This week, the crow learned why somebody might vote Republican and what can be done about it. Also, Yohan is Swahili for John. Learn anything?

From the “Register to Vote” sign on your clipboard, I’m going to guess that you’re …well, registering people to vote?
Yes, I’m with the League of Women Voters of Washington. It’s all about getting people out to vote. We don’t endorse candidates, we just want people to get out and get educated. We provide nonpartisan information on where the candidates stand on various issues, and based on that, people can make an informed decision on how to vote.

Why did you choose this corner of Capitol Hill?
I’ve found that this is a pretty good place. People are coming out of QFC, lots of foot traffic. We also have some people up at Cupcake Royale, but I find that it’s better to be out on the street—don’t mind asking people if they’re registered, and if they are, I remind them to vote.

What do you think is the biggest barrier to getting people to vote?
I think some people are discouraged with the way the government has been going. Some people who voted for Obama are not sure they want to vote for him again, but Republicans aren’t sure they want to vote for their candidate either. That’s why education is so important.

Do you live on Capitol Hill?
I live in Horizon House, a retirement community on University. I walked here this morning — been here since 10 o’clock!

Approaching random strangers—even for a good cause—can be a bit scary. Have you encountered any people who were, shall we say, less than pleasant?
Only one homeless man. He said, “Nobody’s done anything for me, so I’m not going to vote.“ I can understand that he’s kind of depressed about his situation, but we do register homeless people. Homeless people can vote. All they have to do is say where they usually are, if they sleep under a bridge or whatever, and most homeless people have a place like a community center where they can get their ballot.

Before you retired, what line of work were you in?
Oh, I did a lot of things. My husband and I lived overseas for many years, in Hong Kong. He was an educator, and I did social work.

How long have you lived in Seattle?
I moved here from Port Angeles about a year ago. I’m originally from Texas, but I don’t like Texas. I’m a city person, so I was really happy to move to Horizon House.

What are some things that attracted you to this part of town?
Oh, it’s so vibrant, and so alive! I mean, look at all of this! The shops are really neat, and I can walk here from Horizon House. And people are friendly.

Is there anything that you miss about life in a smaller town like Port Angeles?
Not really. A small town perhaps has more interaction because it’s smaller, but I find people quite approachable here. I smile at somebody, they smile back…

This is going to be a question I can guess the answer to, but … what do you do for a living?
I’m a bartender and a server here at The Canterbury.

So that’s why you brought us drinks earlier! Mystery solved. How long have you worked here?
In about two weeks, it’ll be five years.

Where are you from originally?
Estacada, Oregon.

How would you compare life in Seattle to life in Estacada?
Estacada’s now 2,500 people, but when I moved away in ’98, it was 2,000. There was one paved driveway other than my parents’. So, you could say it’s pretty different!

What brought you to Seattle?
I went to the Art Institute for commercial photography. I really liked the darkroom aspect of photography, but print photography is becoming a thing of the past.

In five years at Ye Olde Medieval Pub, I bet you’ve seen a lot. Any memories that stand out in particular?
Well, the ghost messed with me a lot…

There’s a resident ghost?
At least one. There was a thing about it in The Stranger a while back, but the one I saw wasn’t the ghost they mentioned. I was working one night, and I thought I saw a man sitting at the bar in a black trench coat, but I didn’t see his face. I asked the bartender, Jen, to describe the ghost to me. And she described exactly what I saw. It was this guy who got his face shot off here, but I didn’t know this story until afterwards.

Did the ghost make his presence known in any other way?
There were cases where things were turned on after I turned them off, and things were moved around when nobody was here. The back room of the Canterbury used to be an occult store, but that was before my time.

You seem very outgoing—you must get to know a lot of the locals and regulars.
Yeah, I knew a lot of people before I started working here; I started coming here when I turned 21. They had my resume for two years before I was finally hired.

When you’re not working, where do you like to hang out?
I don’t really go out much. Last night, I went to 5th Avenue Theater—I go to a lot of musical theater shows.

Are you involved as a performer?
I’d love to be—I was an honors thespian in high school, but there wasn’t a theater program at the Art Institute, since it’s technically a vocational school.

When I was a waitress, I especially hated Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. As a server/bartender, are there any holidays or days of the year you especially dread?
New Year’s Eve and St. Patrick’s Day are kind of amateur nights, but at the same time, I like being busy. It’s kind of a love-hate thing. I don’t like just standing around for ten hours. I like people, so I like to entertain and serve people.

