Capitol Hill, Seattle
Every week, I grab everyone’s favorite “alternative” (because we have ads for hookers in the back) newspaper out of the rack on the corner and bring it home. I do this for one reason.
The toilet.
You see, I refuse to read my Android or laptop on the commode. Something about it just seems wrong. I think that deep down, I am afraid that one of my ass germs is going to make its way inside of the circuitry, and since I cannot get in there to clean it, I will become obsessed with the notion that my gadgets are somehow infested with imperceptible-yet-present molecules of fecal matter.
Enter the alt.weeklies of the world. The Stranger and The Seattle Weekly … I can smear my shit all over these rags and not think twice about it. After all, it’s only 6 short days before they replace it with a new one.
Anyhow … so, there I was, twenty short minutes ago, in the bathroom with my pants around my ankles, trying to push out gut paste hardened by three straight days of Vicodin use for a back that has gone out yet again.
I reached down, grabbed The Weekly, and the first article I came to was an interview with Mark Arm, demigod to every American between the ages of 35 and 50. In the Interview, he was asked about his home in West Seattle, and I got a little chuckle out of his response which follows:
From – http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/reverb/2011/01/mudhoneys_mark_arm_digs_nprs_n.php
What drew you to West Seattle in 1993?
It was just really refreshing to get to a place that felt a little more real, where it wasn’t just like, in the case of the U District, this yearly turnover of people, and in the case of Capitol Hill, everybody’s not a f**king hipster. It was nice to actually live in a neighborhood where there are normal people, who aren’t concerned about how tight or loose their jeans are.
Ouch.
Kind of harsh, but probably a little too true. I agree that Capitol Hill is hipster, but it’s not nearly as bad as Portland (all of it), LA (Los Feliz, Echo Park, Silverfake) or NYC (Williamsburg, DUMBO, etc). Unlike Brooklyn, at least half of the people on The Hill who look like they are addicted to skag … ARE addicted to skag. As hipster enclaves go, Capitol Hill is one of the most authentic.
Also, when you compare hipster neighborhoods to each other, Capitol Hill is still incredibly affordable and non-gentrified. You can still get 1 Bedroom apartments here for $700-$800. Not Frasier-type apartments, but reasonably decent places. Similar cribs in Williamsburg are $1,500-$2,000. Capitol Hill is also superior to Brooklyn since it’s not full of New Yorkers and wannabe New Yorkers, people whose self-esteem and decibel levels are directly inverse to their IQ.
I guess I have to go to bat for the place because of all of the time I have spent in Seattle in my lifetime, Capitol Hill is by far where I have spent the most.
Twenty years ago, I remember getting in the back of a rear-windowless van in DC, and emerging 3 days later in Seattle having seen absolutely none of the the USA in-between (I hear North Dakota’s nice on two hits of acid). We made it just in time for a set at the Off-Ramp, and afterward, we walked up Denny Way to Broadway where I puked from that perfect combination of alcohol and exercise that results in a special kind of nausea and dehydration that is hard to describe. For the next week or so, we crashed in one of the aforementioned one bedroom apartments, with about 15 other people. Those were the days.
If you think about it, every urban neighborhood has its difficult demographic, and all things considered, hipsters aren’t that bad. Sure, their trust funds drive up housing and food costs, but they don’t usually hurt you physically. Hipsters are scared suburban kids rebelling against daddy’s BMW. They don’t rob, steal, and shoot people. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them. Yes, they are goofy, but hipsters beat mafiosos, gangbangers, cranky old people, and people who don’t speak a damn word of English.
Don’t get me wrong, I like West Seattle also. It does have a “real” vibe. There’s very little pretense or put-on. Being able to walk to Alki beach is also somewhat of a wet dream. It’s just not easy to live in West Seattle without a car. You can’t walk Downtown if you absolutely have to. As a (soon-to-be-again) car-less individual, I more or less have to live near the fixie riders and skinny jeans wearers.
In any event, Arm is quoted in a few sections in the paper, and I enjoyed reading his comments with my pants down. I swear I didn’t touch my wiener once while reading his interview. I saved that for the strip club and hooker ads on the back.
Long-live alt.weeklies and their questionably-legal advertising policies.
I don’t know man, Mark Lanegan comes up more on my Last.FM “stations” so I think I have to take his advice on where to live more than Mark Arms.
But I do generally try and ask someone with an association to SubPop before moving anywhere.
Nice to see the old guys still get some press, although whomever wrote the piece seemed like a hipster douchebag.
I am in the am in the middle of the 35-50 age group and I can unequivocally say I have never heard the name Mark Arm. I must assume you were on the hydrocodone while writing this piece.
Mark Arm is the vocalist for the grunge band Mudhoney.
Mark Arm once cooked minute rice in only 45 seconds.
Mark Arm once flew a Cessna…
… upside down
… through the Tillamook blimp hanger
… while laying down tracks for “Flat Out Fucked”
Mark Arm is a dynamic figure, often seen scaling walls and crushing ice. Mark Arm has been known to remodel train stations on his lunch breaks, making them more efficient in the area of heat retention.
Yeah, but he’s no Skip Martin.
Skip Martin built the hospital he was born in.
What a Punk!
chuckreis…you’ll get to try out West Seattle if you stay in my spare room for a few days. I’ll bet your wife will like West Seattle better than Capitol Hill (less culture shock).
Don’t get me wrong. I like Capitol Hill a lot and I lived there in my younger days when I first moved to Seattle. The whole apartment with 15 people crashed on the floor…I’ve been there.
Rex…If you lived in West Seattle you could take the water taxi to get to downtown.
I am hoping to make it up there this summer. If I like the city I hope to be moving there within a few years. I can’t take more summers like last year.
Luckily Melissa and I have been around and nothing really gives us culture shock anymore. RDU Metro has a huge douchebag population and an impressively equal hipster population.
Three days of constipation, and you need a newspaper? Now that you are getting older, you have to start including hydrocodone’s mate. Your favorite drug, & your butt want you to make friends with prunes. The lips of your butt can be made to smile again, if you use about 5 prunes, twice a day with your yogurt. Your butt will love you again. Remember the olde Captain on Hill Street Blues who finally got things right, remember his smile when he walked out of the can folding the newspaper under his arm saying velvet, just as smoothe as velvet. When you moved out of Las Vegas, you didn’t give a BM. Well now you have to get used to giving a BM, prunes prunes & prunes in yogurt. Think velvet, just as smoothe as velvet.