My Week
Every day I walk down 15th St here in Seattle at some point or another. It's a nice little street, with some good restaurants, coffee joints, and bars. Par for the course in Seattle, there is also a Starbucks. Due to the recession and Starbucks' previous business plan of making sure there is one in walking distance of anywhere you are in any metro area, Starbucks has been hurting and losing money fast. The company made the decision to close roughly 500 stores across the country several weeks ago to save some dough. The Starbucks on 15th St. happens to be one of them.
Several days after this decision was announced on my way to work I was asked by a woman sitting outside the Starbucks to sign a "Save Our Starbucks" petition. Apparently some people don't share my loathing for the company and it's shitty coffee and business practices, and actually want to keep the stores around. Since then, every time that I have walked by the store that same woman is sitting outside with the same petition. Her face is slowly growing more sunburned every day, and it's clear that she has to be taking time off of work or whatever she does normally to sit outside of this Starbucks asking people to sign a petition to save it. I simply don't understand why this is necessary.
There is no lack of places to get coffee in our neighborhood, Ms. Petition. When your precious Starbucks closes, you still have plenty of choices. Like Victrola, which is right across the street and has coffee that doesn't taste like it's burned most of the time. If you don't like that, there's Caffe Ladro another block down. There's even another Starbucks in a Safeway literally 2 blocks down the street from the one that's closing.
To me, Starbucks is on pretty much the same level as McDonalds - a chain with aggressive expansion policies that makes a below-par version of a staple food item and charges way too much for it. You don't see people petitioning to save a McDonalds that's closing, do you? This is equally silly. She's not the only one doing this, either - Apparently all over the country people are petitioning to save some of the 500 stores that are scheduled to be closed. Can people really not be bothered to walk a few more blocks to get coffee?
I've been asked to sign the petition almost every time I've walked past the store, which is frequently. I've never signed it.
I saw two amazing concerts last weekend with Scott. The first was U.S.E and Girl Talk at the Capitol Hill Block Party. For those of you who are uninformed, the Block Party is a huge celebration of my great neighborhood that happens on the street. They close down a chunk of the streets and put up stages and booths - much like the Eugene Celebration but with better bands ;) Girl Talk was the main event for me, but we got there early enough to catch a band that I had always wanted to see but never got the chance to, the United State of Electronica. They're a fun band whose name is a little deceiving - not really electronica per say, their style is more dance rock with a techno flair. The 4/4 beat was constant, layered under several guitars, a male vocalist who made the most of his synth-vocoder combo, and two females who did backup vocals. The whole set was a party, and the music style was definitely a good fit for the environment.
I'm not going to go into Menomena (the band who played in between U.S.E and Girl Talk) too much, because I really didn't like them. Badly placed in the lineup, their crowd response was almost non-existent, and I heard frequent shouts of "Girl Talk!" The lead vocalist couldn't really sing, and the bad failed to really get into a good groove. I know a lot of people like them, I just failed to see really anything positive about the performance. U.S.E should have been right before girl talk, it would have been tons better.
Girl Talk was a different story. For those of you who haven't seen him live before, one of the coolest parts of his show is the fact that he lets people get up on stage and dance around him as he mixes. The block party was no exception, but what the rush to get on stage caused was not pleasant. As soon as people started going up, naturally everyone else wanted to as well, and it resulted in constant pushing and shoving and pressure to anyone close to the front of the audience. Throughout his set I was sandwiched, elbowed, shoved, and felt like I was going to explode with the pressure of all the people pushing on me trying to make it to the front, which it was impossible to do. Regardless, Girl Talk did exactly what he does best, mixed up an hour-long set full of samples that he used in Night Ripper and Feed the Animals, as well as a fair bit of stuff that I haven't heard before ("Digital Love," anyone?) Despite the overly rowdy crowd I still had a great time, and Greg never disappoints with his mixes. I just hope the next time I see him there will be a little bit more space.
Nine Inch Nails was on Saturday. Their set was 2 hours of absolute bliss. I feel like there is no description I can give of this show that will do it justice - every part of it was amazing. The sound was the best I've heard at KeyArena. NIN's set list was flawless, encompassing not only the entirety of The Slip but almost every other famous track in their back catalogue. They even played some of Ghosts, which involved all of them playing different instruments including Trent Reznor on marimba and Alessandro Cortini on piano. The set and lighting was constantly changing - video screens would rise and fall in various places with effects that literally blew my mind at times - at several points during the show there was a transparent LED net both in front of and behind the band making it look like it was raining on stage, for example. Other times the lighting was more traditional, but still pretty impressive. I seriously thought I'd never see a light show better than the one at Daft Punk, but I think this might have beaten it. Every time they changed the set or what the various screens were displaying I had to do a double take - I had never seen anything like it before. All of that on top of the fact that all of the songs were played flawlessly and the musicianship of every member of the band was superb and note-perfect made this, almost definitely, the best show I have ever been to. Yes, Daft Punk, you have lost your throne.
