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).

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 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.

Important and Free: Tax Prep Help at Seattle Public Libraries

The robins are chirping, the daffodils are blooming, oh crap, taxes are due soon. I did mine ages ago with TurboTax because I make hardly any money and can use the free version. However, if your taxes are a little more complicated or you just don't like the Internet, the AARP, Seattle Public Libraries and King County have got your back. These groups are collaborating to offer free tax prep to individuals from January 18th through April 17th at 11 library locations. The closest branch to the Hill is the Central Branch library and its tax help hours are below. For the other ten locations, see the Seattle Public Library website.

Central Library
1000 Fourth Ave.
Mixing Chamber, Level 5
206-386-4636
Tuesday, Jan. 18 through Sunday, April 17
Drop-ins are welcome, no appointments.

Noon to 7 p.m. Tuesday
Noon to 7 p.m. Wednesday
Noon to 7 p.m. Thursday
Noon to 4 p.m. Saturday
1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday

Happy New Year!

I braved the drunken mobs in Belltown to visit some friends and watch the Space Needle fireworks go off at midnight. Totally worth it.

This video is thanks to the kind woman standing in front of me and my friends who was recording the proceedings with her iPhone. If you listen closely, you can hear myself and my friend Dave laughing and exclaiming about the pinwheels.

Happy New Year everyone. Hope 2011 goes better than 2010!

Thankfulness

On and right before Thanksgiving, I got some very sweet texts from good friends of mine about how thankful they were to have me in their lives. Right back at you, guys. I was struck by the trend, at least in my little friend circle of Seattle 20-somethings, of seeing Thanksgiving as a day to be thankful and express gratitude for the good things in one's own life. It made me happy and made me think about all the things I'm grateful to have in my life, which in turn made me happier.

Even if my faithful readers didn't have the chance or time to be thankful on Thanksgiving, I hope that you will at some point (or at several points!) during the holiday season. My bet is that it will give you a breath of space and happiness in this midst of the next month's short days and busy schedules - that's what it did for me, anyway.

R.I.P. Mold, or, Seattle Household Tips

I hate mold. A lot. I come from Southern California, so when I was growing up mold was something you had to take of the bathroom from time to time. Now that I live in a janky apartment in Seattle, it's something I have to address on a weekly basis during the winter in the bathroom, in every windowsill, and occasionally on things that lean against outside walls. So I really fucking hate mold.

I finally got around to looking up how to kill this stuff right the other day. The CDC says that a 1:16 solution of bleach and water, sprayed onto and left on the affected surface, should do the trick. I wiped down everything first and then sprayed it with the milquetoast bleach solution just for good measure. I really hope it works.

Beard & Stache Fest comes to the Hill

Beard & Stache Fest is a month-long homage to facial hair and an extended fundraiser for Treehouse, a non-profit committed to improving the lives of foster kids in Washington state. It's had some events around Seattle previously, but today is the first day it came to Capitol Hill with the Wifflebowl in Cal Anderson Park. I only walked by, but I must admit, it looked like a lot of fun.

If nothing else crazy gets planned for Valentine's Day, I fully plan to attend the next Beard & Stache/Cal Anderson event, the Lover's Quarrel Cardboard Tube Fight. You bring the cardboard armor, the enthusiasm and lots of friends; the Beard & Stache folks will provide the cardboard tubes. It's free (though donations are appreciated) at Cal Anderson Park on 2/14 from 1-4pm, w/a pre-quarrel brunch at Bluebird and an afterparty at Po-Dog.

Rent's Due

I recently discovered that a favorite (delicious and affordable!) restaurant of mine that did not wish to be named is moving out of the center city in favor of more affordable pastures to the north. Even though they're on a main thoroughfare, that thoroughfare's been hitting hard times as of late. Despite the decline in foot traffic, rents are still at the same levels as several years ago. This bums me out. In a time when we're all still broke and in need of comfort food, a decently priced restaurant gets pushed out beyond reasonable bussing distance by an unyielding landlord and an unequally unyielding rent. Rats.

Cal Anderson Park Alliance Looking for New Board Members

Kay Rood, Hill-famous CAPA President, has requested that I spread the word about CAPA's search for members to fill their newly-expanded board. The Cal Anderson Park Alliance is the continuation of the badass community group that convinced the city to turn Lincoln Reservoir into a spectacular park rather than a big cement lid. They're still active and making Cal Anderson Park activated and amazing, so if you've got the time and that's what you're into, I recommend applying to become a CAPA board member.

The Cal Anderson Park Alliance is accepting applications and will start reviewing them at the end of January. You can find the application form at the CAPA website.

All Tomorrow's Parties: Cap Hill Holiday Hoopla

Since the Capitol Hill Community Council is one of the co-sponsors of the Capitol Hill Holiday Hoopla, I'll be there this Tuesday night at the "So You Think You Know Capitol Hill" Trivia Table (complete with lovely assistants and sugar-filled prizes).

After looking at all the RSVPs on the Hoopla Facebook page, I'm really, really happy I'll be tabling there that night - it looks to be an excellent outreach opportunity plus I don't think I'd be able to fight my way in otherwise. But what do you expect when there's an absolutely free party/food/drinks to be had on Capitol Hill?

