How to Win Friends and Influence (Among the Crows)

What is it like to get in tune with the place you live and work?

Poptart, my weird orange cat, has been sitting with me and taking up her half of the chair for the entirety of writing this entry to the blog. As sleepy co-author, she still deserves some credit. Especially since we both like to watch the crows building their nests (likely for different reasons).

It’s been three weeks since I made a big move from Lynnwood down into Edmonds, and I’m starting to feel pretty well set up. We’re painting the walls(1) one by one as we get to them, my bedroom is close to being in its final form(2), and we’ve been making good use of the Coleman hot tub we put behind the house. We have plans for the backyard that I’ve been looking forward to(3), but even moreso I’d been anticipating getting to walk to work.

When I realized that a change of residence was in my near future, I started the well-practiced routine of asking my friends and partners for any leads on housing. Rental markets aren’t ever really that friendly, but my options were particularly limited. I didn’t want to live right in downtown Edmonds and be tied to the store at the hip(4), but I also wasn’t particularly interested in going even further afield with this move than I already was(5). Luck and a lot of lifting and scheduling and such landed me a place about a half hour walk from the store, and I couldn’t have been happier.

I used to walk everywhere when I was in school in Bellingham. Granted, my world was a little smaller back then, and I barely even used the car I’d gotten on the cheap(6) until after graduating. Walking was a time to sit with my quiet mind, hum my way through songs that’ve been trying to be heard, and see the world far more slowly(7) than I possibly could while focusing on driving with all the perils and speed it brings with it.

Views from my walk to work

I had been looking forward to this because, in the past, walking for extended periods almost daily was good for my mental health. A forced reset in stillness as I make my way slowly to my destination. What I didn’t count on as a matter of fact was the company I’d end up keeping.

I’d noticed the first couple of times I walked that several of the copses of trees along the route were alive with sound. There had been crows I knew that frequented the quiet road out front of my mom’s house(8). Had I found some of my very own?

There’s a surprisingly robust body of literature online surrounding the topic of befriending crows. In short, though, they like to latch on to the same things as me: patience and routine. They have a stronger taste for peanuts than I do, so I decided to trade a bag from Winco (unsalted) for friendship. In just three weeks, they’ve grown from initially trusting that the food wasn’t going to hurt them to congregating in the tree in my front yard when I leave for the day. I sometimes whistle for them(9), but it’s not my intention to treat them as pets or have them treat me as their only source of food. Still though, it’s lovely to see a crow go absolutely nuts for nuts and call out to its family. Soon three or more crows are all joining in its happy dance. For the next few hours at least, they have one fewer thing to worry about.

The crows are just one thing that I’ve gotten to be more in tune with as I’ve settled into my new spot so close to Edmonds. I’m getting to be more in tune with the store and able to jump in as needed when needed at shorter notice. I’ve worried a lot over where I want to be and live, but I think for now I’m happy.

A bonus picture of my outfit for Crow Fest 2022 in Bothell this past October. It’s not even a big deal, but me and my friends DID win best group costume this year.

(1) If every wall is an accent color, then they’re all equally special.

(2) The lump on the back of my head from assembling my bed frame has just about receded. The chunk of wood that was knocked loose by my head is gone for good.

(3) I’m going to gush just a little bit that my partner and I have plans to start growing a reasonable amount of our own food. We’re just about to start turning up ground to plant, we’ll hopefully be set up to keep quails here soon enough to hatch them soon, and next year they offered to build me boxes and frames to keep bees. Homemade encaustic paints anyone?

(4) I love the store a lot; I wouldn’t be taking over ownership if I didn’t. I do value having a bit of distance though while still being close enough to run in at short notice if needed.

(5) If I had taken my budget and had to live on my own, I’d probably be looking at a 30-45 minute commute to Edmonds at least. I do love a long drive. I listened to the entire Witcher series of books while driving from Lynnwood this past year, but at a certain point I just don’t want to be giving that many hours of my life to sitting in a car burning fuel.

