Waterfront Park

I've been in Seattle for three full days. It feels like I've been doing a lot, and simultaneously not enough. I've been following a plan that that I more or less laid out before I came here. The plan was to do the kind of research that is really place-specific, the kind of research that you cannot rely on library books, journal articles, or telephone calls and videoconferencing to handle. I've been walking the major arterials that criss-cross the central city, connecting the shores of Puget Sound on the west to those of Lake Washington on the east. I've been visiting museums, and I've been swimming a lot, and journaling. I've just been keeping my eyes open, trying to take in all that I can.

It feels a little trivial on the surface because I'm not talking to people, conducting formal interviews, or visiting hip-hop centers. That work was done earlier, and will take place a little more tomorrow and Saturday when the Boogie Down the Block festival formally begins. I think it's useful work, however, and that the usefulness will start to be more apparent later when I'm back in New York, piecing it all together and trying to see what I've got.

So today, I met an old friend for lunch at the Pike Place Market. We ended up eating at a bistro type place of his choice that was opposite Waterfront Park, a stretch of urban grassland that abuts Puget Sound along Western Avenue. Beloved One, an emcee who is quite active in 206 Zulu and the hip-hop community locally, joined us near the tail end of lunch. Afterwards, she and I walked over to Waterfront Park to chat. As we walked, I remembered a story that Piece, a well known poet and emcee, had shared with me in February 2010. She was a child in the early 1980s, and her older brothers were responsible for baby-sitting her. They didn't want to hang around at home with a kid sister, so they dragged her onto the bus down to Waterfront Park. They'd set up a cipher and start rapping or breaking, hoping to pick up some change. One day, one of the brothers threw Piece into the cipher, telling her at age six to just say her name and that she was born in the month of May. She complied and had no idea what to do next. Impulsively, she said, "Everybody, clap your hands." To her amazement, people began clapping. That, she told me, was when she realized that she had the power to move the crowd.

If my memory is correct, these visits to Waterfront Park would have occurred in 1985-86, or so, about two years before I moved to Seattle to take a job at The Seattle Times. Sitting n the grass today at Waterfront Park, I imagined such a scene taking place. Waterfront Park is a social place, smushed between what's known as the downtown waterfront and the Pike Place Market. From our vantage point on the grass, Beloved One and I could see Mount Rainier gleaming in the sun to our left and the Washington State Ferries traversing the Sound between the docks in downtown Seattle and those for Bainbridge and Vashon islands. Against the backdrop, vendors give away free drinks as promotions and slice up sample slices of apples, peaches, and apricots. In the meantime, people like a palm reader who hailed Beloved One do what she described as "working the hustle."

Working the hustle lay at the roots of the entrepreneurial spirit of hip-hop. Far, far removed from the glitz of the cameras and limousine that accompanied current superstar Macklemore as he went down Broadway last night, the entrepreneurial spirit was about creating something from nothing. Piece not only learned from her childhood visits to Waterfront Park that she could move the crowd; she also learned that the dimes, quarters, and dollar bills tossed into the hat at her feet held value. It was extra spending money, which b-boy Crazy Legs of the Rock Steady Crew described at the Words Beats & Life teach-in earlier this month, as being a way to avoid having to eat the free-lunch provided for needy children at the local schools. Later, it came to stand for income -- sometimes a supplement, sometimes an essential, but always welcomed.

Beloved One grew up in Ballard, north of the ship canal, in an area that traditionally has been dominated by Scandinavians. It is quieter and much more residential than the neighborhoods south of the ship-canal.  She listened with interest as I described the flag burnings that took place along Broadway in 1988 and 1991. "I was nine," she said. "I had no idea."