Here's a video with some highlights: It's pretty bad quality, but if you click on it and actually go to YouTube there's a "view in high quality" link. I recommend seeing it that way.
Several days after this decision was announced on my way to work I was asked by a woman sitting outside the Starbucks to sign a "Save Our Starbucks" petition. Apparently some people don't share my loathing for the company and it's shitty coffee and business practices, and actually want to keep the stores around. Since then, every time that I have walked by the store that same woman is sitting outside with the same petition. Her face is slowly growing more sunburned every day, and it's clear that she has to be taking time off of work or whatever she does normally to sit outside of this Starbucks asking people to sign a petition to save it. I simply don't understand why this is necessary.
There is no lack of places to get coffee in our neighborhood, Ms. Petition. When your precious Starbucks closes, you still have plenty of choices. Like Victrola, which is right across the street and has coffee that doesn't taste like it's burned most of the time. If you don't like that, there's Caffe Ladro another block down. There's even another Starbucks in a Safeway literally 2 blocks down the street from the one that's closing.
To me, Starbucks is on pretty much the same level as McDonalds - a chain with aggressive expansion policies that makes a below-par version of a staple food item and charges way too much for it. You don't see people petitioning to save a McDonalds that's closing, do you? This is equally silly. She's not the only one doing this, either - Apparently all over the country people are petitioning to save some of the 500 stores that are scheduled to be closed. Can people really not be bothered to walk a few more blocks to get coffee?
I've been asked to sign the petition almost every time I've walked past the store, which is frequently. I've never signed it.
I saw two amazing concerts last weekend with Scott. The first was U.S.E and Girl Talk at the Capitol Hill Block Party. For those of you who are uninformed, the Block Party is a huge celebration of my great neighborhood that happens on the street. They close down a chunk of the streets and put up stages and booths - much like the Eugene Celebration but with better bands ;) Girl Talk was the main event for me, but we got there early enough to catch a band that I had always wanted to see but never got the chance to, the United State of Electronica. They're a fun band whose name is a little deceiving - not really electronica per say, their style is more dance rock with a techno flair. The 4/4 beat was constant, layered under several guitars, a male vocalist who made the most of his synth-vocoder combo, and two females who did backup vocals. The whole set was a party, and the music style was definitely a good fit for the environment.
I'm not going to go into Menomena (the band who played in between U.S.E and Girl Talk) too much, because I really didn't like them. Badly placed in the lineup, their crowd response was almost non-existent, and I heard frequent shouts of "Girl Talk!" The lead vocalist couldn't really sing, and the bad failed to really get into a good groove. I know a lot of people like them, I just failed to see really anything positive about the performance. U.S.E should have been right before girl talk, it would have been tons better.
Girl Talk was a different story. For those of you who haven't seen him live before, one of the coolest parts of his show is the fact that he lets people get up on stage and dance around him as he mixes. The block party was no exception, but what the rush to get on stage caused was not pleasant. As soon as people started going up, naturally everyone else wanted to as well, and it resulted in constant pushing and shoving and pressure to anyone close to the front of the audience. Throughout his set I was sandwiched, elbowed, shoved, and felt like I was going to explode with the pressure of all the people pushing on me trying to make it to the front, which it was impossible to do. Regardless, Girl Talk did exactly what he does best, mixed up an hour-long set full of samples that he used in Night Ripper and Feed the Animals, as well as a fair bit of stuff that I haven't heard before ("Digital Love," anyone?) Despite the overly rowdy crowd I still had a great time, and Greg never disappoints with his mixes. I just hope the next time I see him there will be a little bit more space.
Nine Inch Nails was on Saturday. Their set was 2 hours of absolute bliss. I feel like there is no description I can give of this show that will do it justice - every part of it was amazing. The sound was the best I've heard at KeyArena. NIN's set list was flawless, encompassing not only the entirety of The Slip but almost every other famous track in their back catalogue. They even played some of Ghosts, which involved all of them playing different instruments including Trent Reznor on marimba and Alessandro Cortini on piano. The set and lighting was constantly changing - video screens would rise and fall in various places with effects that literally blew my mind at times - at several points during the show there was a transparent LED net both in front of and behind the band making it look like it was raining on stage, for example. Other times the lighting was more traditional, but still pretty impressive. I seriously thought I'd never see a light show better than the one at Daft Punk, but I think this might have beaten it. Every time they changed the set or what the various screens were displaying I had to do a double take - I had never seen anything like it before. All of that on top of the fact that all of the songs were played flawlessly and the musicianship of every member of the band was superb and note-perfect made this, almost definitely, the best show I have ever been to. Yes, Daft Punk, you have lost your throne.
Here's a video with some highlights: It's pretty bad quality, but if you click on it and actually go to YouTube there's a "view in high quality" link. I recommend seeing it that way.
Click to view