If you didn’t work for the Canterbury, what would be your ideal job?
I always wanted to be like Bette Midler—singing and dancing. But then I found out that I was a really bad actress. But I’d also like to be an accountant. I really like math.

Maybe you could find a way to combine musical theater and accounting?
Yeah, I could be a singing accountant! That would be great.

Your name is pronounced like the German name, but it has a different spelling. Tell me about it.
Yohan is Swahili for John, in the way that Johann is German for John. I’m originally from Kenya, in East Africa, where we speak Swahili. The language came about from the intermarriage and trade between the Arab world and East Africans; Swahili has a lot of Arabic terminologies and African languages mixed together, along with some influence from colonial languages.

It seems like everyone speaks about a thousand languages in the Horn of Africa countries…
In Kenya, everyone speaks at least three. We speak English, because of the British colonial influence, then we speak Swahili, which is our local language. And everybody belongs to a tribe, so they speak their own tribal vernacular. And then I learned French in school.

Being so multi-lingual, which language do you think of as your “mother tongue?”
My mother tongue is a language from Uganda—my mother is from Uganda, and I was born there, but my father comes from Kenya. So we moved to Kenya and I learned Swahili. And my father belongs to a tribe called the Kisii…

How do you think that affected you, growing up speaking multiple languages and living among so many different cultures in Uganda and Kenya ?
As a kid, it doesn’t phase you. It seems normal that everyone speaks different languages, etc. As you grow up, you start learning the differences among the tribes, which are more dominant, and you start looking at tribes as either superior or inferior. Some tribes are bigger than others, and the bigger ones run the economy.

Why did you move to Seattle?
I went to college in Vancouver, B.C., doing graphics and communication. I was an artist for a while, but that wasn’t what I really wanted to do in life. I wanted to fly airplanes! So I moved to Seattle, then I went to flight school in Florida and got my commercial pilot license. I was a pilot for TWA for a while. When American Airlines bought them out, I moved to Italy and flew for an Italian airline based in Milan.

How did you like living in Italy?
I loved it. Beautiful country. Love the food. But I got laid off, so I decided to move back to Seattle, which I consider my home.

It sounds like you’ve been all over the world—why do you consider Seattle your home?
I think it’s something in the water in Seattle, perhaps! I can’t put my finger on it, but I keep moving away, and I keep coming back. It’s weird. I’ve lived in some of the best and most exotic places in the world, including Italy and Puerto Rico and Hawaii, but I keep coming back here. I don’t understand it myself!

Do you live on Capitol Hill?
I live by Queen Anne, but this [the Canterbury] is basically my “local bar.” I know a lot of people here and they know me. I like to come here when I get off work early.

What do you do now?
I work for The Boeing Company in Everett as a functional technician, but I hope to become a test pilot for them soon.

More CHS Crow:

• Jorge, Monica & Jake — ‘… so I blend in’
• Ben, Azul & Mike (& Alfred) — ‘People in Seattle are from all over the place’
• Charles, Noa & Qwo-Li — ‘You have to have another job to pay the bills’
• More…

Marguerite Kennedy is a freelance writer, semi-professional thumb wrestler, and recovering New Yorker who currently resides on Capitol Hill. She blogs at www.marguerite-aville.com, and does that other thing @tweetmarguerite.

(Image: Lindsey Wasson/The Spectator)

Note: Details on the State of Washington vs. Tina Mcvey case and its chronology were taken from SPD Detective Melvin Britt’s 2011 Case Investigation Report, as well as various other court records. Because the case is still in litigation, University Counsel declined to comment on the case and advised University faculty and staff to refrain as well. Public Safety Director Mike Sletten provided a timeframe of the investigation.

At the end of the 2010 school year, David Ingham made a discovery.

Ingham, the account systems manager at the Seattle University Controller’s office, noticed that deposits had not been made from campus “revaluation machines” for a long time.

“Revaluation Machine” is the proper name for the black consoles on campus embedded in the wall near ATMs in the University Service Building and the Student center. If your meal plan is running low, or you want extra cash for laundry or vending machines, students and faculty can “reload” their campus card accounts with cash using the machines.

Oversight of the machines, as well as most campus technology systems, is the responsibility of Sungard, an external IT Service provider that began working with SU in 2003. After noticing deposits hadn’t been made from the revaluation machines in an unusually long time, Ingham reviewed accounts received from Sungard and noticed some alarming discrepancies.

Over the course of the 2008-2009 fiscal year, $53,598 had gone missing.

