Greetings from Big Sky Country

After arriving yesterday afternoon at Helena Regional Airport, I quickly noticed that Montanans are friendlier than Seattleites. By a wide margin. They strike up conversations simply because they're in the same space as you. They offer you fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies when you check into their hotels. They share taxis with you, to be friendly but also because there's only one taxi company in town, and sometimes the next cab won't be coming for an hour. We asked our driver how long she'd lived in Helena -- she was born around here -- and she said: "Too long." I shared the car with a nice couple visiting from Alaska. They had a satisfyingly negative view of Sarah Palin and Ted Stevens; the wife was in town to help lead a yoga retreat.

Last night, the groom's male friends, myself included, threw him an impromptu "bachelor party" that was really just a brief bar-hopping spree. We met some locals, discussed marriage and relationships, and got to bed by 1 a.m. Today I had a crepe for breakfast and read The New Yorker, got my Facebook fix, and had a fantastic veggie burger for lunch at an (ostensibly) Irish pub. Now I'm about to go swimming in the hotel's heated pool. The ceremony isn't until four o'clock. (Did I mention I'm in town for the wedding of my Oberlin friends Jesse Groman and Abby Person?)

The rehearsal dinner last night was splendid, and just the way I want mine to be someday: relaxed, fun, and full of nice people and delicious food. And random dogs. And homemade lemon sorbet for dessert, served in emptied-out lemon halves. This mini-vacation I'm on was sorely needed, and I hope to take more weekend trips in the near-ish future. Sometimes a change of scenery can be incredibly refreshing. (By the way, the picture above is of Helena's downtown cathedral, which I hope to see before I leave town tomorrow afternoon.)

Everyday style

Kate introduced me to the new photoblog Face Like a Blessing, a diverse and gorgeous catalog of faces. Says its creator, Jasmine:

Some will be friends, some strangers, some fashionable, some not -- it'll be a slightly different focus from Pike/Pine, but I hope just as interesting and enjoyable for you and me.

Super-ego

Jeffrey Toobin has an enjoyable article on Obama's Senate replacement in the latest New Yorker. Not only does it boast one of the wittier illustrations to run in the magazine of late (see above), its portrayal of Burris as "a figure of fun, because he was highly egocentric" -- so says former Chicago ward committeeman Alan Dobry -- offers the reader an opportunity for genuine schadenfreude. That Burris has already commissioned a mausoleum with "words of self-celebration carved into the wall," and that the achievements it records aren't overwhelmingly impressive, is entertaining enough; that he named his son Roland Jr. and his daughter -- wait for it -- Rolanda (not making this up) pretty much takes the cake. I've always loved The New Yorker's political profiles, and this one, in its sly way, posits an interesting idea:

In his very ordinariness, Burris may represent a triumph of sorts for the civil-rights movement, which was, at least in part, a struggle for black people to be seen as just like everybody else.

Metro mayhem

Okay, not actual mayhem. But the threat of mayhem -- the definite possibility thereof.

I took the #71 downtown today instead of the #64, which takes me directly to work. Assorted people stood with me at the #71 stop in Ravenna, including a very nice Australian lady, and we all talked about Seattle's three snowplows and climate change. Despite the unseasonable cold, we had a nice time. At the Westlake station of the transit tunnel, I got out and walked to the #3, doing in reverse what I do every day to get home. I boarded the #3 on First Avenue, and it wasn't unusually full when I got on, but as we moved toward the hillclimb more people crowded in, until it was hard to move, breathe, etc. Then we started to go up the hill. We reached Fifth Avenue before the driver decided we had too many people -- we were too heavy to ascend the slope (this was a trolley bus). Then something happened that reminded me, perversely, of the scene in The Dark Knight wherein Heath Ledger's Joker attempts a nasty little social-psychology experiment, telling the passengers on each of two ferryboats that they have to blow up the other boat in order to survive. Spoiler alert: Human nature isn't quite as dark as the Joker presumes it to be, and everything turns out fine.

On the #3, there was much grumbling after the driver stopped the bus and told us that unless someone got off, none of us would be going anywhere, because we simply couldn't get up that hill with so many bodies crammed into the vehicle. There was swearing among the passengers, and no one, myself included, wanted to hike up Jefferson Street in the cold. We stood there for about ten minutes, and then people finally started to get off the bus. Before that happened, I thought more clearly about class and Metro than I had in some time. I'm scheduled to get my car back Monday evening, but a lot of the people on the #3 probably didn't have cars at all. When you don't have much money and can't afford an alternative, you have to put up with whatever bullshit Metro throws at you.