(6) My fantastic red Ford Escape was the only other car I owned, and I drove it all the way into the ground before giving it up for the care I have now. Someday I hope to have a car that isn’t 20 years old, but nobody is ever going to get rich selling art supplies.

(7) I think often of a Robert Frost poem, A Passing Glimpse (1928) with lines that include:

I often see flowers from a passing car

That are gone before I can tell what they are.

and

Heaven gives it glimpses only to those

Not in position to look too close.

(8) Agnes, the crow, went by as many different names as there were people who fed her, but that’s how I knew her. She was easy to recognize with a broken wing that prevented her from ever even attempting flight. As far as I know, she hasn’t been seen in at least a few months, which doesn’t look good for her.

(9) The same combination of notes every time. Patience and routine.

A Tale of Two Skates:

Running a serious business in a Very serious way

It’s a well-established fact…

…that ARTspot is one of the coolest spots in downtown Edmonds(1). That’s said not as a business owner, but as someone who was eight years old when the Wishing Stone opened a store in Edmonds down by the waterfront and there was finally something interesting to see in the early 2000s. I grew up in Edmonds(2). Despite traveling around a bunch and considering myself a somewhat worldly person I was always perplexed in my earlier twenties that I somehow always ended up back in Edmonds. I think it’s because I actually really like it here? Edmonds is really special to me for many reasons. One of the big reasons is the kernel of wonderful weirdness that lives in the community of artists that have made Edmonds their home(3).

To anyone outside that community, the arts may seem like a foreign concept reserved for others. The terrible truth, though, is that someone you know, and probably even someone you love, is an artist(4). And artists are weird. The weirder the better. Weirdness helps you find comfort in taking the risk of creating something genuinely awful. If you’re already weird then what do you have to lose? It’s ARTspot’s mission to provide artists with the tools and expert advice to find success in what they’re doing, but I also view it as an integral part of what we do here to encourage taking comfort in weirdness.

Just a normal guy doing normal things in a normal way.

Salvador Dali Walking an Anteater through Paris (1969)

To pivot the subject slightly, in the winter of 2021 we had all been weathering the COVID-19 pandemic to the point where the new normal felt pretty normal. It also kinda felt like we were still trudging through a swamp that fewer and fewer people wanted to acknowledge. It had been a weird time, but not in a particularly good way, and I hadn’t really made art or felt any creative drive in months by then(5). I was working at the art store, which at least afforded me the joy of being around other creative people and sharing in their joy, but it wasn’t a great time for me(6). 

My background in the arts is in costume design, which is all about nudging and pushing viewers’ perceptions for one reason or another. I was stuck in a major rut, so I decided to nudge my own perception as a viewer of myself. 

Wouldn’t it be fun to get really good at roller skating? (7)

So I’ve been wearing roller skates around the store almost every day for a year and a bit!(8) I started very slowly and cautiously after closing while running inventory reports, and to date I’ve never collided with a person or fallen on a display. My black Impala(9) skates, even when they were unadorned at first, were a great icebreaker for anyone coming into ARTspot with a serious attitude or expecting a serious store staffed by serious people. We take creativity seriously, but a big part of that is embracing the weird and wonderful.

These are my skates as of today! February 6th, 2023

Subject to change at an artistic whim. I could have taken a better photo of them, but I didn’t want to take them off.

By now, I’ve used POSCA acrylic markers(10) to cover my skates with more and more bits. Quotes from David Bowie and Ai Wei Wei(11), a Sex Pistols logo, and a guillotine for no reason in particular(12). They all wear off because the canvas in this case is something that gets used hard and regularly, and the only thing I always replace just the same is the bright yellow and pink of the Pistols. Acrylics are pretty durable, but if you think I skate hard at ARTspot, you ought to come out to the Lynnwood Bowl and Skate sometime for an 18+ night(13).

(1) Not for lack of competition! It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about Edmonds as Deadmonds, and I think that’s only partially because of my advancing age. Though I must say there’s still nobody down here that sells Pokemon cards, which is what I primarily thought was cool at age 5.

