When I was a bike messenger I took these photos at 1000 2nd Ave when Martin Selig the Seattle real estate titan, owned 33.3% of downtown Seattle. Selig probably owned 66.6% of the buildings I frequented as a legal messenger.
5 years ago the covid shutdown lockdown ghosttown downtown zombie shitshow (working remotely) changed Seattle in many ways. It still has not recovered or returned to the work-a-day office space of yesteryear. Here and now Selig’s grip on the city is slipping away. You can read all the details in this Seattle Times article
If you own the building you can do what ever you want with it. You can paint huge canvases, call them art and hang them in the lobby, in the hallways, in the offices of your real estate empire. Selig painted these giant paintings (12’ x 7’ ish) that got my attention back then. That's Mary posing in front of one circa 2006.
The USPS will call it a postcard if it’s no more than 4.25" high x 6" long x 0.016" thick.
Some of these pilder mashups are 12” x 18” and up to 0.25” thick. I like to write on the back, put on a fake stamp or three and “mail them” to special penpals I know on campus or nearby in coffee shops or bike shops. Hand-Delivered via electric ass cargo bike.
Junior Junior will take over delivery duties on a crow creation I recently made for one of his teachers that is retiring, a guy you might know: Chris Quigley. As if. If only.
One day a few months ago, I hand-delivered an old-marine -climatic-map-crow-creation with the words I wouldn’t want your job on a day like thisslathered over it, to Dr. Cliff Mass at Atmospheric Sciences. When I asked him about it later, he laughed and said he got a real kick out of it.
I enjoy handing off postcard-size postcards to the USPS, for penpals around the country. Those feature some of these same themes but are constrained by their size limits. However, I’m not ready to pay the postage on these 18” x 12” lumpy creations that would have to be bundled up to make the journey and therefore would no longer appear to be giant postcards.
It’s not my birthday but it will be soon. A calendar date to commemorate. When you get to be my age you start thinking about fresh tennis balls for your walker.
Today I went out for a dry-fit test-run. The drive side ball needed a little tweaking and luckily the Medicinal Herb Garden guy had a Rambo knife that he let me use for 23 seconds. Perhaps later on, the Electric-Ass-Cargo-Bike-Fleet-Mechanic can dial the tennis balls in for the big day.
In 2003-2004 I was silkscreening T-shirts, one at a time. Stick figure bikes on the front with “a quality of life issue” on the back. I gave them away to friends and sold a few on eBay. With postage fees and eBay’s cut of the deal, my profits added up to Jack Shit. So in 2005, I started this website to sell some t-shirts directly to consumers.
Somewhere in that there time span I asked my college friend Dan Murray if he wanted to do a little bike ride in Iowa called RAGBRAI. He asked his brother Chris to come along and we all rode our first RAGBRAI, calling ourselves “team pilderwasser” because we were wearing some of those stick figure bike shirts I made. As seen in the photo above on our way home after our first Great Bike Ride Across Iowa.
1047 weeks later...
...this site is still up
YOU ARE HERE but not to buy t-shirts.
And Mr. Chris Murray has done every single RAGBRAI since 2005. With Jimbo’s help, they’ve grown team pilderwasser into kind of a big deal. With luggage trucks and charter buses. A strong core of regulars surrounded by a rotating cast of newbies. They’re not messing around in halfass t-shirts. They’re sporting pilderwasser jerseys with matching caps and coozies too.
It took me a second to realize the green-black-white color scheme of this edition of the jersey is a nod to the Grinnell Griffins Rugby team which is a nod to the 2007 original pilderwasser team bus
A Bulldog T-shirt under a Big Time Hoodie. Both ends of my coffee-beer continuum. Literally, figuratively, metaphorically, symbolically, gastronomically, economically, anaerobically, wardrobically.
Single-handedly supporting the local economy, one beverage at a time. Frequent flyer cards in my wallet side-by-side. Buy 10,000 pints, get one free. Not just talking the talk, walking the walk, wearing the shirt. Wearing the shirt and the hoodie too. A “most-regular regular” candidate. I’m drawn to authentic real-deal really-real places like these. They’re not fluffy or shiny or trendy or new. They're not perfect. They are what they are. Good coffee. Great beer. Cool people.
The owners of both establishments are pillars in the U-district community with a rich history of UW connections and plenty of stories to go along with it all. Bulldog opened in 1983. Big Time in 1988.
