Staircase

Since the bar opened in the last week of March, I've been trying to take mental health breaks. These are generally constituted of me being out of cell phone range from an hour to a day. It is a good exercise in patience; I fret and pace about what is going on, but I have to let go and enjoy whatever it is I am doing. With that, here are some pictures from the weekend spent at Staircase and hiking Mt. Ellinore.

The first pic is from the ascent to the summit of Ellinore. Before we reached the ridgeline, there was this staircase that went straight up into the mist.

The next pic is on the same staircase behind us. At some point we were above the trees hiking through rocks. Given that we are all pretty soft, it was intense.

The next pic is of pea climbing through rocks where the trail had disappeared. Last year we tried this hike in June and the summer path was snowed over. We made it to the chute, but probably about a third of the way up we turned around. I was committed to making the summit this time despite there obviously being no view...

The last few pictures are from what can only be called a stroll after Ellinore. They are both of the Staircase river that flows into Lake Cushman. The last one is on a giant felled tree across the river from our campsite. Serene, beautiful, exactly what I needed.

Ah, music...

O dear Siren, I haven't heard your call in quite sometime. I stopped thinking about music before I stopped playing having been burned and hollowed by years of playing. I was exhausted; I had nothing left. I started playing not to become a rockstar, to play arenas and get blowjobs from groupies, but to play small venues with a devoted group of people who were into the punk rock, DIY thing that had me driving to Canada to watch Botch and Harkonen play in a cafe in the nineties. So I did what I did between Carmenzito and The Assailant and I haven't looked back (very much) since. Until this weekend.

It started at work when a couple of old Tacoma musicians sitting at the rail were geeking out about music. It started with one of the going on about how the music on MJ's Thriller was so fantastic. He was playing air drums while singing the guitar parts with (to be honest) a puerile exuberance. His friend humored him until it was his turn to geek out about Helmet's AmRep records. Eavesdropping on their drunken euphoria sent me spinning off into a Neverland where I started playing music again in a heavy, indie, noise-type band that was some hybrid of early Helmet and Jesus Lizard. The feeling lingered until the end of the night when a young kid who'd seen the assailant came in. We ended up talking music with the conversation coming around to the old Paradox (U-District, not Tacoma...) and The Edge of Quarrel movie. I went home sad and nostalgic that night...

So, tonight, Independence Day, I ended the social part of the evening talking for an hour or two in the kitchen with Liza's new bf, a nu-metal guy who vaguely understands DIY and hardcore/punk, but has toured and knows what it means to play loud music then get old. The night ended with K putting on 20 from Colera and Liza and her bf indulging us for about 1/2 the song. Nevertheless, I teared up as I thought about how it was the last song I ever played live. So, I'll try to avoid the semi-turgid prose and give you a few snapshots:

I honestly don't remember this show. We played so many at Camp Nowhere and eventually they were all packed to the rafters and some sort of nuts. It was so hot and close, these were the types of shows that got me into this. Maybe we influenced somebody there like Botch did at the Velvet Elvis did for me. It was what I wanted shows to be like. This pic kinda sums up the goofy, crazy energy that was at every show.
I want to say the funny thing about this pic is...but really there's so much. I'm drunk on a balcony in an apartment in the center of Paris in between the Iranian and Chinese embassies explaining to Rye where the bruise and knot on my head came from (basement show in the Latin Quarter where, packed to the rafters, Nate's drumset keeps moving and I held it in place as people spilled over me the entire set. At one point Jon cracked me in the skull with his head stock.) That same night in that same spot Ryan broke down crying because he was so happy. He couldn't believe that he was on tour and had just played an amazing show in Paris. All of these cute French girls crowded around to comfort him because they couldn't understand why he was crying...

Our last tour was rough. We did mas o menos 5 weeks with Elphaba around the country. As bad as it was (it's the only tour that does not shine in the flattering glow of memory), there were still great moments. We played an awesome show in Detroit, but really we played the same whether it was 10 kids freaking out or ninety. This pic kinda sums that up for me. It was a long day and not a lot of people, but I remember it because it seemed so quintessential...

