McGuire Who? / Riding by the Seat of My Pants
I figured out something this morning I cannot believe it literally took me a decade to register, about a residential high-rise in Belltown. It's a building nearly completed now, which I ride past on my bike southbound along 2nd Avenue after work every day. I've watched it go up over the past several months, and kept forgetting to look it up once I got to work or I got home.
It's on the corner of 2nd Ave and Wall St, and is the site of what used to be The McGuire (2001, 242 ft, 25 floors).
"Used to be," you might ask? Well, this morning I finally thought to try figuring out what the building standing there now is called, and it was kind of difficult because I had made a note on my phone of the "2506" address I saw on a doorway on 2nd Avenue, assuming it was the address to the building. Apparently not: the building's address is 210 Wall Street.
It took me quite a while to figure even that out, though. I hopped on Google Maps to get a Google Street View of the building to make sure I had not noted the address incorrectly. And then, just out of curiosity, I used Google Map Street View's nifty "history" feature, and I clicked all the way back to 2007, only to find . . . a rather similar high-rise standing there. In a photo from twelve years ago. What the shit?
For a few minutes I thought I was going crazy. 2014 shows a vacant lot on the site, which it continues to be through 2017; 2018 indicates the current building under construction. Could this be real? Is it possible Google Maps actually has data wrong and has photos from the wrong street in its historical data for the location? Or, is it actually possible that a Belltown high-rise was demolished and I actually had no idea?
Ding ding ding ding! I am amazed I knew nothing about this: The McGuire, nine years after construction in 2001, was deemed structurally unsound due to construction material defects and building mistakes, and it was indeed demolished by 2012. A 25-story building! In a neighborhood I have passed through regularly through all those years! How the fuck did I never notice a fucking 242-ft structure was slowly disappearing between 2011 and 2012? I suppose I was just too distracted by the massive number of other, much taller buildings being erected everywhere, which would make sense and is at least kind of understandable.
Still. That's a building of striking proportion to be demolished (which was, apparently, done floor by floor). It occurred to me that it must be the tallest building ever demolished in Seattle -- and, according to this Wikipedia list of tallest voluntarily demolished buildings around the world, it is indeed the solitary building from Seattle included (not that it means much, but on that list of buildings from around the world, it's the 90th-tallest). The Wikipedia page (linked to in the previous paragraph) for The McGuire Apartments itself notes it as "Known for: Tallest building in Seattle to be demolished".
I still wanted to know the name of the new building on the site, though. This took me a while, as I found a lot of news stories about plans for development -- including this one with a nice artist's rendering of the completed, three-tiered structure -- but those were all too old to have an official building name. I finally found the Emporis.com page for it, though. The building's name? The incredibly creative "Second and Wall."
Interestingly, the new structure has one fewer floors, at 24, but is still higher in feet: 255. It's 13 feet taller than the high-rise it replaced. I feel bad for all the businesses, and especially the residents, who were forced to vacate the building, which was not even a decade old, when it was decided it was more cost effective to demolish the whole thing rather than retrofit it.
All of this stuff is massively fascinating to me, as you can plainly see, which makes it all the more remarkable to me that an entire decade went by without me knowing anything whatsoever about it.
As for my evening last night, when I found out I would not be going to a wine tasting mixer at Total Wine & More as originally planned, I decided to shake up my tentative movie-going plans I had for the weekend and see one of them yesterday -- being the Thursday before published opening date of a movie that big, I knew there would be options for Tarantino's latest, Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood.
The showtimes at Pacific Place were rather inconvenient for me: 4pm was too early; 7pm too late -- combined with trailers, this movie would let out at minimum three hours after listed showtime. I did not want to be just leaving the theatre at 10pm. Luckily, AMC is also playing it at their 10-screen multiplex that used to be Sundance Cinemas (that used to be Landmark Theatres' The Metro) in the U District at 5pm, and I had ridden my bike to work, so that was perfect.
I left ten minutes early at 4:20 just to give myself enough time to ride all the way up there comfortably. I used the bathroom as soon as I arrived at 4:58, and the trailers were just beginning when I sat in my seat. This was one of the smaller theaters, and there were maybe six other people in there. That's probably less a reflection of how well the movie will do potentially, than a reflection of it being right at 5pm on a Thursday, the day before published release date, no less.
