About A City

WASHINGTON BLVD. E. SEATTLE, WA.
Jan 3, 2008

The rain has just got even heavier. I turn the wipers on full.
I’ve been parked here now for over fifteen minutes, wondering if I’ll ever be able to get out. I’m hungover and the wiper’s frantic rhythm and squeak are beyond irritating.
Across the narrow winding street is Viretta Park, an unofficial place of remembrance for Kurt Cobain; his widow Courtney Love still has his ashes stashed in a bankvault somewhere, so there’s no grave to go to. Next to it, hidden in the trees, or behind that tall wooden gate, is the house where he died. By his own hand – or if you believe the web-based conspiracy theorists, aided in the task by those close to him. Fearful, one theory goes, of his stated desire to give up music and concentrate on art. Either way, his descent into a heroin-addled netherworld meant that Kurt’s days were probably numbered – and untold seams of talent buried forever.
The night before, I’d celebrated my birthday. Starting in the Mecca, a traditional Americana rock jukebox-driven joint, it turned out to be a long night.

At the bar, I strike up a conversation with Oliver, a late 30s Daniel Lanois lookalike, who bemoans the changing face of Seattle since the grunge heyday of the early ’90s. “Seattle’s been going gangbusters for the past decade or more, development everywhere, all the old venues gone,” he complains.
He orders another Fat Tire beer and when I tell him I’m from Ireland, I’m surprised that he looks interested. Unlike the east coast, being a Paddy rarely cuts much mustard in Seattle. A musician, he tells me Martin Hayes played fiddle on an as-yet-unreleased record of his.
“Yeah, a few years ago, our band were doing covers of really sad slow songs and we were like, slowing them, right down as far as they could go. We did Radiohead’s ‘Fake Plastic Trees’.” I try to imagine how it might sound. His friend who has just downed another Jaegermeister pipes in helpfully, at lament pace, “Slowed, right... down... dude.”
“Well,” I say, “When it comes to slowing things down, sure Martin is yer only man.” No wonder the Feakle maestro lives here, I thought, as I said my goodbyes and headed for a rendezvous at the stylish Paragon Bar, in the upmarket Queen Anne neighbourhood, with its fine food, early evening live music and attractive staff, who act like they’ll be your friend for this life and beyond.

With the wipers on full, I can see that the two park benches in Kurt’s little one-acre park are festooned with graffiti. I’ve got about an hour of daylight left to take some pictures but the rain just hammers on. I use the waiting time to do some remembering.
Back in 1989 I visited Tokyo and used the trip to look for some work. During that mission, I became friendly with Bret, a graphic designer from Seattle. He enthused about the Seattle music scene. As things turned out, it was about to explode – and by the following year the whole world would know why he’d been excited. We did some work together and soon afterwards he visited Ireland on his way back to the US. One day, on Dun Laoghaire pier we, Susanne and I, decided to pack up and go and see what all the excitement was about.
In the year or so we spent there, Nirvana and the other Sub Pop signings dominated popular music worldwide. Released just after we arrived, Nevermind soon knocked Michael Jackson’s Dangerous off Billboard’s No.1 spot. In Seattle, clubs like the Re-Bar on a Friday nigh, saw lawyers still in their work-suits moshing with the layered goateed rockclimbers. The music was everywhere and the enthusiasm infectious.
A few months from the end of our northwestern sojourn, a lucrative illustration project with another Seattle giant, Microsoft, set us on the road with a tent, a black over burgundy ’56 Chevy and 6,500 miles of the western states to tour. Then, it was back to Ireland in time to prepare for, unbeknownst to us all, the transformation that was about to befall our own craggy island.

