I’m All Lost In, #84: Falafel food truck; Midnight Safeway; 1975 drummer wanted ad.

I’m All Lost In…

the three things I’m obsessing about THIS week

#84

1) Falafel Salam Food Truck

On Tuesday evening, by happenstance, XDX and I discovered the best falafel in Seattle. After making the mile-and-a-half jaunt to 13th and Jefferson to hang out at Peloton Cafe (XDX had never been) we were met with a “closed” sign; it said Power Outage Closed Until Further Notice : (.

So we started the mile-long shamble to our old favorite standby, Kanom Sai Cafe on 23rd and Spring for some taro pastries. We eventually made it there, but not before following my impulse pivot to Chuck’s Hop Shop at 20th and Union. I had a craving for their veggie dog (like the one I had there on New Year’s Eve). They’ve since taken that off the menu, so I got in line at the falafel truck parked out front by the plastic tables under the tented lot. Falafel Salam’s long white truck seemed as if it was reclining there on its own BarcaLounger, beckoning.

Falafel Salam sets up outside Chuck’s Hop Shop at 20th and Union, 5/20/25

Their prominently displayed vegan option—it’s listed first on the menu— was stuffed with onions, cucumbers, cabbage, lettuce, and cilantro induced, green-on-the-inside falafel balls that were nearly as fluffy as the thick pita bread; I had to hold the messy dinner like I was eating a McDonald’s Big Mac. Falafel Salam’s special sauce? An unwieldy helping of mouth watering creamy tahini and, the key, hot turmeric.

(Unbeknownst to me, Falafel Salam has been around since 2009. You can find them at Chuck’s in the Central District on Tuesdays, in South Lake Union by Amazon on Wednesdays and Thursdays, and at the Ballard Farmer’s Market on Sundays. They’ve also got a brick and mortar spot in West Seattle.)

We rounded out our urban hike three blocks over at Kanom Sai, where we got the Shakespearean update from the solo kitchen staffer/baker/counter worker (she’s also the owner) before stopping at the 22nd and Madison Safeway where XDX, arrested by a window display, made an impulse buy of her own: two 12-packs of Waterloo Seltzer, which we attempted to stuff in her orange backpack.

2) Tipsy at the Safeway

Speaking of jumping into Safeway: The descent into my own sylvan green neighborhood from Capitol Hill’s properly lit nightlife district is marked by a Safeway at the corner of 15th and John. Fortuitously, it’s open late (until 12 am). Fortuitous because I often find myself ambling back from The Drag late in the evening longing for a Dagwood Sandwich.

My version of this comforting cartoonish sandwich: A colorful assortment of veggies dressed with herbs, spices, chili oil, and a dash of mustard or vinegar, packed into a refrigerated soft spinach tortilla or lovingly set on two tears of sourdough baguette with garlic hummus or pine nut and spinach pesto spread on each slice.

Swaying through Safeway’s quiet produce section while the sprinklers cycle on and off and the dégagé night staff unpack boxes, I dreamily track down my chosen salad sandwich ingredients like a post-apocalyptic traveler happening upon an army surplus store.

On the list (for fine dicing and, in the case of carrots, shredding): purple cabbage, red peppers, hot peppers, onions, tomatoes, black olives, baby spinach, banana peppers, capers, broccoli, and those bright carrots.

I won’t lie, there are a few other things on my spur-of-the-moment list for these heady late-night Safeway excursions: a tub of hummus; maybe some super processed Tofurky slices or vegan cheese; and definitely a box of Cheez-Its.

Drunk at Safeway, 5/21/25

I ran into another late night Safeway shopper on Wednesday night; she too was cavorting in the cookies and cracker aisle at this strange hour. And she too hailed from D.C. We reminisced about Dupont Circle’s legendary “Soviet Safeway” before she disappeared cradling her box of Oreos on the way toward the sole check out lane that was still open.

I surveyed my Cheez-Its options—Italian four cheese, buffalo wing, cheddar jack, smoked gouda—went with original and floated off to the self-check out where other post-apocalyptic revelers were swiping and bagging.

Late night snack courtesy of the late night Safeway with Cheez-Its on the side, 5/21 into 22/25

3) “Freak Energy”

I have never felt so seen.

On Saturday morning, as we sat down at the coffee shop for an overdue hangout, Valium Tom slid a freshly folded black T-shirt across the table: I got you a present.

Last month, in the wake of Blondie drummer Clem Burke’s recent death (RIP), former Blondie guitarist Chris Stein went searching for and successfully unearthed a treasure from the band’s pretend-we’re-already-superstars origin story. What he found may be the perfect expression of the droll post-hippie (but kinda still hippie), indigent glamour that characterized the wily, bohemian aesthetic of Lower Manhattan’s mid-1970s emergent punk and new wave music scenes.

Stein posted his historic find on Instagram: It was the drummer wanted ad that he and Debbie Harry and the rest of the yearning band put in the Village Voice in March 1975.

This number is not in service anymore.

I’d seen Stein’s post; I’m a devout Blondie fan and had started following him around the time I read his flailing memoir, which, thanks to his inept storytelling, failed to divine staglfation New York’s countercultural heyday. (I lovingly panned his book here.) He’s made up for it with this eloquent artifact, though.

Valium Tom saw Stein’s post too, and he put the slovenly elegant ad on a T for me.

With my new Blondie T-shirt, 5/17/25

I’m All Lost In, #83: Colin Marshall’s list of books about cities; cirrus clouds radio; and my neighborhood tree canopy

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week

#83

1) Colin Marshall's List of Books about Cities

Valium Tom and I call it the City Canon, our ongoing project to come up with a list of great city books. The list includes: novels where the city setting is a character itself; nonfiction treatises on important precepts of city planning; histories that are tied to the life of a particular city; or even histories and biographies where the subject reflects a discrete tenet of cityism, such as fashion revolutionary Mary Quant’s swinging London memoir.

Colin MacInnes’ 1950s novel about London’s emerging youth culture Absolute Beginners tops of my city lit list. Over the years, other personal city literature mainstays include: Edith Wharton’s New York Stories; David Owen’s Green Metropolis; Hanif Kureishi’s the Black Album, Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy; William Gibson’s Neuromancer; Jane Jacobs’s classic The Death and Life of Great American Cities; Stephen Crane’s Maggie a Girl of the Streets; Jonathan Rechy’s City of Night; Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep; and Robert Louis Stevenson’s London-centric Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Back in 2023 and 2024, I got serious about the City Canon and, starting with architect Jorge Almazán’s city planning textbook Emergent Tokyo, I proactively set out on my own city studies seminar, writing mini-essays on each book

My city seminar list of books:

Emergent Tokyo by Jorge Almazán (Tokyo)

Palace of Desire by Naguib Mahfouz (Cairo)

Dubliners by James Joyce (Dublin)

Quant by Quant the Autobiography of Mary Quant (London)

The City-State in Five Cultures by Robert Griffeth and Carol G. Thomas (Mesopotamia)

Billie Holiday the Musician and the Myth by John Szwed (Manhattan)

Open City by Teju Cole (Manhattan, Lagos)

Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind’s Greatest Invention by Ben Wilson

Every Day is for the Thief by Teju Cole (Lagos)

Confessions of an English Opium Eater by Thomas De Quincey (London)

Yes to the City: Millennials and the Fight for Affordable Housing by Max Holleran

Ask the Dust by John Fante (Los Angeles)

Arbitrary Lines: How Zoning Broke the American City and How to Fix It by M. Nolan Gray

Tomorrow Will Be Better by Betty Smith (Brooklyn)

Hard Times by Charles Dickens (Manchester)

Lot by Bryan Washington (Houston)

Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell (Manchester)

All the Men in Lagos are Mad by Damilare Kuku (Lagos)

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Lagos)

Scenes of Bohemian Life by Henri Burger (Paris)

And I left off in 1920s Manhattan with Ursula Parrott’s Ex-Wife last fall.

I may have reignited my city reading binge this week, though, by picking up Henry Grabar’s Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World; I’ve only read the chatty intro and a bit of the first chapter, so we’ll see.

But I am currently hooked on the website that tipped me off on Grabar’s parking policy book: Colin Marhshall’s Books on Cities.

Marshall is a Seoul-based writer and the former host of public radio’s The Marketplace of Ideas and his follow-up Notebook on Cities and Culture.

Overlapping with my list—Ben Wilson’s Metropolis, M. Nolan Gray’s Arbitray Lines, Jorge Almazán’s Emergent Tokyo, plus an apparent shared interest in Lagos (and Nigerian writer Teju Cole)—Marshall has been reviewing and keeping a list of city books too.

Note: Marshall’s list doesn’t include any fiction. It’s all urban planning (Jeff Speck’s Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time); urban context (Lewis Mumford’s The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects); city histories (Malcolm Harris’ Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World); essays (Orhan Pamuk’s Istanbul: Memories and the City); or nonfiction city closeups (Tom Scocca’s Beijing Welcomes You: Unveiling the Capital City of the Future).

It’s not that Marshall’s city syllabus has added to my must-read list as much as after reading a couple of his lengthy, substantive book reviews—which seem more like prompts for his own city reveries— I’m now prioritizing his gems of urban reflection themselves.

2) Cirrus Clouds Radio

Finding great space-out music isn’t as easy a To Do as it sounds. Playlists dubbed “Classical Music for Relaxation,” for example, often obliviously fail to consider that classical music is about dynamics. Better not get too drawn into that soothing cello section because here comes the angry piano.

Or: Have you ever been getting a massage when, suddenly, you just can’t avoid perseverating on the plucking harp or plinking piano instead of decompresssing to the lulling chords swelling beneath?

On the other hand, excising dynamics can leave you with a set of New Age music that’s just too banal and cheesy. This is a particular risk when Ambient is your go-to genre. But when you try to nudge the algorithm away from becoming an anodyne strain of spa friendly greatest hits, Ambient suddenly runs the risk of coming on too ominous with unnerving minor key drones.

In summary: settling on relaxing music can be unsettling.

This week, I’ve been obsessed with navigating this musical dilemma, trying to curate the perfect set of opium jams. I’ve been starting with a tune called “Cirrus Clouds,” basically a layered configuration of warm tones, and then—as a way to alert the smart play—skipping any subsequent tracks that are cluttered with overeager melodies or insistent chords on the down beat.

My quietude quest is a work in progress, but as my apartment fills up with the three-dimensional currents of The Riddle of Dreams or the flexible Hzs of Runic Inscriptions on Parapets, I’m suddenly thinking about adding achieve enlightenment to my To Do list.

3) My Neighborhood’s Beautiful Tree Canopy

Seattle NIMBYs have weaponized the soft and pleasant idea of tree canopy as a metaphor: When they talk about trees they’re not so subtly disparaging housing development.

As I’ve pointed out on PubliCola, the hypocrisy of their position is frustrating: Do they think their single family lots represent the natural state of things? To the contrary, according to HistoryLink, homeowner neighborhoods like Wedgwood used to be sylvan wonderlands of “dense forest.” But with today’s clearcut geography giving them theirs, Baby Boom patron saint Joni Mitchell evidently forbids us from cutting down any more trees to accommodate housing for others.

The compounding irony: building dense, multi-family housing, ie, skinnier and taller than than roomy single family properties, takes up much less space, and logically, takes out fewer trees. You’ve got it backwards, NIMBYs.

This week, as I do every May when my dense neighborhood’s rich tree canopy turns into Exhibit A for Seattle’s status as America’s Emerald City, I fell in love with my street’s mixed-use zoning once again.

My street is part of Seattle District 3. With urban Capitol Hill at its core, D3 has formidable 32 percent tree canopy cover; the current citywide stretch goal is 30%.

——————
I’ve got two notes from this week that don’t rate as obsessions, but deserve attention.

First, I’ve been watching the NBA playoffs (mostly, at Madison Pub still), and I’ve been keeping a list of now-defining pro-basketball accoutrements that did not exist when I was a kid. More importantly, they seem like cultural affronts to our MAGA era.

My NBA list:

Everyone is Dr. J (a ballerina) now;

female court correspondents and broadcasters;

Saudi Arabian advertising stitched into the uniforms;

the ubiquity of tattoos;

European stars.

And my favorite new addition: pink and other metrosexual, pastel colored basketball shoes.

Second, and file this under someplace where you can actually eat out past 9 pm: I was pleasantly surprised to discover that one of the interchangeable looking restaurants on worn out Broadway is actually a charismatic standout: Broadway Wok.

The generic “Chinese and Thai Cuisine” tag certainly plays into the ho-hum vibe on this spent 1990s stretch between John St. and Roy. But the reality inside this warm restaurant—overflowing bowls of tasty tofu, fresh veggies, and savory green curry, along with charming down-to-earth service—defies Broadway’s lackluster trend.

I’m All Lost In, #82: Finding a new hoodie; digging the new Capitol Hill; and working in Sharepoint, aka Shitpoint.

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#82

Back in the 2010s, whenever I’d write (what turned out to be) a prescient item in PubliCola’s persnickety “Morning Fizz” column, or whenever we broke news there, I’d hype it on social media by crowing: Learn to Trust the Fizz.

Well, Learn to Trust I’m All Lost In…

Back in October, when I read poet Marie Howe for the first time (her New and Selected Poems, 2024), I was floored and tagged her as one of my obsessions that week raving about her “masterful” poetry.

This past week, Howe’s New and Selected Poems won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

A snippet from my October post: “Howe’s talent lies in describing discrete POVs and then putting them back together again in a new way that seems to connote God.”

Another I’m All Lost In favorite, Blondie, also came up big this week; at least in my own private narrative. First, on Saturday night, the drummer for a band on the bill at Baba Yaga (the Sasha Bell Band from Montana) sounded exactly like Blondie’s big beat, crash and boom drummer Clem Burke. (RIP last month, sadly.) It was glorious, and we were awestruck, marvelling at the doppelganger sound. But this guy looked to be in his late 20s or early 30s, so who knows how he managed to channel so precisely Mr. Burke’s garage beat BPMs.

In other perseverating-on-Blondie news: I started learning a Blondie tune on piano this week. It’s another one of Blondie’s Catherine Deneuve-as-early 1960s-Parisian-teen-who-now-takes-the-stage-at-a-punk-club songs: “Slow Motion.”

The boy in the back on his second attack/
Wants his baby back (wants his baby back)/
What's all that commotion that you hear?

That’s it for this week’s goods of the order. Onto this week’s obsessions.

1) Why Can’t I Find a Good Hoodie?

My Palm Springs hoodie is not on brand: I’m neither an elderly golfer, nor a California property owner, nor a Burning Man techie. But the insistent “Authentic/Palm Springs, CA/USA/Desert Oasis” logo aside, this easy hoodie has been my comfortable and casually flattering go-to fit ever since XDX bought it for me two years ago; we were at the Palm Springs airport where I was shivering as we waited for our flight back to Seattle from Joshua Tree.

My ongoing chagrin with the gross yuppie messaging has finally prompted me to get a different hoodie. But after visiting several neighborhood shops—Crossroads Trading, Magpie Thrift, Creature Consignment; as well as Bon Voyage Vintage near work—I’m still stuck with this odd sartorial staple. All the hoodies I found this week were either baggy and awkward fits, besmirched with overly complicated aesthetics, or came with off-key logos themselves. The plain, sturdy front zipper and casual hoodie ideal, neither misleadingly youthful nor senior center friendly, seems to be more of a shopping Holy Grail than I’d realized.

Do I need to abandon my dream of scoring one secondhand?; people likely hang on to the excellent hoodies rather than casting them off. Do I need to embrace adulthood and pony up at J Crew online rather than sticking with my idealistic plan to hit Goodwill this weekend?

Cal Anderson skate park off Pine St. commandeered by death metal, 5/3/25

2) No, Capitol Hill Was Not Cooler “Back in the Day.”

Call it St. Mark’s Place Syndrome, which writer Ada Calhoun nailed in her great 2015 book St. Mark’s is Dead, an in-depth history of the storied Greenwich Village bohemian drag which also spoofed every generation’s perennial sense of horror that the city’s heyday enclave is not as cool as it was back in their day.

I wrote about Seattle’s version of this Gen X delusion, call it Capitol Hill Syndrome (or Grunge Delusion) back in 2021, arguing by the numbers that Capitol Hill is more diverse today, busier, and just as youth-centric as ever. There may be fewer artists living on Capitol Hill today (though I haven’t seen anyone prove this pervasive theory), but I’d argue there are certainly more venues here for artists to actually show work or gig. Yes, Capitol Hill is more expensive than it used to be, but so is the entire city.

It’s also more green and sustainable than it used to be. Not only does Capitol Hill now have a separate bike lane and a light rail station, which it didn’t “back in the day,” but the Capitol Hill Station is the second busiest station in the system with 9,100 daily riders during the week.

I’ve lived on Capitol Hill for more than 25 years, and I can tell you it was so white and predictable in the 1990s and early 2000s that if a white Capitol Hill hipster saw a group of POC kids on The Drag, they’d start to wonder if there was a hip hop show going on. I should qualify that: if anything was going on in the first place. For the record, weeknights on Capitol Hill were a bust 20 years ago. And the weekends weren’t reliable either. (An anecdote: I distinctly remember strolling through the sparsely attended Capitol Hill Block Party circa 2002 when it looked as lonely as closing time at a farmer’s market.)

As spring begins in earnest this year, I’m struck by Capitol Hill’s diversity and electricity and reminded once again how things have changed for the better and cooler. Strolling among the crowd during May’s 8:45pm gloaming this past Saturday, it was impossible not to take note of all the POC faces crisscrossing the groovy corridor. Groups of cavorting 20-somethings were cruising from the jam-packed 20,000 square foot bookstore (which didn’t used to exist on the Hill) to the unwieldy food truck lines (tacos, hot dogs, shawarma); or shambling from the noisy dive bars and clubs to the glittering string-lit restaurants and epic, de facto party scenes at the slices or Hot Chicken place (open until 4 am). I for one followed the crowds to watch the death metal band that, fronted by a Latino singer and an Asian guitarist, had set up in the skate park.

