Defying the head halter.
Originally uploaded by Kamala Dolphin-Kingsley

CHS pal realtor Marlow Harris posts about Sunday’s St. Francis of Assisi pet blessing:

On Sunday, October 4th, the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi Pet Blessing will be at 12:30 p.m. on the front lawn of St. Joseph Church at 700 18th Ave. E.

• CHS comments are a great source of scuttlebut: Esmeralda closed and will be replaced (says commenter kelseyed) by a Cantonese joint with the working title “Chungee’s Drink ‘n Eat”
• Plum begins serving weekend brunch – available 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. – myself I’m eager to try the “Mayan Blue Corn Pancakes topped with Jalapeno Scramble and Avocados served on a bed of Mixed Greens with Fire-roasted Fresh Salsa”

---

• Tamara Murphy is not anything but clear eyed about opening Terra Plata: “You do restaurants because you love them. Nobody can make money off of one”
• Crush, Poppy, Spinasse, and Rover’s all on Seattle Metropolitan’s Top 10 List of 2009 Best Restaurants (only one of these would make my list this year) 
• Jonathan Kauffman outs Kimchi Bistro and Dom Polski as “Top 5 Hidden Restaurants”  
• Healeo (CHS sponsor) nabs star raw food chef Adam Lewis (try the Eggplant Lasagna – you won’t be sorry)
• Faire is not the only  local biz backing Pete Holmes – count Derschang a Holmes supporter as well
• Cornichon’s initial impression of Chow is thumbs down
• Don’t miss this interview with Spinasse’s Jason Stratton where he mentions dropping by the Bottleneck Lounge for Top Chef viewing (CHS sponsor and home of the October CHS meetup) 

Anybody want to share your poem online? Ceremony starts at 4 PM.

Yup, the big Sonic Boom neon rocket ship is gone. We first told you about Sonic Boom’s move from 15th Ave to Melrose back in June. Sign in Sonic Boom’s window says the new shop will open November 7. Looks like the rocket has already made the move.

The CHS community calendar for October is already full of stuff to do — we’re adding two more events to the list.

• On Wednesday morning, October 14th, we’re switching things up and partying with the morning people. Join CHS at a special edition of HEALEO and Phyzz Yoga’s morning stretch sessions. For $9, you’ll get a yoga morning class, a smoothie and CHS will teach you the special downward crow pose. Fun starts at 9 AM.
• The next Tuesday, we return to our wicked ways with a CHS happy hour at east-slope Cap Hill watering hole, the Bottleneck Lounge.

  We’ll also be mixing it up with the good people of the Central District News. For this evening of inter-neighborhood diplomacy, the Bneck is offering CHS and CDN neighbors special happy hour deals. See you October 20th starting at 5 PM.

---

In the meantime, here are some of the things going on around Capitol Hill this weekend:

Saturday October 03 2009
09:00 AM – 05:30 PM	SLICE Day-Long Co-op 101 Workshop SLICE: Strengthening Local Independent Co-ops Everywhere is a day-long workshop on cooperative basics for nascent and existing co-ops and folks who want… (more)
09:30 AM – 01:00 PM	Seattle Film Institute Open House & Free Workshop Seattle Film Institute Free 3D Video Workshop–9:30AM-11:00AM; Open House for Fall Classes–11:00AM-1:00PM. Classes in Film/Video/Documentary Production;… (more)
10:00 AM – 04:00 PM	Chris Jordan: Running the Numbers – NEW EXHIBIT A look at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. This exhibit visually examines the vast and bizarre measures of our society,… (more)
04:00 PM – 05:00 PM	16th & Howell Park Groundbreaking Ceremony Groundbreaking Ceremony & Poetry Reading Join in! Bring a 3 x 5 card with your favoirte word or line from a poem or play to add to the community poetry… (more)

The New Generation of America Independent film-makers is growing, if only by means of incestuous interconnections. “The Mountain, The River, and The Road,” (Oct. 2 at 7 pm) the opening night film at the Northwest Film Forum’s Local Sightings Festival (Oct. 2-7) looks and feels like a West Coast version of “Mutual Appreciation” or “Hannah Takes the Stairs,” with the decadent urban grime of those pictures replaced by the airy mountains, clean flowing rivers, and open roads of the Northwest.