Kobe beef-fed and Guinnessed at the Paragon to a standard only rarely chanced upon at home, my friend, Mike (who runs an old-style garage on Capital Hill) and I head for Targy’s to continue this birthday of all birthdays. Targy’s is another survivor of the recent gentrification of the town, with two pool tables and an oblong central bar. House rules established, before long our quarters are on the pool table and we are playing doubles with a bunch of local kids.
After a wobbly start, a couple of Jamesons with the next round of yet-again sublime Guinness, sees us on a roll. They come, they fall, we stay on the table and the hours go by. The barman puts some Pogues on in my honour. Between shots, Tim – a towering 28-year-old of Norwegian stock – tells me that one of our other adversaries is just back home from “active duty”. The fair, doe-eyed boy he is referring to looks like he should be studying for his Inter Cert, or whatever it’s called now. I begin to notice that his friends are watchful of him.
“They’re just glad they’ve richer parents who’re sendin’ them to college, that’s what it is,” says Tim, before hollering over to his partner who’s been distracted by a girl at the bar, “You’re up, Duuuude!”
The story of army kids and what they’re going through is one that will impact on Americans for years to come. Arriving at Seattle Airport just before Christmas, the reality of the US foray in Iraq became clear as we jostled for space at the baggage carousel between excited teenagers still in oversized Baghdad battledress and desert boots, looking cold and vulnerable without their body armour. “Al Qaeda mustn’t be up to much in the US, if every airport in the country is now full of these kids,” says Tim. “They could just ride in there and pick ‘em off as they meet their girlfriends and families. There’s no protection.”
We leave Targy’s miraculously unbeaten. Walking home in the rain, it occurs to me how strange it is: at 18 you’re allowed to spend three years shooting at shadows in the sand, whilst at home you are prohibited from entering a licensed premises until you are 21-years-old.

Flashback. Six weeks ago, I was standing in a cold classroom in Ballina, County Mayo wondering why I had agreed to do four days of art teaching in a secondary school at the request of the local County Council. The former boarding school, now an all-boys day school, was still imbued with the austere atmosphere of a bygone orthodoxy. This was as much to do with the imposing architecture as anything else: the all-lay staff seemed to be really making an effort for the students, as evidenced by them inviting a Hot Press illustrator into their midst.
I had forgotten what an all-boys school smells like: rain-dampened sweaty jumpers after a lunch break of football in a wet yard. The last four years of my secondary school days were spent in the scented halls of a girls’ boarding school where I was one of a handful of dayboys. Looking down at the bedraggled collection of bored faces, I realised I was way out of my comfort zone. I’d already lost three or four to the ‘Sir, sir, sir, can I go to d’toilet’ routine? But it was being addressed as ‘sir’ that really freaked me – that and being looked at with that glassy, ‘ah well, just another teacher’, expression.
I had been struggling to explain that, for the project I was foisting on them, they needed to draw from their experiences and maybe capture the mood of their surroundings. Clutching at straws I mentioned the movie Elephant, an atmospheric exploration of a high school shooting. I said I couldn’t remember the director’s name. “Van Sant,” came a quiet voice from the back of the room. “What?” I said. “Gus van Sant, he directed it, he also did Last Days about Kurt Cobain.” And that was it: barricades down, we were off, and an animated discussion about Nirvana, Soundgarden’s ‘Black Hole Sun’ and Cobain followed. “But, you were all just...” I paused to calculate... “Just about born when he died,” finished the lad with the lank blond hair, from the back of the class.