I memorialized the action with a tipsy post on Bluesky directed at the figurehead of my generation’s calcified gatekeeping:

A few nights later, after Wendy’s Stealing Clothes and I caught a crowded Wednesday night show at Neumos, we landed at Bimbo’s, a boozy, Mexican-comfort-food Capitol Hill institution (still very much there) that used to be more Edward Hopper Nighthawks than today’s Hieronymus Bosch orgy. Again, hard not to notice and love: As white middle-agers we were in the minority.

If, as my curmudgeonly indie rock generation has it, Capitol Hill is dead, I say: Long live Capitol Hill.

3) Sharepoint Ate My Homework

In a follow-up to last year’s 2 Line debut, Sound Transit, the regional transit agency where I work, is opening two new light rail stations on the Eastside suburbs this weekend. This means I’ve been busy writing remarks all week for Sound Transit leaders who will be speaking at the Downtown Redmond ribbon cutting.

Growing the 2 Line on the Eastside to 10 stations and 10 miles today with a 3.4-mile addition that represents a 50% expansion will give folks living both to the east and west direct, fast, easy access to Microsoft. …  

…quick access to Downtown Redmond’s vibrant and visionary downtown.  

…reliable access to concerts and recreation at Marymoor Park. 

….and seamless access to our great trails: EastRail, the East Lake Sammamish Trail, or the Bear Creek Trail.

It also means I’ve been relying on Sharepoint, Microsoft’s Word doc management platform.

Predictably, fiasco struck on Thursday morning. Trying to do rewrites while tiptoeing around Sharepoint’s manic track changes pop-up windows, ornery formatting protocols, and Exorcist III-possessed cursor, induced my own solo clusterfuck. With my colleagues similarly paralyzed in their own Sharepoint hell, important changes were lost and errant versions were en route to the Exec Team.

“Everyone, pens down,” my wise boss said reining in our increasingly haywire Teams chat. Her Zen temperament is the only antidote to the inevitable bedlam of Sharepoint, or Shitpoint as I’ve referred to the frustrating program for years now.

As I wrote speeches about ferrying thousands of new riders to the Microsoft campus, I fantasized about directing all of them straight to the Sharepoint department.

I’m All Lost In, #81: New shoes; new poetry; and the best place to watch the NBA playoffs is a gay dive bar on Capitol Hill.

I’m All Lost In …

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#81

Before I get to this week’s three preoccupations, I’ve got a recipe of the week

Two recipes, actually—one for mushroom paste and one for mushroom dip. The backstory is that I recently went to Yalla, the Lebanese food window over on the Drag Beyond the Drag and ordered the same mushroom gyro that I got back in January. Unfortunately, the former standout vegan menu item left me longing this time; the mushroom filling was flat and flavorless.

So, I decided to take mushroom matters into my own hands. I googled a few recipes, but I couldn’t decide which one to go with: a shallot-based one (identified as duxelles) and a heavy-on-the-parsley-and-walnuts one. Frying pan and mini-food processor going all at once, I whipped up both and slathered the meaty results on facing pieces of toasted jalapeño bread with romaine lettuce, dressed red cabbage, homemade bread crumbs, sliced tomato, and (secret ingredient) yellow mustard.

I didn’t snap a picture until I had an open-faced version for seconds (pictured below). It was delicious, but I’d recommend the traditional sandwich version.

Mushroom paste and mushroom dip combo sandwich, Monday, 4/28/25

1) New Shoes

I’ve always been hard on shoes. Holes. Soles coming unglued and falling off. This was particularly hard to admit with the two most recent pairs of shoes I’d been wrecking as I rotated between them all year. One was the slim pair of shiny black dress shoes I bought at Ross Dress for Less for Dad’s funeral back home in Maryland in March 2024, and the other was an old-fashioned tasseled pair of soft black slip-ons I pilfered from Erica’s grandad’s closet to wear at his funeral in Mississippi in September 2024. Despite my enchanted hope, the sentimental value was not enough to fortify these standard issue men’s shoes from decomposition.

Wearing my also-fairly-ratty gray New Balance track shoes, I walked downtown on Saturday as my Seattle shopping compass directed me to Nordstrom Rack at 5th and Pine. After working the crowded aisle of size 9-1/2s for an uncharacteristically patient half hour of perusing and trying on, I ended up going with the two pairs I had picked from the start: some stretchy navy blue mesh Cole Haan sneakers with a cushioned white sole and brown leather accents, and a shiny pair of classic black leather oxfords with brown and white trim.

Tuesday afternoon, 4/29/25

I was paranoid that the tight spots around the insteps (that I’d pretended not to notice) would actually become aggravated in the real world beyond the store mirror. But after a week of walking around town, the leather has softened, the mesh has eased, and with last year’s set of funeral shoes safely ensconced for sentimental keeping in my closet, it’s time for these solid, cozy, and even elegant new kicks.

2) Andrea Cohen’s The Sorrow Apartments

During my 2018 heyday—aka, my obsessive, initial excursion into poetry—I had several autodidactic strategies to make up for lost time and discover as many poets as I could. Among these strategies—which included reading all the classics I’d skipped in high school and college; finding more by poets who were showing up in literary magazines; and getting recommendations from my old bookworm friend, high school English teacher, Dallas—there was also this: spending tipsy Friday nights in the poetry aisle at Elliott Bay Books where I’d literally judge a book by its cover. This impulsive ploy actually led me to the great Louise Glück; her definitive 1962-2012 collection has a sci-fi picture of Saturn on the cover.

In a bit of a poetry reading drought these days, I returned to my Friday night game of chance this week. Based on the excellent Impressionist cover mockup of what looks like contemporary Brooklyn on a muggy summer night of flickering apartment building windows, I bought The Sorrow Apartments (excellent title, too) a collection of taut yet chatty verse by a poet I’d never heard of, Andrea Cohen. In a mysterious postscript to this wild Friday night shopping spree, Dallas claims to have sent a few of her poems my way earlier this year.

Written in clipped short lines of two or maybe three words, and often using slant rhymes (mantle/nail, bottle/still, boa/holds) to propel the reader along, Cohen drafts near-epic short stories about lost moments with former lovers or distilled snippets from long lost childhood summers.

These expansive minimalist dispatches from her melancholy memory banks had me deciding again and again that I’d just read the perfect poem; I dogeared about 15 of the 80 or so in the collection, including this one:

Mantle

I have——/on my mantle——/

a jam jar filled/with nails. Every-/

thing I love has/burned down,

but I still have/my mantle/

and my nail/aquarium. I/

still have/my fire.

3) The Madison Pub

The best place to watch the NBA playoffs is a gay dive bar.

I’d never been to the Madison Pub before, a neighborhood oasis of tap beers, busy pool tables, pinball machines (Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars, Ghostbusters), and a well-lit, mazey expanse of four-top seating.

Madison Pub, May 2015

Dappled with neon beer signs and big screen TVs hovering around this spacious dive, I’ve been settling in at the long bar to watch Denver’s Jamal Murray go for 40, the unimaginative Lakers forget there’s a key, the Timberwolves’ Anthony Edwards smirk and score at will, Houston and their coach idle in anger, and GSW have fun, while I nosh on Cheez-Its; they don’t have a kitchen. But not to worry. The warm staff lets you bring in food from nearby businesses like Dave’s Hot Chicken.

Quip-making cast of bartenders included, there’s lots of playful kinship at the bar (one fellow in town on tour with a Broadway musical put us on the guest list for a Saturday matinee at the Fifth Avenue Theater). The bar also has magically cold beer served in frosted mugs that, if you luck out, comes with a layer of slushed ice below the foam. And their comprehensive jukebox keeps the old rock (“Spill the Wine”) and new pop (The Weeknd) in steady rotation, along with a weird downtempo cover of Elton John’s “Rocket Man” that seems oddly popular.

I’m happy to report that this week’s Quote of the week—”This is like the Zapruder film”—came during an NBA watch session at Madison Pub. This pithy bon mot was uttered in response to the TNT announcers as they endlessly reviewed a technical foul sequence during GSW’s game 4 win on Tuesday night.

…

The other Quote of the Week comes from my favorite British-accented trio from The Tennis Podcast who were posting installments during the Madrid Open where, by the way, my parasocial goddess, Daffy Saby affirmed her 2025 status as World No. 1 and beat Coco Gauff in the final 6-3, 7-6 (7-3). The quote, however, was about cryptic World No. 2 Iga Swiatek, who I think of as J.D. Salinger’s catatonic Franny Glass. “Of course Iga Swiatek loved the blackout. Of course she did,” host Katherine Whitaker observed with delight after the tournament was temporarily suspended during the curious Spain/Portugal power outage and broody Swiatek savored the chill time.

Lastly this week, a follow-up on the Scrabble obsession I wrote about back in I’m All Lost In, #70: “Randiest,” the week’s most impressive Scrabble play, earned a 50-point bonus for using all seven letters and included “Triple Word Scores” on both the “R” and the “T,” and a “Double Letter Score” on the “I,’ for a grand total of 116 points.

I’m All Lost In, #80: Planning; Paying; and Visiting.

I’m All Lost in…

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#80

1) Planning (ahead)

It’s Spring. And the 65 degree weather has inspired me to seize the day. Suddenly I’m planning the future.

This is a notable change in M.O. for me. I’m someone who relies on the structure of recurring weekly rituals as a repetitive bass line for improvising the week. From working out of PubliCola’s Philip Marlowe-sized office in Pioneer Square every “Playpen Wednesday” to submitting my poetry every “Submission Sunday” to writing this very column every Friday after work at Otherworld Wine Bar over the ambient din of snobby DJs and groups of young tech employees flirting with each other, I riff on these weekly set pieces to score my week in real time.

Now, however, slowly but surely, I’m taking control of my time. For starters, I proactively lock down Saturday mornings in advance, starting on Tuesday when I log onto the Seattle Parks & Recreation website and make a tennis court reservation. Then, I send out a “first dibs” bat signal to the small, group-text thread I’ve organized of potential opponents; last Saturday I ended up playing T. Suarez, a guy my age from work. He’s a gracious and sincere tennis pro type who still plays in local tournaments. I’d never faced off against someone who hits as hard, low, fast, and tricky as him. He beat me 6-0, 6-0. But it was a blast. With his streak of one-two-punch serve/crosscourt return winners, friendly tips, zoom-in advice on my serve, and a plastic bucket of Penns (it was too damp out for his ball machine, apparently), I got a welcomed and de facto tennis lesson.

Volunteer Park, Lower Court 3, 4/19/25

This new micro bit of calendaring is paying off; the courts have been slammed lately with hopeful duos showing up, racket bags in tow, thinking they’ll be able to just grab a court. Well, good luck comes to those who plan, and reservation in hand, I, for one, have been starting every Saturday with a morning tennis match.

This small-dose of planning also seems emblematic of a grander trend. Just this week, after years of sneaking out of their invites, I cordially RSVP’d to hippie technocrat nonprofit Futurewise’s annual fundraiser for May 24th; it’s at a sustainable ag co-operative farm in Woodinville. I also bought tickets to a May 27 concert at WAMU Theater. I’m seeing moody psychedelic guitar meditators, Khruangbin; they’ve been in heavy rotation in my after-hours apartment ever since I came upon their lulling jams late last month.

There’s also some bigger planning afoot: I bought tickets to the Mubadala Citi DC Open, the 500 level pro tennis tournament in DC, my hometown where I’ll also visit my mom and then take Amtrak up to NYC for the weekend. I sent a buzzing email to my New York pals this week giving them details.

This hardly counts as spreadsheet neurosis, but something about the delicious longer hours has me wanting to take hold of them.

2) Paying

Easygoing places that should know better—Hood Famous Cafe in the ID and Aviv Hummus Bar on 15th Ave. E. in Capitol Hill being the latest offenders—are making dining out feel like cyborg capitalism closing in.

Call me a Luddite, and I am a bit of one. But when an otherwise cozy joint insists customers become staff (host, waiter, and front counter) by scanning a QR code to access the menu to fill out an order to pay on your phone, the mood goes from night out to the “And begin” moment during a final exam.

Even young, tech savvy XDX (she works at Apple), who I met for dinner at our old favorite Aviv on Tuesday night, was flummoxed by the new cranky ordering interface. The cramped iPhone process led to a rushed and discombobulated order that was more us throwing our hands up in exasperation than perusing the baba ghanoush.

The computations of capitalism are even more dispiriting at a daily oasis like a coffee shop as yet another part of the day becomes an iPhone-forward experience and yet another set of employees becomes displaced. Typing your name, address, billing address, credit card expiration date, and CCV onto a touchy phone-screen app to simply pay for a morning cup of coffee kind of defeats the pleasure of stopping in for a morning cup of coffee. That is to say, the act of dehumanizing restaurants and coffee shops is the opposite of restaurants and coffee shops.

3) Visiting (often)

I joined Bluesky in August 2023 in a fit to crash Elon Musk. But posting on Bluesky seemed kind of like going with the salad instead of the tater tots. And it didn’t help that the site seemed a bit needy with those buy-one-get-one-free invite pleas.

While I certainly sensed an urgent increase in traffic immediately after Trump’s election, Bluesky still didn’t feel like a main arterial.

This week, I noticed that has changed. Bluesky is suddenly the first place I visit (repeatedly) daily—not the NYT anymore, nor my email, Instagram, Facebook, nor, as I was doing passively and questionably in 2024, TikTok.

I can’t say I’m addicted or smitten with anyone on Bluesky (so, no must-follow recs yet) though I do have my favorites: M. Nolan Gray , Jamelle Bouie, Ryan Packer, David Roberts, Erica C. Barnett’s dispatches from city hall, of course, and God bless NYT Pitchbot, whose mind games must baffle the NYT’s stumbling-to-understand-what-the-problem-is editors.

….

In conclusion this week, I leave you with

… the Overheard Quote of the Week from J—, a barista at Fuel, the airy coffee shop on my block (where they don’t use QR codes to place orders). She was filling in a coworker about an apparently problematic fellow and this jumped out: “He goes to Burning Man. I feel like that already explains a lot.”

…the Local Politics Quote of the Week from Kirk Hovenkotter, the executive director at pro-transit nonprofit Transportation Choices Coalition. He was doing the fundraising pitch at King County Executive candidate Claudia Balducci’s campaign kickoff breakfast. After hyping her successful decades-long fight to bring light rail to the Microsoft suburbs he noted sly: “There’s Bellevue city council video to prove it.”

….and a Follow-up item. In last week’s post I wrote: “Not only do I now need to write a new PubliCola column about this unpave-paradise provision, but the concept of redeveloping park & rides into housing seems like a prompt for a poem as well.”

I didn’t write the poem, but I did write the PubliCola column.

“Gaining this flexibility,” Metro spokesman Jeff Switzer said, “would be really important to help both the state and King County Metro achieve their shared goals around transit oriented development and building housing conveniently near frequent and reliable transit service.”

You don’t have to convince me, Jeff. Turning parking into housing is an urbanist’s version of turning swords into ploughshares.

I’m All Lost In, #79: Trump’s antisemitic fight against antisemitism; Kurt Weill’s black keys; turning parking lots into housing.

I’m All Lost In …

The 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#79

1) Trump’s Fake Jews

Sorry if I don’t buy it when Donald Trump, whose consistent mix of America First populism, Ku Klux Klan nativism, and Third Reich authoritarianism—all infamously paranoid ideologies that demonize Jews as bogeyman and shadowy puppet masters—says he’s fighting antisemitism. To the contrary (and hardly surprising): Trump’s clampdown on campus antisemitism traffics in antisemitic tropes itself.

Trump’s effort to fight antisemitism is nothing more than a brute attack on the First Amendment rights of those who dare to criticize Israel. To claim he’s defending Jews by going on the offense against students who criticize Israel, Trump is equating condemnations of Israel with antisemitism. There are certainly strains of anti-Israel rhetoric that eagerly channel antisemitism, but they’re not synonymous. And more to the point: Trump’s move reduces American Jewish identity to Israeli identity, a sweeping and condescending configuration of the age-old, toxic idea that Jews maintain a secret-password loyalty to an alien brotherhood, typically conjured as a cabal of internationalist bankers, that disqualifies Jews from being authentic Americans. Trump is not fighting antisemitism. He’s embracing it.

Last November, Jews overwhelmingly rejected Trump; more than 70% voted for Kamala Harris. Cue Trump’s name calling. In his febrile brain, this made the super-majority of American Jews “fools” who “hate their religion.”

While Trump dismantles basic government services, due process, America’s favorable status around the world, and the economy, I’d say Jews are the opposite of fools: 5.25 million of us knew our monthly checks from George Soros would no longer be enough if our 401Ks were wiped out, so we voted en masse against Trump’s dangerous tantrum. We also knew, per Woody Guthrie in the early 1940s singing about notorious antisemite Charles Lindbergh and the original America First movement, “When they say America First, they mean America next.”

While we’re on the topic of giving Trump the thumbs down, it did seem like a few flashes of resistance to his KKK agenda captured a subtle but noteworthy shift against MAGA this week: U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s (D-MD) trip to El Salvador and unusually successful (for a Democrat) press conference to highlight the unconstitutional plight of Trump deportee/political prisoner Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia; the agitated crowd at Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley’s (R-Iowa) town hall; a series of court rulings calling out the Trump administration’s delinquent behavior; Harvard! (us Jewish elites like that one); another weekend of protests; and, not too surprising, but I love this: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Jackie Robinson Day defending the importance of Black history.

2) Weill’s Black Keys

Speaking of antisemitism, this week I’m all in lost in Kurt Weill; the German Jewish composer fled Nazi Germany in 1933, but not before writing his lumpenproletariat, urchin chic classic, 1928’s The Threepenny Opera.

Realizing what a huge mistake it is that I haven’t been practicing piano much this year, I revisited one of my favorite songs to rejuvenate my keyboard brain chemistry: Weill’s tale of working class vengeance, “Pirate Jenny,” the anti-capitalist showstopper from The Threepenny Opera.