In the 2009-2010 fiscal year, $84,895 had disappeared.

In total, $138,493 deposited by students and faculty in campus revaluation machines simply was not there.

It had vanished.

Ingham picked up the phone and called Tina McVey.

Not long after, McVey quit.

—

Sungard and Seattle U’s Office of Information Technology began releasing a seasonal newsletter in 2008 called “SU Tech Talk.” In the Spring 2009 edition, a small feature was included called “Five Minutes With Tina McVey.” In it, McVey is interviewed briefly about her employment at Seattle U through Sungard. Starting in 2007, she began serving as the Campus Card Administrator, the duties of which she sums up in the interview as “oversee[ing] the Campus Card office, the people who staff it, and the card services that the University authorizes.”

McVey mentions working closely with payroll, Student Financial Services, Housing and Resident Life and Bon Appetit. At the end of the interview, when asked what she likes most about her job, McVey replies, “I really enjoy interacting with everyone on campus and getting to know them better. Since everyone has to have a campus card, I think it’s great that I’ll eventually get to meet everyone!”

One of McVey’s primary responsibilities was the collection of funds for deposit from the revaluation machines on campus. McVey was to collect the money in a US Bank bag, along with the deposit receipt, and take them to Rommel Delacruz, the Senior Account Technician at the Controllers office. In a statement to the Seattle Police Department, Delacruz said McVey was “the only Sungard employee he took deposits from that he could recall.”

After the missing $138,493 was discovered, McVey turned in one last deposit, short of funds, and abruptly quit.

A staff investigation led by campus Pubic Safety director Mike Sletten was launched to look into the theft, which soon involved the Seattle Police Department.

“Concerns about money handling reached a point where we needed to contact plice about a criminal investigation,” Mike Sletten said. “We needed to get this reported through police right away.”

McVey’s sudden resignation after the discovery of the missing funds made her a person of interest in the investigation. Quickly, other suspicious details started cropping up:

• While in 2008-2009 McVey recorded 13 deposit slips, in 2009-2010, she only recorded five. The space between deposits in 2009-2010 spanned months at a time.
• McVey was discovered to have written checks to a collection agency in 2008.
• A court issued search warrant of her personal bank account revealed “McVey had large amounts of cash each month, above and beyond her regular pay being deposited into her bank account in even dollar amounts (i.e. $1000, etc.).”

The investigation lasted from Jul 2010 through the middle of 2011. Sletten facilitated the investigation with SPD, assisting with setting up appropriate interviews and coordinating logistics. Public Safety and the Controller’s office took control of the responsibility for account deposits from Sungard after the incident.

“We wanted to assure it was appropriately accounted for, dollar for dollar,” Sletten said.

During the period of the investigation when Public Safety and the Controller’s office took control of accounts, only a $1 to $2 discrepancy was noted.

After a review of the facts, probable cause was determined to charge Tina McVey with Theft in the 1st Degree. McVey was arrested on September 20, 2011.

—

How the University failed to notice large amounts of money being stolen for two years has yet to be addressed by Seattle University—however the University did assure The Spectator that no faculty, staff or student lost money in their account due to the theft.

Thanks to Chuck Porter, neither faculty, staff, nor student will really have to worry about it anymore.

The same Fall that McVey was arrested, Chuck Porter was hired to fill a newly created position at Seattle University—Chief Information Officer (CIO). The CIO job, while tech oriented, is not staffed through Sungard like McVey was. The CIO works strategically with Sungard from the university to prioritize technical investments on campus, and administer Sungard’s contract with the school. Porter is in many ways the mind behind the campus tech—he thinks about what the school has in the way of technology, and tries to make sure it gets what it needs.

One of Porter’s first priorities as CIO was to replace the campus card system.

“The system was built 12 years ago, and in tech you have to think about things in dog years, so that’s really old,” Porter said. “Door locks would stop working with cards when it rained, which we all know never happens in Seattle.”

Another concern of Porter’s about the system was that students couldn’t count on it to accurately reflect the balances in their accounts.

Upgraded SU Cards might be part of the solution

“The revaluation machines were broken most of the time,” Porter said. “Faculty and students couldn’t even use them, let alone rely on them to tell them how much money they had.”

Over the summer, Porter replaced the entire system—installing new door swipers that activate with a simple tap of the campus card. He got rid of the revaluation machines altogether.

