Life on the Hill is Dead, Long Live Life on the Hill!

It is time to say farewell to Blogger and hello to Wordpress and it's fancy-lookin' (and free!) theme Oxygen. If you want to keep reading what I'm writing, follow me over at the new Life on the Hill and Other Stories. I've just got a post up about my tour of the future home of "The Center for Impact and Innovation", a joint venture of The Hub Seattle, Social Innovation Partners, and The Bainbridge Graduate Institute.

Infographic! Barriers to Spacesharing in Seattle & How a Collaborative Consumption Intermediary Can Help

While I'm still working on a final super-shiny version of my collaborative consumption/ microleasing commercial space paper, the inforgraphic poster version of it is now up on Scribd. Take a look and tell me what you think! If you want to help me out and proofread a copy of the paper, just poke me in the comments section below, or find me on Twitter ([at]comradebunny).

Carsharing is Caring

Seriously, CareBears really would use carsharing. Because they care.

A waste of space, and how to end it

Something that's been bugging me for a while is the amount of unused and underused space on Capitol Hill. Sometimes it's just for hours or half-days, like how nightclubs are empty in the daytime and Lowell School is empty at night. Sometimes it's for months at a time, like the empty storefront on Broadway that keeps trying (and failing) to be a Thai restaurant.

This waste of space bugs me because there are so many people who'd like to use a storefront or a school room or a nightclub for those short periods of open time: artists practicing a performance, community groups planning a festival, a group of more than 5 friends just trying to find a place where they can watch the Oscars in peace. But for some reason, there seems to be no way to unite the supply and demand. A little help, invisible hand of the market?

Since the invisble hand seems to be busy, I've decided to step up and do something to end this wasteful situation. Since I'm in grad school, that something is a thesis on how to unite the supply and demand for non-residential temporary space in a dense urban neighborhood (i.e. Capitol Hill)...basically, a how-to guide for making the Zipcar or AirBnB for temporary space rentals.

I'm going to look into collaborative consumption models, supply of and demand for temporary space on Cap Hill, barriers to the creation of a temporary space rental market, and what a market maker/trusted intermediary would need to provide to make renting out space for short periods of time (hours to months) economically feasible. And I'm going to do all this by the beginning of June. (Go, Jen, go!)

In the meantime, I'll keep you posted on the neat stuff I find here and on Twitter (@comradebunny).  Hopefully the process will help me think about our neighborhood's wasted space problem, and it'll help my faithful readers find interesting ways to keep amused, save money, and maybe even save the planet.

Belated Catalog Christmas Days 9-12

Emma and Thorstein were pretty sure this wasn't the way 
to Grandma's House

It made Stephen a little nervous to see that special spark
 in Shari's eye when she met his sister.

Miranda loved ushering for the Christmas pageant.
She never knew what she might find in the seats!

Catalog Christmas Day 8: Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2012 everybody. May your lifestyle choices be easier on you than Little Peter's are on him.

Catalog Christmas Day 7: Searching for Santa

Happy New Year's Eve everybody. Here's one last Santa card, since I figure I can't really get away with them anymore after today.

Catalog Christmas Days 5 & 6: Creepy Santa

This is hands-down one of my favorite cards I made this year. 

 Seriously, you don't want to eat that.

Catalog Christmas Day 4: Turkey

I got these bitches a turkey.
Bitches LOVE turkey.

Catalog Christmas Day 3: Thankful

She just looks so ... deviously self-satisfied ...

Merry Christmas with 12 Days of Catalog Christmas Cards

Merry Christmas, faithful readers, or at least Happy Boxing Day. This year, like last year, I'd like to celebrate the end of 2011 and the holiday season with some of my catalog Christmas cards. I made a raft of them, but I think I'll post about a dozen, one for each of the 12 days of Christmas. Here are two for today since I took the day off from the internet yesterday.

There was nothing inherently funny about the lady looking at her crotch until I figured I could put a wreath down there.

They were selling these things called "spirit hoods" and all I could think of was children raised in the woods by wolves.  Or in this case, owls.

Selections from Occupy Seattle Weekly Issue 3

Issue 3, 11.20.11 - The Good, The Bad and The Ugly: Effective Marches, the Messy Business of Camping, and the Pepper-Sprayed Face of Dorli Rainey

The Good

This week was filled with fantastic events and demonstrations:  

• Tuesday night’s extensively pepper-sprayed and photographed march in Belltown
• Dr. Cornel West’s rousing speech at camp on Wednesday
• Thursday’s labor-led march and occupation of the University Bridge
• Fridays’ march to the Police Accountability Office with speeches by two of Seattle’s new pepper spray icons, 84-year old Dorli Rainey and Reverend Rich Lang
• and the “Rise and Decolonize, Let’s Get Free!” concert and rally hosted by Hip Hop Occupies in Westlake Park on Friday night.

