This amazing p arrived yesterday all the way from Yucca Valley. A unique care package from Matt & Clair down there.
It’s currently exploring its new home, seeing just where it’ll fit in. And I know that it knows it’ll fit in just fine.
I’m visualizing this letter as part of an impressive sign somewhere illuminated among its partner letters making up a word, getting your attention and selling you something.
Check out the old school throwback craftsmanship and construction on the back. It brings me joy and appreciation for yesteryear and days gone by.
This poem spoke to me. This poem is speaking to me. This poem will speak to me again and again after that. If I ever wrote a poem, this is the kind of poem I would want to write.
All due credit to Dobby Gibson. It’s not reprinted here without permission. It’s a photo of a red 53T big ring that just happened to land on page 46 of the April 20, 2026 issue of the New Yorker.
Seven years on an island looks pretty good from where I'm sitting. Ask me about chainring bolt circle diameters, old locker combos and rubber duckies.
As president emeritus of the Profile Design cup holders club it goes without saying that this is my bottle cage of choice. It’ll hold my coffee, my beer and even my water. No other cage covers the continuum like this one. Seamlessly smooth transitions. Simple understated elegance. I’ve influenced the entire UW electric ass fleet, leading by example. Walking the walk.
B. iSSi Thump pedals
Favorite pedal. No longer in production. You can find some pink ones online. I like the molded pin. No need for the replaceable metal pins that will hamburger your shins. I’m not racing downhill. I’m final fifty fucking feeting on an electric ass bathtub in blown-out Sambas. Chill.
C. Nature’s Bakery fig bars
You’ve probably seen a flavor or two of these at your local grocery. But I go to the source with their Build-A-Box option and select all my favorite flavors, a veritable rainbow. So many choices. They’re part of my coffee klatch. My kids eat them too.
D. Slim Fold wallet
The last wallet you’ll ever buy. The best wallet you don’t own yet. Saw this on a fathers day list. Not to buy for my dad. To buy for myself. It’s the shit. Best wallet ever. I’ve already converted a couple of people. You could be next.
E. Big Time Brewery
It’s Big Time time. Cannot say enough about this place. The owner and his brother the brewer. The staff. The beer. All of them Top Notch. In an old school way. It’s on my line almost every time Big Time. Check it out.
Trent Reznor dropped out of college in the 80’s to pursue his music career. I’d like to think his one year of collegiate computer science occurred at UW, but it didn’t. He went to Allegheny College in Meadville, PA.
Nonetheless, I think of Nine Inch Nails’ “Head like a Hole” as a not so subtle nod to the UW fight song.
I'd rather see Reznor than Kenny G in a bow down BECU commercial.
A literary journal published at the University of Washington since 1978, committed to offering an exciting range of work from both new and established artists, and including poetry, fiction, essays and creative nonfiction, interviews and dialogues, theatre and visual arts. Contributors have included such writers as Rita Dove, Czeslaw Milosz, Kathleen Spivack, Al Young and David Wagoner.
The journal continued producing issues into the late 2010s, with the final print edition appearing as a double issue (11:1-2) in spring 2018, featuring contemporary voices in poetry and prose that aligned with its commitment to extended, innovative works. This volume marked the end of regular print publications, amid broader challenges facing university-supported literary outlets following the 2008 recession, including institutional budget constraints that strained funding for non-core academic programs. By 2019, The Seattle Review announced an indefinite hiatus, suspending new submissions and ceasing active operations, with the publication transitioning to an archival status only. The hiatus continues with no new content solicited or released. Past issues are preserved through university libraries and select archives.
This is Volume 8, Number 1
$10 per issue in 2015…
I’d buy that for a dollar
I did buy that for a dollar
I will buy that for a dollar again if I ever find any other issues at Surplus
As you may recall, and you two too. I suggested you read Saroyan’s book before I even got my hands on it. Less than 48 hours later I got a copy of the book from Western Washington University’s Library via interlibrary loan. I expected that whole process to take a couple weeks, not a couple days.
I also purchased a copy from a rare book store somewhere over there a few time zones east of here via eBay.
As we speak, I’m finishing up the WWU copy and getting it back into their library just as my very own copy is arriving via USPS, finishing up the 2750 mile journey to its new home.
Saroyan worked at various jobs his entire childhood. Orchards, vineyards, selling newspapers, county fairs, working, working, telegram bike messengering for a few years all around Fresno at age 12, 13, 14. He knew he wanted to be a writer early on. He hated school so he quit at 15. But he kept working at various jobs to pay the bills.
In this BR-BH book, Saroyan’s 8-year old son Aram wants and gets a new big big bicycle. In real real life, Aram grows up to be kind of a big deal in the writing and poetry world. From the Seattle Public Library I got my hands on two of Aram Saroyan’s books of minimal poems, published about 60 years ago. Single-word poems, just a few letters and a whole lot of white space. Great stuff, right up my alley. Here’s an example, one that stuck with me:
hghgh
Visualize that in the center of the page, nothing to distract you, until you turn the page to another one-word poem…
This morning I was fumbling around in piles on the floor that are my “reading lists” looking for the backpack-book du-jour. At the bottom of one pile Ellen Forney was looking up, asking me to have another go at “marbles” her graphic memoir.
As I flipped through it looking for my bookmark to be found around 66.6% completion status, I stumbled upon a sketch on page 106 which was done on some Girlie Press note paper. Just the other other day I was admiring an old Girlie Press Rules ruler. Then that sketch on page 106 let me know: today is the day.
I wasn’t looking for this print. But it found me yesterday on a Silver Cloud route. Now I’ll find it a thrift-store frame around 10” x 14” and gift it.
