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First things first!
This was kind of the biggest news yesterday, which I did not notice until I was just about to get home on the bus after a very eventful evening full of last-minute-changed plans: I opened Twitter, and saw from the Capitol Hill Blog account that they had finally posted
their piece on Shobhit's Seattle City Council District 3 candidacy.
Before I read it, I really braced myself for anything possibly unflattering. I have long followed the guy who runs the Capitol Hill Blog, both on Twitter and regularly checking the blog itself for specific updates on things happening in the neighborhood, so as a rule I trust him. But, I don't think anyone can be faulted for being guarded about media coverage of any sort.
I was quite pleasantly surprised by the piece, and found it more than fair—hell, almost
generous in its coverage, and how Shobhit's quotes were chosen and presented. The only real downside is having this piece come out before his campaign website is live, which probably won't happen until next week at the soonest.
With some real trepidation, I checked this morning for any comments on the piece, as people can get really stupid in the comments on that blog (as they can anywhere; that of course is not unique to this). The first comment was somewhat refreshing:
An engineer is better than an ideologue. (And by the way, I agree. I think lots of people, including me, are thinking anyone would be better than Kshama Sawant. Shobhit's not going to be
unlocking the doors to City Hall to let in protesters, that protest being justified having been a little beside the point; there can be a fine line between protest and showboating.)
A single comment in reply (as of this writing anyway) did indicate that Shobhit really needs to upload something new to his socials, though:
Can’t figure out what I think about a candidate inviting the public to visit him in the hospital while he recovers from surgery. I’m sure he’s just trying to appear relatable or something, but oof, that’s cringey. It’s ok, dude. Rest up, put some clothes on and we can talk when you’re on your feet again.
He was really inviting hospital staff in that video, incidentally, not "the public." That said, if that's the most recent video, anyone who checks his socials is going to think he's still in the hospital. He needs to upload another one letting people know he's okay now, out of the hospital and ready to move on with the campaigning.
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I haven't gone to see a movie in the theater since I went to see
Linoleum—which I
liked a lot—last Thursday, and I had planned to go see another one after work yesterday.
That changed when I got a couple of texts midmorning from Claudia:
Hey I'm at my office till 5
I was reminded I had to come in last night
Claudia usualy works from home, at her house in Port Orchard, for the Washington Farmland Trust, but maybe once a week comes in to work at a roving desk at their office location, which—a thrilling detail to me—is located on the fifth floor of the Bullitt Center, the "world's greenest building" when it opened in 2013, and all of one block away from Shobhit's and my condo at The Braeburn.
We had made a plan for me to hang out with her after work on Thursday, March 23, with me meeting her at the office so I could come in and see it. Then she asked to shift it to the next day, which then had to be postponed indefinitely because of some issues with her son at school. "I have to be a mom tonight," she said, and I totally understood.
I simply tentatively switched the calendar event to the next Friday I thought might work, figuring I would follow up with her when the day got close. Well, that all changed yesterday when I easily switched up my plans due to her sudden availability and my other plans not involving anyone else.
So, I left work at 4:15, so I could catch the Monorail, take that to Westlake Center and transfer to Light Rail, and walk to the Bullitt Center from there.
I was walking through Cal Anderson Park, in the middle of texting Claudia that I was walking and what my ETA was, when suddenly somebody grabbed me, saying something to the effect of, "Who's this idiot?" That wasn't what he said. I can't remember what he said. It was something in that vein.
It scared the shit out of me. "Jesus
fucking Christ!" I shouted, and then I saw that it was Gabriel! Laughing his ass off.
He was with Tess. They are both on Spring Break, spending some quality time together, and apparently there was a nearby restaurant Tess was dying to go to. Some suchi place. This explained what the hell they were doing in Seattle. Gabriel does not come up from Federal Way all that often, and what the hell were the odds that I'd bump into him now? Actually, at that particular time on a weekday, not super low. Granted, had I not left work early, we would have missed each other by fifteen minutes.
Any other day, I would have stayed to chat longer, but I was beelining to meet Claudia at 5:00 when she got off work. We chatted long enough for me to find out why they were there, and for Gabriel to snap a photo.
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Even with the brief delay, I still beat the GPS on my phone's ETA of 4:59 by a couple of minutes. That's what it said when I got out of the Light Rail station, and then when I ran it again after walking away from Gabriel, it said . . . 4:58.
I stood outside the entrance to the Bullitt Center on Madison Street for a few minutes before Claudia came down to let me in. I fully intended to get an exterior shot from the other side of the building and then spaced it. I did take a picture of the entrance itself.
I took a guided tour of this building the very year it opened,
in 2013, before they even had any tenants yet, just one month shy of ten years ago now! It had also been
on day 6 of that year's Birth Week; this tour itself I was able to attend at the last minute and went by myself. Now, with Claudia working for a one of the building tenants, I got a quasi-private tour of one of the floors that would never be included in a guided tour.
That said, I'm sure there is access to areas no one would get otherwise on the guided tour as well, making them good companion experiences. When Alexia and I first started to really get to know each other and become better friends on our long walks during quarantine orders in the early days of the pandemic, we talked about the Bullitt Center a few times, and I have long advocated that we take one of their guided tours together once they are doing them again. I have no idea how long they've been back, but I saw yesterday a QR code for guided tours
now happening. I got pretty excited when I saw that, even though the Eventbrite page says tours cost $10 per person. That was practically nothing in my opinion, but Claudia was incredulous. "They should be free!" she said, or the money should go toward the Bullitt Center Foundation or something. I mean, I'm sure that if nothing else they have operating costs for these tours. Her boss was there and she actually said of the ten bucks, "Isn't that expensive?" I found this incredulous kind of odd actually. I'm happy to pay ten bucks. A Seatte Architecture Foundation tour, by contrast, can run between $25 and $30.
