This week the crow learned there is still plenty of work to do. What did you learn?
What are you up to tonight?
Iâm still working, actually. Iâm a hairstylist here [at Raven, on Pine St.].
How long have you been doing hair?
Iâve been at this salon for about three months, but Iâve been doing hair for four years.
What drew you to this line of work?
Itâs a long story. I moved over here with my partner, and he always wanted to do hair, so he signed up for beauty school. I signed up three months later, but I was like, âWhat the hell am I doing?â But, as it turned out, I loved it.
Are you a Seattle native?
No, I grew up in Eastern Washington, moved down here about five years ago. Just trying to make my millions!
Why did you guys choose to come to Seattle?
Growing up in Eastern Washington, I always thought Seattle was a big city, even though itâs not that big. It seemed like moving to âthe big cityâ to me.
So, same-sex marriage is officially legal in Washington. Will that affect you and your partnerâs relationship?
No, but I think itâs great. Itâs wonderful that people who want to be legally bound to the person they love can do that now, but itâs not for me. Not yet, anyway.
I read earlier that about two-thirds of same-sex marriages in this countryâin states where itâs legalâare women. Why do you think that is?
I could be digging myself in a hole here, but I think female gay relationships tend to be a little moreâŚhow should I put this? Women arenât as big of whores as men are.
Interesting thought. Do you live on the Hill?
No, I live in Shoreline. Itâs not too bad of a commute.
How do you like living in Shoreline?
Itâs quieter there, and more affordable. We have a house and a yard, and birdsâŚ
What kind of birds?
Parrots. Big Macaws.
Those are smart birds, and they seem to live forever. I know people who have parrots who are older than they are.
We have a four-year-old and a 21-year-old.
Wow. Your parrot is old enough to buy beer. Do you ever send him down to the 7-11 to pick up a six pack?
They walk down there with me sometimes!
I just ate a late-afternoon cheeseburger next door, but donât tell anybody! Do you have any guilty pleasures on the Hill that will make me feel better about that?
Sometimes I spend all my tip money next door at Liâl Woodyâs.
Dude. How many hamburgers are you eating, if youâre spending all your tips? Theyâre pretty cheapâŚ
Itâs not just burgers. Theyâve got the holiday shakes, and the onion rings⌠They have a caramel pumpkin and an apple pie shake right now that are really good.
Now I want to go back for a shakeâdamn you! Do you hang out on the Hill very often, outside of work?
More so in the summer time when itâs a little warmer. But itâs the Hill, so you can always be entertained. Good people watching!
Â
Are you a Seattle native?
No, I grew up in New York. But I moved here in 1989âmore than half my life now, so I feel like a native.
Where in New York?
I grew up in sexy metropolitan White Plains.
What inspired you to move to Seattle?
I was going to move to San Francisco, but then I came here first and fell in love with it. I almost moved to San Francisco, like, a dozen time. Then I finally was like, âThis is home.â
Did you know anyone in Seattle?
I had one friend, who I came to visit on my way to San Francisco. And she had this amazing situation, and I met the most amazing people and got an amazing job right out of the gate. I just landed well. I thought, âThis is heaven!â
I assume youâre the proprietor of this shop [Sugarpill on Pine]?
Yes, and Iâm an herbalist.
Why did you decide to become an herbalist?
By necessity. I had some health problems as a kid, and Western medicine wasnât very effective. When I moved here met a woman who was an herbalist and we started working together. I eventually went and became a massage therapist and studied homeopathic medicine as well. Then I apprenticed to other herbalists, and learned it like you would learn a language.
Why did you choose to open a shop on the Hill?
Iâve always worked in this part of town, even though I live on the Southside. I just like how diverse the population is here. Iâm a singer, so Iâve been part of the arts community for a long time and a lot of my clients are dancers and artists and musicians and people who make our lives beautiful, but who donât always have health insurance. I wanted to stay where my people were.
Do you think artists and musicians are attracted to alternative medicine for economic reasons, or just because theyâre more in tune with non-mainstream ideas?
I think itâs both. Itâs still not accepted in most parts of the country, but it is around here. But still, itâs expensive to go see a naturopath or a practitioner. And for good reason, because these people are trained and they spend time with you. But a lot of what I know, we should all know. It should be taught in schools. We should be brought up with it. Part of why I have a store is so I can give that away. So if you come in to buy some olive oil, and you have a cold, I can help you. You donât have to make an appointment. There are things in your own pantry that can help you. Thatâs one of the biggest services that I can offer.
I think thatâs really beautiful, that you want to give away your services to help people.
