Don’t forget, the Capitol Hill block parties continue Saturday with the second annual Summit Ave Block Party. You’ll find bands, vendors, mini skate ramp, free tattoos, burlesque, barbecue, and more. Here’s our coverage from last year’s party. Free. 11a – 9:30p.
2012’s Summit party (Image: @bluedream42)
For more weekend things to do — including the big Seattle Street Food Festival on 11th Ave — check out the latest CHS On the List.
Ok, so it ends at 9:30 so I’m guessing muggings will begin around 9:45. I will pencil that in on my schedule. Not the muggings but to be home and curled up with my cat in front of the tv by 9:30. ;D
More like the ‘Summit Inn masturbatory nepotism festival’.
NO ONE on this street was asked to be involved in any way if they were over the age of 35, weren’t on Facebook and didn’t live in the Summit Inn. Several bands that live on this street that would’ve liked to have been involved weren’t even aware that there was a block party until less than a week out and the people ‘running’ it posted half-assed invitation on buildings the day BEFORE the event. The organizers had plenty of time and energy for “fundraising parties’ and making “Special edition, 2-disk, Summit BP2013” music CD’s but no one could walk down the block and ask if any of the actual NEIGHBORS and PEOPLE WHO LIVE HERE want to be involved or have any input? No one who was here last night actively trashing and openly disrespecting this strip lived here.
That wasn’t a Block Party in the way one imagines it; neighbors getting together to get to know each other, people coming together to make BBQ and listen to music.
It was a Capitol Hill Block Party in microcosm; nasty crusties throwing garbage everywhere, everyone’s favorite ‘personalities’ from the Highline\Comet scene standing in groups chugging cheap beer and a ton of disrespectful idiots and awful performers (though the earlier bands were pretty good) chasing the people who actually live here to other parts of the city for the day.
This wasn’t a block party, but a bunch of shallow hipsters throwing a private party and shoving it into the rest of the blocks face.
Here’s an idea: Instead of ONLY asking your friends and music contacts to come by and trash everything, why not actually try to get the people who live here involved?
I hear the guys across from the Morris make a mean BBQ and some of the cats in the weird brown building make a mean Spodie.
I sincerely hope the people at the Summit Inn are too damn busy being drunk and jobless to remember to get the permission to do this next year, as some of us would actually like to be involved and have some input.
Captain Buzzkill detected.
Let me know which street you live on so I can invite 300 of my friends to loudly and drunkenly crash your street with no notice or warning. Did you want to be a part of it? Too bad.
We’ll pretend it’s to bring the neighborhood together while my friends piss and dump beer and garbage all over your property.
And don’t worry! We’ll tell you several times that we’ll clean up the mess afterwards, but we’re really only going to clean in front of buildings with people we know in them.
And we’ll totally be back next year!
It is the SECOND annual Summit Block Party. I gave the manager of your building a stack of fliers weeks before the event. A grip of ppl from the block who we’re surprised the day of were still grateful and decided to have fun. Lighten up man! Its a BLOCK PARTY!
There was a porta potty- which aint cheep! Which building do you live in? I would much rather recieve personal feed back than generalizing hate rants over a public forum. You want to be involved? Lets start by opening a personal dialog. feel free to email me at [email protected]. This is a learning experience for me- so please! Let me know how I can improve things for next year.
This makes me laugh. Maybe you should actually come to the event and talk to people about your concerns instead of cowardly whining about it behind the privacy of your computer screen. Like Adair said, let’s open a dialogue.
Also, nepotism? You might want to double check definitions before you misuse words and make yourself look like a total idiot.
I think in this context we could all derive the meaning of the word and it wasn’t misused. Yes, neoptism is meant to be exclusive for blood relatives but in this case it was being used to illustrate the favoritism of the residents of the summit inn family.
Hi. I’m Elizabeth and I live at the Summit!
I understand that there were problems created by the Summit Bloc, but problems like noise and crowd control are inherent in any sort of large celebration.
As far as I’m aware, the intent of the Summit Bloc was to allow local artists to showcase their music, and to provide an option of free entertainment to the locals. Whereas other larger bloc parties charge an arm and a leg to import music from outside Seattle. This was something that was made by locals to be accessible to locals, and any pains (hopefully growing pains) at the very least come only once a year.