For a song that’s supposedly written in all-white C Major, there are a lot of dissonant black keys in Weill’s mix. This is most notable when, after the chorus concludes with its way-off-script and dramatic F#, the only way to segue back into the verse—already an off-kilter circus polka in its own right with its C to D/E-flat cluster—is to pause, take a breath, and then jump back in to Weill’s revolutionary fervor.

As verse two kicks off, Pirate Jenny, incognito as a washerwoman, presses fast forward on the dialectic: “You gentleman can say, ‘Hey girl, finish the floors, get upstairs, make the beds, earn your keep here!’” Little do they know more pirate black notes are coming. Third verse: “Then you gentleman can wipe off the laugh from your face, every building in this town is a flat one…”

3) Turning Parking into Housing

I wrote a PubliCola column in late February about the excellent Transit Oriented Development bill that’s in play this year in the state legislature. The newsworthy part to me was the breakthrough compromise that matched the longstanding proposal’s originally unfunded requirement to include affordable housing near transit stops with the dollars to actually pay for affordable housing. Call it Funded Inclusionary Zoning, or FIZ.

But this week, as the bill was on its way to pass the senate 30-18 (it passed the house in early March, 58-39), Urbanist reporter Ryan Packer posted about an amendment to the legislation. And now I’m obsessed. The extra language enables King County to turn a bunch of park & rides into housing.

Not only do I now need to write a new PubliCola column about this unpave-paradise provision, but the concept of redeveloping park & rides into housing seems like a prompt for a poem as well.

P.s. Be sure to check out episode #3, just out this week, of the monthly podcast I record with my bestie ECB, “Are You Mad at Me: A Shattered Glass Podcast.” It’s all about the greatest movie of all time, 2003’s Shattered Glass.

I’m All Lost In, #78: Doom on 15th Ave. E.; new poetry from Arthur Sze; impending doom on 19th Ave. E.

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week

#78

I’ve only done a few RIPs here—early 1960s juvie hall diva Mary Weiss; the great Jerry Feit; Rosalynn Carter; 1950s doo-wop eccentric Maurice Williams; Jimmy Carter; DIY Brooklyn rap artist, Ka; New York Dolls’ lead singer David Johansen; urban planning guru Donald Shoup; and my childhood basketball hero, Jerry West. Sadly, this week I must add another name to my (mostly) para sentimental list of losses: RIP Clem Burke, the magnificent Blondie drummer whose gigantic beats always packed the band’s sardonic new wave, disco, rock, and nod-and-wink-‘60s-girl-group-pop mix with a consistent knuckle sandwich.

Whether learning “Dreaming” or “Picture This” on piano or marveling at late-1970s masterpiece LPs such as Parallel Lines or Eat to the Beat, I wrote a lot about Blondie last year. Blondie is a favorite band from my adolescence that has emerged on the 21st Century’s list of now-revered musical pioneers who still also sound fantastic. In a June 2024 post about the first, and perhaps best, new wave album I ever bought—Eat to the Beat—I wrote this about Burke:

The star of this expert mix is Blondie’s drummer Clem Burke. Every track on Eat to the Beat, from pop dynamos like “Dreaming,” to sexy disco rock like “The Hardest Part,” to insouciant pop like “Union City Blue” is driven by Burke’s rolling tympani fills and nonstop trap kit assault.

I guess, in the end, not nonstop. Luckily, his work is preserved on record.

Onto this week’s preoccupations:

1) Where Have You Gone Bites of Bangkok?

Bites of Bangkok on 15th Ave. E., Still closed, 4/11/25

Speaking of not-nonstop. Is Bites of Bangkok’s magical run over?

Every time I walk by the striking red storefront and black awning of my neighborhood’s dive nirvana these days, I’m cast into a stream of memories: proudly rushing my out-of-town guest Gregor Samsa, aka, Lee, to this slapdash spot on 15th Ave. E. for the miracle of late night dinner in Seattle; sweeping in with a date after a groovy rock show, a little giddy and a little drunk, sitting down at a cozy table waiting—and whispering with hope, is that ours?—for two sloppy plastic takeout bags of tasty noodles, veggies, and hot soup; locking down with my friends Wendy’s Stealing Clothes, aka, Annie and suburban State Sen. Marko L. for a beautiful intra-Democratic party squabble while eating bok choy, broccoli, and tofu entrées with crispy hot eggrolls on the side; or strolling in solo to read a book at the bar while sipping a cocktail alongside the gaggle of regulars who are busy chatting with the superstar (gracious pour) bartender as a second-tier ‘90s movie plays in the background on the mounted TV.

I’m lingering over these memories because Bites of Bangkok has gone dark in 2025. The always-kind-of-a-surprise gem closed “temporarily” back in mid-January; my theory is that there was no way to replace the secret ingredient: the aforementioned and lazily charismatic bartender who moved to Amsterdam in January to be with his girlfriend. (We all thought he was gay). According, incorrectly, to a staffer at the comedy club next door, Bangkok Bites was set to reopen a month ago now. In reality, its large darkened window has loomed over the sidewalk all year, enervating the deceptively welcoming bright red storefront and prompting the same kind of disappointed feeling you get when a tall guy takes the seat directly in front of you the moment before the movie starts.

I’ve lost count of the number of times recently I’ve thought, I’m craving a strong whiskey and an oily plate of rice and stir fried veggies, only to realize my neighborhood’s perfect choice might not exist anymore. As Bites of Bangkok’s apparently defunct Instagram account says: “We’re taking a break…we will open again on January 8th @5pm…” The lone comment frets: “When will you guys reopen? Been closed for a couple months…”

2) The Poetic Juxtapositions of Arthur Sze

How pleasantly surprised was I to find that a set of 26 new poems closes Arthur Sze’s otherwise retrospective collection, 2024’s The Glass Constellation.

Even though Sze is a woo-woo nature bard—daffodils, mesas, honey locust leaves, herons—he is one of my favorite poets. Indeed, despite my zealous commitment to cities, Sze’s go-to conceit is constantly enlightening: He rapidly strings together simultaneous events at play in the material world.

Searching for lightning petroglyphs, I stumble/ on a rattlesnake skin between rocks/—at dusk, soldiers set up machine guns/ near the entrance to the Taj.

As University of Virginia professor of creative writing Lisa Russ Spaar explains in her review of The Glass Constellation, Sze’s “signature cocktail” is his gift for mixing images:

..in the shaker that is the poem, [Sze] mix[es] exquisitely sensory (often synesthetic) detail; things occurring in the same moment but in different places…; intimate, political, violent, natural, erotic, and historic instances, perceptions… corded together; an expression of the mysteries of time, sexuality, and natural beauty that infuse human experience with meaning (“we hear / a series of ostinato notes and are not tied /to our bodies’ weight on earth”). For as with … any interrelated series or simultaneous frisson, such as a musical chord, it is the quality and specificity and arrangement of the various parts brought together — the catalogue, the list, the various notes — that make something new, fresh, inimitable about each configuration. In fact, one way to engage with Sze’s substantial new and collected poems might be to read a poem a day as a kind of koan or text upon which to meditate — such is the richness of this precise, fiercely observant, metaphysical and elegant work.

I first read Sze in 2022 when I bought his then-most-recent collection Sightlines (2019). The potential joke was on me. The title struck me as an urban planning term (it also sounds like the name of a local housing density and sustainability think tank I admire). Rather than being thrown by what turned out to be Sze’s lingering nature walk poems, I was instead blown away by his effortless flashcard series of precise and transcendent observations.

A neighbor hears gunshots in the bosque/and wonders who’s firing at close range;/I spot bear prints near the Pojoaque River/but see no sign of the reported mountain lion.

Or, and as is often the case, more dramatically in his closing stanzas:

I want to live on this planet:/alive to a rabbit at a glass door—/and flower where there is no flower./ —During the Cultural Revolution, a boy saw his mother shot by a firing squad—

The new poems stir this same juxtaposition chemistry, including a gorgeous six-part sequence titled appropriately enough “Entanglement” in which Sze outlines what’s up:

When you least expect it, your field/of vision tears, and an underlying landscape/reveals a radiating moment in time./Today you put aside the newspaper,/soak strawberry plants in a garden bed;/yet, standing on land, you feel the rise/and fall of a float house, how the earth/under your feet is not fixed but moves with the tide.

3) It’s Not Going to Work

In which I weigh in once again (this is an obsessions column after all) on the disappointing restaurant that just opened on my block.

We gave Rocket Taco 2.0 one more chance, taking seats at the expansive, yet nearly vacant bar top, ordering whiskeys, and trying in earnest to make a nightcap of it. Too bad for us. An indolent staffer, more a service worker than a neighborhood bartender, reluctantly gave us our drinks. They never checked in with us again. And to be fair: It’s clearly not their job to. There is seemingly no dedicated bartender position at this local bar. It’s evidently not part of the business plan.

Oblivious to the cozy potential, Rocket Taco’s owners do not not seem up to the opportunity of moving into this elegant neighborhood space on 19th Ave. E. For starters, despite the capacious moody restaurant digs, patrons are greeted at the door with a cash register queue where they’re made to order and pay in advance—checking in to check out, rather than being seated and encouraged to stay for a flowing evening of table service and kismet.

My prediction: despite some chatty, initial crowds (loose usage), these diners are not going to return. In sync with the fast food check-in parameters, the staff botches any dining-out mood as they eagerly get busy mopping the floor, unplugging the music—with a loud electronic fart the night we were there, and putting up chairs at the too many conspicuously unoccupied tables as the egregiously early 8:30 clean up time kicks in.

Nothing about the interior design choices say stay and make memories here this evening. In fact, there are no evident interior design choices to speak of other than the prominently displayed stack of to-go boxes at the bussing station by the front door. No art. No plants. And, give it a month, likely not enough customers.

——–

What would this weekly report be without a tennis update? And this one’s important: On Saturday morning, I hit my first-ever two-handed backhand, smashing a crosscourt winner past Valium Tom as he rushed the net. I’ve always used a one-handed backhand, but possessed by impulse, my inner Monica Seles seized the opportunity for not only a two-handed return, but one with a satisfying, skidding bounce into the open court.

I’m All Lost In, #77: Egyptian cotton sheets; Vegan Chips Ahoy version; Expatriate of the week.

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessing over THIS week.

#77

1) New Cotton Sheets

My pal Johnny Rotten Shoes, aka Erica, thinks I got duped—$85 seems suspiciously inexpensive for a “luxury” set of “800-thread-count” cotton sheets, she warned.

But judging from how comfy my bed has been, now newly fitted in the sage-colored set of 100% cotton sheets, I ordered from Luxury Egyptian Linens, I’m convinced I made the right move.

Switching to cotton sheets.

In particular: The move from the slippery bamboo set I’ve been using for the last couple of years (that always ends up in confusing and bunched disarray at the foot of the bed) to the soft cotton sleep-study experience I switched to this week has been the coziest of mid-life revelations.

Every night, I feel like Madonna expressing herself, or perhaps it’s Blondie’s Debbie Harry beseeching us to “call me,” crooning about designer sheets at bed time.

2) Plant Based Chocolate Chip Cookies

Back in I’m All Lost In #13 from January 2024, I identified my sparkling cookie jar as an apartment therapy achievement, claiming it was an aesthetic obsession rather than a sugary one.

The number of boxes of Back to Nature brand Chocolate Chunk Cookies I’ve gone through in the past few weeks belies this claim—and confirms I’m hooked on this hippie rendition of Nabisco’s Chips Ahoy, a beloved childhood confection—the crunchy ones, not the queasy chewy version.

Back to Nature is certainly the worst name for a chocolate chip cookie imaginable, but the plant based, no high-fructose, no hydrogynated oils, no saturated nor trans fats, no artificial colors nor flavor ingredients justify the Woodstock-era reverie and explain why they taste so malty and delectable rather than sickly sweet and industrial.

3) Daria Kasatkina Serves Putin

For regular readers who typically skim (and barely) my WTA entries, you may actually find this dispatch exciting:

Gay tennis star, World No. 12 Daria Kasatkina, announced on Saturday that she will no longer play as a Russian. Obtaining Australian residency, Kasatkina, who fled her native Russia two years ago because it’s impossible to live openly under the Putin regime as an out lesbian, says she will now compete under the Australian flag.

Notably, Kasatkina has also been an outspoken critic of Russian’s war in Ukraine. It’s easy to imagine that Kasatkina, 27, was something of a Pussy Riot fan when she was a teenager; the math works out perfectly: Young Kasatkina would have been 17 during the heyday of Pussy Riot’s revolutionary story line. With her bold anti-war and LGBTQ politics, Kasatkina is certainly practicing what original Russian riot grrrls Nadya Tolokonnikova and Masha Alyokhina preached.

In an inspiring, and kind of urbanist Instagram post, this week Kasatkina said:

Australia is a place I love, is incredibly welcoming and a place where I feel totally at home. I love being in Melbourne and look forward to making my home there. As part of this, I am proud to announce that I will be representing my new homeland Australia, in my professional tennis career from this point onwards.

While this righteous news transcends my scoreboard fixation with the WTA, I will also say that last December when I made my predictions for the 2025 season, I picked Kasatkina as one to watch.

—————

I’ve kept this week’s three items short because I have quite a few follow-up items to get to.

First, regarding my recent boozy matcha latte discovery: I’m now swapping in whiskey for the vokda-like shōchū I initially experimented with two weeks ago. This “Botcha Latte”—Maker’s Mark bourbon, matcha tea, and hot oat milk—has become my happy hour go to at my other recent discovery, Peloton Cafe.

Second, while I understand the value of U.S. Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-NJ) anti-Trump performance on the Senate floor this week, my takeaway was a sad one. With the comparisons and juxtaposition to Dixiecrat Sen. Strom Thurmond's epic (and racist) 1957 speech, Booker’s stand ultimately highlighted a dispiriting fact: Thurmond’s defensive speech was delivered at a time in history—mid-20th Century America—when his segregationist movement was in its throes and the civil rights movement was ascendant. Along with Gov. Wallace’s school door stand, Thurmond’s filibuster represented a dying gasp for American racists. Nearly 70 years on, Booker's speech showed the roles are now reversed.

Third, you’ll remember I was painfully cynical about Rocket Taco’s current play to activate the underachieving corner spot on my block. I posited that unless they changed from their HOA-friendly model and instead took on the role of a warm neighborhood bar, their reboot would fail. Well, I dropped in this week to both give them a fair chance and to sit at the bar and send a message about the bartop demand. The good news is that there were more people in the place than I imagined there’d be (still not bumping, though) and the regal bar was stocked. The bad news: we were the last people there as they put up the chairs at 8:20. I did get some encouraging info about the business that’s taking over Rocket Taco’s old, smaller space across the street, though. It’s going to be a cafe and women’s sports bar. Maybe they’ll stay open late? I’ll be there on Day One anyway making sure they subscribe to the Tennis Channel.

Fourth, I’ve written plenty in this space about my young musician friend, yeoman artist Rob Joynes, including about his killed-the-assignment computer-music opening set at my book release reading in May 2023 and about his abstract beats solo show at Vermillion last summer. Well, I saw him perform once again this past Saturday night. It was an unconventional show for a Seattle rock club. Rob set up and hosted a folk night at downtown rocker oasis, the Belltown Yacht Club where he set out chairs in front of the stage. For an electric guitarist who leans My Bloody Valentine, Rob played a surprisingly stark and confessional acoustic set. But the night ultimately starred his songwriting idol, Kath Bloom, who he invited out for the show. Bloom is an obscure musician from Connecticut. She put out some odd folk albums in the 1970s and early 1980s, and Richard Linklater used one of her songs in 1995’s Before Sunrise. She’s now 70-something, and to a roomful of Rob’s adoring friends and to many of her own cult fans who showed up, Bloom, accompanied by her melodic, young sidekick guitarist David Shapiro, played a tender, frolicking, intimate performance of her own.

Kath Bloom and touring partner guitarist David Shapiro on stage at the Belltown Yacht Club, 3/29/25

Fifth, and with some exertion, I finished the Bryan Washington novel I started two weeks ago, Family Meal. There are lots of paragraph-ending mic-drop insights that would work in their own right as poetry (“The sirens behind us don’t sound any closer, but they don’t disappear either. It could just be the backdrop of the city. Houston’s natural state.”) But in the context of this forced novel about self care as philosophy, I found myself missing Washington’s superior, attention-to-detail driven short stories, one of which showed up in this week’s New Yorker.

Sixth, and sorry, but it’s tennis time. My favorite WTA player Aryna Sabalenka ended up winning the Miami Open this week, convincingly: 7-5, 6-2. She beat World No. 4, American Jessica Pegula, who she also beat in last year’s U.S. Open, which I saw live. More importantly (to a Daffy Saby fanboy like me), she finally got the props she deserves for her overlooked yet defiantly impressive 2025 stand to date; four months in with a tour-best four major finals appearances and a tour-best 23-4 record overall, she’s World No. 1, leading former invincible World No. 1, and current World No. 2, Iga Swiatek in the rankings by more than 3000 points. Go to the 30-minute mark here and listen to prodigy tennis podcaster Matt Roberts—the unencumbered boy-genius analyst on the tour—sing Sabalenka’s stats while conjecturing with his two cohorts that she could win Roland Garros and Wimbledon for a career grand slam. “I think I’d have said no to that in the past,” Roberts says, but noting her new and suddenly comprehensive game, Roberts concluded, “this is the year for Sabalenka, playing like this.” By the way, I played tennis myself on Saturday, facing a new opponent who had drop shot and slice expertise. He beat me 6-4, 6-4, but not before I responded in the second set from down 0-3 with a strong first-serve and passing-shot-heavy, 3-game winning streak to suddenly even things up.

I’m All Lost In, #76: a South Seattle classic; two biographies in one; and an iffy business plan.

