Drive through Woodinville, Washington today, and it has the glimmer of an Eastside Seattle suburb about to be born. With its Target, Safeway, and housing developments with names cooked up by marketing departments, Woodinville is fairly unremarkable, a place you’ve seen a million times before. A scant 20 minute drive from Seattle center, via...
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I picked up Octopussy, by Ian Fleming, sometime in the 1970s at the small-town public library where I grew up. It was for sale, and I think cost something like ten cents. Being a young James Bond fan at the time, I was delighted to happen upon this book. But soon after I bought...
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I’ve only had high tea a handful of times, as I’m not much of a tea-drinker. But high tea at a grand hotel is something entirely different. It’s not just tea or sweets; it’s a way of slowing oneself down and savoring the moment. On a Sunday, after a symphony concert at Benaroya Hall,...
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Recently I got a marketing e-mail from a site called BeautifulPeople.com, which purports to admit only “beautiful people.” The e-mail was accompanied by a video of a quite homely guy and a handsome guy at a swimming pool. A trio of hot women comment that Homely Guy (actor Michael J. Sielaff) turns them on...
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In all their glorious beauty, well over a century of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics covers. And all the pages following the covers, too. It always seemed like the covers were the main thing–blimps, subs, nuclear-powered trains, rotating houses, and all sorts of wonders that we would soon experience. Truly, these things make me...
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Harry Parke, born Harry Einstein in 1904, was a comedian, and by the 1950s was resting on the laurels of his invented persona, a Greek named Parkyakarkus. This fictive name translates to “park a your carcass.” Remember, in these days nobody blinked at ethnic humor. Harry was one of those clubby, fraternizing comedians who...
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Want to make all the other kids jealous at the next summer music festival? Ditch your Coleman Elite for something far cooler–a tent modeled in the shape and size of a 1965 VW Camper van (Microbus*). This tent is officially licensed (whew – I was worried about that) and has doors on the side...
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Found today in Boing Boing! In 1906, a farmers J.W. and E.C. Fawkes formed the Aerial Trolley Company Co., Inc. and put a monorail-like trolley in their Burbank farm. Is this real-life steampunk? I believe so. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the utter coolness of even the company name, Aerial Trolley...
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The Hyatt Regency Atlanta, built in 1967, is famous as one of the first–if not the first–example of a large atrium hotel. The inside of this 22 story is scooped out, with rooms facing each other and public spaces below. Built by John Portman, the Hyatt Regency–originally Regency Hyatt House–is an architecturally significant building...
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Reading the new paywalled New York Times today, I saw an article, pictured above, about violence in the Ivory Coast. That word, intercommunal, leapt out at me. Wha? Huh? The dictionary just says the predicable–”that which exists between communities.” Well, yeah. Duh. But what is it really? My guess is that this is the...
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