Nostalgia. Nirvana. Nevermind.

I recently picked up a contract for some travel writing about Seattle, my home town. It’s guidebook style writing, but there’s an interesting twist to the approach and I was keen to tackle the cultural pieces. I’ve lived in Seattle for nearly 20 years and while I’m not in tune with everything that’s the new hotness, I  feel a certain propriety towards this city. I’m connected it to it like no other place in the world. Today’s breaking gray sky reminds me that I still miss the sunshine of California but this place, this maddening green gray city with its increasing traffic woes and volatile economy and passive aggressive weather is my home.

To write the piece about Seattle music, I headed into an internet rabbit hole and ended up on a list of songs about Seattle. I also asked my internet friends, real and imaginary, about songs that evoke Seattle for them. Not songs that are necessarily about Seattle, but those that, when you listen to them, just bring this place right to the front of mind. As you’d expect, any number of people said “Anything by Nirvana” and, more specifically, Smells Like Teen Spirit. That song is said to have debuted live at the OK Hotel,  a place that you may or may not remember was featured in Singles, a movie about a bunch of 20-somthing hotties finding their way. I was a little older than the cast; I had fled to Seattle right before my 30th birthday. The five year difference aside, I could have walked right out of this movie, a blurry extra, a California transplant with a degree in painting, a bicycle, a not quite final divorce, and no idea what I was doing.

OK Hotel, May, 1997 via Wikimedia/Creative Commons

The OK Hotel was badly damaged by the 2001 Nisqually earthquake, a 6.8 shaker that dropped bricks all over Pioneer Square and took down the chimneys on my Capitol Hill condo. I’d stopped going to the OK Hotel years before; I could not even find it when I’d walk underneath the viaduct, the double decker death trap freeway that bisects the Seattle waterfront and downtown. Years earlier, I’d sit at the counter, drinking coffee, eating soup. My art school friend G. lived there for a while, up the broad stair case and down a rickety hallway, and we met at the OK Hotel frequently. We’d eat breakfast and gossip. I remember sitting on the bar stools and telling her about “this Austrian guy I’d met in Australia.” She was wearing a black t-shirt that said “Grunge is Dead” in courier type. It was 1996, we were working artists, we were the kind of people that I make fun of now — “Look at those goddamn hipsters,” I say, and “You kids get off my lawn.” That “Austrian guy” is sitting on the couch, I married him and we live in West Seattle just beyond where the city turns into the suburbs in a house we own about half of and that is big enough for guests.

It must be five years ago that I interviewed for a job in the 619 Western building, another ramshackle pile of brick that was occupied by artists. I’d go drink beer in friends’ studios, and for parties, and we would joke about the rickety elevator and the equally rickety stairs. The demographics of 619 had changed considerably since I’d attended free range figure drawing sessions, and art openings in the hallways, and stumbled out to ride my bike home late at night. This time, I was in the building to talk to a guy about a social media manager gig. He was late for our appointment and as I sat on the stairs waiting, I became increasingly angry. It wasn’t about his lateness, though if he’d been on time, I probably would not have worked myself into such a state.While I waited, I had time to remember what I used to do in this building. It smelled of artist’s materials, of linseed oil and turpentine and paint. When the start-up guy finally showed, I was open to hearing what he had to say, but as soon as we walked into the space that was his office, I was blindsided with unexpected emotion.

“You are in my space.” I thought. And no, it wasn’t MY space, but it was space that had been occupied by my friends. I’d been wedged out of my own, similar space, a few blocks away when my studio building was converted to offices. I was crushed, places where an artist could make a mess were endangered and increasingly expensive and further and further away from where I lived. I could not focus on the conversation we were supposed to be having, one about social media strategy. I could only drag my eyes across the expensive computer hardware placed artfully in front of the ghosts of canvases stapled to the building walls, the splattered paint on the floor, the awkward little loft where a drunk friend spent the night rather than taking the bus home so late to a shared apartment on Capitol Hill. It took all I had to keep from saying “I hate you. I hate everything you stand for. You are the reason my head is full of the voices of frustrated artists. You could be anywhere, and you displaced someone who doesn’t have your resources or choices. Get. Out.”

“We’re bootstrapping,” the guy said to me, which I interpreted as code for “Our pay is crappy, but I don’t care because I made all my money elsewhere.”

“Fuck you,” I thought.

It wasn’t his fault, of course, and gentrification is common, and my reaction (over-reaction, some might say) and personalized vitriol was wildly displaced. But I was hit with a similar emotion when I pulled up the website for the OK Hotel today. It’s apartments and “artist’s suites” which typically means overpriced studio units that you can’t actually make art in, and yes, I’m jumping to conclusions. Again. The lobby is open to the public on first Thursdays, the night that Pioneer Square holds its gallery walk, the rest of the time it’s private.  I could go have a look at the current state of the building but walking inside would make me too sad and I’d probably see more ghosts. Clicking through the OK Hotel website, I was hit with a weighty nostalgia for those shiftless afternoons before we became whoever we are now.

I don’t live a life marked by regret. Things are quite magical, even in my day to day existence, I am the kind of person who repeatedly says “I am the luckiest person alive!” and I mean it. Nor am I the kind of person who thinks that things should stay still in time. As I watch the photos come from the Mars Rover, I am struck with the possibility that the future is likely to be better and even more magical. I don’t want to reclaim my thirties, I am happy. My nostalgia is nothing. To most people, these places are only real estate. I cued up Smells Like Teen Spirit anyways.

“Here we are now, entertain us.”

“Oh well. Whatever. Nevermind.”

Help me out? Leave your favorite Seattle song and/or band in the comments, wouldja?

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.