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Mary, a woman who lives on our floor at The Braeburn and who is also an artist, was supposed to be part of the
Pioneer Square First Thursday Art Walk yesterday, at the Caffe Vita at the base of the Smith Tower. I marked my calendar weeks ago when Shobhit got an email notification that Mary would be participating, and as it was noted to start at 5:00, Shobhit and I went to that Caffe Vita at that time—we even actually got there a bit early. Mary's name was on
the small sign posted there noting her participation, but after Shobhit emailed her later, she replied back that her show was updated to November. Apparently Caffe Vita was not up to speed on this any better than we were.
Plenty of other places were participating and had lots of art hung up, though, so we still walked around and got to see some pretty cool art. This included a bunch of booths and vendors set up in Occidental Square, which we also walked through. Most of them were art vendors but a few were food ones, and Shobhit walked into a booth by this woman selling homemade desserts. And even though he had bought himself a latte and me a hot chocolate at Caffe Vita, at which time he noted his "eating out budget" had gone up significantly just because of his recent purchases at coffee shops, at this booth he still bought two small desserts which cost a combined $27.
I wish I could remember the name of the place. We ate both desserts later last night and they were amazing. One was a tiny little chocolate cake and the other was a sort of lemon poppyseed pasty tart.
We actually walked a block north on 2nd Avenue first, killing time when we thought we were still waiting for Mary to arrive. When it became clear she wouldn't be, we left Caffe Vita again and then walked Occidental Square, going inside several businesses there to look at art as well.
The kind of art we saw really ran the gamut. Some of it really sucked. A lot of it was amazing. I thought about what a great program this is for any given neighborhood, as Occidental Square was
hopping, and every participating business had lots of people coming in and looking around. I could only assume this program is good for all participating businesses, and I should pay more attention to Art Walks in the future because I really enjoyed a lot of the art.
Shobhit had a SAG-AFTRA Local board meeting to attend, which he did via Zoom on his phone while we walked up 1st Avenue. We sat on a bench for a little while for him to finish the call. They had just one major item on their agenda, which they seemed to vote unanimously to pass, whatever it was. So far as I could tell, they did not much discuss the election that took place the day before, which left Shobhit pretty dispirited: he had been running for local Vice President, and the one other person running won it by a pretty wide margin. He did observe ballot counting, which meant he also saw a written note that was kind of nasty about both the people running.
When I got home on Wednesday, well after Shobhit had already texted me how things were going, I asked if he was doing okay. "Not really," he said. The woman who beat him sent him a pretty gracious email that Shobhit shared with me last night, and in his reply he admitted he was taking it kind of hard but looked forward to working with her. At least he's still on the board. As I said to him, people often run for things multiple times before they finally win. That's how Jennifer's ex-husband Eric wound up becoming
mayor of Shelton, after all—he didn't win his first election either.
That doesn't mean I am eager for Shobhit to run for City Council again, mind you. That takes a ton of bandwidth even for the candidate's spouse, and frankly I'm not that up to going through that again. I certainly think he should keep running for leadership positions in the context of organizations like SAG-AFTRA, though.
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It was kind of by coincidence that the two things Shobhit and I did yesterday were both art related. I had really wanted to see the
Ai Weiei exhibition at Seattle Art Museum, which closes September 7—and yesterday was the first "First Thursday" after the PCC office move. The museum is just a couple of blocks from here, so I booked the timed-entry tickets that are free on the first Thursday of every month.
I should see if anything else cool downtown does free admission once a month.
The whole reason for my interest in Weiwei in particular was my knowlegde of his
giant LEGO recreation of Monet's
Water Lillies—which I missed! He had other LEGO recreations in the exhibition ((Monet's
The Scream; Peter Paul Rubens’
The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus with a panda inserted where there there was a cherub in the original 1618 painting), but I never saw
Water Lilies. I thought maybe they rotated it out or something.
I should have asked staff, because I figured out today that
Water Lilies is apparently
its own separate exhibit, on display until March! Now I need to go back. There's lots of other amazing art anyway; I have already just made plans with Laney to go on the first Thursday in October.
Anyway, my missing
Water Lilies yesterday notwithstanding, the Ai Weiei exhibition was still amazing. I'd recommend it to anyone, though you now only have two more days to see it at the Seattle Art Museum.
Shobhit's and my tickets were for 6:40. We were there roughly an hour. I could have spent more time, but knowing I'd be coming back was fine, and we had plenty of time to see the Weiwei exhibition itself. We caught a RapidRide G line bus back up the hill via Madison, and then had a relatively late dinner of leftover sambar and rice (and later the desserts) while we watched this week's episodes of
Peacemaker on HBO Max and
Platonic on Apple TV.
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Oh, I almost forgot to mention that, when Shobhit came downtown for us to go to Caffe Vita, he met me at the office first. I texted him instructions on how to come to the back entrance, but he came in via 4th Avenue instead and texted me he was walking around the store shortly after 4:00. So, I just went to let him in through the front door.
I showed him the kitchen first, and noted what a great vantage point that window will be for watching the Pride Parade. He noted that we wouldn't be able to get anything thrown into the crowd, but we never get much of worth that way anyway. I still rather like the idea of watching from inside, but we'll see.
The desk to my left that Noah sat in both Tuesday and Wednesday was empty yesterday and today. Shobhit sat there for a few minutes while I wrapped up, after I gave him the tour of the office. That didn't take long, of course. Shobhit felt the space was so small he was convinced this is even smaller than the Roosevelt Way office was. Nope: Roosevelt Way had 8,300 square feet; this new 4th Avenue office is 12,000. I think the issue is just that Shobhit was not seeing how much space is taken up in here just by the 14 conference rooms and seven phone rooms.
This new office is indeed slightly less than half the size of the Elliott Way office, which had 26,000 square feet. Honestly, I already miss that amount of space—but, there's a lot to love about this new location too. So we downsized massively with this move, but the space here is still 44% larger than Roosevelt Way was. Now, the actual
desk space may be a much narrower margin than that, but I don't know those numbers. I only know the numbers of the overall floor space.
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[posted 12:32pm]
