Recent Stories with tag ballard

"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.

Sunergy solar power projects

It seems every few days we are inundated with claims of new sources of clean, green energy. But these new directions tend to offer a lot of potential, rather than proven results. Yet, as the Gulf oil spill demonstrates, little good can come of staying the course of fossil fuel.

So what's behind door number three? Solar energy isn't a new technology. It's growing comfortable in middle age and showing surprising perseverance. Solar energy systems for homes are still pricey, but if you live in Seattle and have watched your electric bill rise almost 20 percent this year alone, you might have started weighing your options.

"The first question we get from customers is always, 'Will a solar energy system work in Seattle?'" says Jeremy Harvey, the advertising and marketing director for Ballard-based Sunergy Systems. "The answer is yes." (A thick cloud cover does reduce the electricity you get, but partly cloudy days can actually improve power production.) Our long summer days help compensate for the dark December half-days, and at the exact time of the year when our hydroelectricity supply is at its limit.

Sunergy is one of the largest installers of solar energy systems in Washington. (Find more here.) They focus on residential systems, but can also install commercial systems, and Harvey says they are on track to double their installation total from last year.

The sun has been harnessed for energy in a variety of ways since the earliest days of man, but the solar power industry as we know it is really about 40 years old. It first began to attract public interest as a viable residential application in the 1970s and many people's perceptions are still shaped by early versions of solar energy technology.

One thing is still true, which is that the sun pours out much more power than we can get at: Even cutting-edge photovoltaics don't transform more than 30 percent of sunlight into electricity. (They're working on it.) But in terms of what you need to power your home, panels take up much less space and look snappier to boot.

Shoreline Community College's 18-kW system

"We've evolved in every way," Harvey says. "The systems are more efficient, easier to install and maintain, and there are many more types of systems available. Some of the biggest innovations in the industry are government incentives."

Solar energy systems are not cheap up front. The "average" price for the installation of a 5-kW solar electric system is between $20,000 and $40,000. Seattle City Light says a 2-kW system can run $12,000 to $20,000. To make that money back through electricity bill savings and incentives might take 10 to 12 years, though that recoupment time, remarkably, is down by almost half from what it used to be.

Costs are lessened through tax breaks and incentives at the county, state, and federal levels--more or less, depending on where you live. It's not just a free ride for hippies with big screens--policy wonks, like our friends at Sightline, have been pushing for incentives that take into account not just homeowner savings, but also the savings from not adding power infrastructure. Do you know what a new nuclear power plant costs these days?

Issaquah Fish Hatcher's 1-kW panel

Currently, the IRS will allow a tax credit equal to 30 percent of the cost to purchase and install a system. Below that, the incentive game can get confusing. The state will reimburse 15 cents per kilowatt-hour, and up to 54 cents/kWh if your system was manufactured in-state (currently, there is only one manufacturer in Washington State).

Snohomish County has a magnificent program of financial incentives--offering an instant rebate or low-interest loans to pay for installation--but King County has no such program. Seattle City Light will let you collect "rollover" kilowatts, as any excess energy you generate flows back into their system. Sunergy aims for a system that leaves you holding a $0 electric bill over the course of a year.

According to Harvey, the typical solar energy customer so far is in their mid-40s to 60s--in other words, people likely to live in a home long enough to reap the long-term benefits--though some younger, green-conscious families are signing up too. Because photovoltaic panels have no moving parts, maintenance is virtually nil. Occasionally defects in manufacture appear, but these are covered by warranty.

Solar heating tubes

Though solar electric is the most common system ordered, it is not the only type of system you can install. Solar-heated hot water systems are gaining in popularity.

Hot water production is the second highest energy expense in any home, right after central heating (it may be the highest, obviously, if you have radiant heat). Solar hot water makes the most efficient use of the sun's energy, netting you almost three times the energy you'd get from photovoltaics.

In Western Washington, according to Harvey, families can meet about 90 percent of their hot water heating needs in summer, 75 percent in the fall and spring, and 30 percent in the winter. (The solar hot water heaters are "hybrid" systems, with an electric supplement that handles the darkest, coldest months.) And all it takes is some tubes filled with a biodegradable antifreeze solution.

Hot water systems cost substantially less than photovoltaics, so they can pay you back for installation through fuel bill savings in well under ten years. If you'd like to learn more, Sunergy holds special Solar Energy 101 and 201 classes in their Ballard location; contact them for the next date.

