what was that? is that all there is? who is this? this is it.

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your time is gonna come

July 8, 2025

a quality of life issue since 1969…

 

 

side effects may include:

 

fever, tiredness, body aches, skin reactions, flushing, sweating, constipation, diarrhea, dizziness, drowsiness, dry mouth, halitosis, vertigo, headache, insomnia, nausea, suicidal thoughts, abnormal heart rhythms, internal bleeding, liver problems, kidney problems, drop in sex drive, confusion, regret, rumination, loss of appetite, alopecia, muscle soreness, joint stiffness, fatigue, swelling in the affected area, inertia, complacency, seamlessly smooth transitions from coffee to beer and back again, a dwindling number of fucks to give, a total absence of give-a-shits, phantom nostalgia syndrome, phantom ass-pocket U-lock syndrome, asking “what if?”, questioning “if only”, repeatedly repeating the same old stories, bad jokes, poor punch lines, when-I-was-your-age-phrasing paired with you’re-doing-it-wrong-proclamations.

 

Zeppelin II cassette stuck in the deck of a Datsun B210 to auto-reverse forever.

 


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that which we call a weed, by any other name, would be a flower

July 8, 2025

 

if A then B

maybe

 

could be

if A then C or D or E

 

digging for

an analogy…

 

you like old VW bugs

do you like auto racing?

 

you like bikes

do you like bike racing?

 

A:B :: Y:Z

 

 

could be

maybe

not necessarily

 

 


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07:07

July 7, 2025

mark your calendar

however

do not adjust

the clock

on your VCR

 

today is 07:07

 

as you can see in this hand-made postcard that I received from 22 Heather on this seventh day of July


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on a day like this

July 6, 2025

those guys down at DANK bags sent me this Shag Bag photo

 

 

they can supply the details because I don't know. or maybe I did and then I forgot...

 

 

was Stupor Bowl 22 in 2019?


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Have you got all you need? Enough to eat and a book to read?

July 2, 2025

another other book for your summer reading list

 

this is a helluva book

helluva is a helluva word

try to use it in a sentence 

easy-peasy

if you've made it this far you've already worked some Fine Young Cannibals lyrics into your day

knowing unknowingly

unknowingly knowing

don't ask me to choose

 

 


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sense of place

July 1, 2025

a clean well lighted place for everything and everything in its place

 

this must be the place

 

you are here

 


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ground up

June 30, 2025

Ground Up Speed Shop Visit

i often gloss over the RADAVIST

but once in a while something gets to me

this guy's stuff gets to me

 

spot on

good stuff


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in for a penny in for a pound

June 30, 2025

one cubic foot of water (7.5 gallons) weighs 62 pounds

 

one cubic foot of osmium weighs 1,410 pounds

 

one thousand four hundred and ten pounds

 

visualize the final fifty fucking feet on that prime package

 

put that on your porch and poke it

 

in a weathered cardboard box

 

at today’s market rate that shit-ton brick would cost you $537 Million

 

plus shipping

 

+WA state sales tax 

 

put that in your pipe and smoke it

 


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if A then B

June 28, 2025

enigma

speculation

conjecture

conjugation

conjunctivitis

completely unrelated

it’s all relative

cathecting the notion

an object in motion

as if 

what if

if & only if

if A then B

muddy 

it’s mud you see

off camber

exposed roots

wet pine needles

i n e r t i a

sequence of events

unfolding as planned

but whose plan is it?

not mine

not my circus

not my monkeys

not my road

not taken


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the road not taken

June 25, 2025

read a book, read a book

June 23, 2025

WAIT HERE

June 20, 2025

111% post consumer waste

 

Reused

Recycled

Repurposed

R e g u r g i t a t e d

 

Five-year-old floor sticker

  • Imploring you to wait here
  • Implying you might not know what 6 feet looks like
  • Imploding your recollection of covid years

 

Pasted onto recycled cardboard

 

YOU DUB’s zipcode overlaid in foam numerals from a set of surplus letters & numbers 

 

With four magnetic squares on the back to slap it on my locker or your white board display

 

Call it a postcard I'm not yet ready to part with 

 

WAIT HERE

 


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the urge to ride your trike

June 18, 2025

 In most situations with a strong correlation I say let’s not jump to causation. But here I say causation all the way. 

