Seagulls. (rough rough draft)

I couldnt figure out the best way to pick the seagulls up off the wharf. There was really no getting around that it was my job, and after the events of last night, someone would have to sweep up the feathers, the beaks, the whole bits of bird piled, sometimes four deep. But town custodian or no, I was more concerned about the price of hay.
The thatching on my escape raft was nearly finished, and I’d done all necessary sawing, cutting, welding. Even the sail was complete. But given that most cloth materials were in such short supply I figured hay would be the way to go for cushioning. After all, I’d be on the raft a while.

Then last night happened. Without a lot of warning- some warning, but not a lot- the skyfighters returned and just made an absolute mess of the waterfront. Even in the days of heavy industry it’d never looked this bad. Dead seagulls everywhere. Wharf rats crawling through the bodies, carrying away half-eaten bags of chips left by fleeing shoppers. One giant Styrofoam middle finger, the calling card of the skyfighters.

Still, I couldn’t buy hay anywhere, not on town custodian wages. And paid vacation was out of the question.

I woke up with a note stuck to my ceiling saying my services would be required for at least another two weeks to deal with the mess. I am surprised my bosses survived the melee, frankly. The plan had been that I’d get some hay, finish the raft and disappear. It was crucial to do this before the onset of winter, when all the ocean trash freezes into sharp icicles, that launch into the sky due to displacement. Only this stops the skyfighters, their metal bodies crashing into the same sea that they patrol, their “peacekeeper” badges glowing at sunset. This wasn’t a fight I wanted in the middle of. There were only so many layers of irony I wanted to process at once.

But now here I am, staring at a whole wharf full of bird corpses. If I leave now, they’ll just funnel regeneration funds into Employee Retention funds, and not only will they find me and drag me back, the whole of fucking Bayside will still be a trash mound I have to sweep over. Revitalization. Ha. 

The question is where to take the birds, and how. My bags aren’t meant for anything this heavy duty; I’ll probably need to petition the Society of Feral Cats for their services. I hate that. Joan at the desk is always so smug. “You thought we were a bad idea, but now look at you.” She’ll probably call Shirley at the Urban Goat Alliance and have a good laugh. It’s not that I despise the usefulness of animals, it’s just that there are way too many of these beauracracies and if we don’t have money to keep the schools open, how the hell do we keep three Fitness Gorillas? At least Danny Felds is nice. I wouldn’t want him out of a job. I’ll keep that in mind the next time a city employee satisfaction survey gets passed around. Why they have the “check box if ____ should be fired” box is beyond me. Afterall, Joan is still here, and why? But then, I suppose so am I, and after the whole mess on Rockefeller street, I shouldn’t be. Well, hopefully I won’t be for long. If I could just get my vacation time figured; they never search for those who don’t come back, only those who leave. 

Will you look at the sunset over scorched feathers. The society for unusual bar ornamentation would love these. I could use a smoothie.

So I guess I should find my brooms. If this doesn’t take too long, I’ll just use the hay from them on the raft. And maybe these feathers. They have to be good for something.

12/30! On The Nose!

Tips for successful tourism include: not being a tourist
not caring if people know you're one. I'd rather get directions
than wander lonely as a cloud, I'd rather sit in the spot
that everyone drawn here like flocking voles sits because
it's worth it, even if it's not secret, I'll get it.

Like how I tell folks to check out pike place if they haven't.
The things a city owns that belong to the world, and the
things that belong to the neighbors--- I am a local at my
locals, and running numbers everywhere else.

Or I am a local everywhere, but only trust my fellow
locals at the spots I've worn in with elbows.

It is hard to share joy without sounding like namedropping,
it is hard to namedrop without ruining joy. I will glide
across these pavements I've not known before,
I will take all the pictures I need

but I'll try not to be an asshole about it.

You know it's a certain kind of day.

a joke like this provides comfort.

carry on.

Trains and Tall Buldings 3: Dispatch from the Central Oregon Coast

Many American cities with "city" in their title aren't recognizable as such*. This seems especially true in the Northwest, where a "city" suffix guarantees a post-rural town that's been swallowed by (or is currently being swallowed by) growing sprawl. Sometimes this takes the form of a dual-downtown situation, where the historic, old downtown is preserved, (with various levels of care) and serves as a destination for tourists, or prospective urban transplants.** Then, a mile or so up a road that more often than not serves as an inlet to multiple cul-de-sacs, there's a huge parking lot with a flagship store (Wal-Mart, if the town is poor, a Safeway/Haggen/Costco if not, Whole Foods or Trader Joes if they have attracted a lot of post-citydwellers) and several other chains-- a Subway, McDonalds, Starbucks, Dominos, etc. I first noticed and identified this in Stanwood, where I lived on return to the states, but have noticed it in growing small towns all over Western Washington. The idealist in me says (dammit!) the old, walkable, local downtowns should be enough for any town, but the pragmatist in me says (well, I guess) this is a decent compromise. More on that, probably at some future post, but this is the context needed for my trip with Rachel and her family to Lincoln City, Oregon.

