"Goodbye, baseball!"

It's being reported that beloved sportscaster Dave Niehaus has passed away at the age of 75. Dave was the announcer for the Seattle Mariners for their entire existence until he retired from broadcasting at the end of last season; he was deservedly inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008.
Dave Niehaus was a Seattle institution and a giant in sports broadcasting. Many have rightfully dubbed him the Voice of the Mariners, a moniker I whole-heartedly agree with. As a kid, I listened to Dave call games all the time, and I credit his boundless joy and infectious enthusiasm for baseball with helping to form my rabid Mariners fandom, and I know I'm not the only one. It's hard to imagine the Mariners without him.

This glorious moment in Seattle sports history would not have been nearly as electric and memorable without Dave Niehaus:

"And the people bowed and prayed, to the neon God they made..."

There is a kind of giddy terror when answering phones. You sit and wait. Many KEXP listeners may not realize that the phone room is not constantly abuzz with incoming calls. On the contrary; it has been my experience that maybe 75% of a our time is spent waiting for the phones to ring. In the protracted interim, we pass the by time chatting, eating donated food, and writing lists (top 3 greatest shows you've ever seen, top three female singers), all while keeping a nervous and excited eye on the silent phone. You hope that your phone rings next, but you are also afraid. It's the same way you feel when an beautiful, confident person is approaching you, and you want to talk to them, but a part of you wants to curl up into a ball and hide. Once you pick up the receiver and deliver the first line, "thank you for calling KEXP. How much would like to donate today?", and plunge into the conversation, all the fear goes away, and you wonder what you ever had to be afraid of in the first place. 

Before my volunteer shift, I journeyed to Bellevue to submit a resume to a prospective employer. The entire Eastside is a strange place. It has no soul; it is all sprawling suburbs and dead-eyed corporate office buildings. It doesn't feel like anyone lives there, not anyone who belongs in the Northwest, anyway. It feels like the worst rich parts of Southern California. I wore a dress shirt and slacks to the potential job, and it seems fitting that I changed out of my Bellevue costume as soon as I returned to Seattle.

Dance-off with our pants off

The Sun finally decided to leave it's house at about 4 this afternoon, like a pothead. It rolled off it's couch, wiped it's cheeto-stained fingers on it's hemp sweatshirt, and stumbled outside just long enough to say "watsup?" So today, the part of the Sun was played by Seth Rogen.

I enter the conference room at KEXP to find the mailing party already in progress. I wonder then how often actual conferences are held in this room so named for that purpose. Today we are stuffing envelopes with swag to be sent to those who donated during the pledge drive. Handling t-shirts and tote bags is much less hazardous than folding letters; no paper cuts. 

There are maybe six of us, and a few more trickle in. One of these is a woman named Nikki, whom I have met before. She is an entertaining, somewhat boisterous character given to random bursts of laughter, and writes live music reviews. 

The conversation makes it's way inevitably to live music, and people offer their opinions of some local venues. The recently reopened Crocodile is the target of some disappointed scorn, as are some other joints. "Are there any places in this town that you people do like?" jokes Tim, to my right. The air in this place is indeed jovial. 

This blog seems to have spawned a new verb. Now, when I go to KEXP, I am usually recognized as the Donut Runner. "Hey, get any donuts?" people might say. I responded to a like inquiry today with the word "figuratively". This confused both me and those around me at first, but then I offered, "donut running is just a general term for having little adventures." This makes sense. 

Where's all the food? (oh...)

Last Friday I returned to KEXP for the first time since the pledge drive. My task this time was (officially) to hand out swag to donors who personally came into the station that afternoon, but in the four hours I was there, maybe a dozen people showed up, so I passed the time by stuffing membership letters into many envelopes. 

The swag pick-up was in one of the live performance studios - boxes of two kinds of bags, and incrementally larger shirts, from baby sizes to extra large adult garb, sat arranged upon the floor where many a music legend and local indie kid alike have grooved and jammed. 

