facades

some rumors prove gloriously valid!

 

other rumors remain dubious.

mobile monday

 

a sour greeting for a late-night session with a full punchcard. farewell nook.

you know what's cute? trying to explain to your mamabear at 4am the likelihood of a tsunami sweeping across the pacific while seattle sleeps will be greatly impeded by sixty-some odd miles of mountainous peninsula.

crew neck available at 35th north

 

overheard at vita

I never really sit downstairs at Vita, as it’s rather loud. But tonight seemed like a perfect night to try it out & watch bundled up Seattlites traipse around in the new snowfall. Upstairs they hunch over their laptops & books; downstairs they chatter. Perfect for one of my favorite guilty pasttimes, overhearing snippets of random conversations, largely without context.

Here are my findings: Whoa! Quite a lot of Capitol Hill have traveled abroad. Or at least, prefers that to be the focal point of their coffee date conversations.

true story: i just found this lone fortune by the window ledge. any one of these travelers could have left it!

 

So here’s some gems from the loudest speakers of a day’s worth of tables, the voices which carry even above the clank & clatter of the espresso machines.

• On not being able to name the country of origin of his African heritage: “People have such a narrow view of what ‘African’ is.”

• “I saw Cat Power standing up one time & it was awful. Just standing up.”

• “Well, they’re going to throw a party for us. They’re going to have to. They have to. They will.”

• “Well, you have a week to make your presence known.”

• “I tell them to stop arguing always, but it’s totally futile. He’s always going to keep spreading stupid around.”

• On Oprah: “& she’s definitely beefy… not that there’s anything wrong with that. But it just keeps getting worse, her hair, her clothing. It’s like her people are running around like ‘I don’t know what to do with her! I don’t know! Just wrap her in cotton!'”

• “Making eyes is my favorite thing to do.”

• About man’s large duffel: “Do you have goodies in there?? Is there a unicorn & pie in there?”

• “You didn’t tell me Kesha was playing Key Arena last night. Nobody told me!”

“I want to buy her album. But I have all the songs already.”

• “I’ve been here now for 3 months & I keep thinking, now I can hop on a bus, & go there, or there. Or Germany.”

• An SU student’s ramblings regarding a recent trip:

“Then the bitch drove us out to the desert.”

“This African safari dude got us some…I don’t know what it was, but damn. ‘Hi, my name is Ali.’ That’s all the English he could say.”

“All I knew of Africa was like, Casablanca & Aladdin.”

• “She filled me in on the secret: girls like being liked!”

• “We stayed in Istanbul for five days, & every day ordered progressively more food. On the last day, the dude was like, ‘Where you from?’ We were like, ‘Dude, we’re from California!’ So he was like ‘Don’t you have mussels there?’ & we were like ‘Yeah, in Venice Beach!’”

• “In Granada, they have really really cheap beer and tapas.”

“What’s that?”

“Tapas is any dish you eat in the daytime.”

• “At one point I felt I knew more gay guys than I did girls. Goddamnit!”

• “I was twenty one for three months, maybe, if that.”

• “Nice, how long have you guys been together?”

“Three months, today!”

“Then what the hell are you doing here with me?”

I’ve been here far too long, consumed far too much coffee. No one’s safe from these ears on Capitol Hill! (Except perhaps those who speak at a reasonable level.) Goodnight! Tonight let’s get all buried in this inch or two of snow.

PSA: quit it with the damn phone

I promised I’d write this somewhat intoxicated (?) so here goes: Your phone makes you infinitely more unattractive.

Cool man, you got that cute new text message from that cute girl/boy/job/horoscope hotline/bandmate/talent scout/one night stand/roommate/roommates’ little sibling/coworker/petsitter/neighbor/landlord/pet/blogger/whocaresman, aren’t you here to be with your friends?