In this case, the bus driver was scolding us for being stubborn, but a woman at the back of the bus rightly pointed out that the driver, knowing the route, could have kept such a big crowd from accumulating in the first place. (Indeed, it was within her power not to open the back door and to tell people trying to get in the front that they were out of luck.) The woman in back claimed, perhaps a bit cynically, that the driver insisted on packing the bus beyond capacity because Metro hungers for our money. While I doubt this driver's motivation was primarily financial, the angry rider made a good point: Overstuffing a bus and then forcing people out is kind of a raw deal. (Then again, most of the people on the bus had boarded in the free-ride zone, and no one who got off at Fifth and Jefferson had to pay.) Anyway, the bus eventually got moving.

I look forward to having the option of driving again in the near future, but the other day I ran into an acquaintance from Oberlin who lives in South Seattle and doesn't have a car (he works in West Seattle, mostly), and he seemed perfectly happy busing, biking, and walking places. As I said, I'm still glad I have a car, but I plan to drive it to work just a couple days a week after I get it back. And while I wouldn't appreciate such an eventful commute every day, it was certainly an eye-opening experience. A nice balance, in a way: At my first stop, I saw people bond in a way that's unusual in keep-to-yourself Seattle, and on the #3 I witnessed equally uncharacteristic expressions of anger -- more Big Apple than Emerald City.

(By the way, credit for the photo above goes to Seattlest.com, not me.)

Ladies and gentlemen, we are covered in snow

Be careful out there, kids. I thought my toes were going to freeze off earlier tonight, as I made my way back from a walk down the Ave. My fellow Kibbutznik Deborah and I encountered various eccentrics in the U District, including a guy who shouted "Get away from my car!" at some students playing in the snow and then told them he was kidding, it wasn't really his car. He laughed and laughed. Then there was the portly guy who engaged strangers at the bus stop in conversation about Vikings and the bubonic plague. Oh, and the Native American who claimed to be "Eskimo" and told a string of jokes about Native Americans ("Indians") that would have been offensive if he hadn't been Native American (and pretty much were anyway). He also told a joke about toilet paper that was harmless, if somewhat gross. (By the way, I didn't take the above photo of a stuck bus; it came from a P-I reader.)

Tales of the city

A few highlights from my long weekend in San Francisco:

• Saw the Gilbert & George retrospective at the de Young. Had never heard of the artists and was quite impressed and amused. (The image above was one of my favorites.) It was especially funny seeing a show full of nudity and "shocking" images (excrement crucifix, anyone?) with my mom, who found the whole thing "interesting" and was better able to reflect later, when we were elsewhere, on how engaging it was. I found myself wondering whether the Seattle Art Museum would take on a show like this. But maybe I'm not giving it enough credit.
  
  
• Met a sweet-natured middle-aged woman named Leslie Ferguson on the streetcar to Fisherman's Wharf. Mere minutes after meeting me, she complimented my mother on how I turned out. I mention this only because she wasn't praising my upbringing; she was praising my looks. If ever there was a city in which being flirted with by a kindly fortysomething in a belly shirt wouldn't surprise me, it would be San Francisco. She's a former Manhattanite, and while I got the impression that not many locals shell out $5 a pop (one way!) to ride the streetcars, there was Leslie, proud San Franciscan, hanging on as we went up and down the hills, and chatting away. When we parted, she hugged me and my mom and kissed my sister's hand. Delightful.
  
  
• Met a disgruntled worker at David's Deli on Geary. I was quite pleased to find a deli that seemed a bit like the honest-to-God Jewish delis of my Detroit youth, of which Seattle has very few, if any. (Still haven't made it out to Goldberg's Famous since I wrote my extremely ill-considered preview for the Weekly, way back when.) Anyway, the disgruntled employee was inclined to tell the truth, Bulworth-style, since it was his last day on the job. Here's what happened:
  
  Me: "How big is a large orange juice?"
  
  Him: "You don't want a large orange juice."
  
  Me: "I don't?"
  
  Him: "No. Too expensive. Not worth it."
  
  Me: "Oh. Is there anything else I should know about the menu?"
  
  Him: "The potato pancakes aren't fresh. They're frozen. And the orange juice -- it says 'freshly squeezed,' but it's not."
  
  Me: "Okay. What is good? Are the blintzes good?"
  
  Him: "The blintzes are very good. Very fresh."
  
  Me: "I'd like the blintzes. But I kind of also want eggs."
  
  Him: "I'll bring you two eggs on the side."
  
  Me: "Scrambled?"
  
  Him: "Sure."
  
  He ended up refilling my orange juice for free and throwing in hash browns with the eggs. I kind of loved him. I tipped him $10.