Back in Seattle after 15 years in Ireland, it’s interesting to compare the two damp beacons of economic success. Both at the northwestern extremities of their respective federations. Both commercial hubs, ours between the US and Europe and Seattle between the US, Asia and the world. Both home to bands that continue to define their respective hometown’s identity. However, I can’t help but feel that while Seattle may, like us, have sold its soul it does still retain a heart.
Surrounded by snowcapped mountains, sea and lakes, you still get the impression that, despite a shortage of ‘downtime’, the majority of people are working hard to afford the space to be out there in the elements. And elemental it is. Mount Rainier dominates the skyline from the ocean, and feels as near as the Sugarloaf is to Bray. It is however, all of 14,411ft. and 54 miles away. When the baby sister Mt. St. Helens, to the south of the city, blew her top off in 1980, there wasn’t much left alive or standing within 40sq. miles. There’s a sense of the wilderness being close at hand; and milking this is Seattle’s answer to the Dundrum Shopping Centre: Recreational Equipment Inc. (REI) – a mammoth retail outlet for all things outdoor. At REI, established in Seattle in 1938, Seattle’s socialites are more likely to spend $500 on a backpack than a handbag: they are, you could say, seriously pretentious about looking real laidback.
Starbucks has been pumping caffeinated sustenance through Seattlites’ veins for over three decades now. Their ubiquitous Mermaid logo cardboard cup was once a must have street accessory and spawned a global coffee revolution. However, fair trade pressures and its targeting during the Seattle WTO riots of 1999 have seen its attraction fade amongst the green and groovy locals. Still, there’s a Starbucks or a Tully’s Cafe on every neighbourhood corner, well outnumbering bars, as dogs do children in this part of the world.
Seattle’s affluent classes have a fleece covered ease with money, and good ideas on how to spend it. Jack, a 50-ish, fit looking property developer and a friend of Mike’s, invited us up to his 1920s Queen Anne mansion after a casual encounter in a wine shop. At a bay window, with its panoramic view of Seattle and the Puget Sound, he shared his passion for seaplanes and mountain climbing. With so much water around, seaplanes provide a nostalgic background drone to waterside life in the NorthWest. A $100 ‘fun ride deal’ will get you across the border up to Vancouver, fifty minutes away. Jack owns a 1953 De Havilland Beaver. “It’s worth over $200 grand, and going nowhere but up,” he told me. He was heading on an expedition to the Antarctic after Christmas, to climb a mountain there that for which Mt. Rainier had acted as a good warm up. He said we just had to go to visit the Boeing factory 30 miles North of Seattle in Everrett.
Nothing quite prepares you for the sight, from a roof-suspended gallery, of an assembly line of 747s. Thirty three thousand people work here, seemingly Lilliputian in proportion to their task, in the largest building in the world. It could hold ten football stadia and is lit by a staggering one million, metre-wide, halogen lights.
Just south of Seattle in Renton, another ten thousand workers are knocking out, on average, one 737 every day. I suspect there must be a statue to our own Michael O’Leary there, for it was the bould Michael who, following 9/11 – when other airlines were busy cancelling contracts – ordered 155 new 737-800s, getting a discount of more than 50% off the $65m per-plane asking price. Muchos cajones, whatever else you might say about him.
Renton, birth and burial place to Jimi Hendrix, is also home to Microsoft, the largest software company in the world. At least Ireland gets some of the action from here, with 1,600 employed at its operation and development centres. We all know about gizillionaire philanthropist Bill Gates – but his co-founder buddy Paul Allen also casts a hugely influential spell on the region, backed up by a seemingly infinite personal fortune.

Back outside Kurt’s house, the rain has now eased to an acceptable east Clare drizzle. I get out, camera in hand, and take a little plastic friend I’d picked up along the way with me. Ah, but where?
The day before I’d visited Seattle’s Experience Music Project (EMP), and was shocked to find Kurt Cobain dolls for sale in the museum store. The dolls are the product of a recent deal done by Courtney Love, who sold her late husband’s copyright likeness to the National Entertainment Collectibles Association.
The EMP, designed by Frank Gehry, of Guggenheim Bilbao fame, hosts a 140,000 sq.ft museum of music and science fiction interactivity and paraphernalia. The highlights for me included what is almost certainly the most extensive guitar collection in the world and the actual props from the original Star Trek series, including Captain Kirk’s chair and the show’s familiar instrument clusters and electronic devices (made, charmingly, with all the fit and finish of a botched Blue Peter project). It seems the place was designed to hold the private collection of Paul Allen, who also helped fund the building, a major attraction in itself, set suitably in the environs of the Space needle, the landmark remnant of the Seattle Fair of 1962.
Inspired by the forlorn look on his face, I made the dubious decision to give Courtney a few bob, rescue one of these fake plastic Kurts and return him home.

The park is empty. The rain has stopped. The sodden ground pats to the sound of run-off drops from the branches overhead. I walk past the benches and climb the 30 steps to the street above, which offers a view through the trees down to the house. Nearby a City Sewer worker is trying to unblock a drain which has been struggling with the deluge. “Is that Kurt’s old house?’”I say. He seems young enough to be familiar with him. “It sure is, though they tore down the building at the back there where he was found.” I leave him and go back down the steps and spend the next half-hour in the gathering gloom taking photos of little plastic Kurt – dead rock star, former heroin addict and lead singer with Nirvana – on the benches.
Later that night I’m reviewing the digital shots while sipping a medicinal and aptly named ESB beer. In the background on TV, Obama is paying tribute to the campaign faithful, following his Iowa caucus victory. “Signed, sealed delivered, I’m yours,” goes the Stevie Wonder campaign tune. So, Seattle retains a heart, Kurt bypasses Elvis as the top-earning dead celebrity and the nation may just get its soul back.
“I found it hard, it was hard to find/Oh well, whatever, nevermind.”
As the man said...