Instead, students have an entirely new way to manage their campus card debit accounts. A new website in its final stages of debug, https://campuscard.seattleu.edu, will debut around the time this newspaper comes out that will enable a slew of new capabilities to students. Students will now be able to add money to their accounts and check balances over the internet. Students can also give their parents access to add money to their campus card debit accounts remotely. If students lose their campus cards and are worried about someone taking them, they can also deactivate their current student cards over the internet.

“The risk that was present before has completely gone away,” Porter said. “This new system is much safer, and I think will be much easier for students.”

As for McVey—her first case scheduling hearing was originally scheduled in June of this year. The hearing has been delayed three times as McVey confers and reviews the case with her lawyers, but is currently set for September 24th.

The Seattle University Spectator is a student-run publication covering the school. CHS features Spectator reporting as part of a community collaboration. A portion of advertising revenue generated by the collaboration is donated to area non-profits involved with media, journalism and social causes. You can enjoy the Spectator online at su-spectator.com.

One thing is sure to get lost in the shuffle of concerns about microapartments on the Hill — people live in these things. This morning, we showed you just how many microhousing projects there actually are around Capitol Hill. Here’s what they look like inside.

Warning: What you are about to see is, well, kind of boring.

But getting there was the interesting part. Our efforts to work with the developers or property managers and get inside one of the open aPodment buildings on the Hill got nowhere fast.

Turned down, we turned instead to an aPodment resident. What we found were small, dorm-like rooms — as messy and cluttered as any other 20-something male’s place on the Hill. The shocking photos are below.

You also get a sink and a refrigerator in your room

The rooftop patio

Shared Kitchen area

First impressions: The aPodments are, yes, tiny. Roughly the size of a college dorm, maybe even smaller, there’s room for a bed, some clothes, and a bit of storage for your things.

Units average less than 150 square-feet across the various developments. Rents range from $500 to more than $600.

A communal kitchen and a small rooftop area with seating can provide a getaway from the confines of your room, but quarters are close there too. It’s a lot of living packed into a very small space.

Decibel 08, originally uploaded by deejayres.

The Decibel Festival is set to make Seattle’s ears ring with electronic music starting today and running through Sunday the 30th. Many of these events will take place on Capitol Hill at Neumos, Barboza, Q, the Baltic Room, Melrose Market Studios, and, offering the largest variety of Decibel options for the Hill, the Broadway Performance Hall. If you include Hill-adjacent venues Re-Bar and The Paramount, that’s a high Decibel level for the Hill, right? Individual tickets and festival passes are available on the Decibel site.

For those looking to dip their toes into Decibel without buying the festival pass (which carries a hefty final cost of $240.64 after fees, or $129.13 for students) there’s an event on Saturday that warrants attention. At noon at the Broadway Performance Hall the Do Over will be hosting a free showcase hosted by Haycock, Strong, & Aloe Blacc, with many guest DJs. It’s all hush-hush, but judging by past events it should be well-respected DJs.

Decibel is an ambitious festival. Besides the music showcases, one major aspect is the conference, which takes place largely at the Broadway Performance Hall. The conference includes workshops, keynotes, product demos, and much more. One of the first of these events is a class called SPACE PALETTE AND MORE – CREATING CONTROLLERS FOR THE KINECT. (Broadway Performance Hall, Wednesday) That’s par for the course- geeky, forward-looking, and if you are involved with or interested in making electronic music, quite possibly fascinating. UPDATE: And, as Jeanine points out in comments, the conference portion is “complimentary” — also known as FREE.

A new addition to Decibel’s Capitol Hill experience will be Broadway dance club Q. The new venue debuted in September with ambitions of changing Seattle’s EDM landscape.

If one is drawn to the visual as much as the auditory there is much to choose from right on the Hill. Optical is Decibel’s audiovisual series will have many performances at, you guessed it, Broadway Performance Hall. On Wednesday there will be a re-scoring of Jean Rollin’s La Vampire Nue by Demdike Stare. Might not want to bring the kids to this one — the film is pretty adult. There are Optical events each day, some at the Triple Door, and some at BPH. Tickets for these events are sold individually, and are also included in the festival pass. 

Electronic music enthusiasts would be well-advised to attend as much of this year’s Decibel as possible. For fans of the upperclassmen, there’s Orbital at the Paramount on Thursday, KEXP recommends dB in Dub and Cerebral Vortex at Neumos on Wednesday and Saturday respectively. Off the Hill there are also many don’t-miss shows like Tipper, MIMOSA, and Starkey, at Showbox on Thursday. There are choices and plans to make, and little time. Better get to it. 