Harmony-loving British pop trio Peggy Sue has been recording live performances in uncommon places all along their North American tour.  If you go to their YouTube page, you can see them all: on top of a bus in Montreal; at a skatepark in Portland; on the sidewalks of Boston, at least until the performance was interrupted by the police.

So when the Brighton band was making their way to Seattle to play at the Sunset last weekend, The SunBreak offered a few ideas of places for them to record:

• on the ferry (which has been done, but is still interesting)
• at the Sculpture Park (though you might have a cop run-in there too)
• in the water tower at Volunteer Park (sure to have a nice echo-y effect)

But sometimes the best performances aren't planned, and that's exactly what happened on Saturday night.  Check the video above for Peggy Sue's Seattle performance.

Here's the story—there was a woman watching the show from outside through the window. Apparently she had forgotten her ID.  So for the last song, the band brought the show outside for her.

The Stranglers were always the odd ducks of the first wave of 1970's British punk. Older and smarter than most of their peers, their songs were anchored more in roller-rink keyboards than slashing guitars, and their lyrics emphasized lascivious humor and personal observation over the socio-political shouting of the Sex Pistols and the Clash.

Hugh Cornwell, The Stranglers' lead singer and guitarist from the band's early-seventies inception to 1990, was--in many ways--the face of the band. His distinctive English monotone of a voice and his biting lyrics gave the band its personality, and his restlessness helped pull the band away from spitting pub rock into jazz and exotic keyboard pop (to whit: the magical 1981 British hit, "Golden Brown," the most gorgeous waltz about smack that you'll ever hear). Once Cornwell left The Stranglers' ranks the band remained serviceable, but never quite seemed to find a personality of its own.

Both band and original frontman are doing fine apart though, thanks. The Stranglers continue to record and tour throughout England (their latest long-player Suite XIV contains some lovely pop songs like "She's Slipping Away"), and Cornwell's etched out a low-key but rewarding career solo. His new longplayer Hooverdam (available for free download on the singer's official website) is a likeably rough-around-the-edges collection of tunes largely free of the Stranglers' arty tendencies. All erstwhile punk-rock figures should mature so gracefully.

Tickets ($15 on TicketWeb) for Cornwell's set at the Tractor Tavern Sunday night are still available, and it promises to be a treat. The scruffy rockabilly sound of much of Hooverdam should fit nicely in the environs of a hotbed of roots music like the Tractor, and he reputedly divides his current sets democratically between Stranglers classics (with an emphasis on that classic punk/new wave 1977 opus, Rattus Norwegicus) and newer solo material, with a bare-bones guitar/bass/drums power trio configuration that cuts away all frills and boils old and new tunes alike down to their sinews. No more heroes, my eye. 

Ballard's Original Pancake House is part of a nation-spanning, pancake-purveying chain, but you wouldn't know it from the old-school neon sign out front at 80th & 15th Avenue NW. Yelpers are giving it a respectable 3.5 stars, and Urban Spoon likes it 88 percent.

The first impression you get is that they're expecting company: part of the entryway is a large walled-in porch for hordes to take shelter from the weather in before being admitted to the restaurant proper. Our waiter Juliann said the weekends get a little crazy.

Inside is an expanse of tables made of blond wood ("summer camp ambiance" says Ballard Bites), seating Ballardites with sizable appetites who don't demand much from interior design. You can get pancakes, yes, but there's also waffles and crepes for those with a wandering eye. If you want to break all the rules, there's corned beef hash and more. But--and here is where the sizable appetite part comes in--the corned beef hash comes with pancakes. Just when you think you're out! They drag you back in.

The SunBreak Breakfast Team was three this day (Ballard resident Troy J. Morris sat in), and we ordered the Links & Eggs, Corned Beef Hash, and Buttermilk Pancakes (six). The pancakes came solo, but the Links & Eggs and Corned Beef came with a choice of two sides (we went with 3 pancakes and fruit). That, plus two coffees constantly refilled and a Diet Coke, came to $36, plus tip. The Corned Beef Hash was the most expensive option ordered, at $10.95, I believe....

(more)

"a murder of one" by Zenobia Joy, via The SunBreak Flickr pool.

Hey ladies: Blackbird's spin-off, women's store Birgitta is set to close, like, now.  So head to Ballard this weekend for a mega-clearance sale.  Some clothes for women will remain at Blackbird, on the main floor.  But the rest of the stuff upstairs has gots to go!

Full press release after the jump.

