1. A Rainier Beach community group called the Rainier Beach Community Empowerment Coalition is holding a neighborhood meeting tonight. Their subject is “Environmental Justice: Are We Getting Any?”
The group is primarily responsible for putting on Rainier Beach’s annual “Town Hall meeting,” which is coming in January. And recently, the RBCEC provided six teenagers with a 24-hour workshop to help them put on their own community events–resulting in an Environmental Justice Forum and a Hip Hop Dance Competition back in August.
Tonight at 6:30 at Rainier Beach Family Center (8825 Rainier Avenue South).
2. Back in high school, Jurassic 5 was my ish. The sole survivors of the Good Life Cafe hip hop crowd, their party-ready, old-school-tinged raps were perfect for bouncing around the burbs in Mom’s car. The two archive-attentive DJs were my favorite, but Chali 2na, their deep-voiced, seven-foot-tall center of gravity, arguably had the best flow of the entire crew.
Chali is playing at Neumo’s tonight with Gift of Gab, a favorite from my more mature music-listening years. If you can shake the $18 cover, you should go to that. Otherwise, you should scoot over the Easy Street Records in Queen Anne. Chali 2na’s doing a free in-store there at 6 to warm up for the Cap Hill gig.
Jurassic 5
Neumo’s at 8 pm, tickets are $18. Or, Easy Street Queen Anne, at 6 pm–admission is, obviously, free.
3. The Sexual Minorities Commission is meeting tonight at City Hall. Like the Women’s Commission, I recommended checking in on earlier this week, they’re tasked with watching out for a group that faces discrimination.
The fifteen-member Sexual Minority Commission advises the Mayor and City Council on city issues related to sexual orientation.
Tonight at City Hall, Room 370, at 6:30 pm.
4. Good Seattle history books are hard to come by. Sons of the Profits, which for some reason is the canon history of the city’s founding days, is a dopey, factually-spotty mess (it repeatedly refers to Native Americans as “Our Red Breathren”) written by Bill Speidel, the guy who started the Seattle underground tour. It’s a shame, too, because Seattle is one-in-a-million in terms of the hippies, anarchists, and rapscallions who, until the advent of Microsoft, took refuge in this gloomy outpost.
It’s going to take some serious writing chops and a much more patient eye than Speidel’s to tell that story, but this may be a start: Lorraine McConaghy, public historian at the Museum of History and Industry, has a new book—Warship Under Sail—about the USS Decatur, an American warship that coasted the Pacific Northwest shore in the very first years of Seattle existence, firing its cannons at Native Americans and providing settlers with supplies.
The book is supposed to be well written, and even better, it’s supposed to get into that shady, West Coast underworld that characterized much of Seattle’s early history.
Tonight, McConaghy is giving a lecture at MOHAI about the Decatur, based on the book.
7 pm at the Museum of History and Industry, at 2700 24th Ave. E. Tickets are $7.
Know about any important meetings, rad shows, weirdo lectures, or other noteworthy events? Please e-mail me at chris@publicola.net.
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Chris– I agree that a really good history of Seattle has not been written but I think people would be better off reading Roger Sale’s “Seattle Past to Present”. And I wouldn’t total eschew Speidel. Like historical writing, it too has become an artifact of history. In other words, nothing can rise above history including the attempts to describe and understand it.
I read “Seattle Past to Present” and liked it as well. It wasn’t a great book, but I thought it was a good one.
Oh, and the book I really wish would be written would be “Seattle’s Changing Geography” (or something catchier). I think it would be fascinating to put together a big coffee table book complete with maps (some old and some new) describing all the ways in which Seattle has changed from a physical standpoint. The rivers that used to flow from here to there, the hills that were washed away, etc. I’ve read a lot about the changes, but without big maps (which, by the way, are hard to view on a computer monitor) it is difficult to tie it all together.
Um, Sons of the Profits is the canon? Since when? That book’s always been regarded as a literal joke.
If there’s one book every Seattleite should read, it’s Skid Road by Murray Morgan.
If there’s one book every Seattleite should read, it’s The Family by Ed Sanders.
Josh — this is a serious discussion. Utopias on Puget Sound by Charles LeWarne. Fascinating.
3. The Womens’ Commission issues advice on sexual orientation? Being a woman is an orientation?
@7,
Bad grammar. Not sexism. Will fix. Sorry.
@6,
True. Sorry. It was late in the day, and I was feeling goofy.
I thought Bill Speidel’s sequel “Doc Maynard” was actually a good read. It included the first time I’ve ever seen an author essentially say the first book was wrong and spend much of the book correcting the earlier problems.
The first book I read to figure out Seattle when I first moved here was David shields’ Black Planet about the Sonics and race.
Wow. It blew me away how creepy and unsophisticated Seattle was about race. Not because Shields exposed his fellow citizens, but because Shields himself came across as creepy and unsophisticated.
I thought: “This guy’s a local college prof? Help.”
@10,
Agreed! His classes were dumb too.
Emerald City: An Environmental History of Seattle by Matthew Klingle is seriously great. Narrative of land and power and culture.
@12,
Thanks for the rec. Sounds great. Available?
@13,
Elliott Bay (ooh ooh pick me! i need it!) / UW Bookstore / Amazon
Oh, and the book I really wish would be written would be “Seattle's Changing Geography” (or something catchier). I think it would be fascinating to put together a big coffee table book complete with maps (some old and some new) describing all the ways in which Seattle has changed from a physical standpoint. The rivers that used to flow from here to there, the hills that were washed away, etc. I've read a lot about the changes, but without big maps (which, by the way, are hard to view on a computer monitor) it is difficult to tie it all together.