Scientology has come to Capitol Hill in the form of a front organization under the name of “Citizens Commission on Human Rights”. The group currently has an exhibition situated in the old Hollywood Video location on 129 Broadway E. 

The organization compares modern Psychiatry to “terrorism” and the “mafia”. It also lays claim that psychiatry is a crime and is to blame for among many current tradgedies such as Colubmine, and 9/11. 

They are actively handing out flyers on the street and have window posters promintently displaying the message “Psychiatry Kills” over pictures of Seattle icon Kurt Cobain and legend Judy Garland. 

More information about the organization can be found here: http://www.cchr.org

Seattle – September 25, 2012 – Black Rock Spirits, makers of Bakon Vodka, a brand that in only three years gained nation-wide distribution and a fanatical fan base, today announced they are assisting with the US distribution of Sparkle Donkey Silver and Sparkle Donkey Reposado tequilas.  Until now, this 100% agave award-winning tequila  with a rich heritage has only been available in small batches due to inefficient donkey-only distribution, according to a Black Rock Spirits spokesperson.

As most tequila aficionados know, heritage is critical to the taste of any tequila.  “Is your favorite tequila old enough?” asks Black Rock Spirits subordinate, Sven Lidén.  “Maybe not. There are many tequilas to choose from and some have been around for three, four, even five generations.  We’re proud to be importing tequila with a heritage that goes back not generations, but centuries.  We’re also pleased that the Institute of Tequila Studies has recently completed an in-depth historical archive of the legend behind the world’s best tequila, Sparkle Donkey.”

                The tale of the elusive Sparkle Donkey (or ‘El Burro Esparkalo’ as it’s known to locals) is as rich with history as it is with mystery.  Legend has it that one of the most well documented sightings of El Burro Esparkalo was in the late 1800s in a small Mexican village in the Jalisco region.  Residents say that the donkey saved their village after spring floods destroyed their agave fields, bringing barrels of tequila down the mountain.  Analysis confirms that the 100% Agave tequila is handcrafted somewhere in the Jalisco region using high-sugar agave and volcanic spring water, but beyond that, not much is known.  The complete historical archive by the Institute of Tequila Studies can be viewed at www.sparkledonkey.com. 

                Fans of the Sparkle Donkey brand have been around for decades in the US, but until now were unable to find it consistently or in large quantities.  Despite its rarity, notable spirits competitions and judges have praised the limited edition tequila’s quality.  Sparkle Donkey Silver was recently awarded a Gold Medal (rated 93 points, ‘Exceptional’) at the 2012 BTI International Spirits Competition (http://bit.ly/P0qb2X).  The Reposado also earned a Silver Medal (rated 88 points, ‘Highly Recommended’) at the competition.

                Prices vary from state to state, but Sparkle Donkey typically retails in the low- to mid-20 dollar range. You can find Sparkle Donkey NOW at Poquitos, The Hideout, Unicorn, and Liberty Bar in Capitol Hill. For more information on when Sparkle Donkey will be available locally or to learn more about the legend and history of El Burro Esparkalo, visit www.sparkledonkey.com, watch the video at http://vimeo.com/45403197 or like Sparkle Donkey on Facebook www.facebook.com/sparkledonkey.

Given our small role in Seattle’s media industry, we have to admit to a little extra love for the Capitol Hill Community Council an its newly installed publisher/president George Bakan. Curious to know how a council meeting run by a Seattle media mogul goes? Here’s our set of notes from last Thursday’s September council session in the Cal Anderson Shelter House. You can learn more about the CHCC and plan ahead for the next meeting in November at capitolhillcommunitycouncil.org.

• Capitol Hill Station: Vanessa Murdock of the Department of Planning and Development talked about Monday night’s meeting which will “touch on designs of the urban design framework (in relation to Capitol Hill Light Rail Project).” “Monday is the night!” says council member Michael Wells, it is “a cumulative effect of years and years of work…Capitol Hill should be proud.” President Bakan agreed, adding, “It’s a fascinating project…go to the meeting.”
• Microapartments: The most vigorously discussed issue of the night was on building density and the concern that some developers of “apodments” and microhousing are skirting proper building planning review via loopholes.  “These are incredibly vague rules,” remarked an attendee. “We have identified 10-11 (microhousing units) on Capitol Hill,” said a presenter fromReasonable Density Seattle.
  

  ---

After an hour of debate about microhousing and the wording of a letter to be sent to the Seattle City Council — in a nutshell, “We don’t like that apodments don’t have building review signs, look into it.” — the meeting moved on.