Blackbird to Close Women's Store

Big clearance sale on remaining merchandise

As a change in business plan, Blackbird is closing Birgitta, its women's store, immediately. A small selection of women's brands will be integrated into the main floor at Blackbird and the new store, The Field House.

Almost one year ago Blackbird decided to diversify and broaden its reach in the Seattle retail market. Blackbird had been selling menswear to women and also had a successful ongoing women's rack in Blackbird. Women's clothing seemed to be the natural next step. After almost a year, it was realized that the other Blackbird businesses were more successful and took far less effort.

Owner Nicole Miller says, "Closing Birgitta is not easy, but we think people will be excited about our new projects to come."

The space where Birgitta was--upstairs in Blackbird--will be converted into a private personal shopping studio, and will potentially be used for shop-in-shop/pop-up-shops.

THE BIG BIRGITTA CLEARANCE SALE

Sunday, December 13th 6pm - 9pm

Monday, December 14th 9am - 9pm

40-80% off

RACKS AND RACKS of LOVELY THINGS

Karen Walker

Helmut Lang

Harputs Own

Harvey Faircloth

Mono

Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair

Blank

Ladyboy

Repetto

Cosmic Wonder

Deadly Ponies

Patrick Stephan

RVCA

Obey

Tslay

Clu

Boy by Band of Outsiders

Dace

Fremont

Woolrich John Rich & Bros.

and lots of Vintage

A wacky wordsmith had his or her way with the awning of Ballard's Bit Saloon :

Bands mining traditional Americana sounds come a dime a dozen nowadays, but you can count the number of 'em that actually capture the unbridled joy of their influences on Mickey Mouse's left hand.

In a world of whinging neo-folkies and over-studied No Depression mewlers, Indian Valley Line sound like the real, wonderfully unaffected deal: Three guys who'd be just as happy bashing away at their unadorned country-bluegrass tunes on a front porch under a restless night sky as in front of an audience. Which makes being in an audience for one of their shows a party, pure and simple.

The band's surging acoustic sound alternates chugging Johnny Cash old-school rockers with the sweet sting of Ryan Lynch's weepy electric guitar, and lead singer Kevin "Bubba" Sur belts out the tunes in a warm and keening Woody Guthrie wail that can't help but put a smile on your face. The band's packing an armada of great material, too: "Cleveland" bounces down the road like a great lost Chet Atkins track, and I triple-dog-dare...

(more)

Jason Franklin and Shawnmarie Stanton in "Bone Portraits" at Live Girls! Theatre. Photo by Meghan Arnette.

"We inventors, you know what we keep in mind?" Thomas Edison asks his idealistic young assistant in Live Girls! Theatre's Bone Portraits (through Nov. 14, tickets $5-$15). "The good of the people?" the assistant dutifully responds, only to be cackled at by the nefarious showman-inventor. Edison doesn't really need to answer his own question—the audience already knows he's in it for the money.

School children are no doubt still taught the happy version of Thomas Edison's life, as an quintessentially American story of success through sheer pluck and ingenuity, but a more sophisticated and complex (and adult) portrait has been emerging on Seattle stages this fall. In this version, Edison is emblematic of the excesses and callous short-sightedness of the era of progress, when industrialization and technological advancement in the late-nineteenth century began reshaping the social order. He was part of the back-story to the Balagan's The Elephant's Graveyard last month, which touched on his brutal electrocution of a Coney Island elephant as a publicity stunt. Bone Portraits goes further, taking aim at the man himself, and the human cost of his ruthless business practices....

(more)

If today actually felt like the first day of fall, it would be the perfect occasion for tonight's lineup at the Tractor. The atmospherics of Trespassers William would definitely go well with a crispness in the air. 

And then there's Toronto songwriter Taylor Kirk, aka Timber Timbre.  Tonight's his first time in Seattle (on his way to the Rifflandia Fest this weekend), touring off his self-titled U.S. debut, out last month on much-beloved and bebuzzed Canadian label Arts & Crafts (see: Broken Social Scene and everyone affiliated with them). It's a startling goth-folk and blues album that exists as some sort of Venn diagram between Grizzly Bear, M. Ward, and Screamin' Jay Hawkins.  Check out haunting first track "Demon Host" (above) for a taste.  Just add jack-o-lantern.

• Timber Timbre, Trespassers William, and Charles Leo Gebhardt IV play the Tractor tonight at 8pm. Tickets are $10, 21+.