Marquee

April 8, 2014: Island Style

[click to enlarge]

White Center, Washington is a famously dingy place, and it always will be. However, that doesn’t keep local arts people from sprucing it up now and again with a mural or two. This particular panel honors two of the larger ethnic groups inhabiting the area: Samoans and Southeast Asians.

You can see this art (which is part of a much larger display) in the 9400 block of 17th Ave SW, on the boundary line between Seattle and White Center (i.e., unincorporated King County.)

Here’s the Google Maps location: https://goo.gl/maps/EwCW0

–but don’t expect to see it on Google Streetview, because their photo is out of date, and the mural may well be gone before they update the street-level photos of this area again. When the art rubs off, this little patch of White Center will be back to the same old grime – the famous old grime – that we locals have come to love.

February 7, 2014: Everwonder

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Just another wet fall day in tha Highland Park ‘hood . . .

It’s hard to hate graffiti that actually makes you think. If this is what the local punks are up to these days, there might just be hope for us after all.

January 5, 2014: Fresh New Look

Like the Albertson’s that came before it, Saar’s “Super Saver” food store in White Center is pure ghetto: high food prices, lots of weird, ethnic foods and cheap BEER! I give it a couple of years before it, too, goes tits up, a victim of the legendary White Center Jinx that keeps any large business establishment south of Roxbury from succeeding.

Yelpers sometimes lie, but not this time. Read.

November 23, 2013: Security Fence

This scene is located at 2127 SW Barton Place in southwest Seattle, a few blocks from DBP’s house. The Google Maps street view shows the house when the fence was still under construction. See here.

Here’s what the whole fence looks like from the street as of now:

In addition to making a bold public statement – and being a nice place to park the eye – the “security fence” serves a third function, one which your average passerby wouldn’t even be aware of. It keeps graffiti off the fence.

Oh, occasionally some cretin of a teenager, like a mongrel dog urinating on a tree, will still come by and spray a gang “tag” over the design, but the owner is right on it. They usually paint over the gang feces within hours, just like it never happened. This has the effect of discouraging the punks, who, in spite of their awful ignorance, are still able to grasp that the power of peace and beauty (and personal responsibility) will always triumph over cretinism. 😉

And speaking of cretins . . . when I posted a similar photo on another local blog about a year ago, someone came on that blog and said: “I hope they arrest the punks who messed up that fence with a peace sign.”

Now, it’s possible that the person on that other blog was being sarcastic, but knowing their readership, the smart money’s betting it was a cretin.

October 28, 2013: Shalloween

Let’s face it: No matter how hardened we become, there’s always something just a little a little off-putting about finding a woman’s dismembered body outdoors in the woods, in someone’s garden, or in the trash.

* * * * *

And yet, how tranquil they seem in death, no? Happy even. It’s almost as if they had resigned themselves to Fate, and met it peacefully.

I’m glad these women didn’t suffer too much. And I’m glad to know that there’s a Heaven, a nice vacation spot for the Spirit to travel to after it leaves the body.

Um. There is a Heaven . . .

Right?

Photos by David Preston

October 4, 2013: Castle-Mari

I live in a place called Blight Center, Washington.

Check it out, man: Even our Welcome sign is blighted. And this picture was taken right after The Mayor dedicated it.

(OK. Technically, we don’t have a mayor here. But then, technically we don’t have a prostitution problem, either. And when I say prostitution problem, I don’t mean that there are too many of them.)

As you can see from the sign, the official name of this town is White Center, but I live here, so I can call it whatever I want, just like Black people can call themselves niggaz, while everyone has to refer to them as Africa-merians, or whatever the latest fashion is.

Actually I, don’t even live in Blight Center proper. I live in area between Blight Center and Deathridge (technically: Delridge.) But see, Deathridge is really just a suck-burb of Blight Center. Blight Center is what Deathridge wants to be. Copy?

When I’m feeling snooty, I tell people I live in Highland Park, and when they go: Where’s your kilt, haw! I go: It’s dead. Just like you’re about to be.

Shuts ’em right up.

When I’m feeling delusional, I pretend I live in West Seattle. But whenever I say that out loud, you can depend on some jackass who was raised in a cabin on Admiral to pipe up and go: Aarrrrrr! But ya don’t live in the REAL West Seattle, do ya ma-tey?

And I guess they’re right, but WTF anyway. They can keep their million-dollar view shacks that are two feet from sliding into the ocean. That is, if the ocean don’t slide up to them first.

Ahem! So what were we talking about? Oh yeah. The new marquee. Whatever else you say about Blight Center, they got some cool street art, and that includes some stuff that blows the hell out of any cheezeball Chamber of Commerce mural in the RWS.

The new marquee art comes from the side of a building on 17th Ave SW, right after it cuts across Deathridge Way SW going south. [Here.] I guess some local school kids must have done this art project and put it on the side of this old building to gussy it up for a while. The artwork is starting to fall apart, what with the rain and everything, so I thought I’d capture it on film before it was gone.