• Melrose Promenade: The Melrose Promenade Project presented on its future endeavors in the area. They hold a community clean-up event every 2nd Sunday of every month. Check out the Melrose Promenade Facebook page for details. UPDATE: We’ve removed erroneous details regarding clean-ups that have already occurred. A representative says a $20,000 grant will be used for a community “visioning” process.
• Streetcar route art project: Claudia Fitch of SDOT made a presentation about an arts project that will be part of the under construction streetcar line. This will include creating light posts representative of the area around each part of the route. In the International District the light posts will be based on the cultures of the boroughs they represent. On Broadway it will be bright and a modern-deco design. The arts projects will also include “eye of the needle” posts which will carry catenary wires along the street car line and she also presented ideas for artistic partitions between bike lanes and using cross-hatching patterns on crosswalks. These projects are in the conceptual stage.

• Omnivorous: David Dologite presented on behalf of Capitol Hill Housing and shared details of this Friday’s Omnivorous fundraiser which will have “unlimited nibbles” and “chocolate in there somewhere.” 
• Cal Anderson safety: Police will be stepping up patrols; working with school (Seattle Central has stepped up security to operate 24/7). Michael Wells of the council said, “Nagle Place has gotten sketchy.” SCCC will be putting up more lights.
• East Precinct Advisory Council: Next Thursday, EastPAC will be holding a meeting and are looking for people to get involved with the council. It will be held at Seattle University in Chardin Hall.

More notes:

• A woman made a presentation on a potential QR project (QR are those funky looking bar codes that smart phones can read). This would involve setting up QR codes around Capitol Hill that link to online polls which residents can use to voice their opinion on issues affecting the community. The presentation was associated with Small Sparks.
• A logo contest is being held to create a new one for the Community Council. An undetermined prize will be given to the winner.
• The CHCC treasurer spoke about the various issues they have with Bank of America and their plan to move to BECU. The CHCC currently has $1,896 in their back account to which Bakan said, “We need more money.” Another asked how people can donate, to which the treasurer replied, “Just give it to me!” Bakan also notes that CHCC is not a non-profit.

The inconvenient truth about charter school Initiative 1240

An excerpt:

Initiative 1240, which is a resolution to set up charter schools in the state of Washington,

circumvents our State Constitution because it would set up an alternative state school system not under the supervision of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Randy Dorn, Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction, July 2012

Bill Gates and the Walton’s are waging a campaign against democracy and public education and for the privatization of our schools through the tool of Initiative 1240. Bill Gates, the Walton’s and others from the “business community” in our state, have financially backed a campaign to get enough signatures for Initiative 1240 to be on the ballot in November and now are financing the push for the votes through faux roots organizations such as Stand for Children and the League of Education Voters.

For a description of what charter schools are and what they aren’t, see What is a charter school? which is posted on this blog.

Read more at Seattle Education: News and Commentary.

When I heard about upstart crow collective’s entirely female Titus Andronicus (at Seattle’s U’s Lee Center through October 7; tickets), my stomach gleefully lurched, and I purchased away with a bloody, macabre song in my heart. All women? Are you serious? This hardly ever happens! (I may have squealed.)

Shakespeare often underserves contemporary female actors, with lackluster roles or only two women in a twenty-person cast. Seeing talented female actors playing bit parts as handmaids, fairies, or even the larger, yet rarely deep characters gets old and generally inspires rants about failures of creativity. Tthere are exceptions, of course, but only exceptions–not rules.

(Why, in 2012, with everything else in play, are we putting on Shakespeare the way he gender-assigned it? It makes no sense, so I have to try to play the “Because” game to explain it. Romeo’s best friend can’t be a chick because…dudes aren’t friends with girls? An entirely genderbent play has to stay the way it was originally designated because…if we have a woman outside the designated cross-dressing it loses all meaning? Fools are strictly males because…they make dick jokes? Did I get any of them right? I digress.)

Having read Titus Andronicus long ago in some darkened high school lit class, I vaguely remembered it involved a lot of blood, rape, dismemberment, and eating people. Since I’ve been worried about the zombie apocalypse, it didn’t seem like too much of a stretch in my 2012 doom-countdown clock that an all-female Titus might be one of the four Horsemen, but in Goth garb, tattoos, and piercings. (Oh yes, it’s hot.)

Let me just throw out some names that cinched the deal for me: Rhonda J. Soikowski, Peggy Gannon, and Tracy Hyland. Amy Thone is Titus. Oh. Wait. Go back. Amy Thone is Titus. Holy crap.