I've talked about this show a lot this weekend. I didn't want to play it as I've always stubbornly resisted bar shows. I gave in to Ryan and Casey and I'm glad I did. It was the Akimbo record release show and one of our last. It was everything that I wanted out of shows. The place was packed, everyone had fun, and frankly, it reminded me of Europe.

I sit here now with a glass of bourbon reminiscing bittersweetly about it all. About how much has changed. How I work differently now. How my friends are half a world away or they work for me. About how I balance a checkbook and plan vacations. About how I worry about the future, my health, and my relationship. The Assailant was the apex of my youth where I didn't give a shit; I would quit any job or leave anything to play music, tour, to do it. Now, I work 60 hours a week running a business. Now I try to save money not to tour, but for the simple fact that I feel like I ought to have money in the bank. I don't write, I don't make music. All of my creative energy pours into the business and its management. My mental energy is drained by managing talented but willful personalities. I bring the same monomania to business that I brought to music, but with much different results. Ultimately, I am constantly exhausted and unsatisfied.

The Victory Garden

I started gardening for the first time last year when I was out of work. Inspired by the convolute ramblings of Derrick Jensen a my own dissatisfaction with my life in general, I spent last summer working at a DIY bike shop and a community garden. Here I am a year later, still unsatisfied, by trying my best to make it work. Here is a little documentation of the work at home. This first pic is of the bed that is mas o menos devoted to tomatoes and basil (purple and gree). There are a few Walla Walla sweet onions and a potato going as well. I moved the peppers (Anaheim and another hot type that I don't know that name of) over to the bed with the corn. The soil here is fantastic as we composted in the box all winter, added a bit of top soil, then called it good. I must say that in a lot of ways I am pretty lazy about this kind of thing; I simply threw all of our organic matter in the box without worrying about turning it too much or really doing much of anything. The worms seemed to have taken care of everything for me.

In this bed we cut the sod, added a bit of organic top soil, then put the corn, sweet peas, artichoke, and greens in the ground. A bit later I moved over here volunteer potatoes and squash.

Finally, over behind the beds where the soil appears to be the worst, we have planted more volunteer squash and potatoes, strawberries, and a blueberry bush.

So, we have soil of varying degrees of apparent health in each spot. It will be interesting to see how each group does. Philosophically, I think that getting the plants in the ground is the most difficult part. After that, it simply requires watering, occasionally weeding (although I keep this to a minimum as well), then enjoying the fruits and vegetables. Of course, everything could die, at which point I will been proven wrong about the amount of work required...

Mise en cinema

There's a great post over at IO9 about why these fake films within films are great (ostensibly because their absurd nature and obvious badness would deter anyone from making films like these...) Aside from the CG being bad and it being generally hackneyed, there is something disconcerting about this clip:

George Simmons in "Re-Do" from Justin Long

The Evolution of a Muppet

In the late fifties and early sixties Henson was hired to do these commercials for Wilkins coffee. I'm not sure these are any less disturbing than the Wachowski-esque video game violence of modern television and cinema. For your viewing pleasure:

Enterainment Tonight, sorta

For those of you who haven't seen it. And for those that forget, here's the younger Phoenix brother doing his best Andy Kaufman:



Here's the thing about Phoenix, I think he's staging this whole thing. I think he's going to meltdown his career, grab a bun ch of headlines as a lunatic, then whatever. My only problem is that I read a while ago that he's having a friend film this entire thing for a documentary(?). Welcome to the desert of the real, my friends.

tentwentytwo south

As a few you know, I've been working sometime on a new bar. It's been part political wrangling, part salesmanship, and frankly, a good portion of luck (of course, I assert that you mas o menos make your own luck...). I've had and continue to have a crisis of conscience about running/owning a bar. My thinking is this: bars/pubs/lounges are good for communities when they promote people coming together, talking, and enjoying each other's company. When the bar promotes getting drunk or watching television or fucking in the bathroom, it's not good for the community; which is to say that one can do any of the above things and have a great night, but if it's the establishment's goal that the patrons do them, then something is wrong. What's happened is that I have the opportunity to build an establishment in my neighborhood that will be here when I'm gone, that can be a fixture, a place where people come together and enjoy and imbibe.

