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Sun, 23 Mar 2025 21:43:17 GMT

A few more Frank Chopp memories today. The 43rd is the bluest district in the state: It covers Seattle’s Capitol Hill, the University District, and part of Fremont, and is the kind of district where the GOP is a distant third behind the Democrats and the Socialists.

When I met Frank in the late aughts he’d already been Speaker for years, and It was sort of a mystery to me how the 43rd, the tip of the leftmost feather on the left wing of the party, had managed to elect a Speaker.

The answer, from what I could tell, was that Frank was just really, really good at the job. He had an uncanny ability to skate to wherever the 50th member of the caucus was.

In the 43rd it was generally understood, or at least grudgingly accepted, that Frank wasn’t always swinging for the progressive fences because he’d taken on the role of caucus leader, and so was sometimes blocking good bills to protect other, more vulnerable members, or because he knew a bill didn't have the votes and so was prioritizing things that he thought could pass. This was also clear if you went to 43rd Dems meetings, where Frank would occasionally let his guard down.

Frank and I never spoke about it, but I like to believe that one of the reasons he stepped down as Speaker, but then stayed in his seat for a few more years, was so that he could jog left without the weight of the caucus on his shoulders.

Another thing I admired about Frank was that when he ran for re-election, no matter who he was up against, he hustled like a first-time candidate in a race too close to call. He took every challenger seriously, even if they seemed unlikely to beat him.

When Kshama Sawant ran for city council in 2013, she caught the incumbent napping: He didn’t take her seriously or put any real effort into campaigning until it was too late, and she squeaked past him by a two-point margin.

A lot of people have forgotten, though: Sawant’s first run for office was the year before, in 2012, against Frank Chopp. Sawant did not catch Frank napping. He hit the campaign trail and walloped her by a 40-point margin.

Some of that was because Sawant was a greener candidate at the time, and hadn't yet found the lightning-in-a-bottle $15/hour messaging that got her elected in '13… but a lot of it was just that Frank put his head down and ran.

I also think Frank took challenges from the left seriously because he knew that the Speaker role was pulling his voting record to the center, and knew his district well enough to know that that created a window for challengers.

He could have closed that window anytime he wanted, by giving up the Speaker role—but instead of doing what was best for him, he did what he thought was best for the party as a whole.

Tue, 16 Apr 2024 05:25:42 GMT

Today I discovered the song and video for "Bring Back the Time," by New Kids on the Block featuring Salt-N-Pepa, Rick Astley, and En Vogue (!). (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulJBJYie0l8) I have thoughts and feelings.

Apparently a lot of people are discovering this song in 2024—despite the fact that it was released two years ago—because the music industry isn't really geared up to promote a track from several artists who peaked in the eighties.

Anyhow, this song is hitting me in the feelings, because it's the first time I've really experienced a "nostalgia" piece for which I was the target audience.

(There was a song called "1985" by one-hit-wonders Bowling for Soup, but that song was released in 2004, and I don't think anyone was nostalgic for the eighties at that point. It'd be as if a song came out today reminiscing about the good old days of 2005.)

Really, I think that for most of my life, "nostalgia" has been a boomer thing: The eras that people and songs were nostalgic about—or, at least, the ones promoted in mass media—have been from before I was born or when I was too young.

So watching the "Bring Back the Time" video and listening to the lyrics was like, whoa, I am actually feeling nostalgia here, which is sort of a first.

If you were in the generation that grew up when MTV played music—that is, Gen X—the "Bring Back the Time" video is a hoot: It pays homage to, and in some scenes does shot-by-shot remakes of, a dozen classic videos from the eighties.

I didn't realize until today that Rick Astley doing the David Byrne dance from the Talking Heads' "Once in a Lifetime" video was a thing I needed to see repeatedly.

One other observation: The New Kids, Rick Astley, and Salt-N-Pepa all look good for artists in their mid-to-late fifties—and then, somehow, the members of En Vogue look like their second wish was for immortality. I do not understand this.

In the video there's a Robert Palmer "Addicted to Love" homage/parody, and I didn't notice En Vogue was playing the models in the background until about the third or fourth viewing, because… they look like twentysomething-year-old models in a Robert Palmer video.

This also may be the first time since Carly Rae Jepsen that a song has immediately earwormed me. So if this sounds like your kind of thing, check out the video.