So, aside from clearly pandering to me and my uncontrollable need to watch talented women perform Shakespearean characters outside of the usual fluff of Nurse and Peaseblossom, the production is actually quite good, though bumpy in a few places. Set in the round (with a rather lovely design by Carol Wolfe Clay), I was struck by the altars lining the walls. There were white urns smeared with blood behind me, and a large bloody table with a dropcloth in front. I was surrounded on both sides by overhanging black staircases.

Under the direction of Rosa Joshi, the immediate contrast between Soikowski’s Bassianus and Kelly Kitchen’s Saturninus sets up the premise of a kingdom torn between two different brothers for the throne–one warm and smiling and one severe. Further, the loving gestures shown in the small and quick moments between Bassianus and his love Lavinia (Brenda Joyner) make you acutely aware as cute and happy as they are, it cannot end well. Meanwhile, the beautifully nasty portrayal of the two brothers from the Goth side of things (Gannon and Sarah Harlett) will ruin your faith in humanity especially during the battery of Lavinia.

Nike Imoru shines as the evil-at-heart Aaron, manipulating any and all to gain power. Strangely enough, I did not question this fact even when he looked on his baby. No softness came through, per se, but the subtle shift into being evil for evil’s sake and suddenly having progeny to provide purpose was quite captivating.

Thone balanced Titus’ love of his children, desire to be left to aging with grace, and the possibility of insanity with clear contrasts driving the play forcefully home. The decision to sever his hand juxtaposed with his inability to comfort a tongue-less, handless, and utterly destroyed Lavinia is perhaps the best example of Thone’s skill.

I had hoped this production would be spotless, but not all is shiny. At times the production became spotty and unclear in its tone. When the deceased cast comes back to set the table for the cannibalistic dinner, I felt like I was watching another play. Though it was darkly humorous and had me giggling, the play shifted from dark deeds by dark men to sweet revenge with a camp twist. And though I liked this short transition for its macabre glee, the turn from intense and serious violence to farce was a little jarring.

Complicating the issue was how the production dealt with blood. They chose to show the puppet strings of theatrical blood effects. We see the syringe that shoots blood from a knife; we see blood poured on a chest in a ritualized manner after the character dies. It made the would-be mess tidy, but also stylized and confused. While some moments came off wonderfully lusty in the pouring of blood, others were almost comical. Further, a few of the asides seemed to be lit as if the characters were B-movie villains delivering their monologues about orchestrating the invasion of earth. Not just lit that way, I should say, but also delivered in some instances as if they were expected to end them with a “Muahahahaha.”

Added together, these choices made me wonder: Is it camp? Tongue-in-cheek? Completely serious? I couldn’t be sure. Of course, the play does lend itself to over-the-top dramatics by the end. Having endured so much death, blood, and abuse, is there anything to do but laugh? But in this instance, it did not necessarily feel earned, instead broadcasting the ridiculousness of the circumstances and cheapening an otherwise emotionally captivating production.

Aside from that, there was an overriding question I couldn’t help but ask: When are they women playing men, and when are they performing as women in a male part? I enjoyed exploring this question through the variety of performance and honestly want to see it again, if no other reason than to document the play for its queer and gender theory lens. There were actors who performed as women throughout (Kitchens, Tracy Hyland). There were actors performing men without the seams of femininity at all (Gannon, Imoru, Soikowski, and Harlett). And then there was Thone, who seemed to shift between mother and father, both male and female.

Rather than taking me out of the performance, I felt that the question added to how we approach the text and story. When is Titus the man actually a mother? How is Aaron’s self-proclaimed evil side squelched with a softer touch when a son is born to him? And the larger question of why these choices are categorized in clearly imperfect gendered binaries. Why does it hurt more that this Titus doesn’t know how to comfort his daughter? I don’t know. But it does.

The SunBreak is an online magazine of news & culture. A conversation about the things on Seattle’s mind.

Off the Rez has worked it out on E Pike (Image: Off the Rez via Facebook)

With Capitol Hill’s growing nightlife economy, one component of the scene that hasn’t grown to the same extent as the lines outside Pike/Pine clubs on a Friday night is that necessity of booze-y late-night carousing — street food. Answers have been mixed as Seattle reaches its first anniversary of enacting new laws designed to foster the entrepreneurial food+drink scene. Are things better? The party crowd at the Puget Sound Business Journal says, ho ho, Seattle street food is gaining speed. Slog says “yes and no.” The Great Broadway/Pike Hot Dog Cart Caper of 2012 says the city, at least on Capitol Hill, still has plenty of work to do.

