Last Saturday, we met friends at the Georgetown Artopia and carnival, where we enjoyed the power tool races (shown here) and other exciting oddities and bands with hairy teenagers.
How do they do it? Somehow Georgetown seems to remain in a perpetual state of just-before-coolness. You know, Bumbershoot in the early 90s cool, when you could see bands all day long for six bucks and you didn't have to wait two hours in every line. So many things go the way of Bumbershoot (and the Gorge, where we are going next week to see Willie!)--overly commercial, overly crowded, overly coifed--to the point that it almost makes you not want to leave the house for another g.d. festival. Georgetown is different. I won't rave about it too much and spoil your fun, but they do have another festival coming up next weekend (a garden walk, sadly, not a carnival).
Among the many attractions we enjoyed was something that wasn't even part of the festival: a WWII-era airplane that flew over throughout the day. As we were walking back to our car after the day's festivities--dinner at Stellar, performance art on the sidewalk, and a quick stop at Belle and Whistle--we saw a thirty-something woman on the corner looking up. When we asked her about the airlanes, she got very excited. "You can pay to go in them," she told us. When we asked how much it cost: "I don't know, but I bet it's a bundle. Some rich person must be doing that."
Some rich person is doing that. I was driving this morning and heard one of those NPR adlets for Paul Allen's Flying Heritage Collection. Last weekend, and this weekend too, they are featuring the P51-D "Mustang."
Weirdly, this reminds me of Sharon, the town babysitter in Malad. We didn't have anything like licensed daycare there, because most moms didn't work. Those moms that did work took their kids to Sharon's. Sharon's was awesome: she had a basement full of toys and a mini-playground in the backyard, and when you went to Sharon's she would just turn you loose with about 40-50 other kids from age 3 to 12. The only rule was that you had to share. I don't even think we had to clean up after ourselves.
And that's Paul Allen, Seattle's town babysitter. He's building us a giant playground (have you driven down Denny lately?), he lets us into his geek basement, and we can play with his toys. It costs a bundle, but if you're willing to give up a few bucks and your lingering sense of nostalgia for the days when Seattle actually had diners, quirky festivals that aren't overrun by tourists, and one-story buildings, you get to hang out at Sharon's, Seattle-style. Or you can move to Portland (doesn't he own the Trailblazers, too?). You could also move to Yakima, or Malad. I'm pretty sure he doesn't own anything there.