These peaceful rallies and direct actions kept Occupiers and allies motivated and square in the media limelight. Keep it up everybody!

The Bad

While Occupy Seattle’s demonstrations have been effective, camp hygiene has not. Capitol Hill Seattle Blog reported on letters issued by King County Public Health and the Chamber of Commerce regarding the public health hazard they perceive that the camp has become.  The list of issues can be found here, but main groupings of concerns are: 

• food borne illness risk factors
• communicable disease risks
• unstable structures with limited fire safety planning or access
• reports of drug dealing and illicit drug use
• sewage and waste water not properly disposed of
• waste water disposal into storm drains
• no effective hygiene facilties
• uncontrolled dogs defecating and urinating
• rodent activity
• discarded/used syringes and needles on the ground

Some of these issues are almost impossible for OS to address – where else can water be poured out in a camp on a street corner but down a stormdrain? And how on earth do you build proper hygiene facilities without access to water main and sewer hookups?  

That said, there are plenty of things on that list that Occupy Seattle can take care of. It’s totally doable to create better pedestrian access into and out of camp, ensuring dogs go to the bathroom outside of camp and their poo is picked up, and do daily sweeps for trash and discarded signs.  Even though some of these issues (like needles and rats) already existed before Occupy Seattle moved in, it’s in OS’s best interest to take care of them for their own sake.

In the letter addressing the Occupy Seattle encampment, Michael Wells of the Broadway Business Improvement District and the Capitol Hill Chamber of Commerce writes:

“While many of the businesses are sympathetic with the Occupy movement (75% of Broadway BIA members are small, locally owned businesses) these sanitation and safety concerns are very troubling…We would like to see occupy Seattle address the health and safety concerns around the encampment immediately.” 

Occupy Seattle should also find these health and safety issues very troubling: not only are they bad for the neighborhood, they’re bad for the campers.

11/17 - Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes is preparing to file 1^st degree trespass charges against five protesters arrested during an Occupy Seattle takeover of a Chase Bank on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, November 2^nd. (Publicola, Capitol Hill Seattle Blog)

11/19 - The State Attorney General's office drafted an emergency rule that would create a 120-day window for removing the Occupy Seattle encampment from the Seattle Central campus.  The draft says the college needs to take action because of unsafe conditions at OS camp, including syringes and needles on the ground, drug and alcohol use, lack of hygiene facilities and other risk factors near the college child-care center. (Capitol Hill Seattle Blog, Seattle Times)

The Ugly (But in the end, also good)

Josh Trujillo of the Seattle PI’s now iconic picture of Dorli Rainey just after she was pepper-sprayed by Seattle police at a peaceful demonstration

Seattle’s mace sodden Wall St. March earlier this week seemed to be a culmination in local police’s willingness to use extremely painful but so far nonlethal force against peaceful protestors. However, this pain and conflict brought with it a boon – the picture of 84-year-old lifelong activist Dorli Rainey’s pepper-sprayed face, and story about police brutality so blatant, well-witnessed, and unprovoked it was impossible to ignore.

This picture was soon followed by images of a young woman being sprayed directly in the mouth with pepper-spray by the Portland PD and a peaceful sit-in of UC Davis students assaulted with mace by police called in by the dean. Images like this bring desperately needed attention to the twin crises of police brutality and the suppression of 1^st amendment rights, problems common to Occupiers across the country.

In Seattle’s case, we got another gift – an excellent spokesperson. Not only does Dorli Rainey appear to be a nice old lady, she’s also quite eloquent and has been an activist since she escaped from Nazi Germany as a girl. Thanks for that, Josh Trujillo and the Seattle Police Department.

Selections from Occupy Seattle Weekly Issues 1 & 2

Issue 1, 11.5.11 - While We’re Giving Banks a Hard Time, Let’s Think of the Little Guy

Since demonstrations and actions against unjust and destructive financial institutions will continue into the near future, I feel it’s important to do something nice for all the 99%ers that happen work at those places.  There are a lot of lower level bank employees caught up in the crossfire between the Occupy movement and Chase/BofA/etc. upper management. 

I’m making it my mission to bring flowers and a condolences card (sorry about your bosses destroying the economy, we know you’re the 99% but sadly your bosses aren’t) to at least one Chase bank location on Capitol Hill before Black Friday.  Maybe I’ll add a little note about how it sucks to live in a world where we all have to live with the consequences by some ill-considered risks taken with other people’s money.

