My daughter’s school is having a fundraiser tonight and the theme is “The 60’s” ♒️✌🏻🧝♀️but they didn’t stipulate WHEN in the 60s.
MAGA made them sound so delicious I just had to try them!
The Long Winters were The Beatles of bands that practiced in the area south of Madison between 12th and 19th down to Yesler in the period 2001-2008. That is indisputable.
Inspired by an introspective deep dive @theironsnail did into Cowichan knitting I wanted to share some of the Coast Salish pieces I’ve collected.
When I was a kid my cousins, aunts and uncles all wore hats and sweaters they bought on Vancouver Is. in the early 1960s before I was born. I coveted that wool growing up because it felt like a badge of membership. We hiked the Chilkoot Trail as a family in 1976 and my older cousins all had these amazing hats, each with a different pattern, worn-in and battered by regular wear.
I inherited a hat from my cousin Tommy, who passed away, and I wore it with pride. Later, I inherited my dad’s hat, the one I most closely associated with our family style. I wanted a sweater too but they were closely guarded. I was a thrifter and always combed the racks at Goodwill looking carefully for the unmistakeable wool.
It took me years to learn that Cowichan knitting is one of the most duplicated, appropriated and ripped-off styles of native handiwork. The story of these sweaters could fill volumes, (and I have three, by Pricilla Gibson-Roberts, Margaret Meikle and Sylvia Olsen, all great resources), but suffice to say it’s a classic example of a specialized native craft made by a very specific tribe in Canada that was co-opted in a dozen ways, often by Canadian companies, misrepresented as “authentic” and sold worldwide. The style became a jumping-off point for a whole era of mid-century knitting, many home knitters working from Mary Maxim patterns that were whimsical interpretations and not appropriative at all. I have some of those sweaters too and I’ll show them next.
The dark side is that, starting in the 1970s there were also very well-made imitations, produced in Canada, marketed deceptively as “authentic,” popular in Japan and total cultural theft. Sweaters by Huak and Kanata, although often completely gorgeous garments that are hard to the untrained eye to distinguish from real and which are now themselves 40-50 years old were textbook cases of cultural appropriation that almost drove ACTUAL Cowichan knitting to extinction.
It took me years to learn how to tell the real from the fake and I’m very proud of these.
Sometimes I go down in the ravine at night just to hang out in the dark but I left the lights on in the house.
Here’s a nice example of how AI is improving our lives. You see, @youtube has flagged as “hate speech” an episode of The Omnibus Project where @whoiskenjennings and I spent an hour debunking the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
They offered an opportunity to appeal by clicking the “appeal” button with no context, but rejected my appeal within six hours, with no explanation given. Now they have locked our account from posting anything until June 6th.
The most charitable excuse is that YouTube is using AI for content moderation (having fired all the kids who used to do it half-manually), and the “appeal” runs through the AI a second time. A less charitable explanation is that somewhere in the chain of custody was one Gen Z intern fielding fifty appeals a second using AI to make all the decisions and that kid did not know what the words ‘protocol’ or ‘Zion’ mean.
The LEAST charitable possibility is that the Gen Z content moderator understood the episode was debunking the anti-Semitic libel of the PEZ and is so brain-rotted they think ANTI-antisemitism is actually “hate-speech” against all their friends in the sophomore class at Columbia who belong to the anti-Anti Defamation League.
Whatever the reason, YouTube should be embarrassed. If anyone reading this WORKS for YouTube please try to resolve this. This kind of thing makes the world ACTIVELY STUPIDER by making UNAPOLOGETIC STUPIDITY company policy. Somewhere up the executive chain there is a vice-president who put AI in charge of this and I hope AI makes the decisions regarding their medical care when they get old.
If you’ve got a player piano these are stacked up at the Value Village in Southcenter.
Menswear is a popular social media topic. A lot of guys, young and old, wish the world had a little more style and taking a care in your appearance has a reverberative effect. Every well-dressed person can be like Johnny Appleseed, sowing elements of style.