I’m All Lost In …

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week

#76

1) Billiard Hoang

Tofu Vermicelli at Seattle’s legendary Billiard Hoang, 3/23/25

After watching a ponderous and disappointing movie at south Seattle’s local art house theater The Beacon, XDX and I scrolled on our phones for a nearby place to get a cozy Sunday night dinner; I love procrastinating Monday. We quickly settled on an unremarkably remarkable Seattle gem, Billiard Hoang.

Located two blocks from the Columbia City light rail station at MLK Jr. Way S. and S. Hudson St., this is the kind of easygoing spot where the owners—hanging out at the bar when you mosey in, and maybe an old married couple—offhandedly direct customers to one of the tables in the vaguely raised seating area off to the right of the larger, pensive pool hall.

At first glimpse, Billiard Hoang’s lengthy menu seems to offer the standard Vietnamese fare—warm noodle soups, banh mi, vermicelli bowls, fresh or fried spring rolls, and rice plates (served with beef, duck, or veggies). But the energetic touch (scrambled eggs on the banh mi, congee, durian or avocado milk shakes) quickly brings the love afoot in the kitchen to your attention.

I had the vermicelli and tofu, served atop a spicy broth in a bowl filled to the max with fresh veggies, including, red bell peppers, shredded spinach and carrots, cooked onions, and cabbage. XDX got the sliced quarter leg of duck (very recommended by our amiable and proud waiter) with some gingery bamboo shoot rice vermicelli soup.

Vibe is an overused word, but this is that. Or per XDX, “an institution.”

2) The Goddess and the American Girl by Larry Engelmann

Like a gateway drug, Tom Cumberstone’s hardcover graphic novel (on my obsessions list two weeks ago) about 1920s French tennis star Suzanne Lenglen led me to a more traditional, 464-page biography of the six-time Wimbledon champion.

Larry Engelmann’s The Goddess and the American Girl begins with an engaging anecdote from his college days in the early 1960s at the University of Michigan: His class was reading Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises and trying to figure out who “Lenglen” was; this was Hemingway’s description of his Robert Cohn character: “He probably loved to win as much as Lenglen…” The prof had no idea who this Lenglen fellow may have been, so Engelmann “underlined that passage and put a question mark in the margin of the page.” His subsequent sleuthing didn’t turn up anybody named Lenglen, though. About a decade later when Engelmann was researching his first book, a history of 1920s Prohibition, he came across Lenglen again, a she—not a he, as presumed—who was getting constant notice in the newspapers of the time.

From Larry Engelmann’s comprehensive book: Suzanne Lenglen in action

To Engelmann’s satisfaction I imagine, the NYT called The Goddess and The American Girl “overdue” when it first came out in 1988

They also, lovingly called it “overlong.” No question this is a fat book—because it’s actually a joint bio, coupling Lenglen’s historic and seismic seven-year sweep of the international women’s tennis circuit in the early 1920s with that of her rival and successor, the slightly younger (and more staid) American player, Helen Wills.

Following Lenglen’s taboo-breaking, 1919-1925 run (Lenglen wore flapper friendly bandeau head scarves and hit down-the-line backhand smashes like a man), Wills—with lightning speed and uncanny anticipation (including on-court somersaults)—won Wimbledon eight times herself between 1927 and 1938, disassembling all comers with her “poker face” court demeanor and power hitting.

Another reason this book is hulking: Engelmann—who has written acclaimed history books about China, the fall of Saigon, and as noted above, prohibition America—is clearly a tireless researcher. I could picture him deep in the stacks (and hovering over the microfiche) as I read his prize quotes from Lenglen’s and Wills’ awed contemporaries, gasped at the stroke by stroke details from long-vanished Wimbledon matches, listened in on the up-close accounts of cross-country train rides, and delighted in the dish from late night dancing in Harlem (Lenglen, not pigtailed, Wills, a stoic presence who “acted like a Quaker” and who moved “like a West Point cadet,” wrote the sports columnists of the day).

Indeed, in the two chapters I’ve read so far—uptempo outlines of these athletes’ respective careers as they ascend toward to their 1926 “Match of the Century” (cued up for Chapter 3, “Ballyhoo”), Engelmann is big on the historical context. As much as Engelmann places Lenglen’s and Wills’ superpower tennis skills in direct competition, he more so pits cosmopolitan Lenglen as a cognac-sipping European versus Wills as the embodiment of public-park-system-America, where tennis was the “royal sport of the people.” Engelmann quotes legendary and contemporaneous sports writer Grantland Rice observing that Wills “represented the power of youth, but not the romance of youth.”

Speaking of dominant female tennis stars, I am once again riveted by WTA action this week: My favorite player, No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka, is currently tearing through the Miami Open, having beaten both No. 9 (and Olympic Gold medalist) Qinwen Zheng, 6-2, 7-5 and No. 7 Jasmine Paolini, 6-2, 6-2 (!) en route to her fourth finals match of the year. While Saby is 1-2 in 2025 finals to date, and isn’t getting the love that recent Cinderella-story winners like No. 5 Madison Keys and No. 6 Mirra Andreeva recently got, I’d say she’s the most consistent winner on the tour right now.

How consistent has Sabalenka been? She’s only the fourth player to reach the semifinals at the Australian Open, Indian Wells and Miami the same year as World No. 1, joining Steffi Graf (1994), Martina Hingis (1998, 2000 and 2001) and Serena Williams (2015). That’s some list.

3) Rocket Taco: New Space Same as the Old Space?

“No news about what’s moving in yet, but hopefully at the new place, they’ll ask if you’d like a coffee refill at lunch or another glass of wine after dinner.”

That’s me, back in a December 2023 obsession list, ruminating warily.

I was preparing myself for yet another misplayed business venture on my aspirational block, the brief human stretch on 19th Ave. E. where it’s zoned Neighborhood Commercial, or NC-1 (multi-story, mixed-use apartment buildings, convenient retail, and restaurants). After an awkward three-and-a-half year stint of totally misreading the room, December 2023 was when Bounty Kitchen (I called it Empty Kitchen) was finally closing its doors; the owners had been obstinate about their HOA feng shui as opposed to considering the renters living in the vibrant cluster of surrounding six-story buildings.

This week, a new business finally moved in. Well, not exactly new. Local Mexican restaurant chain Rocket Taco—hardly outstanding, but certainly respectable with their in-house handmade tortillas and tasty lentil, chickpea, and cauliflower vegan options—is simply moving across the street from its current 19th Ave. E. spot into the much bigger 3,000 square foot abandoned Bounty Kitchen space.

The move seems risky. Unless, owners Jill and Steve Rosen are plotting some changes to their current kids-friendly approach—and, according to Capitol Hill Seattle Blog it doesn’t sound like they are— the switch from the smaller spot where they’ve done steady, but not jumping business for seven years seems destined to be another flubbed opportunity.

My fears were not allayed when I peeked in on their soft opening Wednesday night. The tell? The shelves above the long, gorgeous bar that defines the new, posh space—and which made the long-ago Tallulah’s a hit here—was spare, with the smattering of liquor bottles looking like the two rolls of TP remaining on desolate pandemic-era Safeway shelves.

Until someone seizes the day by understanding the night, and turns this warm room into a neighborhood bar replete with: a 10 pm-or-later closing time (as opposed to the endlessly disappointing 9 pm closing times on my block); chatty waiters working tables (as opposed to the one-and-done fast food cash register counter service); plus an occasional DJ at a turntable , and yes, a full bar, Rocket Taco will remain, as it did the very next evening, their official first day, mostly empty.

My heart sank as I approached the relocated business on Thursday at 8:40 pm and saw the night’s ominous adumbration: A sole diner and two idle workers hovering.

3/27/25, A disappointing opening night at Rocket Taco

Very unrelated to all that, but lastly, two music recommendations, both to be used as playlist prompts. First, Khruangbin, a Houston-based world-music- meets-soft-soul-rock trio whose floating tunes are built around petty electric guitar musings; tunes like their lightly psychedelic 2024 track “Ada Jean” will nudge your head in a groovy direction that’s similar to the sound of fusion revivalist Thundercat, though less yacht rock jams and more Chicano-think-piece jams.

Second, try a droney track called “Ionosphere” by ambient musician Elias Mia when you want presence but not attention.

I’m All Lost In, #75: Boozy matcha; Houston stories; Speakspeak

I’m All Lost In …

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#75

First, a music recommendation of the week, some data points of the week, and a quote of the week.

Music Recommendation: I once—nearly 20 years ago—mumbled, famously to myself that there were two genres of music that could never be replicated with any legitimacy nor seriousness: Early ‘60s Girl Group pop, such as the Ronettes or the Angels, nor late ‘70s/early ‘80s New Wave. I stand by the Girl Group exhortation, but have you heard of this contemporary band Nation of Language, early 30-somethings who claim Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark as a main influence? The Brooklyn-based guitar, synthesizer, bass, and percussion trio make good on their unlikely 1980 synth pop dream with cold and shiny verisimilitude rocking their tracks such as “The Wall & I,” “This Fractured Mind,” “Weak in Your Light,” and “On Division Street.” I’d say classic New Order more than OMD, but I stand corrected on my earlier wayward assertion.

Data: Given that an extra super majority of people who come into Manhattan’s central business district take transit, the new list of  compelling stats upending Trump’s faux populist attack on New York’s congestion pricing program not only serve as a grown-up fact check on his infantile rhetoric, but also make it plain how well the policy is working for the public.

Since congestion pricing took effect, 13% fewer vehicles are coming into Manhattan, yet retail sales in the tolling zone are up 1.5 percent compared to last year. And there was a 6.7 % increase in the number of people who traveled to work in the area.

… Pedestrian traffic is up around 4% and economic activity appears to be up with Broadway theater attendance, restaurant reservations and retail sales in the tolling zone seeing increases over a similar period in 2024.

Quote: This overdue A.O. Scott piece maps the paranoid strain in modern America by pinpointing JFK assassination conspiracy theories as the starting line for a daft route that runs from left-leaning 1970s anti-corporate, deep state imaginings, to left(ish)-leaning 9/11 inside-job delusions, to right wing Sandy Hook deniers, eventually landing in the brain stem of Pizzagate’s MAGA Trump cult through the lens of 2020’s right wing “Stop the Steal” pathology. Like a good conspiracy theory itself, Scott’s well-versed piece explains everything!

It also aligns with my long held belief that lefty reactionaries such as Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, and Bernie Bro voters share much more with “Make America Great Again” voters than they may want to admit.

More importantly, in addition to name checking Alan J. Pakula’s Parallax View (1974)!, the political paranoia freakout film that bests the over-referenced and overrated Network (1976), Scott’s thorough article quotes a brilliant Richard Hofstadter line: “there is a great difference between locating conspiracies in history and saying that history is, in effect, a conspiracy.”

I found an original copy of this Parallax View paperback last year at Capitol Hill’s Twice Sold Tales and promptly sent it to my 1970s co-conspirator, Eel-head, aka, Gregor Samsa, aka, Lee.

Hofstadter’s bit of wisdom succinctly lays out why I’ve always bristled at those neat theories some of my left wing comrades subscribe to—have you heard about how the Trilateral Commission controls your life.

I’m always left wondering … And?

Meaning: these kinds of theories are a way of abandoning a focus on material reality (like regressive tax policy) while positing the Romantic and irrelevant idea instead that we are helplessly living in the Matrix (another overrated movie, by the way)

Onto this week’s official obsessions…

1) Can I have some Shōchū with that Matcha Latte?

I opted for a matcha latte as my nightcap last Saturday night, a rainy late-winter Seattle evening. The crowded nightspot I ended up at, the trendy Gemini Room, serves such a thing; they also serve $16-dollar cocktails and have Pink Pickled Deviled Eggs and Broccolini & Garlic Ricotta Toast on their night eats menu, along with the Panko Chicken Sandwich, Shoestring Fries & Aioli, and Fried Ravioli.

They are living on borrowed time. But I am living my best My-Chemical-Romance-life. “Could I have a little booze in that?” I amended from my seat at the bar, feeling soggy in my wet shoes and damp jacket. The surprisingly friendly bartenders at this otherwise childish place leaped into action, suggesting I add a bit of shōchū, the vodka-ish barley-based Japanese spirit. They had a bottle of luxe brand iichiko shōchū which blended into the foamy green draught like a cube of sugar idly dissolving into warm tea.

I too dissolved. Into the impressionist streetlights on my languid electric bike ride home, pledging to incorporate this magic trick into my life.

2) Family Meal by Bryan Washington

I loved Bryan Washington’s 2019 debut, a collection of intertwined short stories called Lot, which I reviewed here and which made my obsession’s list one week in late 2023.

Washington is a 31-year-old, Black, queer writer with an effortless ability to turn working class workplaces into mournful yet hopeful fables. Lot, his self conscious collection about striving POC, LGBTQ, and immigrant Houston, was part of my City Syllabus crash course that year; some of the other books in my autoseminar were M. Nolan Gray’s nonfiction book about land use zoning, Arbitrary Lines (coincidentally, also a lot about Houston, thanks to that city’s model slack code), Teju Cole’s Lagos vignettes, Everyday is for the Thief, Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1848 Industrial Revolution Manchester novel, Mary Barton, and Ben Wilson’s sweeping history of cities, Metropolis.

In its review of Washington’s most recent Houston novel, Family Meal (2023), the NYT called Washington “phenomenally precocious.”

Bryan Washington

I’m only about 70 pages in, so perhaps I’ll see what they mean by that phenomenally ambitious description, but when pastries—in a paper bag in the backseat, fresh from the bakery “flaky in my hands, warm to the touch, delicious as I remember,” entered the narrative as a metaphor for the comfort of old friends in the closing paragraphs of an otherwise terse opening chapter, I suddenly felt, as I did with Lot, that I was in the hands of a loquacious prodigy.

3) Speakspeak

Following up my recent bitchy aside on the Gen Z verb “decenter,” I’ve since—after some work meetings this week— came up with a George Orwell-induced neologism, “Speakspeak,” to describe the hesitant yet self-righteous activist wordiness of phrases like “I’m going to go ahead and name that,” pseudo lively yet lifeless jargon such as “hold space,” or “form to norm,” (which apparently means introduce and normalize), and corporate culture gibberish such as “ideate” “iterate,” or “let’s socialize that.”

The list of lexical offenses on today’s Teams calls or in today’s earnest coffee shop meetups —”architect” as a verb, “impact” as a verb, or “impactful” as an adjective are other grating blunders—goes on and on.

The closest thing to a common denominator I can detect in all this banal chatter is that it’s an attempt to narrate rather than say, or even more, an attempt to explain rather than say. A basic rule of writing is to show rather than tell. It’s time to reverse all the explaining and apply the same tenet to speaking.

I’m All Lost In, #74: Graphic tennis; late night coffee; and strong Neville Chamberlain vibes

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessing over THIS week.

#74

1) Suzanne: The Jazz Age Goddess of Tennis by Tom Humberstone

My ongoing obsession with today’s WTA led to me a comic-book novel about Suzanne Lenglen, the 100-years-ago female tennis phenomenon (she won Wimbledon six times between 1919 and 1925, plus throw in two—1925 and 1926—French Open titles, and a 1920 Olympic Gold). I’d never heard of Lenglen before; luckily, tennis reporter/writer/blogger Ben Rothenberg recommended Scottish comic artist Tom Humberstone’s graphic novel about Lenglen last December.

Humberstone imagines 1920s tennis legends Helen Wills (L) and Suzanne Lenglen (R) meeting on the night before their 1926 “Match of the Century” in Cannes.

Lenglen (L) and Wills (R) at their Match of the Century in 1926

Humberstone’s bold yet subdued panels tell the defiant French tennis star’s story in a series of chronological, though in medias res vignettes that weave an understated, slightly fraught tale as Lenglen’s trailblazing (“scandalous”) ascent mirrors the struggles of newfound post-suffragette freedoms alongside the same old limits that beleaguer women’s equality today. (For some more on the contradictions of Flapper feminism, check out Ursula Parrott’s 1929 novel Ex-Wife, which I reviewed last October.)

Humberstone’s research shows that the rhythms, rivalries, anxieties, glory, and celebrity of yesteryear’s tennis circuit, though draped in petticoat athletic gear circa 1922, are much like today’s (sans Lenglen’s sly cognac boosters between sets).

Rothenberg also interviewed Humberstone …

Humberstone: I started to write those things down. The intersection with the suffragette movement and women's changing role in society, how women's fashion was completely revolutionized, the invention of sport as an entertainment industry, the rise and fall of the Jazz Age, the shifting global hegemony from the old world to the new... I realized that I could almost one-to-one attach these themes to Suzanne's biggest matches. That gave me the framework that I used in the book where I generally focus each chapter around the conversations before and after a career-altering match that addresses the themes of that chapter.

As for my aforementioned obsession with the current WTA: After savoring a week of compelling matches at the Indian Wells tournament, it’s coming down to a back-in-form Aryna Sabalenka versus teen-prodigy Mirra Andreeva final this Sunday; in the Friday night semifinal, Saby avenged her recent Australian Open finals loss to red-hot Madison Keys with a 6-0, 6-1 shutdown this time.

2) I Stand By the Title of My First Poetry Collection *

* Available on Cathexis NW Press

The New York Time’s ran a story this week that should be an urban planning policy brief for Seattle’s mayor and city council. It was a business trend story about Qahwah House, a Yemeni coffee shop that stays open late.

With most coffee shops around here tucking in for the evening between 4 and 6pm, there are few places other than bars and restaurants to chat with friends, read a book, or scribble in your journal next to kindred Sylvia Plath mimes after dark. I’ve written this a couple of times in my city planning column at PubliCola: Seattle is an underwhelming proposition for night owls in general; shout out to Bait Shop on Broadway, by the way, one uncommon spot where, miraculously, I was able to get dinner after 10pm last Saturday night.

In fairness, I’ve recently discovered two coffee spots that aren’t afraid of the dark—Peloton Cafe and Basecamp—but both spots are hybrid models; Peloton is more hippie restaurant than coffee shop, and Basecamp doubles as a ski rental shop/outdoors sports club that I don’t feel affinity for, nor, do I feel at home with the bewildering array of clipboard signups at the front counter.