With that being said, I want to bring to attention to the fact that this was organized by Adair. She is an artist living at the Summit, and is only ONE person. She has her own life/obligations aside from Bloc Party and she is not (as far as I’m aware) formally trained in festival coordination. She organized it free of charge and almost completely independently for the sake of the community. That is a big job for one person, and it’s only her second time. She doesn’t know EVERYBODY on the block and the intricacies of their lives. I live at the Summit and when I tried to get some acts on the bill she had to say no because it was full, so I can personally attest it was not favortism. However if you don’t know her already now is a good chance to contact her ([email protected]), and you’re way ahead of the game for next year!
Also from my experience, she is a go-getter, she tackles projects head-on. If she winds up making a mistake in the process, she tackles that head-on too. So any problems in the future, or suggestions for the coming years she will probably take seriously and do her best to implement. You just have to grab her long enough to talk to her; she’s really busy. Additionally, as a young person, I’m sure it’s just as hard for her to understand the perks of door-to-door as it is for someone in an older generation to adopt facebook. Unfortunately in this day and age, facebook is now a staple for social media/advertising and is also one of the most accessible options for someone with a busy schedule. I’m sorry to hear anyone was left out because of and hopefully we can take measures to prevent that next year.
On another note, anyone who has any personal problems with the Summit: I don’t know who you’ve been talking to.. but Lee & Summers are the managers. They are old fashioned and AMAZING people who will take the time out to work with you so long as you speak to them with respect and courtesy. Take the time out to talk to them face to face, they’re always around during the day–just ask one of the tenants to grab them for you! I’ve seen Lee spend DAYS thinking of a resolution to problems with neighbors. He really cares about making sure everyone is happy. Summer is great at implementing ideas. I don’t know who you’ve been complaining to about our problems, but just like at any other building if you don’t speak directly to the management we can’t ensure the problem will get around to being fixed. So in the future, just find them!
I’m personally really glad that you took the time out to let us know how you felt about how this year went. I think that any feedback–good or bad is awesome. We can’t improve on the Bloc Party any other way. I agree more planning and outreach might have made the event more successful!! There was definitely space for more vendors, and perhaps time for non-musical intermission performances. In the upcoming years I would recommend coming down to the event, finding Adair and just telling her to her face if there are any problems (or compliments too!). You might even wind up enjoying the show in the meanwhile! Regardless; you know she’ll be there, face to face is always best, and I want see Adair being given a good talking to LOL. The whole point of the event was to meet your neighbors! Love ’em or hate ’em. They’re your neighbors!! Just come get to know us, we don’t bite hard!
Though I will admit, them actually pulling the plug at 9:30 as scheduled was a nice change from last year, despite all the drunks still staying on the street, blowing things up.
I’m pretty sure last year we were animate about ending it on time… actually I think it even ended earlier last year than it did this year. The rest of the rift raft was your typical Saturday night Summit ave hubub.. with maybe a little post block party high lingering. I don’t know about the ‘blowing stuff up’ part… I heard a big ‘bang!’ but I don’t know which building or street that came from… I can say though… that its been 4th of July every night on/around Summit since 4th of July… Sometimes… I wonder if you forget where you live? The 1700 block of Summit has been the way its been for years… actually… dare i even say its even more tame than 2 years ago? anyhooo- I think I’m finished with this public forum. All the best, Adair.
Hi- I’m Adair. I organized the block party. I want to apologize if you or anyone felt left out- that wasn’t my intention at all. I don’t have much experience organizing events like this so if the Summit Block Party fell short of your expectations I hope that I can do better next year.
This was an awesome event. Everyone who wanted to be involved had an easy time reaching out to you. Thank you for all of you hard work! Everyone had a great time. I saw dozens of people from homes around the block flock and party and drink with us. There was a palpable sense of community. And only people 35 and under in this shit? I can think of dozens of people in the arts who have decades of experience and helped out with/performed at this. Clearly this person did not even attend the event. Honestly, when you throw such a successful event, there will always be people who wish they could have grabbed ahold of your coattails and been involved. Oh well. Too late for them. They’ll just have to spend a little more time complaining about it. Maybe next year!