That guy in the bar stool? That’s your friend. You came to meet up with someone/anyone. I’ve worked in the service industry long enough to know that people can’t seem to sit alone at a table without a book or a goddamn phone, but when you’re with others? More than just rude, but a perpetuating system of loneliness. Let it go. Be wherever you are, with whoever you’re with, & so forth. Seeing a row of bar stools illuminated by the lights off their dim mobile phone screens is debilitating. What cool technology! What sad humanity.

I get it, sure. A quick message here or there, yeah. “I’m at this bar! Come meet up!” But when you spend the night hunched over a 3×2″ screen, perhaps all the liquor in the world won’t salvage your evening.

new official captothehill necklace!

This is a real necklace that Anthropologie is currently selling. At first I thought it was whimsical, sure. I remember stringing these together during Girl Scouts–that killed like a half hour of busy work. Then you see Anthro is hawking this office supply ornamentation for $168. Are you paying for materials, labor, or nostalgia?

So fuck it. I have a bag of paper clips (& they’re gold! Fancy!) & a few rolls of electric tape in only the most adorable tones. So anyone who wants the first official Captothehill merchandise, place your order below. I’m fairly certain this isn’t copyright infringement, as this design had to have been in some craft book in the mid 70s– but just in case, you can pay me in bourbon. It’s worth its weight in gold!

 

flickr friday

 

rodneysmartlowit @ flickr

be sure to upload your photos to captothehill’s flickr pool, to be scrounged through at the end of every week for your best hill moments.

friends

fiestas

your neighborhood

photobooth shots

mobile uploads

drawings

shows

glamour shots

memories, etc.

there’s a prize!

study nooks!

It’s midterm season! Which is mere weeks away from finals season, which is days from the whole recursive system again commencing. There are not enough nooks in this damn city for everyone to have a decent corner. There’s an endless array of coffeehouses, but with expanding options comes excessive nitpicking. I always ultimately decide on the Cal Anderson Vivace — only to again woefully realize that utopian study haven has long since been plowed over, through, under, & out.

So where to tuck yourself away? By far, the coziest coffeehouse is Fremont Coffee (it’s a house!), & of course the University District is chock full of study nooks (Suzzalo reading room! Allegro! Le Fournil!); but perhaps that’s for another investigation.

The big 5 on Capitol Hill seem to be:

• Bauhaus Books & Coffee
• Caffé Vita
• Victrola
• Stumptown
• Online Coffee

But let’s mull over some other potential spaces. Here’s some I’ve bunkered down in & gave merit to based on reliability of internet, strength of coffee, & late hours. Tell me, how the hell Seattle not have an allnight coffee house? Even fucking Olympia does (it’s owned by gothic orthodontists nonetheless!)

+10…

sunbreak

Despair not! Days like these are why we toil day in day out here under Seattle’s murky skies. It’s for those stray days that sneak in to lift the blanket of drear. It’s just the beginning of February. I saw my own shadow on the pavement today, smothered by bright golden light. So, here’s to another Seattle summertime. Because summer is in every moment the sun breaks.

flickr friday

photo by kyle johnson - kjten22 @ flickr

We’ll be posting some gems from Captothehill’s Flickr pool here every Friday, mostly for alliteration’s sake. So join, capture, upload, & show us Seattle through your lens.

$5 Cover: Seattle

Wonder no more what ever became of last year’s taping of a MTV project called $5 Cover: Seattle. It debuted last winter & was regaled heavily at a SIFF screening, though that may have more to do with emerging Seattle talent being showcased on any stage than the actual show itself. $5 Cover is now available in a series of 12 chopped up webisodes here.

Shot around the city, including some essential Capitol Hill spaces (Cairo, Oddfellows, Wildrose), beautifully shot performances can get a little smothered by the really hokey plot & even worse dialogue. When all of that production is scaled down a bit, there’s a few redeeming moments in there–but it’s more just a montage of recognizable faces & places that keep us watching. That, & Thee Emergency‘s Dita Vox is captivating both confidently on stage & vulnerably off.

Watch, enjoy, share, discuss, nap, celebrate Seattle however you can…