I haven’t posted much this spring due to what seems like an
unusually heavy work overload. Finally, now that another academic year has come
to an end, I’m trying to catch up on some abandoned posts that were started but
never finished. This one was started during tech week of our last theatre show,
back in May. That show took place in our usual performance space in the Center House at the Seattle Center, under the shadow of the iconic
space needle. I hadn’t been there since last November, so was shocked to see
that in the intervening months the last vestiges of the colorful kiddie rides
at the Fun Forest amusement park had been removed. In its place was a closed-in, corporate-looking,
over-designed space surrounding the new Chihuly glass museum. The museum itself
looks like a standard-issue greenhouse, with formal, vaguely Asian-style
gardens. The big building that used to house bumper cars and other forms of
entertainment has been transformed into something that looks like an office
park in an industrial strip mall where you would find shipping offices and wholesalers. The path I used to take to get from the
street to the Center House is now blocked by a walled compound that reportedly
charges $19 admission to see Dale Chihuly’s personal collections of non-glass tchotchkes. In the courtyard are a few large glass installations, just waiting for some teenagers to throw
rocks over the fence at them.
Oh well, I suppose the whole concept fits right in with the
tradition of building a fancy building to house the collections of “stuff”
amassed by the very rich. After all, the Experience Music Project (EMP for
short) is just a big space to house Paul Allen’s collection of music
memorabilia. The EMP is a Ghery-ish, brightly colored, metallic-tiled, twisted
structure that one of my school colleagues described as “looking like the Space
Needle vomited”. At least it doesn’t look like it’s wearing a corporate suit,
and the metallic finish shines beautifully when there’s a late afternoon sun
break. Like it or not, the building is more unique and interesting than the "stuff" that's inside.
Apparently as part of the Chihuly renovations, the food
court on the ground floor of the Center House was also remodeled, removing all
of the colorful food stands that used to brighten it up a bit. Now it’s a bare,
gray dismal-looking, corporate-feeling space that could easily be a warehouse
without the boxes and forklifts. Most of the food vendors are gone, replaced by
a trendy window area that would be right at home in an office building, and a lot of boarded-up booths with “for rent” signs. The only vendors left are what appears to be an upscale burger chain, a Starbucks, a Subway, and a kebab
stand that seems to be family-owned and operated, the last vestige of the old
guard. The prices at the kebab stand have almost doubled. According to the woman
who works there, the rent went up significantly after the remodel. I hope they
can make it. At least they don’t have much competition, and not much prospect
of any in the near future unless the economy suddenly jumps up from its
deathbed and walks.
Now I hear that Seattle wants to sell its iconic old
waterfront trolley cars to Saint Louis. The trolley was banished a couple of years ago to build a
rather soul-less sculpture park. The argument for removing it was that it would clash with the suburban-mall appearance of the “do-not touch” sculptures and their grassy suburban-lawn surroundings. The
more things change, the more stereotyped and sterile they seem to become. The
most ironic thing of all is that “art” installations have been in some way
responsible for this de-humanization of the city.
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