________ ________ ________
2018-04-28 / \/ \/ / \
/ __/ /_ _/
This past Thursday, wife and I cruised / _/ / /
into Seattle to goof off around the SoDo \_______/_\___/____/\___/____/_
district - we had three things on our / \/ \/ / \
agenda; a sandwich at the sketchy Subway, / _/ /_ _/
antiquing at Pacific Galleries and visiting /- / _/ /
the Living Computer Museum + Labs to geek \________/\________/\___/____/
out and see Jason Scott's keynote for their
PreserveIT! event.
The sketchy Subway was the sketchy Subway, we ended up there last time we
were here, just by accident, and we went back this time. It's just a regular
subway but kinda sketchy clientele. American Subway still does flat bread and
roasted chicken, both had been removed from Australian stores because
Australia is ridiculous. They basically robbed me of my order! American Subway
also has ranch and pepperoncini, we have neither of these things and are
poorer for it.
Wait, why am I still writing about Subway.
Pacific Galleries is amazing, it's a huge warehouse sized antiques mall.
Another thing we found by accident last time we were here, we just drove past
it and thought "that looks neat" and neat is right, it's so great. Crammed
full of some really wild odds and ends. We'll have to go back because we'd
forgotten just how big it was and didn't give ourselves enough time to get
through the whole store. Did see some really neat stuff though, unfortunately
it was mostly big neat stuff so I'll have to let it go, at least for now. They
had a pair of beautiful vine-like wrought iron stair ends, salvaged from a
demolished hotel, I'd love to repurpose them for the front stairs of a house
or flanking a front gate. So perfect. Everything was really well priced too,
they had a pair of white wingback chairs in beautiful condition and were
asking $1,300 each for them - in Australia you'd be looking at $3,000 per
chair at least for something like that.
Like I mentioned above, we only had an hour to spend there so had to bail
half way through the mall. If we get the chance to go back I might make
another entry on our subsequent visit.
We split from the antique mall and got to the LCM+L a little later than I'd
hoped because we went a round-about way so only had about 40 minutes in the
Vintage Collection upstairs before they closed it up so we scooted up there
for a look around and it's looking so good, wow. I've been to the museum every
time I've come to the States and it just gets better and better. I love the
new open workshop area with the piles of bits and pieces, I just wanted to go
combing through it all!
There seems to be less stuff upstairs now but they've laid it out so it
feels like there's more, it's really nice.
Downstairs though, that was a real treat. Last time we were here was July
2016 and the whole downstairs area was still boarded up and under construction
so this is my first time seeing it and maaaan I loved it. It's got a real
focus on education and interactivity, a bunch of stuff on robotics and some
VR, it was super cool and I really want to drag my nephew here. I had a lot of
fun dorking around with the telepresence robot but what really stole the show
for me is their Totally 80s Rewind exhibit. It was so perfectly executed.
The exhibit is broken down into three rooms; a school computer lab equipped
with Apple IIe computers, an arcade and a basement hangout, essentially
following the path of an average 80s teenager on an average 80s day. They
nailed all three rooms and the attention to detail is amazing.
The classroom has an old school overhead projector, with a lesson in BASIC
programming up, and of course every machine was working so you could do the
lesson or just fiddle. To one side was a bunch of lockers with theme-
appropriate junk, including a Cyndi Lauper tape obviously.
The arcade had a token vending machine rather than just putting the
machines on free play which I thought was a really neat, authentic touch. All
the games worked and were originals or replicas, no generic MAME cabs. It also
had a working payphone, attached to the SDF VoIP system. I took a call from my
sister in Australia on it!
The basement room was even better. Ancient sofa, CRT TV, Atari and NES
(Although weirdly the top-loader, the one piece that really felt out of
place), desk phone (some kind of Model 2500 I think, also working thanks to
the SDF VoIP) and a TRS-80. It was really great, if you recall way back in
July last year I posted a file[1] about a place called Forgotten Worlds, the
basement room reminded me a lot of the back room in there. It was so comfy.
Highly recommend if you're around the area to check it out, it's open until
the end of the year, I think.
Lastly was the keynote from Jason Scott and, if you're familiar with him it
was exactly what you'd expect from him; the value in archiving everything,
archiving in practice and the limitations and risks in doing so. The tour of
the Internet Archive was really good, I hadn't heard of The David W. Niven
Collection of Early Jazz Legends[2] before and that it exists is really
interesting. I also didn't know much of how the Archive started so it was nice
to hear him talk on that. If you aren't familiar with him, he's the guy behind
textfiles.com and BBS: The Documentary and prolific speaker.
There were one or two people in the crowd I recognized but I never worked
up the nerve to say "Hi" unfortunately, but that's ok. The crowd was actually
smaller than what I would have expected, especially for a free event with food
and drinks. Father-in-law says it's probably because it was a Thursday night
and that is pretty interesting to me, if true. Melbourne's weekend starts
Thursday night, even for computer nerds. A similar event there would have been
a full house, although likely there'd be a high ratio of hipster looky-loos.
After the keynote finished I bailed Jason Scott up to introduce myself but
ended up fangirling a bit about what an inspiration he is, etc, and told him
about the Otarchive project. I immediately regretted that because I haven't
scanned in anything new in well over a year so, but at least I feel re-
energised to tackle it.
We'll see if I still feel that way when I get back home, I suppose.
[1] gopher://baud.baby/0/phlog/fs20170704.txt
[2] https://archive.org/details/davidwnivenjazz
EOF