Although it is director Michael Harring’s first feature, it is well-pedigreed by virtue of its cast. Justin Rice, who is so familiar from Andrew Bujalski’s “Mutual Appreciation” that this seems like a sequel, continues to exploit his natural persona of one who is dull on the outside but interesting on the inside. As his sidekick who abandons him at the beginning of their road trip, Joe Swanberg, writer/director/cinematographer of “Hannah Takes the Stairs,” anchors the film with his quiet intelligence. Tipper Newton, the love interest, had a featured role in “Hannah Takes the Stairs,” and has recently completed her own short film with Swanberg.

Just as the participation of Mark Duplass helped draw national attention to Lynn Shelton’s “Humpday,” Rice, Swanberg, and Newton’s contributions to “The Mountain, the River, and The Road” should be a further push toward getting Seattle wired into the national community of independent film-makers.

Documentaries about eccentrics are often exploitive things that play on the viewers’ sense of superiority to the on-screen subjects, Not so “American Collectors,” (Oct. 5 at 7 pm) which respects the obsessions of those afflicted with “More-itis” without denying the entertainment value of entering the private worlds of borderline maniacs. 

From a relatively tasteful collection of handcrafted purses to the near-catastrophic proliferation of AOL promotional discs, directors Bob Ridgley and Terri Krantz offer a fast-paced romp through the bedrooms and garages of our most single-minded citizens. We meet a young woman who feeds all her quarters into gumball machines as if they were slot machines and an old woman who still delights in playing with her Barbie dolls. One of the most articulate subjects explains that by collecting the toys he owned as a child he can trigger lost memories, while a guy who boasts the world’s most complete collection of Duran Duran posters is on the edge of tears as he tries to communicate just how far this band has gone to defining his own life.

In addition to the excellent interviews, the film is a wealth of visual delight. Hundreds of bobble-headed dolls shimmy and shake to generic metal music. A theme-park for artifacts from science fiction movies of the fifties takes up residency in a donut shop. Finally, the sight of 100 idle tractors on a plot of unbroken land is a once-in-a-lifetime vision of displaced consumerism gone wild.

Too many documentarians use the medium to express their own outrage. In “River Ways,” (Oct. 6 at 7pm) director Colin Stryker leaves the editorializing to his subjects, refusing to put a personal slant on the issue of whether or not the four dams on the Snake River in Eastern Washington should be removed to restore endangered salmon runs. The result is a provocative outburst of dissatisfaction with a situation that cannot help one person without hurting another. The conflict between fishing and farming interests is both timely and timeless, harkening back to the cattle wars between the ranchers and farmers and looking ahead to the showdown between industry and environmentalists.

Stryker records the death rattle of American individualism in his interviews with these sons of the pioneers who can no longer make their home on the range. He also shows the continuing struggle of native Americans to hold onto the fishing rights promised them in treaties with the government. From Frank Sutterlict, a stoic fisherman caught between white racism and tribal law, to Ben Barstow, a wheat farmer who would be out of business were he not subsidized by his wife’s parents, their voices tremble with anger and impotence as they fight their losing battles against a diminishing future.

You are unlikely to see a truer portrait of what America has been and what it is becoming.