The quick and dirty on the background is that I worked for Laura at The Monsoon Room for a long time. I ended up managing, which is when I started to become the face of the place. Almost a year in, Laura made it mandatory that I go to a group therapy session with her. It was everything that I hate about crystal-sucking, dream-catching nonsense. I processed for a day, then wrote a resignation letter where I stepped down as manager, but I stayed on as lead bartender. Things continued to be weird until Laura hired the wife of the man who assaulted K. I asked her not to only because I didn't want him around the bar. She refused stating that it was business. I quit that night.

While I managed I worked mas o menos 60 hours a week. Part of the reason that I did this was that Laura covered for me while I went on three (four?) tours, two of them as long as six weeks. The other reason was that I felt I was gaining valuable knowledge, that if I wanted to be in this business, then this was an opportunity to learn what succeeds and what fails. I did it, I learned a lot, and when it was no longer cost effective, I walked away.

I should describe my time there to put this in context. The quick and dirty is that I made more money then I ever have. I was tipped in drugs and girls offered to blow me in the bathroom. I know it sounds melodramatic, but I felt like a rock star. It was ridiculous, but I got caught up in it. I drank for virtually free, I made a lot of money, and people treated me, well, let's say strangely because I was the bartender.

After I left I was angry with Laura for what I perceived to be her throwing me under the bus. I felt like she wanted me out, but she was too much of a coward. Looking back on it, that was probably the case. The woman she hired that led to me leaving quickly washed out like most of her hires. Maybe she wanted me out because I was becoming identified too much with her business (she didn't bartend at all), or maybe because she didn't like me (I think she tried, but we never really clicked - moreover, I think that we never actually liked each other), or maybe it was ultimately a business decision and nothing more. What matters is that I was gone and I wanted to see her fail. I kept an eye on her business, I watched what she did and how business increased and decreased until a year later I was working elsewhere and thinking about getting out entirely (grad school, teaching, farming, et al) when I received a phone call from a friend asking me if I would run the place if she lost it. Then another person asked me. Then another. Here's how it happened (I know I shouldn't air other's laundry, but I feel that this ties into my story as well, so here we go...):

Laura replaced me with a nice guy who had never before worked in the industry (see and beverage, hospitality). If I recall correctly, he was driving a forklift at the time. He does a good job all things considered, but the place begins to spiral out of control. For most of this time (and when I was running the show), Laura refused to bartend, to work in her own bar, despite the fact that labor was killing us. Eventually she did go back to work, but the damage done. It all came to a head when the guy who replaced me was caught serving minors. The LCB pulled the bar's records, found them to be not in order, and promptly shut it down. While this will sound like merely a clerical oversight, it is indicative of a systemic problem with how that business was run. Laura broke ties with her original business partner three or four months after opening. She then changed the name of the LLC that owned the bar. A year or so later she went fishing for another investor (her original business partner financed the entire bar), which is where my friend came in. I drank the Kool-Aid and now he's out roughly 40,000. In the process of all of these wheelings and dealings, she never transferred the liquor license over to the new LLC. We had stayed of the LCB's radar up until that point, and I honestly think it would've been a clerical/admin thing had they not been caught serving minors. It didn't matter in the end, they shut her down. Without a source of income, she eventually (I think she might always have been...) was behind in rent. It so turns out that her landlord(s) are my current boss(es). They asked me if they kicked her out if I would go in and make a craft cocktail bar. I agreed and they gave her a pay or vacate; she didn't pay and signed over the entire bar for back rent. Now, maybe my current boss(es) would've done it anyway, but I suspect that knowing they had someone to turn around the space fast influenced their finally getting tough with her.

Alors, here I am. The point of this really, really long preamble is that I am going to document the experience of opening a bar. I have the skeleton in place and she walked away from virtually everything, so I don't need to buy a lot of bar tools. What I have to do is some renovating so it doesn't look like the same space and I need to write a menu, hire a staff, and make it run. This is what I'm going to document here.