This week in obnoxious side projects: S.T.E.A.M. Assembly at Metrix Create Space

Words are more potent when spoken to a group of creative, like-minded people. Instead of simply being idle, talk becomes action. When one speaks to steampunk types about creating a union for airship mechanics, zeppelin grease-monkeys and the like...idle talk can become extremely silly action. And hence I will be serving tea and cakes in Metrix Create Space at 3PM this Saturday afternoon to the members and supporters of the newly formed Society to Emancipate Airship Mechanics. First a Facebook group, then a blog, and now plans to agitate openly in the streets for the rights of airship workers everywhere. I'm almost afraid to ask what's next...our own cooperatively owned and fully functional airship?

{image courtesy of the ineffable Molly Friedrich}

Fresh from my inbox to you: SNG Landlord Training - Nov. 17th

Seattle Neighborhood Group offers training workshops for landlords, property managers, and real estate managers! Seattle Neighborhood Group is a local non-profit organization dedicated to making our communities strong and safe places to live. We support local property managers and landlords by providing critical information on keeping properties safe and crime free.

This workshop is great for managers who want to brush up on their management skills, as well as for people who have never been landlords before.

After attending this workshop you will be able to...

• Screen applications fairly & legally
• Create excellent rental agreements
• Deal with problems before they escalate
• Identify illegal behavior, especially relating to drug activity on your property
• Avoid situations that lead to difficult evictions
• Learn about recent changes to landlord/tenant laws
• Prevent illegal activity
• Work with your residents to make your property a great place to be.

SNG's upcoming training is 8 hours, and costs $25, which includes a comprehensive Landlord Manual, and of course...snacks! (breakfast, morning, and afternoon).

The workshop will be held at the at 3515 S. Alaska on November 17th. Check-in begins at 8:00.
You must register before Nov. 17! Register online at: http://www.sngi.org/landlord_register.html

Workshop presenters include:
Ron Oldham, National Association of Housing & Redevelopment Officials Director
Gary Kinner, SPD Narcotics Detective
Chris Benis, Attorney, director of Rental Housing Association of Puget Sound
Michael Neguse, Community Organizer, Seattle Neighborhood Group

Register online at: http://www.sngi.org/landlord_register.html
More information at: http://www.sngi.org/landlord.html
Or call Seattle Neighborhood Group at 206-323-9666

And finally, the picture show - images of Steam-Con 2009

Rise Up, O Workers of the Air!

One of the side effects of a good convention are all the new projects that pop up afterward. It's just what happens when creative like-minded people gather in those numbers. I don't know about all the creative fallout after Steam-Con, but I do know about the part of it that fell on me: the Society To Emancipate Airship Mechanics. One moment I was just a simple zeppelin grease monkey enjoying my day off and then - BAM - I'm in charge of an airship workers union. I must have been extremely charming on Sunday. That and everyone must be really tired of losing extremities to unprotected propellers.

In case you missed it: Article and Video on CHCC sponsored Mayoral Candidate Forum

Last Saturday's Mayoral Candidate Forum went remarkably well, especially considering it was the Council's first venture into wrangling political candidates to be at the same place at relatively the same time. We had a good crowd (approx. 100) and good press: CHS blog sent along their intern and their videographer to cover the event. You can see Lucas the intern's article here and cheesecake's video here.

Sky Pirate

I signed up for the listserve at SirThomasRiley.com because Nick Valentino's new steampunk novel looked interesting and they said that they were recruiting sky pirates. I thought they were just being cute until I got my enlistment papers and flight credentials:


This is fan-fuckin-tastic - I am so showing this off at Steam-Con this weekend.

Grand Opening - Metrix: Create Space

After this month's Capitol Hill Community Council meeting and a quick stop at "Dead Stay Dead" at Cafe Metropolitain (more on those later), I finally got a chance to visit Metrix: Create Space's grand opening. The quick way to describe it is Best Crafty Geek Basement Ever. It's a little bare since they're still working on decor, but they've made a good start with the art they've already got up on the walls. And anyway, it's really about the geek tools, of which they have an impressive array at decent hourly rates.

The only slightly negative thing I have to say is pretty peripheral- it would be nice if their coffee didn't come from a push button machine. That said, it's not like you can't just walk upstairs and find real espresso within spitting distance. And who knows, maybe some folks will think it gives the place some extra geeky atmosphere.

Anyway, congrats to owner Matt Westervelt, and may we see many crafty endeavors enabled by you soon.

10/17 Capitol Hill Community Council Presents: Mayoral Candidate Forum @ Seattle U

I've been so busy putting this event together that I haven't had a chance to put up a post about it. Here's the boilerplate:

Seattle Mayoral Candidate Forum

Date: Saturday, October 17^th, 2009

Time: 4:30-6pm

Location: Pigott Auditorium
Albers School of Business & Economics
Seattle University

The purpose of the forum is to provide an opportunity for residents and other stakeholders on Capitol Hill and the surrounding neighborhoods to meet the candidates and learn more about them. More specifically, the Council will engage the candidates in dialogue concerning their vision for the city and how they will seek to improve the quality of life for the citizens of Seattle. We will discuss topics such as the relationship of city government to its residents & neighborhoods, city planning in regard to open space & land use, and transportation.