steps, no ladder, no fire escape. Just a door floating far above your head, if you happen to be walking by. Why ask why?

All the noir-ish corners of buildings in their intermediate stages of construction fascinate much more than the sometimes glossy and faceless end results....

 

Two blocks from my building. Note the discarded coffee cup in the background. As a non-Seattle friend of mine noted, how quintessentially Seattle....

For what it's worth, I've documented the 'hood's changes, ebbs, and flows in a book called Neighborhood Metamorphosis.  

Thanks to Flickr pool contributor BritBeat for this awesome shot of Chase Jarvis's "Seattle 100" project, which you can read all about on TSB here.