Enter the late-night coffeehouse trend coming to America courtesy of Yemeni immigrant Ibrahim Alhasbani’s Qahwah House, a chain with 16 shops nationwide; though not in Seattle, evidently. The obstrusive AI results of my Google query said: “Qahwah House, a Yemeni coffee shop, does not have a location in Seattle, WA 98122, but it does have locations in Dearborn, MI and Sterling Heights.” (There are also shops in New Jersey, New York, Illinois, Ohio, Texas, and Wisconsin.)

Reminding me of how Italian immigrants brought pizza shops to America in the mid-20th Century, and Japanese immigrants brought karaoke bars to America in the 1980s, the NYT article (though, please with the word “decenter”) explains:

Yemeni immigrants are making their mark on the U.S. coffee industry and shifting cafe culture late into the night. In the last decade, the number of Yemeni coffeehouses that stay open well after sundown has ballooned, beginning in Michigan and fanning out toward Texas, New York and California.

The expansion of these coffeehouses reflects increasing demand for late-night spaces that decenter alcohol.

Delah Coffee has opened four coffeehouses in the Bay Area since 2022. Haraz Coffee House, which first opened in Dearborn, Mich., in 2021, now counts 22 shops in its empire. And while Mokafé isn’t the largest of these growing chains — it has seven cafes in New York and New Jersey — but its Times Square location, which stays open until 2 a.m. on weekends, is impossible to miss.

If I presented this NYT article to local policymakers, here are some quotes that would light up my slide deck:

•“There is no location that closes on time,” Mr. Alhasbani said. “The customers keep coming. If we say 3, that means 4.”

• “If I wanted to hang out with my friends, where was I going to go?” said Mr. Alhasbani, who opened the Williamsburg location in 2020. “There was no place like that.”

• They opened Delah Coffee, one of the first Yemeni coffeehouses in San Francisco, the morning of the [Golden State Warriors’ NBA] championship parade. “I had a hundred customers in the shop,” said Mr. Jahamee, 21. When the festivities concluded, many customers returned to the cafe, surprised to find it was open until 10 p.m. “By closing late, we opened up a whole different world,” he said.

There’s also this quote, which serves as a reminder to Trump and his nativist MAGA movement that their isolationism is antithetical to innovation, revenues, and life:

At Arwa Yemeni Coffee, a cafe in Texas opening its fourth location this week, some of the busiest hours are right before closing time — as late as 1 a.m. on weekends. “In our culture, we drink coffee and tea late into the night,” said Faris Almatrahi, an owner. “It tends to be extremely packed and loud.”

When Mr. Almatrahi, 47, and his partners opened Arwa in 2022, their customers were still catching on. “We had a huge non-Muslim demographic during the day” that cleared out as the afternoon wore on, he said. At night, the customer base was predominantly Muslim. [But] as Yemeni cafes have expanded, the crowds have, too. “We’re starting to see other demographics socializing at night and sipping coffee,” Mr. Almatrahi said.

3) Strong Neville Chamberlain Vibes

Posted this placard on my Insta, Bluesky, and Facebook (sorry!) accounts, 3/14/25

As I write this column, the Democratic Senate Minority Leader in Congress, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) signed off on Republican budget legislation that gives congressional budgeting authority to Trump.

This shatters the Democrats last line of defense—going to court—to stop Trump from illegally forcing his pathological priorities on America by ending congressionally-directed government funding for: health and medical programs, K-12 education, veteran support, transit projects, federal law enforcement, clean energy programs, disaster relief, environmental protections, housing, weather satellites, and on and on.

Schumer chose appeasement.

________

Monday, March 10 was the one-year anniversary of Dad’s death. I lit the Yahrzeit candle, read the prayer in the memory of the deceased, and like Mom and Dad used to do for their dead parents, let the candle burn for 24 hours.

I’m All Lost In, #73: RIP David Johansen; the menu at Peloton Cafe; a playlist of one’s own.

I’m All Lost In …

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#73

First, some goods of the order.

A thank you. Thank you, Zeitgeist Coffee. I always found it incongruous that this grunge-era Pioneer Square hippie-adjacent institution didn’t have a vegan option (nor barely a veggie one). For my part, I’d taken to finagling a DIY order—their green salad and some bread on the side—so I could concoct a salad sandwich of my own.

I’m happy to report that Zeitgeist’s new menu addresses this pressing issue. They’ve now got a tasty hummus sandwich; it’s lovingly laced with kalamata tapenade, cucumbers, red onion, and black pepper. Simply titled “Vegan Sandwich,” this noticeably hefty and healthy fare (served on slices of Macrina Bakery sourdough) has a utilitarian bent that matches Zeitgeist’s timeless Jimmy-Carter-for-President profile.

A couple of other Thank Yous this week go out to the Los Angeles Review of Books and Vox for their candid Anora take downs. As you likely know, at Sunday night’s Academy Awards ceremony, Sean Baker’s retrograde comedy about a prostitute-with-a-heart-of-gold won the Oscar for best film. Having given Anora my own thumbs down after seeing it in early January, I was feeling gaslit by the film’s critical acclaim, so checking out LARB’s extended critique and Vox’s thorough pan helped restore my sanity. Vox’s reality check concludes:

Ultimately, Anora may fall into the category of Oscar-winning movies that seem like a cool, progressive choice on paper, but are ridden with problems and critiques from the communities they purport to represent.

There are other factors that have presumably lent to this win, too. Baker is one of the few modern auteurs who’s been unwavering in his commitment to making independent cinema for over 20 years now. Anora is also a monument to ’70s filmmaking canon, an era of cinema that Hollywood has heralded as an emblem of taste. With Anora, Baker puts himself in the conversation with celebrated auteurs like John Cassavetes, Martin Scorsese, and Robert Altman. If only his work contained some of that era’s more radical politics and subversive representations.

Lastly: some reading recommendations.

First, a George Mason University think tank study titled “Urban Minimum Lot Sizes: Their Background, Effects, and Avenues to Reform.” Not only does this piece convincingly make the case that doing away with prevalent minimum lot size regulations will help increase affordable housing supply, it simultaneously clarifies a related, important point about the burning planet. Requiring capacious lot sizes is an alarming anachronism.

Second recommendation, Athletic tennis writers Matthew Futterman and Charlie Eccleshare posted their Indian Wells preview; the 1000-level tennis tournament got underway on Wednesday and Futterman and Eccleshare’s report focuses on the players they believe have urgent storylines at this annual Coachella Valley tennis showdown. Their list includes two of my favorite players. There’s “ropey” (the pejorative British definition) Aryna Sabalenka, who despite still being No. 1, is coming off two recent losses. “I’m all over the place in my thoughts …,” Saby ruminates. “The decisions I’m making on the court are a bit wrong and emotionally I’m not at my best.” And then there’s (slipped to) No. 9, Qinwen Zheng, whose “0-3 record this year tells a story.”

In other major tennis news: On Friday afternoon, under the influence of Seattle’s annual late February heat wave, I booked a Saturday morning reservation at the Volunteer Park courts. By the time Saturday arrived, the temperature had actually dropped into the 30s and a Transylvania fog had settled in. But nonetheless, it was a diaphoretic two sets—the hoodies came off—and in one play, in a tennis first for me, I knew exactly where I wanted to place my serve, successfully painting the deuce court corner. This was during a rare 40-Love win as I acted out for a spell before otherwise getting creamed by tennis natural, Valium Tom.

Volunteer Park, Lower Courts, 8 am, 3/1/25. Before Valium Tom arrived for our own Indian Wells qualies, I practiced my serve, calling out “Saby!” as I tossed the ball in the air and, riding a rush of endorphins, came down like the crack of a pool hall break.

Onto this week’s obsessions.

1) RIP New York Dolls Front Man, David Johansen, 1950-2025
I was a teenage anachronism. When I was in high school during the early 1980s, the New York Dolls’ 1973 debut LP was one of my favorite records. I came to it through my other retro teen crushes, early ‘70s Bowie, early ‘70s Lou Reed, early ‘70s Eno, and fellow contemporary meta teenagers, Blondie.

The ‘60s girl-group-revivalist, yet punk-futurist Dolls first captured my attention with their iconic album cover photo of the band in thrifted drag. But they officially and forever had me with the pitch-perfect teen manifesto song titles listed on the back: ”Lonely Planet Boy,” “Jet Boy,” “Private World,” “Subway Train,” “Looking for a Kiss,” “Personality Crisis,” “Bad Girl,” “Frankenstein,” “Pills,” and, of course, “Trash,” which successfully summed up the whole yearning sarcastic glamour in one word—and with a DIY panache that cued the blistering campy rock on the record itself. “Trash,” fyi, might be the best punk rock song ever recorded; from the rushing pop verses, to the half-time blues on the chorus, to the full-stop vocal recitative—”Uhn, how do you call your lover boy?”—to the “whoa-oh-whoa” rave up, it remains the signature song of the Lower East Side’s stagflation bohemian heyday.

The album’s lone overtly political track, “Vietnamese Baby”—which placed the band’s droll malaise unmistakably in the larger and unavoidable context of early 1970s gruesome American imperialism and impending decline—may be the album’s other signature moment. As Dolls’ singer David Johansen’s striptease-Queens’-accent vocals shift from preen to pain with the My Lai Massacre-conscious “talking ‘bout your overkill/ talking ‘bout your overkill/talking ‘bout your overkill/now that it’s over/now that it’s over/now that it’s over/whatcha gonna do?”, it becomes impossible to ignore the tragedy at the heart of a setlist that once led with comedy.

Johnny Thunders’ Chuck Berry-on-overdrive guitars (and on bourbon and barbiturates as well, if music itself can be sloshed), certainly propelled the record. But Johansen’s bratty yet searching vocals defined it, making good on the set list’s punk voguing.

Of course, you can’t write about Johansen without writing about his juvie hall meta crush, Mary Weiss, the frontwoman for the early 1960s bad girl-girl group, the Shangri-Las. (I’ve always thought “From Shangri-La to Nirvana” would be the perfect name for a history book about punk music.) When Weiss, best known for her 15-year-old vocals on the Shangri-Las’ 1964 hit “Leader of the Pack,” died last year at 75, I—symbiotically—couldn’t help writing about Johansen and the Dolls:

Reclaimed with a sense of sordid 1970s ennui and irony less than a decade later by the proto-punk New York Dolls (also from working class Queens), the Shangri-Las quickly became a template for the CBGB set as bands like Blondie, Suicide, and the Ramones leaned into their own trashy pleas of adolescent angst.

On the louche intro to their 1973 urchin love song “Looking for a Kiss,” the Dolls’ lead singer David Johansen steals Mary Weiss’ spellbinding intro line from the Shangri-Las’ 1965 hit “Give Him a Great Big Kiss” —”When I say I’m in love/you best believe I’m in love/ L-U-V!”

I will say, the mix on the New York Dolls landmark 1973 LP has always sounded a bit muffled; if Johnny Thunders’ heated tube amp riffs had been as clearly defined as the transistor-forward electric guitar sound on, oh say, every other early ‘70s hard rock record (Kiss comes to mind), the Dolls wouldn’t be considered merely punk progenitors; rather, we’d be talking about the Dolls instead of the Sex Pistols. Come the day when the record companies put album masters online where, for some exorbitant subscription fee, people can remix their favorites on a laptop, I’ve got first dibs on New York Dolls New York Dolls.

While I’m set on improving Thunders’ guitar sound, I’ll reverently leave Johansen’s diva performance as is. RIP David Johansen who died from brain cancer on February 28. He was 75.

I staged this Johansen homage at my Seattle apartment years ago with my then-GF, Hester.

2) Peloton Cafe

Located at 13th & Jefferson at the western edge of Seattle’s Central District, Peloton Cafe Bike Shop, a spacious and telework-friendly coffee spot that serves lovingly made sandwiches, is not billed as a vegan restaurant. But given the extensive list of vegan options, from veggie sausage and tofu breakfast burritos to piled-high roasted butternut squash, red onion, and arugula veggie sandwiches, Peloton, which kind of doubles as a not-very-busy bike repair shop, deserves prominent notice on any directory of Seattle’s (too few) vegan oases.

Contributing to Peloton’s oasis status: It’s also the rare Seattle cafe that stays open until 9 pm during the week; they serve wine and cocktails, plus booze-friendly sides like fries, tots, tacos, and sloppy joes (vegan version available.) Even more unique, despite the dive bar trappings, Peloton has a Mister Rogers' Neighborhood sensibility as opposed to Seattle’s standard flannels and fries vibe.

Civic bathrooms at Peloton Cafe: Abortion clinic info and free condoms. 3/5/25

This civic feng shui might have something to do with the tidy minimalist tables and booths, the shelves of board games, and the free condoms and Plan B in the sparkling bathroom. And, of course, the good-for-you veggie-heavy menu.

Peloton’s official 12-item vegan lunch menu is as long as its “meaty” menu. And they back up this earnest commitment by serving fresh, thoughtful vegan entrees—as opposed to the microwaved, “vegan” patty and plastic plant-based cheese afterthoughts you find all over our lazy-does-it city.

I’ve had two of Peloton’s elaborate sandwiches so far (both this week): a “Vegan Hot Pastrami,” which meant roasted broccoli florets with pickled red onions, shredded cabbage, herbs, and Dijon served on grilled ciabatta; and their “Vegan BLT,” which meant soft and seasoned tofu with tomatoes, red onion, greens, avocado, and vegan aioli on sourdough. These sandwiches come with chips or salad; I’ve gone with the salad option, which, like the sandwiches, come super sized.

Peloton’s “Vegan Hot Pastrami Sandwich” is a hardy roasted broccoli main course.

“Peloton” is a bike word that means a group of bikers. It’s a term that pops alongside the vernacular of an otherwise soloist sport; a bit of biker vocabulary that fits this neighborhood gathering spot. As I was leaving around 5 on Thursday, the place, which had been quiet during the afternoon, was filling up fast, buzzing with giddy food orders and conversation.

3) A Playlist of Their Own

“What a waste,” Seattle’s premier cultural critic (and fantastic old friend) Charles Mudede wrote in his recent article about bar owner dictates that their employees adhere to anodyne, preordained playlists that soothe rather than bring curious, new jams to regulars’ ears, brains, and bodies.

My experience of this DJ-as-AI phenomenon at Capitol Hill bars and coffee shops? Being stuck, per some High Fidelity algorithm, in a monotonous stream of 1979- 2000 indie rock classics plus some early ‘70s Bowie and ‘60s Velvet Underground thrown in. I first noticed this tiresome playlist 20 years ago when the Buzzcocks’ 1979 pop punk hit “What Do I Get?” held the No. 1 spot on the coffee shop/hipster bar circuit; this song is still in the mix today.

Charles, using a more (populist) universal example, notes the prevalence of Rolling Stones and Fleetwood Mac songs at local bars.

He continues:

Bartenders, particularly in this city, are often musicians or artists, and have very original tastes in music. Forcing them to play music that we keep hearing all over the place is like pouring way too much water into the pot of a plant. It soddens our imagination. We are bloated beyond boredom when we hear "Burning Down the House" for the gazillionth time. Growth is only possible with forgotten music, or music whose new " sounds... give delight .” Music we must Shazam, capture like an Ariel in the air, and add to a playlist. (For me, the playlist is called Bar Beats.)

To make his point, which is kind of profound when you consider how it taps, elevates, and expands the role, skills, and definition of bartenders (for both the bartender and the drinker), Charles goes on to detail a few specific bartenders around town who are given free rein to feed your Shazam queries with the likes of T. L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir from 1971, contemporary Japanese “soft hip hop,” and French Electro artist, Sumac Dub.

In addition to the potential musical discoveries at hand (freeing up bartenders to DJ is a bit like freeing up librarians to open indie bookstores), Charles’ concluding “plea to let bartenders DJ their drinkers,” can also lead to urban happenstance. Regular readers will remember my own story about connecting with my young artist friend Rob Joynes, who ended up doing a computer music set at my book release event back in May 2023 after he and I originally bonded over his Jump Blues playlist at the Cha Cha Lounge where he tends bar and I drink.

Our musical camaraderie continues; we are currently collaborating on a secret project, TBA this spring.

I’m All Lost In, #72: Seattle City Council sock puppets; cashew cheese, black bean, kale, and butternut squash tortilla casserole; and city scenes.

I’m All Lost In …

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#72

If I was being honest about this week’s obsessions—obsession—I’d write about Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth. I just finished Chapter 12. This is when Lily and Selden leave the party to kiss in the “hush of a garden” where “there was no sound but the plash of water on the lily-pads, and a distant drift of music that might have been blown across a sleeping lake“ after a “tableaux vivants” where Lily “without ceasing to be herself…had stepped, not out of, but into, Reynolds’s canvas, banishing the phantom of his dead beauty by the beams of her living grace.” And that’s only the half of it as Wharton continued dishing in this melodramatic dissertation about Manhattan’s country-house class.

However, having gone on about Wharton’s dynamite prose here, here, here and (yet again, last week) here, I’m going to dedicate this week’s list to some recommendations instead.

1) Seattle City Council Sock Puppets

Maybe you need to be familiar with today’s bush league Seattle City Council to belly laugh (as I did, falling on the floor) like you’ve just smoked some pot? But The Seattle Channel, a YouTube account spoofing the council, is MacArthur-grant-award brilliant. (It’s also crafty, “The Seattle Channel,” also happens to be the name of the city’s official TV channel, which among other things, broadcasts city council meetings.)

Certainly, for a crash course on the pompous buffoonery of the historically underwhelming council—Council Member Rob Saka being the main oaf—just spot-check some of Erica’s regular council coverage at PubliCola (or catch the council shit show on her Bluesky feed).

But honestly, this sock puppet sendup—subtitled: “The Seattle City Council is really not OK. 🤡”—is so self-evidently sidesplitting, a backgrounder isn’t really necessary.

