Othello

In 1852 the early settlers out on Alki beach realised that they were in the wrong place if they wanted to create modern day Seattle so they pulled up there log cabins and sailed across the bay, told the natives to find somewhere else to live and set about cutting trees down and building a city.

In 1981 Jess Winfield collaborated with Adam Long and Daniel Singer in the founding of the Reduced Shakespeare Company thus inadvertently joining Bill Mack (see King Lear) in successfully creating entertainment and memorable titles from the acronym RSC. I momentarily crossed paths with Mr Singer and Mr Long during a break from my own show at the Vancouver World’s Fair of 1986, when I was lucky to see their sword fighting version of one Romeo and Juliette, at least I think it was them.

These two dates, more than a hundred years apart are linked, somewhat tenuously, by Jess Winfield, Othello and the city of Seattle.

The area that the settlers chose is now known as Pioneer Square and it was here that the fledging city began to take root. Timber was cut, timber was shipped and the city was wooden. Unfortunately the Great Seattle fire of 1889 reduced most of this to ash but the city was rebuilt in brick and because of drainage problems the new Seattle that rose was one story higher and small, damp and smelly remnants of the first attempt can be visited on the underground Tour that is organised from Pioneer square.

Pioneer Square is downtown of downtown Seattle, if you follow me. It seems that the action, the energy is uptown, not here in what is the original centre. This gives the area a calmer, slightly lost, on the fringe feel. It’s an uncomfortable mix of ‘trend’ and ‘down and out.’ The Utility Kilt Company, that aggressively markets dresses for men is located here, so is Skid Row.

The term Skid Row possibly originated here in Seattle where its original meaning referred to the practice of sliding logs down from the hills to the waiting ships anchored in Elliott Bay. The ships have been replaced by ferries going to the islands in Puget Sound or north to Vancouver Island in Canada, the logs by people down on their luck. There is a feeling of disappointment in the area, mixed with initiative, some of it historical.

Seattle’s first skyscraper is here, the Art Deco-esque Smith Tower opened on Independence Day 1914 and for a while the tallest building west of the Mississippi. Today it marks the southern limit of the modern downtown skyscrapers and although dwarfed by them it outclasses them and because of its position literally stands apart. An operator-serviced elevator takes you up to the observation balcony but not to the private apartment that now occupies the roof space formally occupied by the water system.

Although the Utility Kilt Company is an interesting if all-be-it unnecessarily macho experience, complete with world map that shows the location of each purchaser and a very pleasing “Marilyn Monroe” air jet experience that the salesman insists that you experience, the gem of pioneer square, the treasure worth travelling thousands of miles for is the Elliott Bay Book Company.

Do you remember what it sounded like in the library when you were a kid? How the floor creaked as you moved around the stacks, the only sound in a cathedral of silence? The Elliott Bay Bookstore is like that with its wooden floors that seem to date from the days the first explorers moored their boats a few hundred yard west in the bay itself.

It’s a cavernous shop, three floors, but you will only find them if you explore all the nooks and crannies; or follow your nose to the cafe in the basement. If you find the Travel Loft listen to the sound your feet make on the wooden stairs as you descend; there is an echo of boatyard.

Jess Winfield and I paths there at the end of July as part of the regular author readings that the store organises. They take place in the basement, in yet another hidden part beyond the café, are free and eclectic as the stock they sell. It’s a wonderful place; you can loose hours browsing amongst the mix of both new and used but don’t leave your children unattended in the kid’s section whilst you do this though as the shop threatens to give them a cappuccino AND a puppy if you do!

Jess Winfield was reading from his new book – My Name Is Will, a novel of sex, drugs and Shakespeare and I rushed across town to hear his thoughts on Othello; if he didn’t offer them spontaneously then I would elicit them through persistent questioning.

Unfortunately traffic, and my kid’s hip hop class conspired against me and I was too late to hear his educated opinions and his humoristic stories, as I entered he was signing the last few copies that remained unsold as the stragglers straggled. I decided not to press him on the subject preferring to carry away a sense of disappointment.

A sense of disappointment that could mingle with the disappointment that underlies the jealousy at the heart of Othello itself, and the disappointment with life that shows in the faces of the pan-handlers and drunks of Pioneer Square and the disappointment that the trees the first settlers saw are all gone; but also that the low red bricked buildings that replaced them are not more widespread in the city centre.

http://www.utilikilts.com