And you can read the review for my many thoughts on the film. I gave it a solid B. Other people are regarding it kind of as a masterpiece. I don't think I'll ever go that far, slavish attention to detail and unparalleled intentionality notwithstanding.
For me, the moment of the whole evening that stands out the most happened right when I left the theatre. I got back to my bike, locked at a bike rack, and it took me a minute even to believe what I was seeing. My seat was gone.
Also: there were other bikes around, none of them with missing seats. What the fuck? I have no idea how accurate he is, but this morning Scott told me there are thieves who go around swiping parts from bikes as part of organized orders. Like a thieving business. Who knows? It could be that; it could be someone just thought it would be fun to fuck with some random anonymous stranger, and I won that lottery. I can tell you this much: I spent about a minute contemplating the seat still on the bike locked up next to mine, and I realized for the first time how easy it would be just to take it. If one of us had to be robbed today, why not make it that random stranger? But, I decided to be a better person and not pass on the shit luck. I bet you anything I had a far healthier emotional reaction -- as in: "Well, whatever, shit happens" -- than whoever owns that other bike would. I didn't let it ruin my day, so why not ensure that neither of us had a ruined day? I'm such a hero!
God knows how much I'll have to pay for a new seat, though. I just did a search online and have realized, okay, a seat will run me about twenty bucks -- but the frame part that attaches to the seat and slides inside the pole in the main frame? A seat post, I guess it's called. I'll have to double check but I think that's gone too. It looks like that will run me another ten. Hopefully I can get both at Big 5 Sporting Goods, which Shobhit had suggested over text last night and I could not believe I had not already thought about -- he gets an employee discount. Maybe it'll all only cost me $25! Hey, ever dollar counts.
Anyway. I had to think about how I was going to get home. Carry the bike on a bus? I decided pretty quickly I would just ride it, as I was still guaranteed to get back home quickest that way. Half an hour of riding mostly up hill without ever being able to sit down is a different experience. I suppose I should take that back; maybe three or four times, I did lean back far enough to sit just very briefly on the rack that's over my back wheel.
I've had this bike since my birthday in 2008, when Shobhit bought it for me as a gift. I've had it 11 years, and it's become quite the FrankenBike in that time: I've had to have brake pads replaced (standard wear in that case); I once had to get the pedals replaced because when the parking space in our building's garage was open some asshole pulled their car too far into my bike and bent the pedal all out of shape; four years ago this month someone actually swiped the back wheel from right inside that same garage. I started locking it up much more securely, with the bike lock threaded through the back wheel as well as the frame, after that -- no matter where I took it. It never occurred to me to make sure the seat was locked up as well. Is that even possible? I'll have to see once I get a new seat again. Although really, odds are this won't specifically happen to me again, at least not soon. If I can easily thread the seat into the locking of the bike too, though, I will.
So anyway, I took the bus to work today. I'll walk home. It's just as well; it's warm today -- I even came to work in shorts, just as I did on Monday -- and I have a library book to read. I can make a good dent in it while walking to the library on Capitol Hill, where I already have a Toni Morrison book ready to check out.
Oh I almost forgot. You know what time Shobhit got back home last night from his gig as an extra on a commercial shoot? 4:45 a.m.! Holy shit. I was sound asleep when he got home, and still was even when my own alarm went off at 5:18 -- so sound asleep, in fact, that it pulled me out of rather deep sleep and it took me a while to fully awaken and stop being groggy, which is rare for me. I usually just wake right up.
Shobhit stirred a bit with my moving around, and that was when he told me what time he had gotten back. "Oh my god!" I said. Then he said he was having trouble falling asleep, which was a perception on his part because he was literally snoring not five minutes before. He then had to get out of bed by about 6:15 to make it to an early shift at Big 5. He has work as an extra on the same shoot again this evening, and it is likely to go well into the late night again.
He started at 5pm yesterday, so he should make a pretty good chunk of change from this. Totally worth doing, and I bet he enjoyed it more than his regular jobs. It would be nice if he could get local gigs like this on more consistent basis. If he did, he could perhaps eke out an existence at least somewhat comparable to the life he led in L.A. And I think he would enjoy that, actually.
[posted 12:22 pm]