Belltown Messenger - FRONT PAGE FODDER

What is happening to downtown hardware stores? Rainer Hardware, the longtime tiny hardware store in the Pike Place Market-the last downtown hardware oasis in Seattle-is slated to be swallowed. What happened to DIY? The longtime family-owned resource is about to go the way of Crawford-Waage, formerly on third next to Dan's. Soon Nyberg Locks, on Lenora and Third will be the only place to get keys made, and there will be no place for screws.

The folk at Niketown-as well as the host of other local sports shops-report that in mid-January they sold more Seahawks paraphernalia than had been sold in the last 10 years. The deep aquatic-green-and blue, birded evidence was everywhere! Jan. 20 was called-Seahawk Friday all over town. The 12th Man is alive and well in Seattle, but alas we are fickle... or as the Irish Sports Board at the Athenian, read: Sea Chickens or Seahawks? A day of Destiny. (No comment about the Irishman's spelling.)

Another crop that grows well on our sunny shores is salons-they are physically uncountable. The latest is Mr. Quint Eby's Quint Eby Salon, 2518 Second Ave. The theatric Eby says his is just the full-service high-end salon Belltown (and Seattle) needs. He and his saucy staff join the bumper crop-with Vain, Gary Manuel, Ciba and the gang.

The multitalented Kris Kristofferson was back in town for a concert at the Moore on Jan. 12. He was spotted poking around our Bonnie borough, maybe absorbing the changes. He spent time here in the '80s, shooting the 1985 film Trouble In Mind, a drama set in Seattle, including many scenes shot in the Rivoli Apartments, 2127 Second Ave., and in the former downstairs coffee shop/diner that is now Mistral Restaurant, on the Blanchard side. (There are great shots of First Avenue, when it was all bars and pool halls, and great shots from Sodo-when the Kingdome was relatively new-and from Harbor Island, when the cranes dominated the buildings.) The film included the diva Divine as a local gangster whose abode was in the building now known as the Seattle Asian Art Museum in Volunteer Park. This is the same beautifully ornate building where the SAM collection will be, for the next year or so.
-ML and CH

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A BELLTOWN MANIFESTO
25. Men hold up half the sky too.