Complete schedule of films: http://www.nwfilmforum.org/go/localsightings/schedule.html

We gave away two tickets to the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce’s benefit dinner Monday night at Poppy to one lucky CHS neighbor. Congratulations, neighbor Jennifer. Her entry was randomly selected from the CHS inbox. We asked neighbors signing up for the contest to answer one question: What kind of business is Capitol Hill missing? Here are a few of their answers:

• A hardware store in the north end!
• Capitol Hill desperately needs a hip boutique hotel.  A design in the line of Ace or the Nines in Portland, Opus in Vancouver, and Clift in San Francisco. Now that’s an idea! BOOM! Take that sucka’s!  :)

---

• I’d like to see a shoe store on the hill.  Yes, we have a few places that sell the occasional 80’s revival slouch boot, and there are a couple options for sports shoes, but I’d like to see a shoe only store along the lines of Market Street Shoes, Shoefly, etc. In general, I’d like to see more stores acknowledge that not everyone on the hill is a 21 year old hipster barista.  There are plenty of places to eat, but I think the demographic is actually a little older and more professional than the retail core would suggest.
• Capitol Hill desperately needs a business in the business of making sure places like NWFF do not close!
• Capitol Hill could use a couple of stylish but more importantly affordable housewares stores.  However, Capitol Hill desperately needs smaller retail footprints from its new development.  As these smaller storefronts get gobbled up by new development, we must retain small retail footprints that independent retailers can afford.
• I think that the Capitol hill area could use a bike share business. Like zip car but for bikes.
• HARDWARE STORE (got the surveys to prove it)

As for the Chamber’s dinner, we’re hearing that it’s sold-out. Neighbor Jennifer will have to let us know how it was.

Purple Mark
Originally uploaded by Siege N. Gin

On Saturday, community members and city officials will gather in a parking lot at 16th and Howell to celebrate the start of construction on a new Capitol Hill park.

Only one problem: Nobody knows what to call it.

According to Paula Hoff of Seattle Parks neither of the two upcoming Capitol Hill parks have official names yet. Her department will be putting out a call for names, Hoff said, probably on Monday.

But why wait for Monday. We like to keep CHS neighbors out in front of this kind of stuff. Let the community group think begin. Here are some of the ideas we kicked around last fall when the process started (and was supposed to end):

Summit at John An angled, sloped walkway separating a grassy grade and community garden plots. With skateboard element and picnic area	Howell at 16th A level turf area in the middle of the site, bordered by a collective garden to the north and a crushed rock plaza and allee to the south
Non-Person Candidates Summit Park (literal) John Park (bad idea) Paradise Park (neighbor suggested) Starbucks Park (too corporate but if they write a check)	Non-Person Candidates First Church Park (too religious) Group Health Park (too medical) Capitol Hill Park (too obvious)

We’ve attached the general rule set from the Parks Department for guidelines to follow. Here are a few highlights:

7.5.2. In naming a park or facility, the Committee will consider geographical location, historical or cultural significance, distinctive natural or geological features, and the wishes of the community in which it is located.

7.5.3. In naming community centers and other facilities, the committee will give considerable weight to the names that reflect the geographic location that gives identity to the community.

7.5.4. Parks and recreation facilities may be named for a person subject to the following conditions: the person must be deceased for a minimum of three years, and the person must have made a significant positive contribution to parks, recreation, or culture in the community without which the park/facility may not exist, or in which the individual’s contributions enhanced a program or facility in an extraordinary way.

The City will bear the cost of the plaque or monument indicating the name of the individual for whom the facility is named.

Neighborhood activist and CHS contributor Andrew Taylor also set us straight on one key aspect of park naming rules — the person doesn’t necessarily have to be dead to be honored:

Homer Harris Park (on 24th, near the YMCA) was named after a living person: Dr. Harris attended the naming ceremony a few years ago.

An anonymous donor gave a megabuck or so for the project. Dr. Harris (who died recently) was a revered local African-American athlete and doctor.

Nonetheless, the rule HAS been broken, so if you do want to campaign for a park named after a living, or recently dead, person, there is a precedent.

That opens things up for Purple Mark — who is very, very alive.

Some shots from last night’s party at Revival .  It drew a good size crowd, even though it was raining.