Last year, the City Council passed legislation beefing up street food enforcement, while simultaneously easing regulations. The intent was to make vendors feel more welcome while also providing strictly enforced guidelines.

According to Erik Gus of Contigo, a food truck that specializes in modern Mexican cuisine, everyone is learning what the relatively new street food policy means.

Gus ran into trouble with the city when his permit for a spot at 11th Ave and Pike was taken away due to a miscalculation that placed the cart too close to a restaurant. 

“I keep a tape measure in my car now,” Gus said.

“The city is learning just as much as we are about the codes, we’re all learning.”

One of the trickier policies for vendors requires the securing of a bathroom within 200 feet of the location.

“We’ve talked to businesses before and agreed to cook them free lunch in exchange for use of the bathroom. Some people just ask us to pay them for it. The bathroom agreement is hard to set up sometimes,” Gus said. 

Exactly what a number of the policies are asking for is difficult to discern for some street food entrepreneurs. 

“It’s a lot of homework and a lot of grey area,” Mark McConnell from Off the Rez said. “A lot of things are unclear.” 

Despite all the shuffle, Gus said things have been mostly positive with the city.

Permits — worthy of celebration (Image: Contigo via Twitter)

“The city has been really great and accommodating — getting permits is just like any other process, if you’re prepared you’re fine.”

DPD Service Request #40571
“In the 80s up until somewhat recently, street food was considered something of a blight on the city,” DPD’s Gary Johnson said. “As we became a much more urbanized and cosmopolitan city, Seattle was noted for its lack of a vibrant street food scene.”

Johnson said at the same time street cart vendors doling out simple fare like hot dogs popped up all over the city, with one of the healthiest populations residing in the Pike/Pine corridor. 

“We had very limited enforcement capability. Most vending that was happening was illegal,” Johnson said.

Which brings us to DPD Service Request #40571 — a story of how the new rules work and don’t work and the challenges faced by vendors trying to find a spot in the neighborhood.

“There is an unmarked hot dog vending truck which sells hot dogs to the drunk and drunker from the parking lot corner of the Shell gas station, located at Broadway and E. Pike,” begins an anonymous Cap Hillian’s complaint, filed with the Department of Planning and development earlier this year.

“The truck’s very, very close proximity to my apartment, and its unreasonable hours, coupled with the crowd noise, the smell of gas which permeates my apartment from their open gas flames, is why I need your help.”

The anonymous resident goes on to explain that the owner of the Shell gas station said he “didn’t know anything” about the hot dog truck. After some prodding, the owner broke down, ending the conversation with the tried and true “It’s my private property and I can do what I want” line.

According to city records, inspector Tom Bradrick was put on the case, which ended up generating “a lot of discussion with management, senior inspectors, and land use specialists,” according to one of the more straightforward remarks we’ve ever seen in the DPD complaint records.

The things is, techincally, the Shell owner was right. Kind of. Chances are, if you read an article about a new housing developments in the neighborhood on CHS, you’ll notice that they are sitting on top of retail space, being built around retail space, or putting new retail space in under the housing. Design-wise, we mix private and public space. That’s what made this complaint so tricky for DPD. The hot dog cart is technically in commercial space, but someone also lives right next door.  

The email chain the complaint started internally at DPD bounces back and forth between most experts in the department. As Inspector Bradrick said, the whole gang got involved, “management, senior inspectors, and land use specialists.” 

Ultimately, the cart was determined not to have breached any policy — but the email chain shows that reaching a verdict on street food policy in the city is still just as messy as a Seattle dog at last call.

Connections
Back on E Pike, Off the Rez has had an easier time of it.

“We figured out everything beforehand — bugged inspectors ahead of time to make sure we had things in order and flew through the inspection,” McConnell said. 

Mark’s brother is Mike McConnell, founder of Caffe Vita, which made securing Off the Rez’s spot in the cafe’s Pike St loading dock easy. McConnell’s truck is on private property and has permission of the owner, allowing Off the Rez to bypass most of the city’s new permit process. Thanks to the city’s new code and a vital E Pike connection, Off the Rez has flourished on Capitol Hill and on its weekly visits to Fremont and South Lake Union. McConnell said he hopes to open a brick and mortar restaurant version of Off the Rez in the future.

The DPD mail thread

101901942 Food Cart Files