I’m going to do a little fit check every day, just to put it out there. In the PNW the one person not in a puffy jacket is the best-dressed person in the room.
My whole wardrobe is vintage, mostly thrifted (although lately from eBay as well), and I love the way every item has a story. Thrifting clothes requires you know your sizes, your body’s architecture and the basics of fit. Finding clothes that fit properly is a constant struggle and unless you have everything tailored to your body from scratch you will always be making compromises. That’s just another element of the sport of it. For jackets always start with the shoulders, that’s the place they need to fit best.
Today’s blazer is a 44R wool/camel hair blend by André Vachon, an extinct mid-level tailor from the 80s and 90s. What intrigued me was the “Tailored in Japan”, very unusual for the brand and in general for blazers.
The tie is by Façonnable, a super French label and Nordstrom staple in the 80s and 90s. Most of their early shirts were made in the USA and their fabrics and tailoring is all great. This tie is from France, which is cool. It’s wool rather than silk so has texture in addition to pattern.
The shirt is Robert Talbott, another older Nordstrom staple from Carmel, CA. They make really nice ties. When I saw this made in Portugal label at Goodwill it stuck out. The little archipelago of Japan, France and Portugal in this outfit is fun.
I put only momentary thought into this because outfits thrown together are usually better than outfits carefully thought out. Started with the shirt, liked the light blazer with it and it needed a dark tie. I think patterns enjoy being juxtaposed but texture can knit things together. The light blue in the shirt catches the silver in the jacket, the paisley is usually found in silk ties so the wool clicks as slightly coarser.
Anyway, then I was out the door.
As per my last post, I highly recommend shopping the vintage market for clothes. I’ve recently taken some of my gently used vintage items to my old friends at @barn.owl.vintage in Georgetown and a bunch more to my new friends at @creatureconsign on 15th Ave. on Capitol Hill. The Barn Owl folks have some workwear, sweaters and boots I’ve known and loved (and they could probably tell you which ones were mine) while Creature has a big selection of dress shirts and blazers, all size XL. I recommend both stores for having very clear aesthetics.
Seattle has many great small consignment and vintage stores. They’re not only a great place to find cool clothes they’re also a way for some of your really nice old stuff to find a new home. All good vintage stores are picky about what they take but you might have things in the back of a closet they’d really like to see. The thing to do is shop in vintage stores, that gives you a chance to understand what vintage buyers like.
Wearing vintage clothes isn’t for everyone—sometimes a jacket that’s 60 years old costs more than a new one would—but it can also be a labor of love and an expressive language. Amazon has made it so easy to consume a torrent of pure garbage. Vintage shopping for clothes, furniture, housewares, hardware, it’s slower, more thoughtful, and the things you find aren’t just miles better in terms of quality, they come with stories. Most stuff is still less expensive than new garbage and, importantly, it’s a small part of punching out of the frenzy of cheap consumerism that’s doing real damage to the world on a dozen fronts.
And it’s fun, a great first date!
Don’t be intimidated, just be sure to try stuff on because old sizes can be different.
So go to Creature and Barn Owl and see if you can tell which shirts and sweaters were mine!
Sigh. End of an era. My dad actually knew Eddie Bauer the man. The old stores were real northwest outfitters, full of sturdy gear, a lot of it made locally. In college my friend Bob Wood and I went through a phase where we just wore Eddie Bauer.
Then the familiar story, the corporate ownership, the off-shoring of production, the outside management, gradually they squandered everything they’d built. They became a mall store, a poor-quality version of North Face, itself a poor-quality version of its former self. Eddie Bauer went all-in on the 50% off sale: lure people in with fake savings on outlet-grade outdoorsy fast-fashion.
I always kept an eye on Eddie Bauer because it held a revered place, like REI, Filson, Pendleton, Danner, Pacific Northwest companies that were more than brands, they were emblems of the region, the Alaska gold rush, the summiting of Everest.
