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My girlfriends and I take a short getaway every summer. Being all three arteests, we have this ridiculously creative name for it: Girls’ Trip.
Right now we are on our 4th annual Girls’ Trip. This year, we devised an elaborate and involved plan that came together loosely like the plot of Planes, Trains and Automobiles. Leslie flew from Austin to San Francisco to meet me just about the same time that Vanessa was on a red-eye back from a leisurely vacation in the Arctic Circle. While Leslie and I drove from my house in Mill Valley to Seattle (14 hours, more or less), a precariously sleep-deprived Vanessa got on yet another plane. Leslie and I spent a fly-by night in the magical garden of my friend Nira in Portland. And then we all convened in Seattle in the lobby of the OK Hotel (not actually a hotel, but an artist’s colony, more or less—with a gallery).
We planned this Girls’ Trip around Vanessa’s very first art installation. Vanessa, you see, is a brilliant word artist. Word artists, naturally, are my favorite sort. It’s difficult to describe Vanessa’s art: an amalgamation of poetry, prose, spoken word, signage, and sculpture. The pictures here are, I hope, an adequate glimpse.
After a chaotic afternoon of panicky last-minute printing, measuring, hanging, and sticking-on—with quite a bit of catatonic anxiety and hypoglycemia slowing us down—it somehow came together and the opening was a huge success. Vanessa shined (thanks in no small part to the fucking-A awesome wrist corsage that Leslie so thoughtfully ordered) and the whole thing went off pretty much without a hitch.
You can see more pictures of the show and Vanessa’s reading on my Facebook page.
Then we set off for the rest of our weekend, which, as is our annual tradition, has so far involved a lot of sleeping, eating, coffee shop loitering, and general lazing about.
I used to live in Seattle for a very brief period of time in the late 90s. I have a nostalgic attachment to the place and can get pretty morose about it. So this trip has been a mixed bag for me emotionally. (But hey, so is every single day.)
On our way out of Seattle to our rental house on Whidbey Island, I forced my besties to take a side trip to Lighthouse Coffee. This unassuming little neighborhood coffee shop was the very first place I ever went when I came to Seattle to live. I had an apartment waiting for me on the Phinney Ridge/Fremont border, but I didn’t know how to get there. My roommate-to-be, Ivy, (who was also one of my best friends from high school) told me to meet her at the coffee shop up the street. So that’s where I landed.
I got out of my old red Jetta packed full of everything I owned in the world (plus my cat), and hung out at Lighthouse Coffee for a good hour while Ivy finished up her game of backgammon or whatnot. I remember thinking that I had lucked into living in the coolest neighborhood in the coolest place in the world. I still love and adore Lighthouse Coffee, have an unreasonable attachment to proclaiming it the best coffee in the universe (they roast their own beans and holy hell), and would pretty much move onto a bench out front if they would let me.
