Pursuing the theme of promoting comments by site visitors to entries when it’s appropriate, here’s site visitor Jeff Baker commenting on my April entry concerning the queen of Northwest bars, Bob’s Java Jive:

Bob’s Java Jive was the perfect getaway for PLU students about 20 years ago.

The coffee shaped building was cool. Cozy, but not too cramped. I remember a circular type bar- and patrons enjoying coffee – mostly truckers. While in good shape, the place felt a bit like a dive and had a “dive-like” aroma.

Then, the monkeys were kept in the back area (a building addition that likely was added on to the coffee shaped building at some point). We called this back room “the plastic jungle”. It featured vinyl tiger print booths, a dance floor made of black vinyl tiles (with an occaisional red or blue tile), random flourescent jungle paintings on the wall ( illuminated by a couple black light bulbs). There were hanging plastic monkey head lights too.

You could get food there, and beer by the pitcher. It was diner food and wasn’t too bad if you didn’t try to imagine what the kitchen looked like. Our waitress served up our hamburger and fries, then kept stealing one or two everytime she walked by. At one point she sat down with us and was cracking up for no apparent reason. Then we realized she was drunk!

The juke box was one of the greatest attractions there. Where else could you find “Love Potion #9” or “theme from Hawaii 5-O”. Of course we always had to play “Java Jive” (I think it was by the Ink Spots).

After a while the live music started. The “band” consisted of two men (rumored to be the sons of the owners). One (looked kind of like Steve Buscemi) played accordion, and the other (a large man with a huge, curly afro and big glasses) played organ. Very serious. They mostly played TV theme songs. One time, they played the theme to Gilligan’s Island. When it was over, a group of us laughed. The brothers glared at us, as if annoyed by our irreverance.

After five or six TV tunes, they’d take a break. The organ player would spin around on his bench, and sit with his elbow on his knee, chin in his hand, silent, no expression on his face… for five minutes straight while the accordian player had a beer.

Bizarre! But it was great! I thank God I never got food poisioning.

Thanks for that illuminating tale, Jeff! Seems that things hadn’t changed much in the intervening years, although I’d love to find out more about the TV theme song band. I can vouch for the sons of the owners having played there for a while – it was a part of the history of the place that was related to us when we asked.

A taunt:

Oh? is it hot? I hadn’t noticed. It’s, um, a comfy seventy-two here in Whybark International World Headquarters. I hear you east-coast types are basting in your undies over there, sweatin’ to the oldies under the blazing wrath of old Sol.

If Seattle isn’t obliterated by terrorists tomorrow, and you call first so I can go over it with my wife, you can crash here for a day or two. (Gotta hand it to Speigelman agin: this week’s New Yorker cover is like a stick to the head.)

But I gotta tell ya: jobs are hard to come by this year.

Wait, wait, wait. No broiling heat, you don’t have to work… what’s not to like?

Oh, the poverty. And the lack of health insurance. And the rent, although another year of deep black recession wll probaly take care of that. Did I tell ya we have, like, mountains and trees and shit?

in the inbox today:

Date: Wed, 3 Jul 2002 15:11:33 -0700 (PDT)

From: G D

Subject: eternity in the heart

To: mike@whybark.com

MIME-Version: 1.0

email from GOD

So, um, does this constitute taking sides in the spamwar?

Last weekend, Viv and I were wandering about Capitol Hill, and stepped into the Red Light on Broadway, purveyors of fine vintage threads to our urban hipster nabe. Red Light is an odd store – there are at least two locations, and they generally have very high quality stock, sometimes of surprising vintage.

I once found a beautiful men’s suit there with tailoring details such as inset ivory or bone cuff stays in the sleeves. These stays are like little spurs that face the wearer’s wrist, and which would allow the wearer to fasten separate hard linen, celluloid, or whatnot cuffs directly to the inside of the suitcoat. This would obviate the necessity of a long-sleeved formal shirt, saving time and money and making the wearer a modicum cooler, I assume.

Separate cuffs and collars for shirts were introduced in order to increase the amount of time a man could wear a shirt before having it laundered; instead of changing the shirt, one changed the cuffs. Imagine, if you will, acting in the capacity of an accountant in the 1800’s; you’d probably drag your cuffs through a great deal of ink, and the detachable cuff would be a great convenience.

The suit itself was in imacculate condition except for the waistcoat, whch had been torn, recently it appeared, along one shoulder. Despite this problem I would have bought the suit; but it had been made for someone about six and a half feet tall. So I left it. I’d guess that the suit dated from the 1840’s to the 1850’s.

So the Red Light can sometimes yield treasures, yet it seems to undervalue them (I suspect the torn vest happened in the store, and the suit hung, unsold, for nearly a year); at the same time it’s not unusual for something I can’t stand (seventies shimmery image-print nylon disco shirts, for example) to be hugely overpriced. Who knows.

Thus, when Viv walked up to me holding a round-crowned hat (right), I was quite prepared to give it my attention. At $25, it was priced just as hundreds of other similar derbies or bowlers are priced on ebay and in thrift stores. However, even a brief look at the hat made it clear to me that it was very well made, with only slight wear to the right interior of the brim, and a sprung bit of some plant-stalk material at the base of the brim where it meest the crown of the hat. The interior was fully lined with very high quality material, and the interior hatband was made of very thick, very soft leather.