 

27 years ago I did a little zine called kickstand with the Soundgarden song looping in the back of my mind… 

 

…correlation? Yes. 

…causation? Hell Yes.   

 

Today I made myself a dickstank trike shirt and I also got myself a knock-off Soundgarden kickstand trike shirt 

 

In the late 90s I had this t-shirt, not from a concert, from the cool poster shop at 6th & Denny. I wore it very few times. If only I still had it I could sell it on Etsy for $450. 

For my second attempt at owning a version of this shirt I went with a tasteful understated black instead of the original sickly brownish green.  

 

 

kickstand

Kicksand, you got loose and I threw up
Yeah kickstand, you got the juice to fill my cup
My mother say that it's alright
My mother says that's the only life
 
So do it right
Do it right
Come stand me up
Come stand me up
Come stand me up
 
Yeah kickstand, I got saddle made of leather
Oh kickstand, I got the words to come together
I got the urge to ride your trike
My mother says that's the only life
 
So do it right
Do it right
Come stand me up come stand me up come stand me up
 
Oh kicksand, you got loose and I threw up
Yeah kickstand, you got the juice to fill my cup
My mother say that it's alright
 
Do it right
Do it right
Stand me up stand me up, stand me up
 
 
 
--Chris Cornell / Kim Thayil
SUPERUNKNOWN  1994

 

 


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STATBACK

June 18, 2025

“I’d buy that for a quarter”

–pilder

 

“No Idea”

–cashier UW Surplus

 

“Make something up…”

–Dr 37 Mike

 

“there are 17 Starbucks within 0.75 miles of current location”

–google

 

“Could you please use it in a sentence?”

–spelling bee contestant

 

“a quality of life issue”

–STATBACK

 


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there goes the neighborhood

June 17, 2025

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. 

 


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circus monkey postcard

June 15, 2025

 

not my circus

not my monkeys

 

my postcards

 

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 this slathered 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. 

 

If you want something done right, do it yourself. 

 


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long story short

June 12, 2025

older than dirt

June 10, 2025

 

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. 

 


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ROLL ON!

June 9, 2025

10-31-07

6-9-25

69

07

same wig

different guy

you are here

where am I?

 


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YOU ARE HERE

June 8, 2025

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




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round the way

June 7, 2025

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. 

 


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GMAC ± 333 lbs

June 5, 2025

Jimmy Timmy & Muster Mark

June 4, 2025

An electric-ass mailman trapped in the body of a washed up bike messenger with a liberal arts degree, walks into a bar

 

the bartender says, 

 

“three quarks for Muster Mark”

 

spot-on

 

Big Time

 

then Neil Degrasse Tyson says,

 

“The universe is under no obligation to make sense to you”

 

OK, cool 

 

is this the path of least resistance? 

 

no, it’s learned helplessness

 

don’t overthink it


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full lane may use bikes

June 3, 2025

 

While I slept it was all over,
Everything. My eyes, squashed white,
Flowed off toward dawn.

There was a noise,
Which, like all else, spread and disappeared:
There’s nothing worth seeing, listening for.

When I woke, everything seemed cut off.
I was a pipe, still smoking,
Which daylight would knock empty once again.

 

"The Pipe"

Shinkichi Takahashi

 


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non-drive side roll up bow down

June 2, 2025

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. 

 


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like butter, it is

May 30, 2025

I know a guy that knows a guy

May 29, 2025

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.  

 


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standard deviations

May 27, 2025

 
The plan keeps coming up again
And the plan means nothing stays the same
But the plan won't accomplish anything
If it's not implemented
 
Like it's always been
And it makes me think of everyone
The cause of this is evident
But the remedy cannot be found
'Cause it's so well hidden
 
This history lesson
Doesn't make any sense
In any less than
10, 000 year increments
Common sense
Common sense
Common sense
Common sense
Common sense
 
--"The Plan" 
Built to Spill 1999
 
 
random numbers
floating everywhere 
 
what if   they're
cut & pasted 
 
into
another context 
 
onto scrap wood
found on floor
 
in situ
resource utilization
 
zero sevens
abound
 
seven 07's
come around

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can't you smell that smell

May 25, 2025

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. 


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I'll gladly pay you Tuesday, for a fig bar today

May 24, 2025

 

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. 

 


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