Okay, let’s get a few things straight here:
1. I live on Summit, and I was there at the “Block Party” for several hours. When I wanted to enter or exit my building I had to practically kick my way through because people decided to use our front steps as bleachers and didn’t leave enough space for people to walk (even though my building manager posted several signs asking them to). And yes, as one of the other commentors stated, most of them were hipster/crusty assholes who acted as though I was inconvenienceing them by wanting to use the goddamn stairs.
2.When I ran into a friend of mine he asked why my band wasn’t playing. I told him it was becuase no one asked us and I didn’t even know this was happening until about a week and a half ago. In my building alone there are residents that represent 4 different bands, that all gig locally and/or tour, release recorded music, have small to medium sized fanbases, have merch, have gotten written up in local publications and websites, etc, and none of us were asked to be a part of this. There are several working artists as well that were not invited to take part. Anyone who didn’t get a facebook invite found out when “invitations” were distributed (and it was the day before when a handful of them were taped to our front door, no matter how many posters were put up in other places). So yes, community involvement was very limited.
3. The street did get trashed. The manager of my building was the only one I saw doing any cleaning after the event. When I got up to go the work the next morning it was the same. As a matter of fact I’m pretty sure I saw a folding table with a bunch of junk on it this morning, 2 days later, in front of the summit inn.
4. The idea that “you live on Summit, so you should expect people to be loud and drunk at all hours of the day and night” is just another way of saying you don’t care. Yeah, I know how it is on this block, that doesn’t mean we should all be indifferent about making it worse. We should all be considerate of our neighbors regardless of where we live because, after all, isn’t that part of the spirit of community that a block party is supposed to represent?
So in conclusion, yeah, a bunch of people seemed to have a good time. A bunch of other people who actually live here were excluded, disregarded, inconvenienced, treated rudely by crusty/hipster douchebags, and had to deal with a bunch of bullshit they had no control over. I’m not saying this to drag anyone down, I’m saying it because these are statements of fact.
Hey Buddy! I just want to say one thing. FU%$$(*&@!$+?>:*&*&&^%#@!@$%)((_+?>>:+_)(*&&^^C*&^#”:+!!@UUUU!!! …We here to STAY! so you better get use to it.
-LOL….Looser!
That’s the level of intelligence and eloquence the rest of the street has come to expect from the summit inn. Good job. By the way, looser than what? Have fun with your bed bugs.
I wasn’t there, but if T.F.T.’s comment is indicative of the kind of people that were there, then all the criticism is certainly warranted.
This whole thread is pretty and childish and passive agressive wwe live across the street you. Could come over and talk to us the old fashioed way but shit talking on the internet anonymously that’s weak
Thank God I don’t live across from you.
To my knowledge trying to politely ask the people drinking in front of your building to have some respect for their neighbors results in nothing, so I don’t actually see the point in “coming over and talk to you the old fashioed way”.
You don’t show anyone on the street any respect. Why should we return the favor?
Whining on a forum might be more effective than actually talking to who ever it is that’s bothering you. I live at the summit and didn’t have anything to do with the block party and feel like you whoever you are keep targeting the people who live in my building by bad mouthing people on the web its super passive aggressive maybe the internet can solve the problem for you but I doubt it
I used to live in the pictured building. It had cockroaches, a violent, alcoholic landlord, and a halfway house across the street. Have things changed there?
Hi. The building pictured in the post is not heavily involved with the direct organization of the event. Though there were wonderful participants! From what I have witnessed the manager is very responsible, dutiful, takes care of problems immediately, hands-on and takes a personal/direct approach with the tenants. There have been no cockroaches when I have entered the building in my months of being around this area and any other problems seem to be taken care of in a timely fashion.
I want to remind people that this event was to bring people together. There was a positive energy on the day of the event, and though there may have been some problems that arose as a result of.. I personally think it’s a small price to pay for one public event to send off our Summer with. This post wasn’t for the sake of targeting any specific building or groups of people. It was to appreciate a free event thrown for the amazingly talented people on this block and associated with this block. Some of us–like many others in this economy–can not afford to go to $40 festivals, and make the best of what we have through events like these. This is a general response and not targeted at Gern. I notice a lot of finger pointing on this post and quite frankly I really don’t see the fucking point. Instead of telling each other what we’re doing wrong, why don’t we focus on what we can do better next year.
Sincerely, Elizabeth.