More often than not, my workday begins at Bulldog with coffee and ends at Big Time with beer. Old School U-district all the way both ways. Round the way, University Way NE bro, you know "the Ave". Just this side of 42nd on the Ave to just that side of 42nd across the Ave.
I shared this photo with UW President Ana Mari Cauce and she responded with a “That’s great. It made my day. Thank you.” all before 8:17am this Monday morning.
President Cauce is winding down her final weeks as President. I’ve had the privilege of being the electric ass Mr McFeely to her office in Gerberding for 73.7% of her tenure. I don’t talk to the president but I talk to the staff in her office and they talk to her for me.
Ana Mari Cauce is a real badass, on so many levels and I believe she has done things the way they should be done, working through many difficult situations over the years. Now she can take a deep breath, relax a little bit and go back to being a psychology professor.
I know a guy named Alistair and he’s kind of a big deal in the electric-ass bathtub world. This status is confirmed by the fact that Grin Tech recently asked him to pose for a selfie. He expressed his discomfort in this, saying he’s probably been in three selfies in his entire life. Then I asked if that included the Sally-Stevil fake selfie. He claimed to have no recollection of the events in question. But his recollection was actually spot-on.
It took me a long time to find this shot in my slap-dash photo filing system. I even asked Sally to send it to me. But how could Sally have a fake selfie on his phone? June of 2021 feels like four years ago plus or minus fourteen more.
Stepping off the elevator, the smell of microwave popcorn hangs thick in the air, recycled for hours by the so-called HVAC system. Eventually the entire floor reeks of Orville Redenbocker. Each arriving elevator opens to capture a few cubic yards of popcorn air and take it on a journey up or down to share with other floors in the building. Until finally, in a day or so, the smell will dissipate.
The source of the smell can be traced to the microwave in the breakroom, the underbelly of the law firm. A gritty, filthy, behind-the-scenes hangout for support staff.
This is the office of our biggest client. I’ve been coming here off and on, but mostly on, for the past eleven years. Employed by four different messenger companies over that span. My paychecks have changed, at least the return address printed on them has changed although my net pay has stayed the same.
In eleven years I’ve seen numerous receptionists come and go, countless legal secretaries as well as support staff and mailroom employees. Attorneys come and go too, but that does not affect me. A rookie in receiving or a temp at the front desk, those are the people that really affect me.
I’ve seen the office remodeled once. I saw the dot com boom. I saw big tobacco litigation. I’ve seen a few things in the legal messenger world. These people have seen me, the old-timers here know my name and say hello. I say hello back and sometimes I smile. One day years ago it was cold and raining and someone invited me into the break room for coffee and it has since become part of my routine.
The coffee here is bad, but it’s free. And free is free. It’s Folgers in individually wrapped filter packs. No measuring. No mess. You just toss one in and press the red button. I don’t actually work here and I think I’m the only person that drinks this shit, except maybe James in office services.
I prefer to drink my coffee from light colored mugs so I can see what I’m drinking. But today my choices are limited so I’m using a dark blue pharmaceutical company mug and gazing up at the ceiling.
Fluorescent lights behind large plastic panels among acoustic tiles in a drop ceiling give everyone and everything here a sickly pale sheen. The lights give off an audible hum that nobody notices. This hum paired with the drone of the ventilation system creates a dull white noise that forms the background to a workday filled with beeps, chirps, squeals, whines, murmurs and buzzes. Computers, phones, printers, copiers and elevator bells. Muffled conversations among the workers blend together. Inane chit chat and jibber jabber. Some say ten percent of the workday is spent on personal matters. But I think ten percent or less of the workday is actually work, the rest is personal shit. I’m not sure what these people do for 8 hours.
A large round table dominates the room with mismatched chairs scattered around. All of them cast off from the conference room or various offices. When an attorney gets a new chair their old one is adopted by a secretary or paralegal. And the hand-me-down trickle down continues on. A chair that nobody wants ends up here in the break room. There is a sizable magazine collection, heavily weighted to women’s fashion, home decor and Hollywood gossip, with a few outliers being golf and fly fishing.
Taped to the microwave is a sign that reads COVER FOODS COOKING MICROWAVE This sign bothers me, as I continually read it, rearranging the words in my mind. I imagine the author’s voice and motivation. Was it carelessness, or their sense of humor? Their choice of fonts was all wrong and the way they chose to tape across the corners instead of creating neat tape loops on the back of the sign. Rumpled and splattered with various liquids, this sign should be replaced. But it’s been there for years and I’m just visiting.
