Is it umpa or oompa (lumpa)?
“Bridget Bardot?” goes the question. “Jill St. John” starts the answer, “and that’s Jacqueline Bisset”, finishes it. It’s a non-standard conversation to have in front of a vacant furniture refinishing shop. But it’s a non-standard day. Not an odd day (at least, to me). Just a non-standard one. PARK(ing) Day has arrived in Seaside, and I arrived early to claim the two spots in front of 600 Broadway. 600 Broadway was to be the home of The Thwack Factory, a live/work/play/wrenching/goof-off urban pioneering effort on Seaside’s main street.
Was to be, before I got a 91 page response to my application to move in and turn the lights on a long vacant building four days before my first day as City Manager. 91 pages. Thorough.
Two economic development professional hires later, PARK(ing) Day is here to demonstrate how Broadway is going to function when we remove two unneeded travel lanes and widen the sidewalks into an inviting space for commerce, culture and culinary exploits. When staff first asked if Seaside could participate in PARK(ing) Day, my immediate answer was yes. Anything that shakes up the status quo is usually good, and even when it’s not, it’s usually interesting. And I’m not good at saying no to experiments, anyway. All the great stuff comes from experiments. Oreos. Eating Reese’s peanut butter cups upside down. First kisses.
So while a drive to Fresno affords ample time for reconsideration, there will be none. There’s a $50 Craigslist lathe there, and I need a lathe to make the Thwack Factory come to life in the two parking spaces in front of 600 Broadway. With the “work” part covered, I also need some furnishings to make the live / wrench / goof-off part come to life. Oh, and a pop-up batting screen to replicate the batting cage that would have hung from the rafters. It’s all quite ridiculous, but Gene Wilder has died and Johnny Depp’s probably too busy curating the bracelet collections on his wrists, so who is going to be the Willy Wonka of Broadway Avenue if not me. That’s a statement, not a question.
There’s a brief introspection about whether the furnishings from the Fortress of Solitude should come out for public inspection. It’s more an aesthetic question than anything, because the Thwack Factory furnishings would have been scaled differently, and whiter. The non-aesthetic issue is do I really want my private furnishings on display. The aesthetic dilemma gets resolved with a natural wood theme for the day, so the table and chairs make the cut, and the Jackie and Jill and Chicago skyline pictures from the domicile du jour come with for effect. The non-aesthetic issue gets resolved since I'm a public figure anyway, and thus it all gets picked apart (and usually wrong) so wouldn't it be fun if there was one day where it was all there, physical and visibile. So there’s also a boyhood baseball hero collage of Ernie Banks, Billy Williams and Roberto Clemente hanging in the batting cage area, and a designer / innovator collage hanging just in front of the lathe, for inspiration. People ask who’s who* in the pictures and I tell them, leaving them to figure out which ones are jokes and which ones aren’t.
It turns out, there’s a difference between being amusing and joking. The collection of artifacts in the parking spaces is – hopefully – amusing. It amuses / bemuses me, at least. But revitalizing Seaside’s Broadway Avenue isn’t a joke, nor is empowering staff to imagine their way to that goal.
The collage of innovators and designers hanging in front of the lathe was inspired by Top Gear’s “Geoff” episode. To significant comedic effect, Clarkson created a “mood room”, to help inspire his electric car bodywork art (a few solid comedy minutes here).
Back at the pop-up, parking space Thwack Factory, the lathe spins under the watchful eyes of people passing by, and two baseball bats get freed from the wood they were held captive in. Most (not all) of the folks wandering into Jackie Jill Chicago Skyline Wonka-ville are mindful not to startle the guy operating the machinery with a question as the lathe is spinning. So that affords some thinking time as the lathe, and world, spins.
So, here it is.
Don't lead a captive life. Carve it out for yourself, whether others understand it or not. Also, life’s a mood room. You can bring to it beauty, joy, remembrance, inspiration and experimentation. Or less pleasant bits. You choose.
Choose wisely.
* from bottom left
Frank Lloyd Wright – architect, cape-wearer
Marcello Gandini – designer of the Countach, Miura and Stratos, any one of which would have been a career-maker
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay – got there first
Dr. Emmet Brown – inventor of the flux capacitor
Mary Margaret Jones – favorite living landscape architect, from Hargreaves Associates, just up the road a bit
Guy in the middle – Joe Maddon, good baseball dude