Thatâs why I sell everything else, so the business supports me in being here. Itâs a different model of business; itâs retail, but thereâs a service element to it. People donât even know what stores are anymore. If you shop here, then you keep me here on your street, and I can help you.
What kind of singing do you do?
At the moment, nothing, because Iâm here all the time. Iâve done a lot of classical music, I used to sing in esoterics for years, and Iâve done a lot of jazz and singer-songwriter stuff. I really love ensemble singing. Itâs really something to be in a big room full of people who are all making sound at the same time.
Any favorite hangouts on the Hill?
I love the Century Ballroom. I think itâs the most amazing place in the whole neighborhood. Thereâs so much happening here, and so many restaurants, itâs hard to point to any one in particular. I love that there people out and about and thereâs a real center of gravity here. It wasnât always like that back in the day.
Â
Whitey? Is that the name on your driverâs license?
No. Itâs short for my online handle, which is White Trash.
Why did you pick that as a handle?
Back it the day all my hardware computer equipment was typically jerry-rigged. At an early age, someone described it as âwhite trash.â They were using it in a somewhat derogatory sense, but I came to use it as a badge of honor.
What brings you out tonight?
This is the night every week when all the local hackers get together and have a good time. To break the mythos, Seattle hackers at least are very social people. We might not see each other for months on end, but when we get together, itâs like we just saw each other yesterday.
Subverting expectations seems to be a big part of the hacker identity. How do you personally define the term âhackerâ?
Anyone who is interested in taking the confines of anybody elseâs technology and expanding upon that by doing things the original author didnât intend, or didnât concept. Sometimes that comes in the form of violating the security thereof. But itâs not always being the bad guy. Sometimes itâs just being clever.
Hackers in Seattle all seem to party like rock stars. Why do you think that is?
A lot of the other hacker cultures throughout the country are very reserved and very tight-knit, and I think thatâs just a facet of stereotypical hackers. In Seattle, the weather and work schedules part of being a hacker and having that mentality is breaking the mold of whatâs expected of you. So the Seattle hackers have gone out and gotten as wild as possible, as social as possible, and staked their claim in the city.
Are these folks you first met IRL (âin real life,â for any non-geeks readers), or did you meet them in the ones and zeros, so to speak?
Half of them I met in person, just from living in the city. Half I met online before moving to Seattle. Some of them are professional contacts. A lot of the people that come here, for instance, are people Iâd read about or heard about before I met them.
Howâand whyâdid you become a hacker?
I moved over to Germany from Michigan at the age of seven, after my father passed away. My mother was working in the Civil Service, and we relocated to Germany because my brother was enlisted Air Force. We were living off-base so we werenât exposed to a whole lot of Americans, and I didnât speak German. To keep me busy, my mother bought me my first computerâa Commodore. I bought magazines and books and sat around at home and learning to program. At one of the computer stores I would go to in Germany, the guy spoke a bit of English, and he asked me if Iâd ever been online. He introduced me to modems, and I used to get online and go to the BBSs [Bulletin Board Services] that he recommended.
When was this?
Mustâve ben â85, â86.
So, you were like Matthew Broderick in that movie War Games? Did you ever accidentally decrypt any nuclear warheads?
Nothing that interesting. There was this billboard system that was mostly in German, but an area was in English. And most of the posts came from people on military bases who were posting in English. The idea of piracy wasnât as prevalent as it was now, so I started out as sort of a wares runner. Because I could get on one BBS and download software from there, and get credit to get other stuff I didnât have.
What do you do for a living?
I do computer security; break-and-enter work. Itâs kind of a hobby, I grew up doing this, and eventually someone said, âWeâll give you a paycheck for doing that.â
Whatâs a project or a hack that youâre especially proud of? That is, one that you wonât have to kill me after telling me about itâŚ
Obviously, Iâm not going to talk about anything illicit, but one thing that was amusingâback in 2000, Radio Shack had this little USB device called the CueCat, that was used for reading bar codes. So we would take online data and encrypt it using strong encryption, and convert that encryption to bar codes, and print it out in multi-level format so you could fax it to other people and they could read it with the CueCat, and they would have a physical hard copy of the crypted data in bar code format that you could read in on the computer, so you could fax encrypted data instead of emailing it.
I am nodding vigorously, as if I totally understand everything you just said. Do you live on the Hill?
I currently live in Belltown. If you have to walk home at night after partying, itâs always nice to walk downhill. I used to stay up here and go out in Belltown, and walking uphill at the end of the night is a lot less fun.
More CHS Crow:
Marguerite Kennedy is a freelance writer, semi-professional thumb wrestler, and recovering New Yorker who currently resides on Capitol Hill. She blogs at www.marguerite-aville.com, and does that other thing @tweetmarguerite.