Anyway. Somewhat amusingly, the dedicated photo album I have for the 2013 guided tour had all of 18 shots in it. My
photo album for yesterday's visit has 35! Granted, some of those are of the ferry rides back from Port Orchard, but still, 26 of the shots were taken inside the Bullitt Center.
I will surely take plenty more when I finally take another guided tour, this time with Alexia. Hopefully sooner than later.
Note the photo above: that was taken at the top, sixth-floor landing of the so-called "Irresistible Stairs" (the infographic for which is seen in the photo at the very top of this post), designed to be irresistible for able-bodied people to take the stairs. That shot I got is now my favorite of any taken at the Bullitt Center, including the 2013 tour. They key differences here are both that it was a much nicer, mostly-sunny day yesterday than my visit in 2013 had been; and I was there with just one other person, offering me an unobstructed view fro which to get the shot—not a bunch of other tour-goers around me. (I have a shot or two from that same stairwell in 2013, but it doesn't look like we were taken any higher than the third floor.)
Claudia then took me to the fifth floor, where the Washington Farmland Trust desks are located, showing me around a little bit but largely letting me wander around on my own. She noted the bathrooms which she said "everyone loves," and I was indeed delighted to see that the two bathrooms are both labeled "all gender," even though only one of them has a urinal. I know this because I chose the bathroom on the right at first, tried to open the toilet stall door, and startled myself by realizing a woman was in there. Oops.
I suppose I shouldn't gender her without having asked her pronouns. (Not that I would do that with someone sitting on a public restroom toilet.) To be fair, in all likelihood, she was indeed a woman.
I just went into the other bathroom to use the toilet there. Both bathrooms also have a shower stall. I'll never really understand the appeal of showers at offices. I would only leave home without showering first if my life literally depended on it.
Anyway. When we were leaving the building, I said to Claudia, "Do you have other plans or are you still down with me riding the ferry with you?" I figured I would ride across with her on the vehicle ferry to Bremerton, then turn right back around on the Kitsap Transit Fast Ferry for passengers only.
The plan would have worked exactly that way except that she checked the ferry schedule at 5:23, the next ferry was at 5:30 which we'd never make, and the soonest ferry after that was not until 7:00. Just driving via Tacoma and the Narrows Bridge thus was going to get her home a full hour earlier than waiting for the next ferry. So, I rode with her in her truck as she did indeed drive down and around via Tacoma.
We stopped for gas in Fife. She said there was a tweaker pacing around inside the convenience store, buying a single Mike's Hard Lemonade with coins. She had talked about her and Dylan's house hunting a couple of years ago, when they ironically told the agent "anywhere but Port Orchard." They wound up buying a house in Port Orchard. For some reason I can't remember, in this conversation she mentioned Wild Waves and not being sure where that was; I told her it's in Federal Way, where a friend of mine (Gabriel) was born and raised and now lives. She told me a story of once being at a gas station in Federal Way, where a guy on a motorcycle rolled up to a gas pump, picked up the pump, huffed it, and then drove away. I thought this was hilarious and recounted it to Gabriel when we were talking on the phone as I rode the Fast Ferry from Bremerton back to Seattle. "Ironically," he said, "that guy didn't live ib Federal Way. He was just driving through." Probably. But we don't know for sure!
Claudia loves the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, things it's beautiful. She grew up in Colorado; I grew up here so it's less of a novelty to me. Still it's always fun to talk about the bridge's collapse in the forties. Claudia noted that big chunks of the bridge are still on the sea floor under the current bridges, which I never thought about. Although of course they would be.
We had some time to chat during the drive, and we covered a whole lot of ground, a huge amount of it about PCC and her lingering resentments regarding her ten years or so here, and also how much better her current job is for her. She admitted the health insurance is not quite as great, but feels like how much higher her salary is kind of weighs that out.
Once on the Olympic Peninsula side, she drove me directly to the Foot Ferry terminal in Port Orchard, aiming to make the 7:00 ferry, which we knew we'd only barely catch, if I caught it at all. I might have had to wait another half an hour, but in the end I made it, by literally one minute. And then I was the single passenger on that ferry across Sinclair Inlet to Bremerton, which was pretty fun. The boat crew of two were upstairs, so there was no need for me to wear a mask. I spent a lot of the ride on outside decks anyway.
I was pretty relieved to have caught that ferry. The next one, at 7:30, would never have made it to Bremerton in time for the 7:40 ferry, missing it by like two minutes. And the next Fast Ferry from Bremerton was not until 9:00. I lucked out there.
I had a secret hope that I would be the only passenger on the 7:40 Fast Ferry to Seattle, but, no such luck. On that boat, there were five other passengers. I wore a mask on that ride, which I had to speak through on the phone with Gabriel when he called shortly after the boat set sail. We chatted for the whole ride, and a few blocks after I disembarked. I even asked him to hold so I could get
this great shot of downtown from the ferry terminal, at just the right point at dusk to give the sky a deep blue color.
I lucked out with the timing of the #12 bus, which arrived within minutes of my reaching the stop, and thus I got a bus that took me to within two blocks of home, as opposed to having to walk half a mile from the Capitol Hill Light Rail Station again. And, just before I disembarked, I discovered that Capitol Hill Blog piece about Shobhit's candidacy, and thus my coverage of yesterday evening comes full circle.
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[posted 12:29 pm]