Thu, 21 Sep 2023 23:44:16 GMT

I bought an e-bike about two months ago, and as of today have put (exactly) 200 miles on it. I’ve mostly cycled around my neighborhood (Ravenna and the U District in Seattle), in short hops that replaced what would have been a car trip…

…or, in some cases, replaced a ten-minute walk to Ravenna Park with a ten-minute ride to Gas Works Park. (The bike is a Tern GSD cargo e-bike, with attachments that allow me to carry two kids.)

I’ve learned a few things after a couple of months of biking around Seattle.

A bike is 10-15 mph slower than a car on city streets (or, at least, it is when I’m pedaling), but for short trips the bike is faster and more convenient, because PARKING. Oh my God. Why didn’t anyone tell me this sooner.

Nine times out of ten I can just pedal up to the front door of wherever I’m going, park my bike, and be there and gone in the time it'd have taken me to find a parking spot in a car.

There’s a burger place a few blocks from home—Rain City Burgers—that I’d driven past literally hundreds of times and thought “I should try them.” But I’d never actually done it, because parking a car there is next to impossible.

But they have a bike rack literally in front of their door, and there are protected bike lanes on both cross-streets. The burgers are pretty good.

Also, even with a top speed that’s slower than a car, it’s even money as to whether I can outpace a car that's in traffic on surface streets. If I’m in a separate bike lane, I get to watch as a car zips past me…

…and then the car gets stuck behind three other cars at the next stop sign, while my slower-but-steadier bike catches up and coasts past them.

And, Washington state law (RCW 46.61.190) allows a cyclist to treat a stop sign as a yield sign, at the cyclist’s discretion. I learned to drive in a different state, so maybe this is common knowledge for people who learned here, but it was news to me.

So I can often (safely) go through an intersection without stopping, while the car in the lane beside me always has to stop at the sign, even if there’s no other traffic.

Bicycles are also allowed on sidewalks here as long as they yield to pedestrians, so I can get to, say, the Montlake Bridge without risking my life on a major thoroughfare like 25th Ave. NE (which is basically a death zone for cyclists).

And, of course, I can hop on the Burke-Gilman Trail and get to all kinds of places without having to worry much about getting hit by a car.

I mentioned before that I’ve got room for two kids on the back of the e-bike. Unfortunately this is one fewer than the number of kids I have, but all three kids (ages 8, 5, and 2) love riding on the back of Daddy’s bike.

Penny, the five-year-old, spends her whole time on the back of the bike flapping her arms and shouting “I’m flying!” Charlie, the two-year-old, runs to the door and says “bike! bike!” if she sees Daddy with a bike helmet.

I mentioned before that this is an e-bike, which is a game-changer for me: I grew up riding a bicycle, but I grew up in the Midwest, and the Midwest is flat. I probably only used two or three gears on my ten-speed. Also my legs were younger then.

My e-bike is a Class 1, which means that the motor only kicks in when I pedal, and stops helping at 20 mph. You can pedal harder and go faster, but it’s all leg muscle after that.

It turns out 20 mph is about as fast as I’m comfortable going on a bike before I start worrying my reaction time won’t be fast enough if a parked car throws a door open or such, so the e-bike’s motor handing off to me at 20 mph hasn’t been an issue.

The motor has four settings. The lowest setting (“eco”) is the “I’m on flat terrain and only really need help at all because this cargo e-bike weighs 75 pounds” setting.

The highest setting ("turbo") is the “I don’t feel like climbing this hill, you do it for me” setting. It’s also the “I’m surrounded by cars and would like all the acceleration you’ve got” setting, which is how I find myself using it most often.

Max, my eight-year-old, always asks “are you in turbo?” when we’re pulling away from a stoplight. He also wants to know when he can get an e-bike.

Anyhow, I’ve had a ten-speed bike rusting in my garage for decades, but in all that time I’ve probably only put ten miles on it, because climbing Seattle hills on a bike is Not Fun. I'm putting 100 miles a month on the e-bike because it lets me nope out of that.

I can still climb hills if I want a workout, and provided I don’t mind being all hot and sweaty once I get to my destination. But, being able to opt out makes a huge difference.

All of this is probably old news to veterans of the Seattle bike scene, but for everyone else: Go get an e-bike, or at least think about it.