Best view saver
RICK DAHMS |
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All hail the mighty Irene Wall! At first Wall's quest to save Victor Steinbrueck Park's sweeping view of Elliott Bay and the Olympic mountains seemed entirely quixotic. After all, Wall was up against a powerful triumvirate—the Marriott Hotel chain, the Port of Seattle, and City Hall, who wanted to build a nine-story, $65 million behemoth that would rise up and steal our precious views. The irony of two government bodies showing such deference to corporate interests and giving such short shrift to the public interest was lost on no one, but Wall didn't seem to have a chance in hell. Her early efforts to engage government regulators met with failure. She appealed, without the benefit of counsel, to the Shoreline Hearings Board, where she faced off against heavyweight lawyers from the Port, the city, and Marriott. And she beat their butts fair and square; the Shoreline Hearings Board ruled in her favor. From Steinbrueck sack-lunchers to Market customers, we're all indebted to Wall for her courage and persistence.
RICK DAHMS |
There were high hopes for the Seattle Arts Commission when Mayor Wes Uhlman set it up going on 30 years ago. Over the intervening years, those early hopes have slowly died away, as finding cash for public arts funding got harder and harder, while community demands for art to serve as a panacea for all social ills grew apace. Susan Trapnell, a veteran of private-sector arts administration, is the first director in the Arts Commission's history to come to the job with hands-on experience in the creative side of art: in the care and feeding of artists, in support of their visions without losing sight of the bottom line, in collaboration with other arts organizations in pursuit of common goals without losing sight of her own specific ambitions. If she manages to survive the frustrations of serving in an office that for decades has been little more than a paymaster to the pressure groups that dominate the arts establishment, she has the qualifications to help design a civic arts strategy for the new century: one to take advantage of the unprecedented wealth of the community while recognizing that straight-ahead subsidy is a thing of the past.
Best band that throws books at you
In the movement to canonize soft-spoken indie rockers who talk about their feelings way too much, we have done a disservice to those hard-working ladies and gentlemen who take the long road to the human heart. While Bloodhag (http.//members.xoomcom/childhistory/bloodhag/bloodhag.htm) could sing songs about 21st-century alienation of self and commodification, they'd rather yell about Jules Verne, Michael Moorcock, and J.G. Ballard. And lest they sway you into a somnambular hypnosis with their mesmerizing mayhem, they will awaken you with a science-fiction book to the head, hurled out of the same suitcase that is believed to have armed Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver. Chaos and required reading lists stick to these bookworms like blood to a hatchet, and if you're not going to pay attention to these gentlemen (some of whom also own Seattle's best arcade, Hi-Score), you're going to pay in blood—or a novel to the noggin.
Best audience member
To marshal the enthusiasm necessary to see two or three shows in a week, 52 weeks a year, requires an almost superhuman dedication to your art of choice, not to mention buns of steel. For many years the P.I.'s Joe Adcock aced out all competition by somehow attending the opening night of every show offered anywhere in the Puget Sound area, often being, by report, in two different venues at the same time. But since July 1998, Adcock has placed a distant second to a mysterious Mr. Joe Boling. Boling, a retired Army officer, was initially a subscriber "only" to the Opera, ACT, and Intiman, but intrigued by the Seattle's vast wealth of theater, he began collecting subscriptions and theater tickets with a ferocious avidity. Last year, he "topped out" at 31 subscriptions and attended over 330 performances. Boling's tastes, in both medium and subject matter, are jaw-droppingly wide, and include "opera, ballet, symphony (choral works), modern dance, performance art, musical theater, student work, improv, late-night, benefits, and drama," with theater estimated at about 60 percent of the total. Boling estimates that he's seen over 600 shows in the past two years, and while other interests, including coin collecting, bike riding (for the MS society), and military conventions have taken up a fair amount of his time recently, he has nonetheless averaged over one show a day for the first half of 2000. "I expect to still see over 250 performances in 2000, and I already have over 40 on my calendar for 2001," he admits.
Best new City Council member
RICK DAHMS |
OK, maybe she's a tad too concerned about those poor circus animals, but Judy Nicastro has lived up to the promise she demonstrated on the campaign trail last year. The tough progressive may have a fondness for grandstanding on the dais, but few of her colleagues would dare call her on it. Her hard-edged rebukes to City Attorney Mark Sidran during one debate rattled the little club-closer so completely that he could only retaliate by making sexist remarks in the City Hall elevator. Here's a quick "big vote" scorecard: Judy developed a progressive agenda to help renters, while Heidi Wills went on a Chamber of Commerce trip to Europe. Meanwhile, Jim Compton developed a WTO review process so flawed one of his colleagues refused to participate. Judy fought like hell to save the monorail, while Heidi and Jim worked to kill it. Judy worked to repeal Sidran's towing law that unfairly targets the poor and minorities. Jim and Heidi voted to uphold the law. That's 3 for 3 for Judy, leaving the scoreless Heidi and Jim in her dust. You do the math.
Best sportswriter