What’s not to love about an action like this? It’s inexpensive, dispersed, easy to recreate and propagate, doable with groups to 1 to however many can fit in a bank, not likely to bother the SPD, (hopefully) genuine enough to apologize to our fellow 99%ers, and quirky and whimsical enough to want to post to Facebook. If you think I’m right about this, then go out and do it, post it to the internet and tell all your friends.

Issue 2, 11.13.11 - A Question of Numbers

The Seattle PI sez; “The city’s price tag to monitor the entrenched Occupy Seattle protest ballooned to $529,609 this week, which includes last week’s pepper-spraying and arrests of protesters in Capitol Hill.” Occupy Seattle organizer Jesse Mulert sez right back: “How is it that that 50-300 peacefully assembled citizens warrant such a concentration of resources?” (Seattle PI). You have to wonder how OS got pinned with a half a million dollar bill that’s largely for police time. It’s almost as if the City of Seattle thinks the problems reported in and around camp didn’t exist before Occupy Seattle showed up. 

Will Capitol Hill and the City of Seattle suddenly be free of fights, drug use, vandalism and encampments of the un-housed if Occupy Seattle disbands? Maybe the concentration of those particular issues will decrease on that block, but they won’t really go away – they’ll just spread out through the city and the neighborhood again. It feels a little like the City is blaming the victim. For what are these things but symptoms of an economically unjust society and a massive wealth gap? The 99% didn’t create the disease, but it sure can get blamed for it.

Also: Who caused the Great Recession that tightened the city and the police department’s budget? The banks and financial firms whose actions led to the mortgage crisis. This cascade of economic disaster eventually led to the creation of the Occupy movement.  Why isn’t the city challenging these banks with this half a million dollar bill?

The Occupy Seattle Weekly, writer and editor: Me

For the last three weeks I have written, edited, printed. assembled and distributed the Occupy Seattle Weekly: Occupy Seattle local news articles on one side, Occupy worldwide news AP style on the other. I'm going to post up some of the local news section articles from the past three weeks soon. I'm proud of the world news section too, but AP style summaries of Occupies around the world will probably be less interesting to those who have access to the internet.

Welcome to the neighborhood, Occupy Seattle

I am totally and unqualifiedly thrilled that Occupy Seattle is going to be my nighttime neighbor at Seattle Central Community College starting tonight. I haven't been able to interact with the Occupy movement much with being in grad school and rarely passing through downtown. But now they're going to be in MY BACKYARD! Yay, big social justice sleepover! Hot cocoa and equity for everyone! So excited!!

In the midst of my enthusiasm, I am still aware that there are logistical issues that may not make this feasible in the long-run: OC HQ is presently downtown, hiking up and down the Hill everyday isn't practical for everyone and bussing may not be affordable. Then there's the fact that SCCC is a very reluctant host.

I know it might not work out. SCCC might telling the kids to get off their lawn, SPD might flip and start teargassing right next to my window (I am right next door), and Occupy Seattle folks might not live up to their good-neighbor promises. All this is totally possible. But for tonight, I have a bunch of new fun neighbors, and I am super excited.

Rules of Avoidance: Restaurants

These are just rules of thumb, and can sometimes be ignored to your great gastronomical enjoyment. But once I thought about it a little (once I was done laughing), I find that they have generally held true in my experience.

{My S.O. thought these up, so as a note to the interested digital archaeologists of the future, the credit for this blog post goes to John Sepulveda.}

When considering where to eat, one should avoid:

1. Restaurants with "hut", "den" or "shack" in their name. "House" is also suspect. I have never heard of a restaurant with the word "slum" or "tenement" in its title, but if I had I would not want to eat there either*.
2. Restaurants whose names include their primary menu attraction, such as fish, BBQ, sandwich, or lobster.
3. Restaurants named after a person who has, in all likelihood, never set foot inside the establishment named after them. Linda's is fine since it is named after local entrepreneur Linda Derschang and she does not yet have so many restaurants that she is not able to go and visit all of them. Marie Callendar's is not.

A hypothetical example of a place you probably don't want to eat is "Bob's Lobster Hut", unless of course Bob is right there in the kitchen boiling the fresh caught lobster and he has an ironic sense of humor.

*Though a place called "The Delicious Apartments" might be pretty cool, especially if it specialized in tapas that you could pick up out of little cubbies connected to the kitchen.

The summer that wasn't

This year started with a cool spring that coasted into a summer of meh. If wanted to be completely accurate, I would call this the summer that came late, but I wanted a title that also referenced how little I've blogged this summer. I could blame the lack of sun, but the real culprits were grad school induced lassitude and sheer laziness for the first month and a half and the 12th Avenue Neighborhood Festival for the month after that. In August and September summer finally arrived, so I was busy rejoicing with the rest of the city and enjoying the late start of circus folk season in Cal Anderson Park.