Adding to my interest was the old-fashioned logo stamped on the lining (closeup at right), which read “Lock & Co, Hatters, St. James’s Street, London – Established 1759”. So I bought the hat.

I have had a turn-of-the century American bowler or derby for some time (right – note its’ straight sides as compared to the slightly tapered sides seen above; interior view below; it’s unlined), and in terms of quality of manufacture, this Lock-made hat far surpassed it. It was also in excellent shape, and so I resolved to find out as much as I could about the hat, and indeed, about derbies and bowlers in general.
So, first, what’s the difference between a bowler and a derby?

Well, as far as I can tell, in 1888, an Earl of Derby (probably the 15th, although this source says it was the 12th, since the 14th lived from 1799-1869, it’s unlikely that it was the 12th) visited the United States wearing the style we now call a derby, in blind recollection of his visit.

However, in Britain, the same style of hat is known by two names: the bowler, which of course we yanks know of, and the Coke hat, which we ignorant colonials have never heard of.

I stood in ignorant solidarity with many of my readers on this matter until I began to investigate that intriguing logo in this newly-acquired derby or bowler. Turning to my highly-paid and wildly efficient team of information research scientists, I beseeched them to toil day and night until information concerning the logo was discovered.

I hadn’t long to wait, and within moments was looking at this site featuring the exact same logo I had noted in the hat I now own. Indeed, there’s a tiny icon of a bowler on the main page! But the category – “Top Hats and Coke Hats” mystified me. Clicking through, I noted the same hat I held in my hands, available for a mere 189 British Pounds! XE.com reports that as of this writing that’s a stunning $289 USD.

Woof! Well, Lock & Co. must cater to some wealthy folks, I guess. In fact, they are holders of the right to make hats for everyone’s favorite dysfunctional family, the Windsors, and have apparently been the place to go for reputable headwear since, um, 1676. I have yet to turn up an explanation concerning the discrepancy bewteen this date and the one stamped upon my hat. And alas! No note concerning the peculiar terminology employed by the hat merchants was to be found.

A bit more digging yeilded this citation of a book, “The Man in the Bowler Hat: His History and Iconography” (entertainingly, an acquaintance of mine who works for the publisher may have designed the cover):

The first bowler hat was designed by the hatters James and George Lock of St. James Street in London in 1850 for their client William Coke II, later the Earl of Leicester.

“The Locks sent their design across the Thames to the hatmakers THomas and William Bowler, who had a factory in Southwark and were Lock’s chief suppliers. William Bowler produced the prototype, which bears his family’s conveneiently descriptive name to this day, although Lock’s has always insisted on calling it a ‘Coke’ hat. ‘On the south side of the river, the thing was naturally called a Bowler, because Mr. Bowler had made it. In St James’s Street it was equally naturally called a Coke, since Mr Coke had bespoken it.’ No doubt the commercial rather than the aristocratic appellation won out because of the hat’s bowl shape.

And so it became clear to me that this bowler was not only a coke hat as well, it was in essence, the bowler. I began to seriously investigate the hat for clues as to its’ age; the lack of synthetics at first made me think it was possibly pre-WW1; when I turned the interior hat band and found the date “2/11/65” for a moment I had hopes that it was from 1865. Hoever, looking more closely I found a paper label under the lining near the date inscription which was typeset in a condensed Futura font. that font was designed in the 1930’s, and therefore the hat must have been made or sold on or about February 11, 1965.

In considering the hat’s overall excellent condition when compared to the significantly older companion hat, it became very clear to me that the hat must be from the 1960’s. At any rate, I was very pleased by the opportunity to learn remarkable things concerning its heritage. Larger versions of many of the photos seen here are available at pix.whybark.com/gallery/bowlers.

As I’ve discussed over the last few days, I’ve been performing hardware surgery on bellerophon, the server that provides you with this website. All has gone reasonably well, but not ideally, and so I brought her into the office here to work out the booting problem that was puzzling me.

I had employed the highly-regarded Carbon Copy Cloner, an Applescript-based drive duping utility, to mirror old to new, but the new boot drive was not playing nice. So. Testing matrix in, um, head, I began to experiment with boot settings this morning. Unfortunately for me, shortly thereafter, the main boot drive, the one with six months of tried and true tinkering and mind-bending installation trickery (are you listening to me, Image Magick?) refused to acknowledge my desires.

So… bellerophon was booting only into OS9, which can work well enough to serve static content but, for example, my Gallery-based photo site, which depends on PHP and MySQL, wouldn’t couldn’t won’t work in OS9. And this blog, which employs the perl-based Movable Type, would serve static content well enough, but new content would have to be hand-embroidered, the way macho men crank the code. (There may, in fact be some sort of Yatta tie in).

So I was looking at the “torn folder” icon, Mac OS X’s new way of saying, “you are screwed”, when the phone rings.

