Saturday summer nights are noisy. Sirens blare through intersections and echo off buildings along Market Street. Water response, fire, life-saving measures.
Last night a man yelled, “Get the fuck off my block.” Another man with feigned machismo responded, “I’m standing right here.”
Silence followed. New encampments on Market and the 14th Ave NW corridor seem to connect to late-night activity. After eight years in Seattle, the unhoused issues are acute.
My son says matter-of-factly, “Did you hear Trump was shot?” His rhetorical question is just more content temporarily streamed before his eyes. He follows with, “What’s for lunch?”
Local over global is a better coping skill these days.
In mid-afternoon, we drive to a strip mall in Northgate to get old-school ice cream at Baskin Robbins. I'm just sick of the bougie shops selling vegan and organic flavors when all I want is a soft-serve cone with sprinkles. Nothing says ice cream like goat cheese, lavender, and black charcoal.
Growing up on Long Island, I miss walking to the bottom of my block to Carvel. It was a drive-up Carvel built in the 1950s to cater to the burgeoning car culture as families moved from urban New York to the suburbs of Long Island.
It was a magical childhood experience to look up at a giant cone and the neon scripted sign: C A R V EL. Hand-painted signs of sundaes hung from the large pane windows. Staff, primarily high school kids, would slide open a window to take your order. On hot summer days, you could feel the air conditioning escape briefly before they slid the window closed to swirl a cone and then dip it in sprinkles.
I ordered a Cherry Bonnet or a Butterscotch Sundae. On the walk home, I preoccupied myself with licking the melting ice cream before it reached my hand. My younger sister needed parental intervention to manage rivulets across her knuckles and wrists.
In 1983, The Beastie Boys released “Cookie Puss,” a rap ode to the Carvel ice cream cake. The song featured recorded crank calls to Carvel in a pre-digital era when a phone call could not be traced. Eventually, the *69 feature was available by the phone company for a fee, and you could call back the crank caller with gleeful revenge. Today, we dox someone.
I find solace in print media.
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