I will try to make up for my lack of blogging with a flurry of slideshow updates before school starts. After that, it is up to the will of the professors, but I live in hope.

From the Washington State Nonprofit Conference: Jabez Lebret on Generation Y

Jabez Lebret's psychological profile of Generation Y for their future bosses:

• We want to make a difference and we believe we can make that difference: Sometimes it feels like we've been raised to be a generation of optimistic activists. This is great, because it seems like this is just what the world needs. This can be irritating, because it means your 25 year old new hire will show up in your office with suggestions on how your organization can do things better on day two.
• We want to be part of something bigger than us: This is great for the same reason as above. It also means we expect more out of our professional lives and volunteer experiences. But when we believe we're part of a good cause and that we're making a difference - watch us go.
• We're natural collaborators and prefer to work in teams:
• We want to be told when we're doing things the right way: Generation Y sometimes gets a bad rap because it seems like we need constant encouragement and pats on the head because of all those participation medals we got growing up. But another way to look at it is that positive reinforcement is
• We have grown up with information always at our fingertips
• We believe in work-lifestyle balance: I think the cliche is "work to live, don't live to work". Again, Gen. Y can get a bad rap because of this. The thing is, we're willing to work hard, but we don't think that working part time, having full sleeve tattoos, wearing hoodies to work, or wanting to be able to take a couple weeks off to hike cross country gets in the way of having a career.

And Now for Something Completely Different: The Washington State Nonprofit Conference

I don't usually blog outside of geek, green and Seattle here on Life on the Hill, but I'm going to make an exception for the Washington State Nonprofit Conference, which I attended this Friday at the Meydenbauer Convention Center in Bellevue. I am making this exception because it was an excellent conference and I had a wonderful time. The Meydenbauer Center was a lovely venue, the staff of Alliance for Nonprofits kept everything running smoothly (special thanks to Erin Tierney!), and all the conference sessions I attended were full of useful information. There is a lot I could write about, but I'll keep it to my two favorite presenters, Erica Mills and Jabez Lebret.

Erica Mills of Claxon Marketing told us all about Nonprofit Marketing Trends to Watch, Try & Avoid (you can find her full presentation here). The basic message I gleaned was that 1) it's all about your organization's story and 2) deliver that story in the way your potential members/donors want to get it. Which means translating your mission or brand into a story and finding a way to tell that story over social media, on smart phones, and broken up in chunks over time rather than once a year in the annual report.

I really appreciated that Erica also told us all what not to do, notably not to spread your organization too thin by trying to do and be everything. For social media, pick three outlets and do them right. Focus on the folks who are interested in what you, don't spend time on those who don't. Frame your message, but once it gets into the hands of your supporters on the internet, let them run with it.

I liked Jabez Lebret's keynote address on Generation Y so much that I decided to attend his afternoon workshop, "The Value of Attracting and Retaining the Social Media Generation." It was a little strange to go to a workshop that was focused on how to hire and keep my generation, but very useful.

Cheap Date: Opening Night of The Great Puppet Happiness Machine

My boyfriend and I were fortunate enough to catch the opening night of The Great Puppet Happiness Machine by Puppet This! at Annex Theater. We had seen the posters go up last week and decided it would make a good event for date night; wandering in on opening night last night was just our good fortune. Our decidedly peculiar ideas about what makes a good date paid off - The Great Puppet Happiness Machine is ridiculous and well worth $10 ($5 for students).

There are basically two premises to the show: 1) a bunch of puppets decide the best way to make their sad puppet friend happy again is to visit a mad scientist and 2) improv. Improvisational comedians running around a blackbox stage with puppets on their hands does not sound like a recipe for success, but it works. Watching puppets gesticulate and flop around is way more interesting than watching the people behind them (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain...). It helps that the crew of Puppet This! are pretty funny, even when things don't go quite right.

The BF and I agree that the show was a little rocky: some of the song numbers stuttered when the puppeteers couldn't make up lyrics fast enough, and the crew was still trying to figure out who should chime in when. That said, this was the very first show of the run and my BF was so enthused about the whole thing he wants to go back again. I admit I'd be interested in seeing how the show changes over the season, and would find it vastly amusing to watch my friends discover the puppet-y wonder of "The Great Puppet Happiness Machine".

[TGPHM shows Wednesday nights at 8pm through May 18th]

PS This makes me really regret missing Manos: Hands of Felt.