Mary Mann has a solo show at the UW Botanical Library through April 28.
I’m a Soul Asylum fan circa 1988. I saw them live several times at Grinnell. I enjoy their albums all the way through And the Horse They Rode In On in 1990.
Grave Dancers Union in 1992 was a sad sack except for this track, which I enjoy, especially on April Fools Day. Don’t talk to me about “Runaway Train” or Winona Ryder or Dave Pirner’s role in “Reality Bites”
“I was not yet sixteen when I understood a great deal, from having ridden bicycles for so long, about style, speed, grace, purpose, value, form, integrity, health, humor, music, breathing and finally and perhaps best of all the relationship between the beginning and the end.”
–William Saroyan
Published in 1952, Saroyan narrates this memoir as his 44 year old self, reflecting on his time as a bike messenger growing up in Fresno. By age 44 in Beverly Hills, he was well established in the writing world, a Pulitzer prize winner and a father. His young son wants a new bike, and not a little kid bike, a full-on adult bicycle.
In the six hours that have passed since I first started to learn more about his book: I found a few copies online that looked cheap but then with shipping from Belgium or New Zealand they were no-go no-no. I checked at Magnus Books, nope. I requested a copy from the extensive interlibrary loan network established through the UW Library conglomeration. Then I bought my very own copy on eBay from a bookstore in Bethesda, MD.
I haven’t read it yet. But if you’re reading these words right now, I strongly recommend this book to you.
An average normal run of the treadmill hamster wheel day on the electric ass bathtub is only 12 miles of actual riding.
That's 63,360 feet. That’s a lot of final-fifty-fucking-feeting, a lot of Amazon last-mile packaging and some good old fashioned old school paper inter-office envelope campus mail too. Racking up a few miles in the relatively small geographic area that is the scenic 700 acre campus and a few choice bits of the U District.
Ask me about 3946 W. Stevens Way and how many times I’ve been there today.
If I had a hammer, I’d hammer in the morning…
If I had a bell, I’d ring it in the morning…
If I had a strava-like heatmap of my habitrails it would be very similar day-to-day. Day after day. Day in. Day out. Groundhog Day. Ditto. Ditto. Ditto. Cyclical cycles circulating. Concentric circles radiating. Repetitious repetitions repeatedly repeating. Backtracking, roundtripping, reconnoitering, revisiting. Again. Playing it again. Groundhog-daying it again. Dialing in details too numerous to recount here and now. Clockwork like. Like clockwork. Lathering. Rinsing. Repeating. Repeatedly.
So it goes and goes and goes until finally it’s quitting time aka Big Time time. Waylaying an IPA. A waylaid waylay. A waylay waylaid. A stone's throw away from the train station and on into my way all the way home.
In 1972 James Wagenvoord published a book called Bikes and Riders. Early on in his book he talks about hanging out in Central Park watching Bob Salzman teach people to ride bikes. And then watching and photographing other people teaching their friends using Salzman's “can’t fail” method.
Some time in the late 90’s I poached Wagenvoord’s photo from page 24 to use as the cover of kickstand #8.
Fast forward 27 years to just last night when I screened yet another kickstand hoodie.
With super opaque white paint that’s as thick as a brick. It’s like squeezing cold toothpaste through a capillary. I took a pass and a half with the squeegee and smudged it. That extra half pass jacked it. Like an out of focus photo of a photo of a photo. It wasn’t what I was going for. But I’m going with it. Because I don’t have a choice.
An out of focus focus-group. A blurred photo of a 55 year old photo. It’s all coming together. That shot always made me think the guy in the middle is loaded and his friends are holding him up. But he’s not wasted. He’s just learning to ride a bike.
“What’s kickstand?” she asks
“It’s a quality of life issue” I say
because it’s easier than trying to explain to her what a zine is
is a Chicago song recorded in August of 1969 and it's popular with marching bands. I didn't know this until this morning around 17 or 18 minutes to 4 when I was googling 45 or 624 and google thought I needed a calculator or a calendar. But I needed to find out the name of that annoying SIX TWO FOUR song and I found it
This fibonacci sequence started the other other day with a brief conversation with 22 Heather about even numbers and odd numbers. Then another other day I presented her with a:
1 3 5 7 9 11
The digits cut from Amazon package tote tags in a classic example of In Situ Resource Utilization.
The next day 22 presented me with a:
2 4 6 8
Digits she crafted herself in a classic example of resourceful creativity…
Then this morning around 25 or 6 to 4
even numbers were dancing around in my mind and that annoying 624 song jumped into the picture
On Friday September 12, 1975 Pink Floyd released “Wish You Were Here”. I cannot say it was on my radar as I was finishing up my first full week of 1st grade in Ms. Wilson’s class at Audubon Elementary. However the song has now been in rotation for 50+ years on every classic rock radio station on earth.
Although I’m not a Pink Floyd fan, I believe there is a time and a place for this song:
HVC 1989
Hidden Valley Camp Granite Falls, WA
Session break late night camp fire. Scrappy counselor on guitar, others singing along with not all the lyrics in their proper place but it feels real, here & now, spot on authentic authenticity. The summer of 1989 at HVC was a great time and place for this song.
HRC 2026
Hans Rosling Center for Population Health
UW Seattle
Sitting in the great big great room at 8am with a coffee and a book when “wish you were here” comes on the Starbucks soundtrack downstairs. It’s the actual song but it feels fake-as-fuck, flat matte muted moot, like a false front, hollow insincerity, forced smile face. Last rainy Thursday morning in the HRC was not the time or the place for this song.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