It was a prospective employer, checking to make sure I hadn’t gone and gotten a job or anything, because they wanted to reactivate me as a candidate for a position.

“Is this the producer/coordinator position?”

Naturally, it’s a technical position performing web work. I thank the pleasant fellow. He had the decision-maker vibe. I go out on a limb (a short one, really – who do you think is the most influential economic force in the Puget Sound region) and ask if they are .NET-based or headed in that direction. Yes, why yes, they are.

So… I have an immediate economic imperative to get bellerophon back into the sky. A bit of poking about reveals that Apple is pretty insistent upon a full reinstall to a clean disk in this variety of failure. And so began my afternoon.

Astute and/or assiduous readers will have realized that I spent the last two-and-a-half weeks in sunny Southern California with family, attending a wedding, lying on the beach, going to Disneyland, missing out on getting drunk with Ken Goldstein while he visited Seattle, and taking lots and lots of photos.

What better way to end a visit to the greater metropolitan area of Los Angeles than with this two-hour human traffic jam at LAX? That’s about half of the outdoor line to get through security. The other half is behind me, and I’d estimate that there were about as many people actually inside waiting as you can see here outside.

As it turned out, I made my flight, but only becasue they were so foolish and/or kind as to hold the flight for a full twenty minutes, something I learned to my surprise when I sauntered around the corner to my gate, expecting to be put on standby for a morning flight.

On the plus side: it was a reasonably thorough, if unreasonably slow, inspection. I have no idea why the jam developed; I can’t say I saw any security people working particularly slowly, and there were six to eight security portals, the same number I saw at SeaTac on the way out.

There was some poor line management conducted by airline personnell, however. At one point we were instructed to form a new “express” line for people with departure times between 6 and 6:30 – naturally, that line immediately became longer than the non-express line.

And, just to keep things fun, this was much, much longer than any of the lines we encountered at Disneyland.

There are many reasons people choose to live in Orange County, California. This is one of them.

Molé is, of course, the sweet-hot dark sauce found in eaterias all over el Norte, and of course in many fine kitchens and on many fine tables throughout Mexican America. I assume you’re familiar with the celebrated “Chicken en molé” and ready to learn more about the mysterious fusion of chile and chocolata.

According to many scholars of legend, molé was first prepared by the nuns of a convent in Puebla, Mexico, a suburb of Mexico City just to the north. Taken by surprise by the impending visit of an unspecified important personage, they hit the larder to learn what ingredients might be available which could prove suitable to the person’s rank.

Among others, they found turkey, chocolate, and chiles.

It’s no coincidence that the chocolate and the chile were both employed liberally by the Aztec and the Maya in the long and glorious history of Precolombian Latin America – both as a sacred potion and as a recreational concotion.

Molé is in many ways the most direct transference of precolombian Mexican culture to our society that we have. The story of the nuns, above, sounds to me very much like the tale of La Virgen de Guadelupe, in which a Mexican peasant shortly after the conquest experiences a visitation of the Virgin Mary – one accompanied by winter-flowering roses and sporting a deeply tanned skin.

A skin the color of chocolate and chiles roasted together.

Mexican culture is full of such transferences, in which beings, myths, words, and foods come into the new culture formed by the conquest and are assigned a sort of passport of validation which diguises the essentially Native American character of the transformed thing.

As Anglo culture and Mexican and Latin American culture draw ever closer, I find it amusing and fulfilling to be aware of the Native roots of so much of the culture from the hot places of our continent – molé is just one of innumerable examples.

—–

http://www.ramekins.com/mole/

http://www.unam.mx/voices/1996/june/taiboi.html

http://www.igroupsonline.com/laavenida/table.htm

Via Karen on the Jason Webley list I subscribe to, some aggravating news concerning my favorite of the Seattle summer music festivals, Folklife. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I had to miss the festival this year, and so I have not had a chance to round out the news from Karen.

She tells of Folklife’s new-this-year policy of harassing street performers should they choose to sell CDs direct to the public rather than via the Folklife store, a policy which resulted in the ejection of my friend Jason from the grounds of the Seattle Center, where the festival was held.

Apparently, the stepped-up enforcement was taken in response to the festival’s ongoing economic woes, and was intended to rectify lost revenues associated with control of CD sales via the Folklife store.

Naturally, street performers such as Jason are reluctant to separate CD sales from performance – doing so would effectively end CD sales for the performers. I personally think direct CD sales take very little away from CD sales in the Folklife store. This ban, just like the big media keiretsus attempts to ban analog to digital converters, simply results in a smaller pool of interested consumers and performers, shrinking the market, in the end killing Folklife itself.

No word at press time as to the size of the RIAA donation Folklife has clearly accepted. It seems kinda dumb, actually – the street performers represent, in many cases, the most organically active, non-preservationist venue in which folks can see and hear non-commercial music performed by, well, folks.

Anyway, it seems pretty clear we can kiss Folklife goodbye. Karen thoughtfully provided the address of the sponsoring organization’s directing officer, which I reproduce herein in the hopes that venomously polite correspondance will be directed toward it:

Michael J. Herschensohn
michael@nwfolklife.org
Executive Director
Northwest Folklife