One volunteer is already there folding letters. She is a KEXP veteran, from deep in the KCMU days. We sit at a well worn folding table, stuffing envelopes and waiting for donors to trickle in. My swag partner (whose name escapes me at the moment; sorry, swag partner) and I pass the plentiful idle moments extolling KEXP, and she relates anecdotes about the station's past, from when it was operated out of a little mouse hole at the UW to it's various radical changes in format and programming. Relatively new as I am to the station, I feel like Luke Skywalker hearing tales of the Old Republic. 

This day is also the end to KEXP's stint in Austin, Texas as part of SXSW, so many people, including most of the regular DJs, are absent from the studio, basking in a much sunnier place than grey Seattle. As such, the station is comparatively quiet and depopulated juxtaposed with the bulk of my experience during the characteristically beehivy pledge week. Also because of this, I am thrown by the lack of free food sitting around. I then realize that a great deal of that food was spirited here by me, so if I want food when I come here, I'm going to have to bring it myself. Perhaps I will make a pie. 

I hear words I never heard in the Bible

After the lackluster protest, 2 friends and I schlep on down to this tiny little place called Cyber-Dogs. It is a vegetarian hot-dog joint that offers Internet, nestled next to the Convention Center. The place is packed with charm and character. The proprietor is a friendly and hilarious Russian lady who personally greets every customer like she's welcoming them into her home. 

As we enter, Edith Piaf warbles on the stereo, and The Wizard of Oz plays on a television. There is an ancient, but operational, tetris machine that also serves as a table. There are photos and posters of people like Tom Waits, John Lennon, and Audrey Hepburn covering the walls. 

One of my friends has come here to get a job. She chats casually with the owner, and it's like they are old friends. I order a hotdog, some kind of creation called a "Greek Goddess". When it arrives, the hotdog is not visible, covered in delicious humus and other toppings. It's really like "Humus with a hint of hotdog". The owner says she has a song to go with each hotdog on the menu. The one she plays for mine is "Hey, Good Lookin'" by Hank Williams. 

At one point, a man enters the shop and tries to interest the owner in selling some kind of all natural gummy candy snacks. She examines them, then my friend notices an ingredient that is derived from horse hooves. A quick conversation about vegetarianism ensues, ending with the salesman saying this: "What's wrong with eating meat? In the Bible, it says its okay to eat meat." My friend and I exchange a look and the man leaves, but not before saying, "Have a blessed day!" This illicits chuckles. 

The hospitality and atmosphere of the place make me feel like Rick Steves, as he will often find some little eatery in a small European village that has the character and humbleness of a family dining room. Cyber-Dogs is a great little establishment with delicious food and warmly friendly staff. 

Just tryin' to keep the customer satisfied

Catch the #41 bus from Northgate to downtown. The weather is bleak and British as usual, sucking the dexterity out of my fingers; I fumble with the fare, and the Limbaugh-looking bus driver frowns and passive-aggressively hands me  a transfer.

The bus is full of your normal salad grab of local humanity; there is a girl with pink hair over here, and some kid who looks like Michael Cera over here with some kind food in a Styrofoam box.

I sit in the middle upon the fulcrum on a bus of this length. It's like some purgatorial place, seeing and hearing the other passengers but not experiencing the ride same as them. 

After a sail down the I-5 river, I ascend from the bus tunnel onto Pine and 3rd. Coming upon 5th and Pike, the first evidence of a protest is a squirrelly man standing by a booth adorned with a sign that reads "LaRoachePAC". I see no one else, so I ask him if he is part of the protest. He says sort of, then tries to give me some literature and get me to join the PAC. I decline and move on.

Down the street is the actual protest. There are maybe 30 people a part of it or loosely attached, most clad in purple and/or yellow.

They've signs that read "WORKERS' VOICE TO STOP CEO EXPLOITS" and so on. Some carry giant 'reality checks'. A lady with a megaphone leads the group in chanting. A man with a large camera runs around, most likely capturing B-roll for some news network. Some communists try to invite me to a meeting.

Spontaneously, the group moves into the parking garage and heads for the elevator; I follow. An officious looking woman finds us and informs us that "This is private property. You need to leave." She is accompanied by two bicycle cops and a scrawny security guard. They insist again that we leave, but we all pack into the elevator and head for the building's lobby. 

