Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

This story in the Seattle Times details the continued diaspora of the Love Israel family, and it brought back some memories.  I’m not intimately familiar with their history, but I’ll try to offer a brief synopsis.  Sometime in the late 60s a guy who owned a string of appliance stores dropped out, renamed himself “Love Israel” and started a commune/group living thing in a spiffy piece of property on Seattle’s Queen Anne Hill.  All those who joined took on an allegorical first name, some attribute that either described them or what they hoped to become, like Reasonable or Serious or Sobriety.  All took the last name “Israel”.  Anyone who joined was required to divest all their personal possessions to the Family.  It was this stricture that led to my first contact with them.

It was 1974, and I had just moved to Seattle.  On a purely technical basis, I was a pretty dang good bicycle mechanic, and I had vague designs on starting a bike shop when I moved here.  Yet to be reckoned with consciously, but weighing heavily on my subconscious, was the fact that I couldn’t sell water to dying men in the desert, but while I waited for fate to make me its bitch in this regard, I was working in a forlorn little bike shop near Seattle’s “U” district called Spokesman Cycle.  The owner was my exact antithesis - fat, lazy, absolutely no business sense, but he knew that, when necessary, he could sell something to someone when he needed to.  I’ve always operated on the fallacious theory that the opportunity I’m currently pursuing is the last one I’ll ever get, and I’m always surprised when another arises through some cosmic miscalculation; he operated under the equally fallacious presumption that every fuckup he did was a do-over, and perceived an injustice when the cosmos wearied of the task of illuminating him and shone its warming rays on some other dog’s butt. 

He was congenitally unable to maintain a check register, and many times, when he had to be dead certain that a check he wrote would not bounce, he would take cash out of the register (what was left after he robbed it for lunches and drinking away the afternoons that I spent repairing bikes and waiting on the few customers that came in, mistaking us for one of the several really good shops in the District) and open a new bank account in order to write check #101 to the vendor or government agency that could do us serious dirt if the check bounced.  Lots of times it would bounce anyway, because he couldn’t keep himself from writing check #102 a moment or two later.

Owing to the fact that we didn’t represent any quality lines of bikes, and those we did rep we didn’t have the money to put on the floor, we offered to sell people’s bikes on consignment for 15% of the selling price.  One afternoon a couple guys came in with an unprepossessing bike to sell.  I forget their first names - Guileless and Kickme, maybe - but their last name was Israel.  I asked what the deal was, and they told me that one of them was a new member of the Love family, and selling the bike was part of his material divestiture.

A couple weeks later, the bike sold, and the Israel brothers came in.  Out of the owner’s earshot, I advised them to only take cash, not a check, for their payment.  They said, no, they couldn’t handle cash because they wanted to be above suspicion in the family circle.  I reiterated in the strongest possible terms, but they ended up taking a check anyway.  Apparently they or the family proffered the check to a carpet vendor to cover a purchase and - surprise! - it bounced.  Guileless and Kickme came in a couple times, and received assurances from the owner that funds were now available in the account, but somehow the check was never negotiated.

The next time they came in, they were in the company of a huge guy who introduced himself (and I’m not making THIS name up) as “Strength”.  Strength Israel was polite, even soft-spoken, and he and the owner discussed the lamentable state of bank bookkeeping and veracity.  Maybe the owner even offered to write him check #101 on an account he had just that day opened at a different, more competent bank, I’m not sure.  But I do remember, as I worked industriously on a bike and tried really hard not to blow snot all over it while suppressing the guffaw hovering just above my diaphragm, seeing Strength’s knitted brow just about an inch from the owner’s quivering face, and hearing Strength saying, “you know, I really want to believe you, man, because I REALLY, REALLY like people.”  I couldn’t see under the counter, but he just may have had the owner’s testicles gripped tightly in his huge hand during this Hallmark moment.

The result of this negotiation was that the owner cleaned out the cash register and, under the close guidance of Guileless, Kickme and Strength, piled into their rattletrap station wagon and paid a visit to the carpet store.  Since the surname “Israel” didn’t have the same connotation as “Gotti” when putting a miscreant in a car and driving away, the owner returned an hour or so later, short of cash but physically unscathed.  I fancy he grabbed the previously spurned check #101 and set out in search of a tavern he hadn’t frequented previously.

In their heyday, the Love Family had, in addition to the Queen Anne property, a “ranch” near Marysville in Snohomish County as well as other properties and businesses.  In 1981, we gutted our Wallingford house and set about remodeling it, and moved to a basement apartment on Queen Anne in the interim.  While living there, my wife found a little cafe/bakery that the Love family operated on McGraw Street, and we would shop there now & then.  We had no illusions that they were entirely a happy, sunny hippy phenomenon.  They were a cult, and we’d heard rumors of sensory deprivation of new recruits, as well as how Love himself retained a fulsome amount of material comforts, including a Martin Guitar and his choice of sisters to occupy his bed.  Still, we suspected that Albertson’s and whatever had a big chunk of Mormon ownership, so what the hey? - the folks at the McGraw street cafe were pleasant enough, and there was a young woman there named Rejoice that was really easy on the eyes…

Sometime in the mid-80s, some sort of schism and/or setback occurred, and they had to divest the Queen Anne mansion and consolidate on the Snohomish property.  They’ve lived there for the last 20 years, following, apparently, this catchy little mantra from their website:

Before enlightenment, planting vegetables and raising children, 

After enlightenment, planting vegetables and raising children.

Now and then we’d see an article about them, including one about how their children, attending public schools in Marysville, were playing on the football team and, after some soulsearching, the parents became some of the team’s most vocal supporters.  Now it appears that their fortunes have deteriorated further.  They declared bankruptcy last year and, just last week, sold the Snohomish property to, ironically, a Reformed Jewish group to be used as a camp.  40 of them will have to move east of the Cascades to a property they (or at least Love Israel’s wife) own and try to forge a new life.  Between this and the Love Family’s website, you can piece together whatever I’ve missed in relating their history.