MacArthur grant-worthy comedy at the expense of the inept Seattle City Council

Whoever the puppet—and cheapo effects—master is behind all the satirical merriment, which uses actual audio from Seattle City Council meetings as its sit-com soundtrack, they are certainly providing a public service. Thank you mystery genius for clarifying just how out of touch, oblivious (to their own disproportionate sense of self), and bewildered Seattle’s sketch council actually is.

Whether it’s aggrieved council member Cathy Moore talking about “Armageddon,” or windbag council member Rob Saka talking…and well, talking and talking, or addled council president Sara Nelson losing the plot, https://www.youtube.com/@theseattlechannel/shorts is required viewing for anyone who needs a break from the unmatched gas(lighting) coming from the council dais these days.

2) Vegan Tortilla Casserole + Cashew Cheese Sauce

I binged on this tomato and garlic-friendly, healthy, casserole comfort food for dinner, late-night dinner (the same night), breakfast and lunch the next day…and possibly dinner one more time.

This beginner’s-level recipe—black kidney beans, a can of puréed butternut squash, and lots of shredded kale are the main ingredients—is both un-botchable and delish.

In addition to the aforementioned main provisions, the cheesy mix of cashews and nooch with paprika, lemon juice, and more garlic, is also key. And I’d make more than the three quarter cups it calls for—don’t be restrained to a 1/2 cup of cashews, for example— because it’s worth slathering on the cashew cream layer after layer.

Saturday night, 2/22/25

3) Pascal Campion’s City Scenes
Sonder—the feeling one has when they realize other people, every other person, in fact, has a life as full and real as one’s own—could conceivably come as a humbling realization. But more so, it’s inspiring in a Walt Whitman “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you” way.

File artist Pascal Campion’s urban renderings, particularly his apartment house tableaus, under this inspiring sort of sonder.

Campion’s illustrations don’t only capture a city Transcendentalism that’s typically reserved for pastorals, but his idyllic urbansim focuses on the energized moments of city dwellers, signaling action the way Edward Hopper’s paintings signaled loneliness. Behind the lighted windows in Campion’s buildings one imagines hope rather than despair.

Don’t get me wrong, his work isn’t anodyne; there are glimpses of the human condition blues.

But the emphasis on city propinquity captures exactly why humans find strength beneath the city lights.

Appropriately enough, Campion, a regular illustrator for the New Yorker, it turns out, came to my attention by way of city planning think tank wiz M. Nolan Gray, a pro-density champion.

Gray, who wrote an invaluable book on the classist warfare encoded in U.S. zoning laws (scroll down for my review here), posted a series of Campion’s renderings on Bluesky earlier this month, writing: “His work is really great for stressing the humanity of scenes that I think people inappropriately find alienating: apartments, crowds, etc.”

————

It’s impossible to ignore how far America fell this week under Trumpism as his Napoleon meltdown put us on the side of derelict Russian aggression over democratic ideals. Perhaps overlooked as Trump’s crass foreign policy in central Europe and Ukraine took center stage, though: A NYT editorial that looked at another dimension of Trump’s effort to smash American ideals. Titled “The MAGA War on Speech,” the lengthy editorial described and enumerated Trump’s direct assault on Americans’ First Amendment right to free speech and a free press. Unsurprisingly—first they came for the trans community—Trump’s effort to impose state-sanctioned speech on Americans tried to expunge the LGBTQ community from our country’s narrative.

The National Park Service erased the letters T and Q: from L.G.B.T.Q. references on its website describing the Stonewall National Monument in New York City. More than 8,000 federal websites, in fact, have been taken down or altered to remove concepts derided by the MAGA movement. These include thousands of pages about vaccine research and S.T.D. prevention guidelines, efforts to prevent hate crimes, prevention of racial discrimination in drug trials and disbursement of federal grants and details of environmental policies to slow climate change.

I’m All Lost In, #71: Defending congestion pricing against Trump; reading Edith Wharton; funding affordable housing.

I’m All Lost In…

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week

#71

Before I get to this week’s three things, I’ve got two follow-ups. First, last week, after learning that legendary UCLA city planning professor Donald Shoup had died a week earlier on February 6, I declared that he was my generation’s Jane Jacobs and linked his LA Times obituary. This week, the NYT followed the LA Times’ lead publishing their own comprehensive Shoup obituary. They called him “an intellectual hero to urbanists.”

Second, last month, in an item here called “Worried about Elena,” I flagged the disturbing news accounts about pro tennis coach Stefano Vukov’s mistreatment of Kazakhstani women’s tennis star and 2022 Wimbledon champion Elena Rybakina and the WTA’s ongoing investigation into his reported conduct. Well, the WTA has now concluded their investigation. Formally documenting Vukov’s abusive behavior toward Rybakina, they have now, appropriately enough, banned Vukov from coaching for a year. The investigation and a three-page summary remain confidential, but tennis reporters Matthew Futterman and Charlie Eccleshare at the Athletic were able to get the summary. This week they wrote an important article about the troubling situation.

Onto this week’s obsessions.

1) Congestion Pricing

2025 has begun. Democrats have woken up. They’re finally fighting Trump.

It’s perfect that congestion pricing—the policy of charging people who drive their cars into the city—is the battle Democrats have chosen to strike back. Not only is congestion pricing my favorite urbanist cause, but the standoff (Trump declared that he’s shutting down NYC’s local program) exposes Trump’s ersatz populism by pitting it against an honest government effort to support the masses.

Oh, I know, mass transit is “elitist!” … Please. Be serious, people.

Filling your car with gas, and paying for parking, not to mention covering auto insurance and buying a car in the first place, is a much more expensive way of life than taking the bus and the subway.

The facts are: 1) Lower income people ($25,000 to $49,000 a year) make up the biggest segment by class of transit ridership (24%); 2) while the poorest, those earning less than $13,000 a year, only 13% of the U.S. population, represent a disproportionate 21% of transit riders; and 3) people of color, who make up about 40% of the U.S. population, make up 60% of transit ridership. Of that group, African Americans, who make up about 12% of the population, have far and away the most outsized transit ridership numbers at 24%; the median Black income is about $53,000, 32% lower than whites.

As a result of Trump’s authoritarian arrogance, the good guys are finally fed up and punching back. In rapid-response battle mode that I haven’t seen Democrats take up since candidate Bill Clinton’s Campaign-‘92 war room, the Governor of New York and the head of NYC’s MTA immediately countered Trump’s regal pronouncement that congestion pricing was dead with a patriotic middle finger and a lawsuit.

I was po’d at Hochul last July when she briefly bailed on NYC’s congestion pricing program, but she’s going to the mat (and court) to fight for it now.

The congestion pricing nerds’ fearless rejoinders have taken on a fierce tone of urban populism.

Congestion pricing detractors are usually the ones who corner the common-folk angle on the issue. Charging people to drive in from District 12 to The Capitol, they harangue, is elitist. But Trump, who’s openly playing Donald Sutherland’s Coriolanus Snow himself in this fight and literally IDing himself as the king, has given progressives a clear opening. Gov. Hochul, transit riders, and MTA head Janno Lieber (with the quote of the week: “This is not the first time a president has said ‘drop dead’ to New York”) have struck back as the actual commoners. Arguing for local control and citing stats about how the new policy is already helping burdened commuters by reducing traffic migraines, easing car commute times, increasing foot traffic for local small business, and spiking transit ridership (while simultaneously providing funding for basic transit system repairs), New York City, of all places, is now poised to humiliate Trump’s shallow populist posturing: About 85% of the people who come into Manhattan’s central business district—where congestion project would be implemented—take public transit to begin with.

According to the live traffic data, congestion pricing has improved travel times.*

NYC’s pro-city populism is the ultimate affront to MAGA, and as Trump tries to shut it down, I’d say the emperor has no clothes because at its core the anti-congestion pricing rhetoric from MAGA is comically flawed: If the city is such a god-forsaken place, why is it so important to suburbanites to be able to flock downtown? Given that the ability to live a suburban lifestyle is only feasible—and sustainable—thanks to the offset that dense housing and commercial centers provide, it seems more than fair to ask suburbanites to help cover the costs of running a popular destination city.

*Excellent footnote: the go-to data tracker for Manhattan’s new congestion pricing program—which compares travel times before and after congestion pricing went into effect on January 5th, is a tool built by a college econ student (and his brother) for a class project. Talk about Transit Oriented Teens.

The tracker uses real-time traffic data from Google Maps to calculate traffic times for chosen routes and days. The data is presented as a line graph of traffic times before and after congestion pricing went into effect on January 5th. Compare one line to the other to see whether traffic times have increased or decreased.

Unsurprisingly, depending on the route and time of day, the new tolling scheme seems to be working — perhaps even better than expected.

2) Edith Wharton

This is the fourth time the brilliant early 20th Century American writer Edith Wharton has taken a spot on my weekly list.

That’s because not only did I read another one of her slow-burn short stories this week that illuminates the shadows of the human condition, but I’m now six chapters into her 1905 novel, The House of Mirth.

The short story, “Autre Temps” (“Other Times, Other Customs,” as it was called when it was first published in Century magazine in 1911) is from “The New York Stories of Edith Wharton,” a special edition New York Review of Books collection I’ve been dipping into and reading since last August, i.e. savoring.

This story is about Mrs. Lidcote, a middle-aged woman who has been ostracized by her aristocratic set for her disreputable personal history—divorcing and remarrying (enough of a transgression in its own right) and then divorcing again. She’s surprised to learn that her daughter, following in the same transgressive divorcee footsteps, is, however, not being ousted from society. With a generational change in values, young Leila is actually blossoming in her second marriage as part of the nouveau riche set; this knavish tax bracket is Wharton’s area of expertise, and she uses her immersive tale to explore the cutting vagaries of human psychology.

The revelatory pain point for Mrs. Lidcote is that while she feels some sense of liberation in the new feminism, she’s not convinced it’s hers to have. Even more crushing, with no idea what this freedom could even bring her, Mrs. Lidcote chooses to retreat back into her comfortable isolation.

Early in the story, Wharton foreshadows: “New York was the sphinx whose riddle she must read or perish.”

Wharton’s second novel, published in 1905, and written when she was 43-years-old, is about 29-year-old jeune fille à marier, Lily Bart.

The novel The House of Mirth, recommended as a fix for my growing Wharton habit by bookstore genius Valium Tom—he says is the best novel ever written (and also a City Canon classic)—begins like a movie. The opening montage follows protagonist Lily Bart, a 29-year-old jeune fille à marier (so, not so jeune, anymore) around midtown Manhattan. We come upon her in the first paragraph in Grand Central Station through the eyes of the unencumbered, cool, and sardonic bachelor, Lawrence Selden, an acquaintance from her social circle. Lily, in “her desultory air,” has evidently missed her 3:30 train north. With time to kill until the late train, she decides to join him for tea, and they head through the throng, exit the station and walk west a block along 42nd St. to Madison Ave. and up to Selden’s top floor brick and limestone bachelor flat. After a flirtatious round of tea and conversation, Lily heads back down to the street where she runs into the plump, nosy, and unctuous Mr. Rosedale. After an unsettling conversation, she’s off in a hansom back to Grand Central to catch the late afternoon north-to-the-country train. Once she’s settled in, she meets two others from her crowd aboard the train, pretty and “serpentine” Bertha Dorset and sheltered and wealthy, Percy Gryce. The train is taking them all to Lily’s friend Judy Trenor’s country estate for a weekend getaway of late night bridge games, walks in the setting summer splendor, and ultimately, for ruminating about things that point to larger things: cheque-book calculations over a shrinking balance and age lines on her face. Even the candlelight blur (Lily hastily turns out the wall light in her room as a preventative measure) can’t obscure them.

“The collapse of a house party,” Wharton writes early in Ch. 7, in perhaps some more foreshadowing. (It’s also a great name for down-tempo set of dub.)

3) Funded Inclusionary Zoning, FIZ

Yes, I’m psyched that the Washington state legislature has a bill in play that would subsidize affordable housing along transit routes. And I wrote a PubliCola column this week urging Seattle to follow suit.

But what I’m really obsessed with here—and what I’m actually trying to expose in Seattle—is the prevalence of reactionary lefties; I credit Christopher Hitchens with coining the perfect derisive description for this set: “Reactionary Utopianists.”

This left leaning faction clings to “authenticity” and “back in the day” gatekeeping in the same way MAGA clings to “real” American gatekeeping. It’s a kind of purity pathology that shows up in “neighborhood character” housing battles in what I call the “Keep Austin Weird” crowd; which seems more like “Keep Austin White,” if you ask me. (Scroll scroll scroll down here for my write up on Max Holleran’s Yes to the City: Millennials and the Fight for Affordable Housing, which outs this kind of NIMBYism in progressive clothing).

These are the Bernie Bros. who idle in a macho Romanticism where knee jerk anti-developer politics often rush to shut down opportunities for new housing as if developers were guilty of manufacturing and selling meth as opposed to apartments.

Likewise, in their own knee jerk anti-development politics, Social Justice lefties can exhibit a similar provincial and reactionary idealism; Lydia Polgreen wrote an insightful column about leftist nativism last year, which I quoted at length at the time when I took a shot at writing about this tricky topic.

So, in my otherwise straightforward column praising the legislation (the bill, which aims to increase density along transit lines, subsidizes mandates on developers to build affordable housing by helping it pencil out with a tax exemption), I also took the time to give a bit of background context so I could outline this disconcerting dimension of the left.

First, a little history. Known as transit-oriented development, or TOD, housing around transit stops is a longtime priority for pro-density urbanists. In Washington State, I trace its origin back to the 2009 (!) legislative session, when the housing advocates at Futurewise first took up the cause.

At that time, their nascent pro-housing movement unwittingly stirred up a hornets’ nest of anti-development opposition from both the homeowner right (who are touchy about “neighborhood character”) and the social justice left (who often equate new housing with developer “giveaways” and displacement).

Thankfully, a lot has changed since then. First of all, gentrification has escalated exponentially under Seattle’s low-density status quo, a trend that calls b.s. on the NIMBY thesis that denser zoning is the cause of gentrification. If anything, the last 10 years under single-family protectionist policies show that it’s the opposite: Sequestering multifamily housing into a minuscule slice of the city’s residential areas causes gentrification.

And, more importantly: The pro-density “Yes In My Backyard” (YIMBY) movement of the past decade has re-framed the density debate in a way that has attracted social-justice lefties. YIMBYs now talk about municipal land use regulations in the context of historic redlining and current exclusionary zoning laws that wall off huge portions of cities like Seattle from lower-income families and renters. As a result, lefties no longer stand in lockstep with wealthier “neighborhood character” obstructionists like they used to.

I’m All Lost In, #70: Neo-Soul, new Urbanism, and new flowers.

I’m All Lost In …

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#70

Before I get to this week’s obsessions, I’ve got a listening recommendation: Start a playlist using Ego Ella May as your prompt (and maybe in particular, her song with Hector Plimmer, “Sonnet 17.”). You’ll know you’re floating in the right space if another slow-jams artist, Gotts Street Park, shows up in the mix. These musicians are all part of South London’s current neo-soul (or more accurately, neo-Sade) movement, which also includes artists such as ELIZA, Cleo Soul, and the KTNA.

I’ve also got an important reading recommendation: the LA Times’ obituary on city planning genius Donald Shoup. Shoup, a longtime UCLA professor, earned his superstar status among new-urbanists by upending conventional wisdom about parking policy. Shoup, who was 86 when he died on February 6, long challenged the notion that abundant parking is a good thing. The obituary summarizes his iconoclastic POV:

Free street parking, Shoup wrote, makes parking and driving worse. The low cost creates a scarcity of spaces that leads people to spend time and fuel circling blocks in misery. And city planners’ efforts to solve this problem by mandating that homes and businesses provide more cheap parking only worsen the situation.

According to Shoup, this parking conundrum is foundational to many of the ills in modern urban life: congestion, sprawl, pollution and high housing costs.

From Shoup’s LA Times obituary; pictured in the 1970s when his iconoclastic ideas about parking first emerged. And pictured recently when those ideas guided the neo-urbanist movement.

1) Shoup’s insistent and influential hot take on parking leads me to this week’s first obsession, State Sen. Jessica Bateman (D-22, Olympia)—or, more specifically, Bateman’s parking reform bill, which I wrote about on PubliCola last Friday. And thank you Erica for leaving in my goofball line about “car(bon)-centric lifestyles.”

Bateman’s latest bill, a longstanding urbanist wish-list item to get rid of mandatory parking minimums (they add hefty costs to building housing and perpetuate car(bon)-centric lifestyles), could once again force Seattle to up its game when it comes to enacting progressive planning policy.

My larger hope is that Bateman, who also chairs the state senate’s housing committee, steps in and altogether overrules Seattle’s touchy, anti-housing zoning code (and the blindly privileged rhetoric of Seattle’s provincial homeowner class who’ve been testifying ad nauseam at City Council this month against any inkling of density that’s proposed in Seattle’s new Comprehensive Plan). Bateman, who already nudged Seattle to build more housing with a starter upzone bill she passed in 2023, is well positioned to usher through the  long list of pro-housing legislation that’s cued up in the state legislature right now.

This list, chronicled and catalogued by Sightline Institute, of green metropolis legislative proposals includes reforms that could, among many Shoup-ista ideas, rein in obstructionist “historic landmark” campaigns, incentivize (rather than tangle up) eco housing innovations, and fund inclusionary zoning, or FIZ (something I editorialized for last February).

I followed up my parking news brief about Bateman’s bill with a full blown column about another one of the pro-housing bills in play in the state legislature right now, a transit oriented development mandate.

After this intro, “Calling Mayor Bateman, calling Mayor Bateman! We need your help. Again!,” I landed here:

What I love about the council’s high-pitched opposition to adding a small amount of tightly controlled density is that it exposes the mendacious reasoning behind a core NIMBY argument: “Concurrency.” Concurrency is the obstructionist idea that you can’t add density to neighborhoods until you first add bus routes and other infrastructure. It’s actually the reverse—and I’ll get to that in a second—but for starters: It’s disingenuous to claim, as the anti-housing (homeowning) contingent did at a January 29 public hearing, that you oppose density in your neighborhood because your neighborhood lacks transit—and then come out against a plan to target density along transit lines.