I have a notebook and pen out through it all, and as I hastily jot down what is happening around me, I feel a happy, excited pang of journalistic rush. This is quite a feeling and I want more of it.

We are deposited in the lobby, where we again meet resistance. Another security guard shows up and tells us to leave. 

A leader of the protest goes to the front desk, saying we've got an appointment with AIG, and asks to go to the 16th floor. The security continues to deny us, and eventually we voluntarily expel ourselves from the building. The group moves back onto the sidewalk and chants for about 15 more minutes. I rather wanted to storm the castle, but the others don't seem to share this sentiment.

A man is on the megaphone now. After leading the cries for awhile, he says, "We'll be back. We'll be back for AIG!". Perhaps if we show up again in greater numbers, there'll be some castle storming to be had. 

The crowd disperses, and the sidewalk returns to normal. As protests go, especially here in Seattle (the protest capitol of the country, if not the world), this indignant gathering was rather lifeless. It's going to take much more than this to effect change. 

Keep the Customer Satisfied

Tomorrow I am planning to attend one of several dozen protests that are happening all around the U.S. in response to the corporate greed and mismanagement that led us into this economic disaster we currently find ourselves in. The straw that broke the camels back and spurred these protest was the revelation last week that AIG, one of the largest recipients of federal bailout money, planned to, and already had, in some cases, pay millions of dollars in bonuses to their employees, many of these the very people whose money hunger and stupidity got us into this mess in the first place. Now, enough of the public feels like it is time for proverbial torches and pitchforks, hence the aforementioned widespread protests being planned. 

To learn more about these protests and where the nearest one is to you, visit this site. The Huffington Post is calling on citizens who attend these events to write about it and take photos and then share. I am going to the protest at AIG in downtown Seattle. I shall scribe an account and photograph things, and then post both on this site and submit them to HuffPo. 

Here is the location of the AIG office in Seattle.

View Larger Map

Day 1

Today was very beautiful. The sky was a rare blue color, and the accompanying sun continued to melt away the lay-about snow. 

I have signed up for a weeks worth of volunteering at KEXP, the only radio station in Seattle. This is pledge week, so they need all the help they can get. I'm down to do a number of things, but what I am doing most is bringing donuts to the station. I discovered today that this involves a lot of driving (duh).

My vehicle is a mid-80's GMC Safari, but I call it the "Bucket" (or "Galactica"). It runs like a fever dream and always feels on the verge of breaking down, but has personality. She's like a retired football player with more injuries than she can count. It gets me to where I need to go around town, but I wouldn't risk taking it across country. Sorry, babe, but I don't think you'd make it past the Mississippi. 

My first stop today was Mighty O, a donut shop just a stone's throw (or a donut hole's throw) from Greenlake. I live up in Shoreline, so it's conveniently on the way to KEXP (which is just north of downtown Seattle). Not so convenient, however, was the shiny, fume-caked traffic crawling spitefully down Aurora, my artery of choice. Galactica and I get impatient and hop down some back streets until we find a skinny little street to park on. I hustle down to Mighty O and grab the donuts, and it's off downtown. 

The next joint is Top Pot on 5th, and it's very anticeptic, especially compared to the earthy, lived-in organism that is Mighty O. I stow the van in a public (paid) lot without paying (I'm just popping in), and grab the donuts. The place feels like if a Bond villain's lair was converted into a cafe'. Concave glass face, skeletal stair case, high ceiling. There is a slight snag, as they were expecting the donuts to be picked up tomorrow morning, so the 2 dozen are not ready. They are very nice, though, and throw together a batch. 

I arrive at KEXP on Dexter and Denny with 4 dozen donuts, and I am the savior. The station is this little building that is honeycombed with studios and bestickered offices. It is like an ant colony, what with everyone carrying out a task for the greater good of the whole. There is just enough room for people to get around, but not enough for me to just stand in the hallway and eat a fajita (they had fajitas). I find an office filled with volunteer coordinators, and they thank me again for signing up to do so many donut runs.