I am drawn sometimes to the idea of these cooperative living situations, curious about whether the intensity and increased human contact, as well as the giving of myself, would somehow make life richer (although I would be the last person you’d want in any situation based on religion).  I have a close friend that has lived in a co-housing cluster for 15 years, and I’m tantalized by that a little, too.  Then I remember how I got to hate dorm life in college, how anxious I was to see the last of my housemates when we bought our house after renting it, and how glad I am to come home from a camping trip, and I’m pretty sure that I’m not cut out for all that togetherness.

This vessel, the ferry Kalakala, has been moored in Seattle’s Lake Union for several years while a few different owner groups struggled to come up with a plan to renovate it.  It was once Seattle’s preeminent icon, before the Space Needle and Monorail arrived with the 1962 World’s Fair.  It was nicknamed The Silver Slug because its art deco design reminded folks of that other icon of the northwest encountered on trails and in our gardens.

It was retired from the state ferry fleet in 1967 and ended up in Alaska as a fish processor, sort of a maritime fallen woman.  A local sculptor brought it back to Seattle with designs on renovating it and giving it historical status to ply local waters again.  While his foundation struggled to gain funding from private and government sources, a series of parties and fundraisers were held on board.  They even had a large plastic bottle suspended from the bow beseeching kayakers to donate money, and every time I paddled by it (I took the attached picture from my kayak), there was a good chunk of change in it.

We attended a couple of these events when bands we liked were playing and, while I thought it was a good music venue, and would have made a great all-ages facility, there was no denying that it was terminally decrepit.

The sculptor lost his bid to raise funds (plus a good part of his personal wealth), and the ship was eventually put up for auction.  Congruent with the ship’s rocky karma, the auction winner’s check bounced.  Meanwhile, the city was issuing daily fines, and the landlord where it was moored was accruing unpaid rent.  Finally, a fellow stepped up and bought it for a lowball price.  He plans to renovate it and moor it up in Everett on tideland property he owns there, so there’s a chance we’ll at least see it on Puget Sound if he succeeds.  But it was imperative that he get the boat out of town, and he set, then cancelled, 2 or 3 dates for its departure, leading to growing cynicism that he would really pull it off. 

Well, today the boat finally left for temporary moorage in Neah Bay, its procession marked by gatherings of the curious.  (I love the tale of unrequited love in this article).  People are divided about whether we’ve bid goodbye to an eyesore or a lost opportunity to recapture a bit of history.   I’m not sure where I fall, considering that I came here in 1974 and the only nostalgia I have for it was as a music venue, but it would have made a damn good one.

We were listening to KEXP’s Wo’Pop show tonight, and heard a track from a new CD by Zero 7 called When It Falls.  I popped onto iTunes and downloaded the album (and did the little dance where you have to burn a CD, then rip it back to mp3 in order to get it onto my Archos mp3 player because of iTunes’ proprietary file format).  Normally, I’d want to hear some more of an album, but I bought this one on impulse, based on how much we liked Simple Things, and the live show we saw at the Showbox last spring.

Zero 7 is one of the “downbeat”, or “chill”, groups that have arisen the last few years.  Others in the same vein include Thievery Corporation, Supreme Beings of Leisure and Massive Attack.

I enjoyed the first run through the album.  It’s a bit slicker than Simple Things, which I’ll have to decide later whether I prefer.  The featured single so far, Home, has a new vocalist, Tina Dico, and for some reason this cut reminds me a bit of a something from Joni Mitchell’s Hejira album - just a melodic whiff, though, as Joni’s poetic storytelling is definitely absent.  I prefer, I think, the numbers by Sia Furler, the vocalist on Destiny from the Simple Things album.  There is a lot more bluesy keyboard in this album and less sampling.

In case you’re growing tired of following Mel’s bid to become the first Australian pope, you might enjoy this little website I stumbled across today.  I haven’t been to church in decades, so I’m not sure if they have internet access in the pews now, but if you ARE in church and ill-advisedly perusing my blog, don’t open this link until everyone’s eyes are shut.

I had the oddest conversation with my mother last weekend when I visited my parents near Toledo.  A Republican all during my childhood and teen years, she’s been more and more vocal the last few years about her support for abortion, her dismay at Rush and his clones’ takeover of AM radio stations whose genial on-air local personalities she used to enjoy, and a burgeoning dislike for George Bush and his crowd.  She can’t stand to be in the same room with my dad when he’s watching O’Reilly on Fox.

We were out for a walk on Sunday - her longest by far since her soujourn in the ICU over New Year’s.  We passed a lot of yard signs importuning voters in the Ohio Primary coming up last Tuesday, and I asked her if she was leaning towards either of the Democratic candidates.  I was taken aback a little when she said she couldn’t vote for them because she’d have to register as a Democrat to do so.  I asked her if she was still registered as a Republican, and she said seh was.  I told her there was no harm in registering as a Democrat just for this election, but she seemed oddly reluctant to consider it. 

I asked her if she could think of any Republicans that she liked, and she answered “no” without any hesitation, but there must be some psychological barrier, some catch in the throat about cutting that final thread.  I haven’t had a chance to ask her what she ended up doing on Tuesday.

The first Easter candy of the season hit the office where I’m working in Milwaukee, in the form of spice-flavored jelly beans and marshmallow Peeps.  I’m not a big chocolate fan, but I love sugary stuff like this that makes your teeth hum like a tuning fork.  There’s nothing like a fresh Peep melting in your mouth, captured only seconds after the cellophane on the package has been breached.