The refrigerator is the unofficial bulletin board for the office and features flyers about a blood drive, a lunchtime concert series from last summer and a memo about the company holiday party. I haven’t ever opened the fridge and do not plan on it. By the time left over food is that left over, I’m not interested.
The floor is covered in industrial strength linoleum squares, as boring as a government job. The hallway just outside features brown low-profile carpet, crushed down, years past its prime, traffic patterns clearly visible, threadbare in spots. I imagine the worn out carpet being mentioned at a staff meeting and the office manager laughing and changing the subject. Then one day I overheard her telling the receptionist that they’d already signed a lease on office space in a South Lake Union spot. So the lame ass ugly old carpet is the least of her worries.
It’s their scenic 700 acre campus, I just roll through it. This crow duo’s territory includes the Life Sciences Building and they know me and my habitrails and that my habits include coffee and fig bars in the morning, and that I’ll gladly hand over a bite or two of my snacks when I have some. However, just one stop earlier at Chemical Engineering, I tossed out the last of my snacks to another crow.
The aggressive one in this pair perched on the rear fender and took a few whacks at it to get my attention, creating a metallic racket. As I explained my food situation to her, she then hopped up to the saddle and began to really dig in with her beak, like a deranged woodpecker. Then I said I’d gladly pay them Tuesday because I had no more fig bars today and I rolled on.
I wasn’t in the market for grips, but I guess these grips were looking for me. If the first stage is denial then the next first stage is reaching out to Steve Maluk because these silicone grips will always and forever and forever and always remind me of Steve. He talked them up and stocked them up in the shop at Bike Works when we both worked under that 501(c)(3) ten years ago or so.
I actually had a pair of these grips on the Allez once upon a time. In a tasteful understated gray grey way. But they were sliced off when I ditched the thumb shifters.
But anyway as I was aimlessly loitering in Recycled Cycles in a former bike messenger now government worker asking Andy Voight if he’s my Bucky kind of way this past take-your-baby-yoda-to-work-day afternoon around 2:22 when I saw these grips and I picked them up only to take that photo for Steve in a thinking-of-you Hallmark Card kind of way. As I was ham-fisting a thumby text message to express those thoughts, in-walked Steve G and the entire Bike Works posse on their Seattle bike shop bike ride tour du jour. It was a big ball of Bike Works energy bouncing on Boat Street for one brief shining silicone moment.
I’m not making this shit up.
Then I bought those grips and put them on this bike.
There are only 5 points of contact on a bike: hand-hand foot-foot & ass. So why not float those points on something that brings you joy. ESI 100% Silicone grips made in the USA. Platform pedals and a WTB saddle.
I like to think that it’s possible to send out telepathic messages to people through the earth, through time and space. And I’ll go with that thought and sometimes I feel like backing it up with a photo and or a text.
Like when I see a #56 Lawrence Taylor jersey and think of Koshalla
Or all those produce PLU # rubber bands that say Catarina
And “Pour Some Sugar on Me” will always say Sara G
Or in my inner ear, I’m hearing “you can do it” from 02 Joey in his Corky voice
Or 33 John saying “just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…” repeating repeatedly
Or a vivid dream featuring my old pets Brad or Skunk or Jody or Buppy or Wendy, just checking in, saying HEY. Across time and space and modes of existence, speaking from the hereafter.
Those telepathic messages are flying around all the time. But most of us are oblivious to them. However, some of us can tune into them sporadically, and when we do, it’s amazing. Like a crystal clear blast from the past in the middle of the AM dial that comes in for a while just outside Ellensburg and then it fades to static once again.
If anyone could tune in to those types of messages it was Aldous Huxley. But that’s another story.
These 5 Double Darns are still in heavy rotation. The black cotton at the top is the newest member of the family. Just breaking in this week as the morning temperatures are in the 40s but the afternoons get into the 70s. The winter weight wool has been the go-to for the past several months under a bucket helmet. But the helmets are getting lighter and the caps are getting cottonier as the days are getting longer.
I’ve had several other Double Darns that I wore until they fell apart. Then I patched them up and wore them some more.
When the Giants top draft pick Abdul Carter asked Lawrence Taylor if he could wear #56 and bring it out of retirement, Taylor said “No”
That made me smile. It also made me think of Koshalla.
There are 56’s all around you. But maybe you haven’t noticed because they’re lurking in the scenery. Around 3:33 this past Thursday I stumbled upon a 56 lingering on the bar leftover from the lunch rush. It spoke to me and then we had a beer together.