If the argument against adding density is that we don’t have the transit to support it, then why are council members like Moore intent on taking Maple Leaf off the list of new neighborhood centers?  The area of concern for Moore that’s slated for the upzone, between NE 85th and NE 91st, sits on a frequent bus line (the 67) between two light rail stops, Roosevelt and Northgate. (Moore called this workhorse route the “one little bus” that serves the neighborhood.)

2) Playing Scrabble

Similar to every item on last week’s list, here’s another dispatch from my Trump-era escapism.

Sunday night, 2/9/25

I’ve been hauling out my old Scrabble board this week, which had been tucked away on a shelf for a decade (… or maybe decades? There’s a faded anti-George W. Bush sticker on the box.)

Unlike, say, my old laptop, my Scrabble board still works. And not only did I still have nearly all the tiles, but there was a mysterious extra E tile that I doctored with a pen to fill in for a missing O.

I got in three games this week, even taking the board out of my apartment for one game at a cozy bar—the Pine Box (again), a new favorite spot on the downtown edge of Capitol Hill, “The Drag Beyond the Drag.” I like The Pine Box’s jackfruit sandwich.

My Scrabble scores aren’t quite up to form yet, lingering in the high 200s rather than the mid 300s, but a couple of 38-point plays (and my 2-1 record) have me feeling like my current sally away from doom scrolling will last a solid spell.

3) This week’s third item is also prompted by my revulsion to Trumpism. You’ve heard of the Iron Age? This is ancient Greek poet Hesiod’s and ancient Roman poet Ovid’s term for the grim final stage of humanity; the fifth stage (in Hesiod’s Works and Days) or the fourth stage (in Ovid’s Metamorphoses).

According to both poets, this bleak era in human history is characterized by a breakdown in the social contract when lies, war, greed, and borders are the norm. Wrongdoing prevails.

Enter the Greek goddess Astraea. I’m piecing together a few different stories, but Astraea, the goddess of justice, evidently paused to gaze up at the sky during her faltering sojourn on earth as justice gave way to abuse. Seeing no stars above—a reflection of the dark epoch—she started to cry. However, Astraea’s tears eventually enriched the ground and soon, bright star-shaped asters sprang up.

My takeaway? Even as President Trump and his creepy acolytes are busy abandoning justice, they are simultaneously sowing the seeds of their fascist movement’s own demise.

The district attorneys and lead prosecutors, including Danielle Sassoon, the acting U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York, who resigned in protest of Trump’s order to drop the corruption case against corrupt NYC mayor Eric Adams are this week’s flowers.

Hopefully there will soon be more.

I’m All Lost In, #69: Familiar Retreats

I’m All Lost In …

The 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#69

Like everyone else, I’m obsessing about the temper tantrum coup that’s taking place in D.C. right now; obsessing that I don’t know what I can do, obsessing about how the Democrats are not putting up a fight, and how the New York Times, with their appeasement coverage, is still…still!…pretending all this is normal.

Recommended headline, NYT:

Trump and Billionaire Ally Stage Lawless, Corrupt Coup.

As to the “What can I do?” question, Mario Savio’s 1960s exhortation to “Put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels…” certainly feels right. That is: It’s time for bodies in the streets. Isn’t that what I’ve been imagining my whole life?

Unfortunately, I can’t help thinking that massive protests would be susceptible to violence of our own, or to Proud Boy (Brown Shirt) provocateurs, or to Trump’s twisted framing. And this is exactly what Trump wants. It will be the cover for his Reichstag Fire moment so he can officially declare an authoritarian state.

Perhaps, though, there’s a silver lining in that. Prompting Trump’s martial law clampdown may be the only thing that makes the majority of the country wake up.

It’s nuts that I’m even having to write this. But it’s also impossible to ignore the fact that the terrorists—i.e, Trump and MAGA—have won.

Trump’s oligarchy power grab is all I’m thinking about right now, so this week’s installment is not my usual list of obsessions, but rather an accounting of where I’ve been taking comfort, how I’ve been escaping. And mostly, it’s been to familiar retreats.

In turn, some of this week’s items are returns to favorites I’ve written about here before.

For starters, there’s Post Pike Bar & Cafe, which I wrote about in December when I mooned over their toasted sourdough vegan pesto sandwich. While I definitely got the pesto sandwich on one of this week’s frequent late afternoon visits to Post Pike (and where I’d inevitably run into my pal Charles), I’m now partial to their dripping Hummus Wrap with its sliced cucumber, tomato, spinach, and fresh banana peppers (the winning ingredient)—all rolled in a spinach tortilla.

Post Pike Bar & Cafe, 2/6/25

In addition to having good-for-you, cozy, and lovingly assembled sandwiches, Post Pike is an easygoing, small dive bar, where you can nestle into a booth and get work done unbeknownst to the playful regular crowd at the bar and the handful of other folks tucked into tables of their own while mellow jams (a lot of Quiet Storm R&B this week) lilting on the sound system.

Another magnetic spot I returned to this week to seek calm: Kajiken, the Japanese noodle place just off Cal Anderson Park. I first wrote about Kajiken when XDX and I went there over the winter holidays.

Once again, it was jam packed with chatty, eager diners on a random Monday night.

Once again, the staff was welcoming and warmly upbeat.

Once again, the city geography of this glowing spot, kitty-corner from the bustling city center park, makes you feel like you’re stepping out among hansoms and women in tea gowns.

And most of all, once again, I savored every bite of the Mushroom Aburasoba, a full bowl of shimeji and king trumpet mushrooms, rich spinach, soft tofu, and red onions piled over al dente soba noodles.

A bit more familiar with the Kajiken drill this time, I ordered two add-ons: bamboo shoots (game changer) and corn. And I doused the healthy noodle smorgasbord with all the table condiments, including chili paste, sesame seeds, vinegar, and oil.

I’ve also found myself gravitating over to the “Drag Beyond the Drag,” as I’ve taken to calling the boisterous and cramped southwestern edge of Capitol Hill that rubs against the freeway where my neighborhood segues into Downtown.

This is the late-night-eats and bar strip on Olive Way where I’d landed a few times earlier this month— getting a messy Middle Eastern gyro sandwich with XDX a couple of Friday nights ago, and then back again the next night, with Valium Tom for a substantive cheese pizza.

So it was that several times this week, I ended up walking the extra 10 minutes to find escape on this corner of the neighborhood. I was there for Thursday evening drinks (and a hot pretzel) with my pal Glenn as we settled in at the low-key, but electric Revolver Bar, where they spin vinyl (on this occasion, they had the Talking Heads’ 1978 LP More Songs About Buildings and Food playing as we talked the night away). And then on the following Tuesday night, I ended up just around the corner at The Pine Box for a savory jackfruit sandwich and more deep conversation.

This week also included a Sunday morning walk in a dreamscape snow shower to an old Central District favorite, Cafe Selam at 27th & Cherry for an Ethiopian Ful breakfast: berbere spiced fava beans covered in onions, tomatoes, serrano chilis, eggs, and feta cheese with an airy and crusty baguette. Apologies to my vegan self, but there’s no forgoing this delicious dish.

Back to cafe Selam for Ful medames, 2/2/25

Charles & ECB, 1/31/25

Charles & ECB, 1/31/25

Other comfort zone retreats this week included: madcap Friday night drinks with great longtime friends Charles and ECB at St. John’s Bar, and then promptly taking the light rail from Capitol Hill to Pioneer Square Station (and then walking through an alley off Yesler Way) to a new downstairs rock club called Baba Yaga to watch an earnest indie rock songwriter named Emma Danner and her band Red Ribbon.

Red Ribbon @ Baba Yaga in Pioneer Square, 1/31/25

Finally, and perhaps this explains my 19th Century disassociation (when I was pretending to be ambling among the gas lamps on Central Park East after dinner at Kajiken): I’ve returned to Edith Wharton.

You may remember last summer I was lightly obsessed with Wharton’s short story collection, The New York Stories of Edith Wharton. It turns out, I’d left off about 270 pages in with several stories to go.

I picked the book back up this week, starting with her 1909 story “Full Circle.” I was immediately drawn back in: “…those piercing notes of the American thoroughfare that seem to take a sharper vibration from the clearness of the medium through which they pass…;” “…they wanted his opinion on everything: on Christianity, Buddhism, tight lacing, the drug habit, democratic government, female suffrage and love.”

I’m not sure I want his (the tortured and defensive main character’s) opinions on that list, but some of those early 20th Century topics, like democratic government, do seem germane today.

Dino’s large cheese pizza; Sheila Heti’s short story; and a young YIMBY’s succinct pro-housing testimony.

I’m All Lost In

#68

The 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week

1) The 18” Round Cheese Pizza at Dino’s

Setting aside veganism for a large cheese pizza with my pal Valium Tom has been a birthday tradition (on both our bdays) ever since I otherwise went vegan in 2018. Nowadays, I’ve extended this cheesy transgression to basically whenever we get together. While I rarely eat cheese, I’m no longer a Maoist when it comes to being vegan, and for my latest, overdue pizza hang out with Tom—which we’d scheduled for Saturday night—we lackadaisically decided on Big Mario’s.

Big Mario’s, I guess.

Though Big Mario’s hardly constitutes pizza nirvana, their slack, greasy slices do fit the bill for our semi-regular pizza get-togethers. For the record, in our bygone (and my pre-vegan) days, we’d hit the long-since-vanished Piecora’s where their slack crust was somehow also crisp and pillowy, making for the best pizza pies in town.

Last time at Seattle’s Piecora’s, April, 2014

Fortuitously, on Friday night, after I got a mushroom paste gyro at Yalla with XDX, she decided to get her post-whisky fix at the pizza spot next door, Dino’s, a red neon landmark I’d been aware of, but had never tried.

Upon entering Dino’s, a retro grunge place with a friendly sit-wherever-you- like-guys staff, I couldn’t help notice the full-moon-sized cheese pizzas basking in their oven racks. I promptly texted Tom to recommend a change in our pending plans. He texted right back with an exclamation mark noting that his Gen Z son was “a fan of that place.”

With smokier cheese and spicier red sauce than Big Mario’s slices, and—akin to Piecora’s—having a spongy density with a pinch of magical yeast, Dino’s pies mean Valium Tom and I no longer have to settle for pizza that merely fits the bill. Dino’s 18” classic—rich marinara sauce, plush mozzarella, fresh basil, and a fluffy oven-singed crust—tops the bill.

1/25/25

Evidently, I’m not the only one who’s keen on Dino’s. After telling my pal Glenn about Saturday night’s tasty outing, he reported that his crew did a pizza bracket a few years back and Dino’s, which also serves square, semi-deep-dish slices, carried the day in their citywide pizza pie taste test.

2) Sheila Heti’s Short Story in the 1/27/25 the New Yorker

Contemporary writer Sheila Heti has shown up on this obsessions list before; in February 2024, I was taken with her poetic and racy diary, which she creatively reshuffled—alphabetically, by the first word of every sentence.

This week, stuck for something to read before bed (the 800-page Hanya Yanagihara novel I started earlier this month just isn’t taking), I was happy to see Heti’s byline on the latest New Yorker fiction piece.

I don’t know if there’s a term for this genre of fiction where creepy and slightly off-kilter, near-future settings are draped over understated short stories. (Argentinian writer Samanta Schweblin’s 2009 collection, Mouthful of Birds, translated in 2019, turned me on to this unsettling blend of casual and magical.

Heti’s The St. Alwynn Girls at Sea is seemingly set at an early-20th Century private girls school in an enigmatic late-21st century world war all at once. Even more disorienting, the students talk in the contemporary 2025 therapy speak of precocious tween girls who likely go on five-star vacations with their progressive moms.

The school is housed on a boat that’s sailing the world to avoid the war and it’s here we meet blunt and cynical Lorraine, extroverted and performatively mystical Dani, and naive and depressed Flora who play out a mild Lord of the Flies drama involving a dorm room oracle (a photo of a former-classmate-turned-child-star). This Delphic soothsayer dispenses divination about Dani’s epistolary crush on a boy named Sebastien.

There are several meaningful surprises as Heti’s teeny bopper myth moves toward its ennui-ridden conclusion, including Sebastien’s vulnerable eloquence, Flora’s class conscious denouement (daydreaming as she’s mopping the deck), and Lorraine’s alarmed apology.

The odd tonal and historical dualities in Heti’s story (which also reads like a quiet spoof of the witchy overtones you’d find in some Shirley Jackson short story about quasi supernatural girls at a boarding school) achieve comedic yet literary elegance as Dani—with the philosophical inner turmoil of a Queen’s English Jane Austen protagonist—ruminates over the idea of a hand job.

3) A YIMBY’s Succinct Testimony

After a parade of typical (and banal) testimony—”I support more housing, but…”— at this week’s city council hearing on the Comprehensive Plan’s slight upzone for more density in Seattle’s traditional single-family zones (“but developers…” “but neighborhood character…” “but renters…”), a young Asian guy who only gave his name as Rata challenged the selfish privilege of Seattle single-family housing preservationists.

Hello, my name is Rata. There’s a lot of fear going on. Seattle’s growing. And with growth comes a lot of that fear. We need to house 200,000 people in the next what 10 years. … We’re gonna put all that in a place that already has density? You need to do the brave thing. Open up more land on single family housing, so we can put more multi-generational, more multi-family housing on there. That’s the only way to do this. That’s the only way we’re going to meet our needs. …

His concise testimony, at the 17:46 minute mark here, was music to my pro-apartment ears.

His conclusion was perhaps the most powerful part, though.

As we see the climate crisis will bring more climate refugees to the Pacific Northwest. And we need to meet that need.

While this certainly strays into conjecture rather than tangible data, Rata’s dystopian visions of (likely) environmental catastrophe work regardless of their speculative nature. Much as the best science fiction calls attention to the implications of contemporary missteps, Rata gave the pro-housing position the weight it demands, especially over transitory issues like “neighborhood character.” By alerting people to the environmental hazards of our low-density status quo (where the housing equity, transit feasibility, and resource efficiency that’s needed to avert climate disaster isn’t possible) his dramatic touch put upzoning in its appropriately urgent context.

————

And lastly, this week’s recommended listening: Put on this chill playlist, “Healing Harp,” at bedtime.

Waxing & Waning publishes “Curb-Cut Effect” and “Not Exarcheia Sonnet.”

I'm happy to have two poems, "Curb-Cut Effect" & "Not Exarcheia Sonnet," published in the latest edition of Waxing & Waning.

Curb-Cut Effect

(when a targeted innovation benefits more people than it’s designed to assist.)

Design your city for ghosts. Make sure. there are plenty of places for them to sit; ethereal as they are, they get tired of floating around all day.

Design cities for ghosts. Walls don’t work anyway. The HVAC is philosophy.

Design cities for those who have died. They get tired of being lonely. It will also be a lithe city for the living, with inevitable segues to kitchen table oaths.

I noticed my hands were shaking. The paramedics tested my vital signs. Immobile, pale as a ghost.

Design your city for teenage pregnancy scares. Make sure there’s someone to lose hours with. Set an

empty chair by your bed.

Not Exarcheia Sonnet

(prompted by Megan Fernandes’ city sonnets)

Rooftops the color of ube in morning light; a trick I noticed at home not in Exarcheia. The places we visit with rats in the walls stay with us. So, here I am seeing

chimeras. Penumbras showing futures. Angels accompanying commuters. Houses surrounded by rubies.

I mistake where I’ve been for where I am;

the cities I’ve been to, for the city I’m in.

For example, am I eating honey-soaked baked goods across from the riot police or am I pushing people deeper into the carceral system?

This is the opposite of: We-are-now-as- distant-from-then-

than-then-was-from-then.

Because it’s still not as distant from when

I first listened to Me and the Devil on Vocalion records.

The ancient world is awake early this morning, mopping the paving stones in Exarcheia,

listening.

1/24/25

Why isn’t Musk’s Nazi salute a major story?; What do Catherine, Matt, and David have to say about the Australian Open?; How do you make a great tofu scramble?

I’m All Lost In …

the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week.

#67

Before I get into what I’m all lost in this week, a couple of quick notes.

1/24/25, Falafel and Fityr with XDX on the tipsy edge of Capitol Hill.

First: At Yalla, a Middle Eastern kitchen window for the tipsy nighttime crowd on Olive Way’s stretch of dive bars and greasy dinner spots located at the edge of Capitol Hill, the veggie and vegan menu is longer than the meat menu. They specialize in flatbread (or Saj) wraps. After XDX and I celebrated our last night as neighbors by walking downtown to check out the collection at the indie art space that’s taken over Pike Street’s vacant Banana Republic, and then heading around the corner to a hotel bar for some generous whiskeys, we cruised back up the hill. And there we were at Yalla. We got the Fityr, a gyro wrap swaddled tightly in tinfoil and jammed with roasted mushroom paste, green pepper, garlic, tomato, green olives, cucumber, and greens plus a side of fluffy falafel. Thanks to this delicious hot spot, I’ll be venturing over to the downtown edge of Capitol Hill more often.

Second: Back on October 25, I wrote this lone sentence about R&B revivalists SAULT: “This week’s recommended listening: I’m liking the juxtaposition of the sing-song ‘60s girl group vocals and the sophisticated Afro-centric sounds of SAULT.” It turns out, they were the perfect artist to tune in as I set out to find a prompt this week for a late night “Go to Artist Radio” of hazy soul sides. But I’d like to amend the description I wrote in October. I’m not sure why I said “sing-song.” SAULT’s music, and the other neo-Quiet Storm bass-centric tracks in the cue from related downtempo artists like Amber Mark and James Blake, bore no resemblance to nursery rhymes. Much more like bedroom jams.