Located halfway down the coast, at 8,000+, Lincoln City has the third largest population (after Astoria and Newport) of Oregon's coast. When we first drove into the north end, there was the mile-up option, two large parking lots with strip-malls about 40% full of business. A McMennamins. A Safeway, a Grocery Outlet, "the 60s Diner," something called the Dapper Frog, and a pizza place. Lots of Space-For-Lease. 

We got to the beach house, overlooking the pacific ocean. It was serene, spacious, gorgeous. This seems to be a feature of all Oregon coast beach houses.

The first day was largely beachlounging, eating, getting settled. The next day we piled into a couple of cars and drove through Lincoln City to Newport, Oregon***. Lincoln City is an interesting case, as for the longest time it was a series of much smaller towns. The result, as you wind down 101, is a series of your classic, historic downtowns connected intermittently by sprawl or woods. I'm a bit miffed my vacation has to ends when it does, because I want to walk around Welcoma and Taft, especially. The town itself probably couldn't sustain this many centers of eating, drinking, and trinket-buying, but in summer, Lincoln City can grow up to 30,000 people due to tourism. Which is it's #1 income source, natch.

It'd be a great spot for a school of some sort; it seems uniquely positioned to make for a sweet little college town. But that's not the business I'm in.

Twenty miles south is Newport, the largest town on the Central Oregon Coast, an hourish east of Eugene. After noodling our way through the Nye Beach Neighborhood, we disembarked at Bayfront, which serves as both an active fishing port and Newport's crown tourist destination (the aquarium, wax museum, waterfront, and undersea gardens are all there). 

I got the feeling both Nye Beach and Bayfront serve as Old Downtowns for Newport; the mile-up strip mall option wasn't one parking lot or series thereof, it was the whole stretch into town, a la Highway 99 in Washington. Bayfront promised the unique-to-Newport.
As such, I wanted to fall in love with Bayfront. I didn't. I mean, it was fascinating**** but . . . inevitably, things sold to tourists and tourists end up being useless; people buy the things they truly need in or near the places they live. Resulting in blocks and blocks of shirts that say things like "If You Like My Bumper, You'll Love my Headlights!" or "If you're not fishing, you're doing it wrong." 

I mean, a block of these stores, fine. Or you know, one really good one. Two decent ones at different ends. . . but in Newport, next to bars that advertise themselves as "a haven for the riff-raff, the ne-er do-wells", bars that probably had to slap "historic" into their name just to remain, across from the docks where fishermen haul in the seafood that serves one of the many Coastal Chains, are rows of pastel butterflies, of sub-Hot Topic/Spencers storefronts that you wonder who, how, why?

Not to say I wasn't charmed at points. The Seafood was damn good. The fascination factor kept my head swiveling, and the town makes no attempts to hide it's grime or industry. In Seattle they'd probably set up a toll system to eat your fish and chips above a dock of Sea Lions.

*the obvious, glaring exception being New York City. Haven't been to either Iowa or Carson Cities, but impressions have not been of huge metropoli, foster-wallaces notwithstanding.

**"You know, it's such a shame to leave Seattle, but I could actually see us living here. . . this is such a cute cafe and look! That bar has a sign for live music. Plus, we can do most our shopping at the farmers market for the three months that it exists."

***There are more Newports than any other town in the English Speaking World. It's just that catchy! (And functional!)
****Fascinating is still better than the Grey Hell that is going through Lynnwood, or Oregon City. Fascinating is better than the grinding depression of Hoquiam, Wa, or even, arguably the Endpoints of Gentrification that a handful of Seattle's neighborhoods are rapidly becoming. But we can ask for more from our communities than single-mode identifiers OR a sub-gonzo journalistic licking of blood-stained lips.

Sometimes the full link is prettier. Like a half-eaten train.

So, let's be generous with our linkage. I recently got four of my pieces posted up at Wonder And Risk:
http://wonderandrisk.com/where-it-really-feels-like-a-city-and-three-more-poems-by-graham-isaac/

I really like what that they're doing over at WAR; bridging coverage of comedy, performance art, poetry, indie sports (pencil fighting? bike polo? what-have-you. there's a "poetry and sports" section), and theatre in a way that makes a lot of intuitive sense, but doesn't get done that often. at least not around here.

Also! Stoked to have received a Director's Scholarship to this year's Litfuse: http://www.litfuse.us/
Now I just have to figure out how to get there, where to stay in Tieton, stuff like that.

Likewise, in case you missed it, you can still listen to an interview that Steve Barker did with Bryan Edenfield and I at OM: http://ordinarymadness.org/?p=442
We were fascinating.

And as always, support Babel Salvage or buy Filthy Jerry's Guide to Parking Lots here: http://babelsalvage.com/