Belltown Messenger - Grant's Broiler

The monorail opponents managed to get the ear of State Auditor Brian Sonntag, who in a biased and propaganda-packed announcement, said he would audit the monorail agency. This is another attempt to hijack the approval of the contract to build, which must pass the city council this month in order for the project to get underway. We can already see which way this is going to go: expect the audit to be very subjective. If opponents slow the approval of the contract by a couple more months, it will be yet another year (2011) until the thing opens. And we voted for it first eight years ago. This really is the last time: call the council at 684-8888 and leave a message for all members: don't (four-letter expletive) with the monorail! Once construction begins, we won't have to keep telling the City, by ballot, petition, call and email, that yes, again, we really want it built. The other side is in touch with them, believe me. You deserve to have your voice heard as well.

The finishing touches are going on the Skyway factory conversion - how emblematic, manufacturing to storage, of our national trajectory - bringing an end to the continual daylong beep-beep-beep of cherry pickers raising and lowering and the midnight work (thanks, guys!). Why does everything have to beep? I know, safety. But what about sanity? Imagine how this will be for the seven to ten years of 24-hour, seven-days-a-week construction on the 99 tunnel. It looks like Belltown restaurateurs are following the Pioneer Square community into opposition to this costly megaproject: see www.peopleswaterfront.org to get involved.

The Seattle International Film Festival swept through town, a hell of a lot of free food, booze and schmooze for a modest investment. I thought my days on that kind of circuit were done, but here I am trying to raise $400,000 to make a movie (www.cthulhuthemovie.com): we managed to bag 'Police Beat' producer Jeffrey Brown, who took that local film to Sundance, as well as throw a gigantic bash for the opening of our sound stage and offices on Capitol Hill (www.cascadiafilmcollective.org). After our September interiors shoot, the stage will be available to local filmmakers: pay us if you have money, pitch in with the work if not. The party was a blast: it has been a long time since any operation so lowly took up such a gigantic space in town (we got it cheap, it comes down in a year) and while we spun records and danced in candlelight until 6 AM I had several people come up and tell me how much it felt like 1992, or 1982, or 1989. The time has come for us to have that spirit here again, as the years since have proved nothing is better than making great art and having fun with your friends. I moderated a discussion of Kerri O'Kane's rock doc 'The Gits', a fiery, loving remembrance of the late Mia Zapata, whose afterparty became something of a wake, so many of her loved ones in attendance, as well as others like myself made to love her by the film.

SIFF showcased the director's cut of certainly the most unfairly maligned American film, and possibly the finest, Michael Cimino's 'Heaven's Gate', turned into a public joke by studio bigwigs trying to close the 70s Hollywood auteur era, a media just discovering the possibilities of infotainment, and a see-no-evil public about to elect Ronald Reagan. The DVD has the director's version. Rent it and play it on as large a screen as you can. The other stunner was the premiere of Gus Van Sant's 'Last Days', an examination of the final hours of Kurt Cobain. Probably too dark and deliberate for a mass audience, its nearly psychic intuition dragged me headfirst through the real experience, which I followed by renting the 'With The Lights Out' DVD of early Nirvana video. A 1988 house party show of the 'Bleach' songs, Cobain facing the wall, is accompanied by goofy friends putting their beers up to the camera, reading magazines on the floor, and messing with the light switch. Meanwhile the band, long pre-Grohl, is a complete work of art, and so, so sublime. Maybe that's how it always is, that great art is too large to apprehend in the moment, and subsequently we all wish we'd been there (a 30-something festival goer told me after 'Days' he'd seen Joy Division in Olympia, impossible for several reasons) and with the circumspection to appreciate it in its time.

And the mayor rallied a convention of U.S. mayors to independently ratify the Kyoto treaty on global warming. Good work, but it's all just noise until he changes our present situation here: we're spending as much as we will on both of our new rail transit systems to replace a highway we might not even need. His number: 684-4000. Have a happy July, and think about how cool it'll be when you can ride the monorail up to Golden Gardens. If you want to talk poetry, email me at belltownpoet@hugohouse.org. u