My Bad

[Shown: The 20th Century. My fault.]

The other night Anitra dragged me to a small public meeting dealing with the Homeless Place of Remembrance Project being planned here in Seattle. The project would create a place in an existing park downtown (Victor Steinbreuck Park, next to the Pike Place Farmer's Market) dedicated to those who have died while living on the streets.

I hate going to public meetings. I hate being in the public. This meeting was so small it was like a high school shop class for a trade nobody wants anymore. Like, when I was in high school you could sign up for electronics shop, but it wasn't cool electronics with transistors and printed circuits, it was all obsolete resistors and vacuum tubes. The only reason to take it, apart from the rare interest in technological history, was to satisfy a shop requirement.

Once trapped in a situation like that, I feel the best strategy is to sit in the back row prepared to heckle and/or shoot spitwads or rubber bands at the neck of any speaker who dares turn his back to me.

So I talked Anitra into settling down with me in adjoining seats in the back row. I got out our handy dandy cheap-ass video camera, just in case something graphic happened. I loaded up on free chips provided, and munched my way though the meeting, praying for a clear shot, of one kind or another.

The first part of the meeting was a slide show all about people who have died and their survivors' grief and joy at having places to feel connected with their lost ones. What a total buzz kill. By the time that was over I was ready to confess all my crimes.

Then there was a speechy bit about the background and history of the project. Since I share a bed with Anitra "I'll Empower Anybody Anywhere" Freeman, I already knew all about the background and history of the project. She had even submitted her own proposal and made me critique it. "You're an artist, Wes. Use your artist eyes and tell me what you think." "No." "Please!" "No." "I'll do the dish-es!" "It's very very memorialistic." "You're not being serious." "Neither were you." And so on. By the time the speechy business was over, I was ready to confess to the 20th Century.

Next we had Questions and Answers about the background and history. At this point a woman in the back row to my far right, who had clearly come to heckle because she was not only in the back row but near the exit, asked how the Parks Department could allow something like this when they have a policy prohibiting memorials in city parks.

A couple of officials from the Parks Department were there to explain that in fact they had taken that policy into account and were not going to let the Homeless Place of Remembrance be an actual memorial. And yes, they said, this would be tricky, and involve "walking a razor's edge" of fine policy distinctions, but they felt goosed and up for it. This answer did not satisfy the heckling woman. "Yes," I thought, "yes, I will have my fun yet. I will not leave early."

Thanks to the heckling woman's refusal to take an answer as a given, the discussion of how any decent parks department could ethically walk a razor's edge passed out of the baroque phase and through the rococco. Finally, just as the razors in my head were melting, she let up, and we moved on to the part of the meeting set aside for brainstorming.

Perhaps I should have mentioned it before now but in fact there is currently no design for a Homeless Place of Remembrance at Victor Steinbreuck Park. There have been designs, but they were to show what designs might look like. There have not been final designs. First the public would be asked to offer ideas. Then a designer would be found and handed the ideas. Then the designer would do a design with or without the ideas handed. Then, I don't know, we build it. Or not.

So we had this brainstorming session. What feelings should the place evoke? What elements of design should it have? What should we expect of the designer/artist that we choose to do the actual designing? Answers from the audience were put on giant post-it notes and stuck up on the wall.

When it came to elements of design, a gentleman sitting in front of Anitra said he didn't want any benches there because that would attract drug dealers and other criminal types.

Now, I've never seen a working drug dealer sitting down. But I am willing to entertain a hypothetical just like the next guy, so I took that idea of drug dealers lounging on park benches kicking back, and I gave that idea a back rub, and shared a beer with it. Then I thought, we can't leave the giant post-it note like this, with the words No Benches written on it.

So I raised my hand and said, "I like benches. I WANT benches there. Lots of benches." I said that if there were enough benches then not only would there be benches for the bad people, there'd be benches for me. But if there were no benches for the bad people, then there would be no benches for anybody, and that's just cutting off your nose to spite your face, or words to that effect.

When I said all this the gentleman sitting in front of Anitra turned around and gave me the meanest full-on scowl I have been handed since my 8th grade arithmetic teacher took a wet one in the neck and guessed I'd sent it.


Thank you, thank you, Anitra, for making me go to that meeting. It was great.