Third: I felt validated and titillated (and not surprised) that the word “subway” came up in an article this week about a 2000-year-old goddess statuette that turned up in a trash bin in Greece.

The discovery of ancient artifacts in surprising places is not uncommon in a country as rich in history and archaeology as Greece. Relics are often unearthed during construction projects, such as subway system excavations.

…

"Here we are in the shadow of the Acropolis, digging five subway stations," said William G. Stead, the construction project's general manager, still awed by the thought after more than two years on the job. He referred to the stations being built within the confines of the ancient city, where the archeological finds are the richest.

In the Spring of 2023, during my sightseeing trip to the Acropolis and ancient Agora, I got giddy when I realized the poetic license I’d been taking to connect Greek mythology and mass transit—an animating theme in my poems—had come to life: It turned out that one of the exhibits, The Altar of the 12 Gods, was at the edge of the Agora right by the city Metro and was only re-discovered during construction of the city’s railway in 1891.

5/29/23, The Agora grounds, Athens, Greece

That is to say: the train and the 12 Gods share some sacred space. I captured the exciting overlap on iPhone video:

5/29/23, The Agora grounds, Athens, Greece, by the Monastiraki Metro station.

I have a poem about this moment in my current manuscript City States. [Omonia is the name of the metro station that was near our apartment.]

Head of a Youth

 Are the 12 Gods gaslighting me?

The You Are Here map

keeps saying “The Altar of the 12 Gods”

is too. But it’s nowhere to be found.

I ask a grounds attendant and she directs me

to the wrong ruin. Head of a youth. 

Elongated face, almond eyes,

flames for locks. 

Body gone.

“The Altar of the 12 Gods,”

built in 522 BC,

destroyed in the 3rd century AD;

rediscovered across the street

in the late 19th century by

tunneling crews working on the new electric railway.

It’s here. Walk down

the alley of myrtles today to Omonia, 

take the subway three stops.

Demeter, rediscovered by Rachel Carson, is my favorite. 

Hermes, played by Johnny Rotten, is my favorite.

Aphrodite, stains like tears below her eyes from the oxidation

of bronze lashes, is unknown.

Who knows

what other transport lies

beneath our sneakers to discover?

Okay. Onto this week’s obsessions.

1) Elon Musk’s Nazi Salute Should be Gettlng More National Attention

Why isn’t robber baron Elon Musk’s sieg heil a major news story? In case you missed it, and you may have if you rely on major outlets for your news: Trump’s $250 million campaign backer gave a Nazi salute from the stage at a Trump inauguration day event; Musk is the No. 1 Trump whisperer and is currently heading up Trump’s official White House effort to slash government. This man, the richest man in the world (net worth ~$430 billion), has amassed sweeping power in the United States. And there he was reveling in Nazi bravado in front of cheering Trump crowds. The New York Times “big story,” ‘What Elon Musk’s Salute Was All About,” isn’t a news account, but basically a muddied think piece talking about the history of “Roman” salutes while puzzling over Musk’s intentions.

January 20, 2025

Fear struck my DNA when I saw the video of Trump’s malevolent patron giving his Nazi salute, but the only hard-hitting assessments in the U.S. (Europe is appropriately aghast) were on social media. And, big surprise, the posts I saw there were largely about the ADL and how they are evil Zionists.

This follows a well-worn and predictable script. When it comes to talking about antisemitism, the Jews themselves are routinely cast as part of the problem.

In this instance, the ADL had become something of a fall guy for the left.

Certainly, the ADL’s response to Musk’s Brown Shirt politics, was unacceptable. The ADL said Musk “made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute.” Um, no. This is the same Elon Musk who has a history of pushing antisemitic conspiracy theories on X, the ubiquitous social media site he owns. And just last month, he came out in support of Germany’s Nazi-adjacent party, Alternative for Germany (AfD).

Gratingly, the ADL went on with their inexcusable Musk apology to say he should be “given a bit of grace and even the benefit of the doubt.” Again, no; and for the record, Musk, who gave the Nazi salute twice, never apologized himself. In fact, he responded to the ADL’s brain dead response by saying ““Thanks guys,” punctuated with laughing emoji. Because yes, it was an intentional sieg hiel. As a friend said: Musk clearly practiced the gesture in the mirror that morning.

Should the ADL be reprimanded for gaslighting us about Musk. Of course. But it’s curious that the majority of condemnations I saw directed at the ADL didn’t work to re-focus on the poisonous reality of Musk’s antisemitism, but rather, very quickly blurred the focus, veering into condemning the ADL for supporting Israel.

On my feeds, anger at the “Apartheid Defense League” overtook anger at Musk. Not only is it typical for overt displays of antisemitism to turn away from the original toxic speech and turn to finger pointing at Jews, but, more telling is how quickly they turn into discussions about Israel and calls (these days) to “Free Palestine.” Pro-Palestine activists would have more credibility when they say their anti-Israel stance isn’t aligned with antisemitism if they didn’t simultaneously seize gross instances of antisemitism to condemn Israel.

For the record, criticism of Israel is not default antisemitic; and there are plenty of reasons to condemn Israel. I for one, have been doing it since I was 12. On the flip side, criticism of Israel is not a default get-out-jail-free card for voicing antisemitism.

2) The Tennis Podcast

I know I’ve been lauding my parasocial besties—Catherine Whitaker, David Law, and Matt Roberts, the insightful and playful co-hosts of The Tennis Podcast—since I first came across their thorough reports back in mid-November.

Well, I’ve been hanging out with them every day this week as they post daily Australian Open dispatches from Melbourne Park, so here I go again.

Roberts, Whitaker, and Law serve hot takes with charm.

Their daily wrap-ups for this week’s Grand Slam are a delight. And they’re usually recorded in the wee hours from some empty coffee lounge or conference room where you can hear a vacuum cleaner whirring in the background, or in one episode, dad-figure Law—scaring off a few late night mice as he stomped around the room.

With emcee Whitaker’s hilarity and snark always puncutated by a conclusive and drawn out British “right;” Law’s thoughtful “isn’t it?” analysis colored by his veteran reporter’s deep knowledge, and, most thrilling, their former intern, young Matt Roberts’ wide-eyed yet incisive takes that regularly veer into the effortlessly philosophical, these maximum tennis nerds offer unvarnished reality checks on all the action. And players!

I’m scared to listent today (Saturday), though. Surging Madison Keys beat Saby in a three-set thriller, 6-2, 2-6, 7-5, to win the Melbourne trophy.

3) My Tofu Scramble

Heat up a frying pan. Add earth balance margarine and almond milk.

Rinse, slice, and dice yellow onions. Sauté. When they’re golden brown, scoop a tablespoon full from the pan and set aside.

Rinse and slice mushrooms. Add to pan with the remaining onions. Continue to sauté. Rinse and dice broccoli florets. Add. Rinse and dice green bell pepper. Add. Sauté and stir all the veggies.

Crumble a block of firm tofu in with the sizzling veggies. Add plenty of nooch. Liberally sprinkle in turmeric. Add three pinches of black salt for a sulfuric umami kick; I use a pink black salt from a brand called Deep; be careful not to use much more than that because it doubles as sleeping medicine. Add more earth balance. Use a spatula to mix and toss.

Scoop the set-aside grilled onions onto two toasted slices of bread.

Rinse and thinly slice tomato. Sprinkle with black pepper. Lay over the onions.

Scoop a satisfying serving of the tofu and veggies onto two other slices of toasted bread for a gorgeously sloppy open face “scrambled egg” sandwich.

1/20/25

Great matches in Melbourne; anti-housing in Seattle; the vegan menu at 19th & Jackson

I’m All Lost In … 

the 3 things I’m obsessing over THIS week. 

#66

I’ll get to this week’s list in a second, but first … 

Live Music of the Week: The opening act on Wednesday night’s experimental electronica bill at Vermillion Gallery—two bearded guys in overalls—literally took the floor; the pair rolled on the ground in a drone duet as they beamed signals to one another through DIY walkie talkies. Their conversational sonics ended in a feedback crescendo when they crawled toward one another and pressed their Fisher-Price handhelds together in a musical kiss.

Electronic musicians take the floor at Vermillion Gallery, 1/15/25

An orchestra of gear, Vermillion Gallery, 1/15/25

The digital meditations continued with another duet, Cecyl Ruehlen and Chelsey Lee Trejo, who took the stage loaded, by comparison, with an orchestra of gear: processors, synthesizers, an electric guitar, mallets, a clarinet, a cello bow, bells, and found instruments for a set of “hexachimeric” signals. I’m not sure what “hexachimeric” means, but like Terry Riley’s In C, this avant garde duo merged their electronic improvisations in a mutual key signature and then filled it up with lapping diatonic waves as the accompanying physical vibrations morphed into notes themselves, becoming rhythmic melody lines.

Cecyl Ruehlen and Chelsey Lee Trejo, Vermillion Gallery, 1/15/25

Cease Fire of the Week: The cease fire in Gaza announced Wednesday afternoon reminds me of the historic Islamist political flex in 1981 when the Iranians finally freed 52 American hostages after holding them for 444 days. It was an outgoing effu to then President Jimmy Carter timed perfectly to sync with incoming President Reagan's inauguration. The Hamas/Israeli cease fire and hostage exchange is set to start on Sunday, the day before Trump takes office. 

The critical difference this time: The effu to outgoing President Biden isn’t only coming from radical Islamists (Hamas), but, as reactionary politics are now the norm, the effu to American diplomacy is also coming from the radical right wing Israeli government and from Trump and MAGA America as well. 

The thing that will bite Trump in the ass, though: Per every “cease fire” between the radical right wing Israeli government and toxic Hamas, this one won’t hold either. 

Quote of the Week: David Law, who plays the straight man to his co-hosts Catherine Whitaker and Matt Roberts’ hooting and hollering on (my favorite podcast) The Tennis Podcast, got poetic this week when he described the scene at the Australian Open where rain delays had forced the tournament to overload a slew of matches into one evening. 

“They just put them on. All at the same time,” Law begins, “deep into the night.” 

And then, he described his atmospheric walk, “roaming the grounds in the dark, with floodlit matches going on everywhere.” 

…Which brings us to this week’s No. 1 obsession: The Australian Open. 

1) The first Grand Slam tournament on this year’s WTA calendar: The Australian Open

Every night this week, I found myself with multiple tabs open on my lap top toggling between ESPN+ broadcasts of early-round matches from Melbourne Park. 

Melbourne looks like a stunning city, by the way, judging from my computer-screen view; wow, the tree-lined Yarra River. During a break in the action, I texted my great friend Gregor Samsa, a tennis fangirl like me: We have to go one day. 

For now, it was a week of streaming a parade of riveting matches: My 2025 secret favorite, Russia’s Daria Kasatkina (No. 10) dismissed Bulgaria’s Viktoriya Tomova (No. 53) in two sets, 6-1, 6-3; recent NCAA women’s stars, including one I don’t like much, Emma Navarro (No. 8) winning an admittedly three-hour twenty minute masterpiece over Payton Stearns (No. 46); and my tennis hero Aryna Sabalenka (No. 1) remaining calm as she delivered some chess board winners to fend off Spain’s Jéssica Bouzas Maneiro (No. 54). 

There was also: the I’m-not-buying-it-yet comeback Version 2.0 from Naomi Osaka (No. 51); her first comeback attempt last year fell flat. Yes, she beat Czechia’s Karolina Muchova (No. 20) early in the week in an exciting match. But she went on to lose her next match, retiring after losing the first set in a tiebreak to Belinda Bencic (No. 294?). 

And then there was this week’s stunning upset, Qinwen Zheng (No. 5), who is emerging as the tour’s forlorn and troubled poet falling to Germany’s maddening Laura Siegemund (No. 79). Zheng, looked stoic, sad, and pensive, as she lost in two sets, 6-7 [3-7], 3-6.

Qinwen Zheng; I’m a little worried about her.

On my aforementioned favorite podcast, Catherine Whitaker re-enacted Zheng’s bewildered indignation at being called for a time violation: “Do you see what’s happening on the other side of the court?!” Whitaker cried in her regal British accent, noting Siegemund’s infamous reputation for slow-serve mind games. 

This is my week defined: Staying up to listen to Whitaker and her zippy co-hosts do their daily wrap ups after I’d just finished watching the very matches they were recapping. 

Unfortunately, I have to agree with one of their cold assessments: My favorite player Sabalenka is not thundering through the draw as she had during the 2024 season on her way to winning a batch of tournaments, including last year’s Australian Open. (The tennis reporters at the Athletic also took note of Saby’s tenuous form this week.) 

To be fair, Saby hasn’t dropped a set yet. As I said ^, she beat Maneiro (6-3, 7-5). And then, in a nerve-wracking win later in the week (which I watched heart in throat on the couch from my Pioneer Square office after landing there Thursday evening to retrieve my phone charger), she beat fellow bruising-ball-striker, Denmark's Clara Tauson (No. 41) 7-6 [7-5], 6-4. So, yes, she’s through to the 4th Round (the Round of 16). But I think it might be American Coco Gauff’s (No. 3) year; Gauff, known in my household as Ka-Pow Ka-Gauff, is blazing through without any complicated score lines. And we shouldn’t forget about Iga Swiatek (No. 2); albeit quietly, she’s been posting scary scores, reminiscent of her dominance early last year when she was the seemingly unvanquishable No. 1. 

Meanwhile, along with Kasatkina, who after beating Tomova, went on to beat Yafan Wang (No. 64) later in the week, 6-2, 6-0, a number of my 2025 players-to-watch are also still in the mix as Week 1 ended: Donna Vekic (No.19), Paula Badosa (No. 12), and Elena Rybakina (No. 7).

Daria Kasatkina in Melbourne

I’m not losing faith in Sabalenka, though. The thing about Daffy Saby these days is that she plays with a newfound confidence and calm. 

Whereas, under a personal storm cloud, she used to botch close matches—like the near-disaster against Tauson on Thursday night—you get the feeling now, as she comes up with clutch, rocket fire winners, that she’s going to pull it out. She seems to know this too. 

2) NIMBY Bingo 

In Seattle, the N in NIMBY (traditionally, Not in My Backyard), stands for Never in My Backyard. 

For fuck’s sake, we’ve been dealing with the anti-new housing privilege of local homeowners’ “neighborhood character” provincialism going back decades. Here’s a feature article I wrote more than 20 years ago about Seattle’s intransigent single family housing zone protectionists. And here we are today, still stuck with zoning code that prohibits apartments in roughly 70% of the city. 

As the city council started to take up the new, woefully inadequate 10-year zoning update (the Comp Plan) a few weeks ago, which once again infuriated touchy Seattle liberals, ECB came to the rescue on Blueksy hanging them by their own petard by quoting their unhinged council meeting comments about orcas and trees and shadows. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie, cringing at the hypocrisy of Seattle liberals, re-posted Erica’s hilarious thread.

Thank you Erica for framing the pending Comp Plan debate. 

And thank you for striking again this week, posting this NIMBY Bingo card as the council formally opened hearings on the issue with a public meeting. 

All of these wrote objections drive me crazy. I once spoofed the “I’m a longtime resident of X local neighborhood,” by testifying at a city council meeting with the exact opposite intro: I wasn’t born here, I said, I’m not a lifelong resident of Ballard or Wallingford or Capitol Hill or Ravenna or Wedgwood or… at which point, then-council member and now mayor Bruce Harrell looked up from his computer utterly perplexed …. But I live here now, I continued, like the hundreds of thousands of people that have moved here in the last 20 years … 

I also can’t stand the trees rap. Developing Seattle with single family homes is what slaughtered Seattle’s tree canopy in the first place. It’s a little too late—and hypocritical—to complain that building a six-story building that houses ten times the number of people living in a single family home will somehow eliminate the city’s tree canopy. And p.s., Capitol Hill, one of the rare apartment friendly neighborhoods in the city, has some of the highest tree canopy. Why? Because building up rather than out saves more trees. 

The “concurrency” thing also defies logic; this is the argument that you can’t build more housing in quaint neighborhoods because the infrastructure and transit lines don’t exist to serve a bigger population. This is an obstructionist canard. Changing zoning isn’t going to bring thousands of new people overnight. Population growth happens over time. Asking Metro to run bus lines to a currently sparse street as a prerequisite for future density is a comically inefficient use of Metro dollars. Smarter policy: When a neighborhood reaches the point at which buses make sense, Metro should meet the need. 

But the trope that irks me most these days is the cloyingly self righteous go-to for every curiously embittered pseudo civic-minded crank: “I’m a taxpayer!” 

News flash: Paying taxes is not a solo project akin to your personal transaction at a restaurant. Everyone pays taxes. It’s a communal endeavor designed to meet collective needs. So, when someone rolls out the “I pay taxes” line of attack vis-à-vis their personal interest, they’re unwittingly reminding us (or whichever civil servant they’re berating) about the actual project of democratic governance: Balancing the needs of all taxpayers for across-the-board equity. In the context of the Comp Plan debate, that means building more units citywide in the taxpayers’ collective interest. 

3) The vegan menu at Moonlight Cafe

A Seattle treasure that I’d forgotten about and rediscovered this week: The Central District’s happily humble (and crowded) Moonlight Cafe at 19th & Jackson.

Vegan Vietnamese, 1/10/25

A decade-plus ago, My ex ex ex, a well-versed Seattle cool kid, turned me on to this vegan treasure where they have two menus: page upon page of traditional Vietnamese dishes and, with plant-based or chemistry-lab alternatives, a The-Upside-Down vegan version as well. 

My sense is that nobody comes here for the traditional dishes. I didn’t on Saturday anyway when I walked the 20 blocks over in the balmy evening to meet a friend for dinner. I ordered the vegan cashew veggie & tofu entree and a side of the addictive crispy veggie rolls. I ended up getting a second order of those. 

With its gluten-heavy faux versions of five-spice salmon, ginger fish, sesame beef, and sweet & sour chicken, this is Vietnamese comfort food for the noshy masses and hipster vegans.