I went to a Pendleton store at the outlet mall in Tulalip yesterday and asked, straightaway, “How many things in here are made in Oregon?” She was very informed: “The wool is still milled in OR and WA, but shirts are sewn in Mexico and overseas.” The labor costs for garment workers are so much lower that they ship giant bales of fabric out and finished garments back. That’s the business model, but it’s a suicide pact and a cash grab. It’s not sustainable, environmentally or ethically.
I’m really on this Where-Are-Things-Made? kick. Turns out Sri Lanka has the best labor-protection culture in Asia and really strives to keep their workers from being exploited. Not so other countries, many of whom turn a blind eye to terrible conditions. At the same outlet mall, yesterday, I visited several stores, Burberry, Polo, Brooks Brothers, J. Crew, just looking at labels, and overwhelmingly the clothes were made in Vietnam where labor exploitation is rife. These brands are meaningless, the clothes all come from the same tiny country where people are slaving away.
When we say, “Manufacture locally” it’s not xenophobic, it’s not snobby, it’s serious stuff. Our present dystopia is reaching sci-fi levels and it starts here.
Look at the labels and think about where your things are made.
Watching the Olympic downhill and Super G with my sister. I was only a middling ski racer as a kid but Susan was very gifted. We both were coached A LOT growing up and still feel skiing very viscerally. Susan quit racing before she was old enough for the downhill, and I only raced downhill a handful of times (including one spectacular crash) and the Super G was only invented just after we both left racing, but watching the races together we are non-stop commenting on every skier, “Whoa, he’s got his hands a little back.” “Look at that line!” “He’s not focused,” “God, he’s so compact!” Even though neither of us was an elite athlete in the end we’re both natural coaches and our color commentary is pretty good.
Susan flinches when skiers get off balance where I tend to wince. You can feel it in your body, even though neither of us ever hit those speeds or competed at that level. It’s as hard on me at 40MPH as it is on them at 90MPH. When you do something long enough you’re able to discern subtle differences in technique so that watching the sport feels like it has real consequences.
We don’t have many things like this, where we sit and watch a sport and it connects us to our youth, our dad, Alaska, a through-line of our whole lives. We both have friends that skied and snowboarded at levels way beyond, and when they were on TV we armchair-coached them too.
Go #Seahawks
Young Dads Social Club meets again. We agreed it was our last meeting and the club is adjourned forever. That’s been our regular resolution since 1994
Enjoyed talking with Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rinck on @kuow Week in Review with Bill Radke and KIRO radio’s David Ross. Councilmember Rinck holds Position 8, the citywide council seat I ran for over a decade ago!
I’m on the Week in Review on KUOW IN ONE MINUTE!
FYI, these four bad boys are waiting for someone at the Shoreline Goodwill on 145th tomorrow morning at 10AM.
These are AI-generated videos. The world we grew up in where photojournalism played a role in forming our opinions is gone. This is true for entertainment as well. Facebook and Instagram will be straight garbage in a year and we face a choice of whether to continue to consume video content or to shut it out. There's no middle ground, you either DRAMATICALLY curtail what you watch or you submit to watching dreck. We're at a turning point.
Ok Redditor @vinylnovelrunner has posted this picture of the bandbox Long Winters LPs having arrived at their door, the first confirmed sighting. After many, many long months of wondering whether these LPs will ever see the light of day we can now confirm at least ONE set of them exists. Hope this bodes well for anyone else who submitted a claim. For the record, no one has received any clear communication, the records are just marked as “shipped” in USPS tracking. Fingers crossed!
Our family tradition is to make “cheesy biscuits” on Xmas. We don’t eat it any other time of the year except sometimes on my birthday. My mom was the keeper of the cheesy biscuit secrets until she taught me, and now I’m teaching my daughter. At one point said daughter decided I needed an apron so she tied this one on me. She got it at @prettyparlors and, needless to say, she was wearing a much more elaborate apron with many frills. She would have probably kept taking photos but we had to get back to making cheesy biscuits.