(2) And Lynnwood a little bit. And what I think was unincorporated Snohomish County when I was really little, but I’m pretty sure there’s a Park & Ride and a Fred Meyer there now. I know it’s just going to get more pronounced as I continue to age in the same location, but it blows my mind how much this area has changed. There were horses down the street from my first house in Edmonds. Horses! In Edmonds!

(3) It’s lowkey very cool that downtown Edmonds was marked as the first Creative District in Washington. I think that opened up some funding for further cultural development. With all this development, I’m really hopeful that people from all walks of life will find ways to visit Edmonds, contribute to the culture here, and then hopefully help to enrich wherever they call home.

(4) It’s a pillar of the ARTspot philosophy that everyone has a creative side and a right to be able to access it. It may not take the form of visual art, but we love it when it does!

(5) I think the last bit of fun I had making art for a long while was back in April of 2020 when the business I was working at at the time (not ARTspot) was compelled by the state to send its workers home on lockdown as nonessential. I ordered, assembled, and painted a custom 3-D printed miniature of Darth Vader for a tabletop game I played hoping that I’d be able to play with my friends soon and impress them all. We’ve still not been able to get back together for a real game night.

(6) And I’m the author here so my feelings matter.

(7) Like, really good. Like Gene Kelly in It’s Always Fair Weather levels of good. I think about this routine a lot and marvel at how flat the street is despite being pretty sure it has to be a 1950s MGM soundstage. If any readers have ever attempted to skate a set of quads down an Edmonds sidewalk, you’d have a new appreciation for well maintained pedestrian infrastructure.

(8) Taking off my skates at the end of the day has become the worst part of any day. To go from gliding and swooping around with little effort to manually plodding around is such a wid shift. I haven’t needed to rearrange anything at ARTspot to accommodate my skating, but I totally have started to view the layout of things as a series of arcs and straightaways I can maneuver through, each with their own speeds to be able to stop nimbly to avoid something or someone.

(9) I am, unfortunately, not sponsored or affiliated in any way with Impala skates, but they do have some very cute designs and pretty good prices considering how well they’re built. If you or anyone you know may work for Impala or a similar roller skate-making company, please consider making more of your styles in sizes larger than a US Women's 9. All my fellow Amazonian transfemme skater babes will thank you and sing your praises until our deaths.

(10) I initially wrote this entire post as an Ode to POSCA, which felt a bit too much like a smelly sales pitch. That’s not really the goal of these posts, but if y’all ever want to listen to someone wax poetic about POSCA like Lieutenant Commander Data talks about his cat, please come in and speak to either myself or Vincent.

(11) “The purpose of art is the fight for freedom,” is a powerful reminder that art and creativity is not just for looking pretty or for making people happy. While curating the Intersections show last spring, I made a point to ask for and include art that I knew may spark an uncomfortable feeling for some viewers despite being shown in a setting that is ultimately safe for them. Art can be so many different things! Whether you’re making it (and you should) or seeking it out to take in through your senses, accept that it doesn’t have to look good for it to be good. I’m a huge supporter of making bad art badly!

(12) I’m a bit of a dirty anarchist, which is shocking I’m sure, but it puts me in an awkward position of also being a business owner raised up into the petite bourgeoisie by merit of knowing a lot about art supplies and coming from a family with access to enough capital to have started a business. I have a guillotine painted on my skates and also sometimes wear a guillotine necklace gifted to me by a friend when I accepted an ownership role to remind me that nobody is inherently better than anyone else and that everything is built on the efforts of others. Maybe all business owners, big and small, should have a little guillotine somewhere to remind themselves to keep humble and honest about the work they do.

(13) If you, like me, exhibit what the young folks are calling Main Character Energy, then maybe the 18+ Night at the Lynnwood Bowl and Skate is the place for you! As a certified freak, I’ve never felt less weird than when I’m surrounded by a bunch of people in their 20s-60s who all choose to go roller skating on a Monday night.