James Hungaski
The Sucklemeister.
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Jason Yori was walking to a veterans meeting about five years ago when he became tired—really tired. He saw a Dumpster. Bed, he thought.
Maybe it was the crappy, rainy day, or maybe it was the heroin in his system, but Yori, still wearing his three-piece meeting suit, climbed into that Dumpster. "Normally, I won't do that because my ethics are pretty strong," says Yori, who's 53 and homeless. "But they sort of loosened up."
He set down his valise of personal papers and fell asleep in the warm, dry trash. Then he woke up to a ferocious symphony of clanging metal and grinding gears. He and the rest of the Dumpster's contents were in the back of a garbage truck, being repeatedly compacted.
"First time, it didn't feel real good," recalls Yori. On the second compaction, "now that motherfucker really hurt." Yori felt something crack and could no longer breathe. "I'm thinking they're going to find me 80 years from now in some fucking dump," he says, "bones and a three-piece suit and a suitcase and a copy of the manuscript for my children's book" (The Magic of Santa's Reindeer).
But Yori wasn't beaten yet. When the compactor retreated after its third crushing, he gathered his strength and found his power animal, the earthworm. He slithered upward through various strata of reeking trash until his head popped out of the top of the truck, which at that point was on the highway speeding past Boeing Field. Yori flagged down the driver and was taken by ambulance from the scene with a fractured spine.
Yori tells this tale while fishing in a Dumpster behind some downtown apartments, looking for bedding. In other parts of the city, his compactor heroics would make him top dog at an under-the-bridge story-swapping session. But Yori happens to hang out regularly in a shabby slice of the Pike-Pine corridor, bordered on the west and east by First and Fifth avenues, respectively. Here, bizarreness is relative. For example, a man a few blocks away has literally lost his ass. And a fellow on Pike Street has eight nipples.
Yori's part of town received lots of attention this summer after several shootings put it on the talking-point lists of local politicians. Chief of Police Gil Kerlikowske dispatched additional cops to the area, where you can witness them on foot patrol today. You can also witness the drug deals, public urination, mental illness, and homelessness that have owned the area for a decade and counting.
While the cops may have had an impact on driving out violent crime, the lunatic flavor of the corridor remains visible and potent. Taking a stroll along the west end of Pike Street is still the cheapest way for LSD-averse Seattleites to experience alternate dimensions. A simple hello quickly turns into "You need OxyContin?" And women stand on the corners and scream at nothing.
This landscape won't last forever, though. A Kress IGA supermarket opening on Pine Street next year will no doubt make the neighborhood more gentrification-friendly. And the Downtown Seattle Association plans to equip Pike with security cameras to help keep it that way. This progress and the fact that basketball season is upon us has compelled Seattle Weekly to mint the following series of collectors' cards featuring your favorite Pike-Pine all-stars. The free gum? You can find that on the sidewalks.
The Medical Curiosity
Name: Pierre Pre$$ure
Nickname: The Sucklemeister
Hangs out: On the corner of Second Avenue and Pike, or wherever spare body parts are plentiful
Career highlights: Pierre has always had a morbid curiosity. When some buddies of his in a premed program mentioned that "less than 5 percent" of dead people's nipples get transplanted, he wanted to learn more. "It was like, you've got access to an organ bank, and there's a nipple surplus? Here, let me buy you a round of drinks!"
Now Pierre has eight nipples on his chest, lined up in two columns like a pig's belly. Pierre, his nipples, and his train-hopping buddies panhandle on Pike Street in the eternal quest for a "space bag" (a glamorous term for the pouch inside box wine). Some drink Milwaukee's Beast from water bottles. "This is the closest this city has to a civilized area," Pierre says. "Your average citizens are drunk enough to say hello to each other."
Or drunk enough to show their tits, as Pierre, a New Orleans native, sometimes does. He lifts his shirt to reveal an extra six-pack, and not the good kind. He either designed the nips from some pallid, claylike medium—or somewhere in heaven there are pissed-off people who can't sunbathe anymore. The nipples were pierced, he claims, but he had the metal removed after performing a back-bending dance maneuver that left him screaming. "All my piercings tried to fucking go into my body," he explains.
The Unhappy Clown
Name: Farrel Thomas
Nickname: Squeaky Tom
Hangs out: At Pike Place Market
Career highlights: Thomas grew up in an unspecified small town and became a construction worker. But a couple of car accidents, deaths in his family, and personal illness killed that career path. Now Thomas sits in Pike Place Market, constructing cheery balloon animals for tourists. "The hell is that?" asks one tourist, pointing to a pink creature perched on Thomas' hat. It looks like a poodle with elephant ears and the eyes of a bug. "It's a pig," Thomas replies.
