Apr. 12th, 2010

randy_byers: (2009-05-10)
Good weekend, although I failed to mow the mile-high lawn because I was such a social butterfly. Went to the Rat City Roller Girls on Saturday. Hiked along Dexter to Queen Anne in the glorious sunshine. Met [livejournal.com profile] daveon, M, and Dave's brother at TS McHugh's, where we were eventually also joined by Nick. The roller derby was fun, although I still can't really follow the action very well, so it still seems largely arbitrary (i.e., fake) to me. There were close to six thousand people in the crowd, which is pretty amazing, really. Afterward M went home and the boys went to a Thai restaurant and then a bar. Next thing I knew it was 1:30am. I didn't feel like waiting around for a rare bus or paying for a cab, so I hiked back to Fremont. Didn't get home until almost 2:30.

Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my bald head for no good reason. Went up to Andy's for a Chungatorial meeting. We sat outside and shot the breeze. I observed that I'm sometimes amazed that we have gotten to our seventeenth issue. I never imagined we would last this long when we published the first issue of Chunga in 2002 (although I believe in that first ish I did actually fantasize about issue 23 in an attempt at humor). Anyway, after that it was off to the pubmeet with carl. Jerry Kaufman had a batch of fanzines that had been handed out at Corflu, including the latest Banana Wings and No Sin But Ignorance, plus a beautiful new issue of Novoid from Colin Hinz and a Dr Who fanzine from Lilian Edwards. [livejournal.com profile] jackwilliambell told me about his trip to NYC (first time he'd ever been there) with [livejournal.com profile] scarlettina. The group conversation even turned sercon at one point when we got on the topic of John Schoenherr's artwork for Analog. Schoenherr died on the 8th at the age of 74. carl stopped by the house for a while after that so he could try a bottle of Colette, which is an interesting new farmhouse ale from Great Divide. Then I sent carl away and slumped in a dull stupor until I got hungry and popped down to the Pacific Inn for some late night fish and chips.

It was all a lot of fun, but I do regret not mowing the lawn. The weather was perfect for it, too. Next weekend it will probably be raining again.

Rat City

Apr. 12th, 2010 04:13 pm
randy_byers: (2009-05-10)
One of the things I learned this weekend (I can't remember who told me, but maybe the waiter at TS McHugh's) is that Rat City is a name for White Center, which is where the Rat City Roller Girls started out. White Center is a little working class town outside of Seattle that has a bit of a (no doubt classist) low rent reputation. The only reason I've ever gone there was because Victor's grandparents lived there, and I visited them with him a few times. I had never heard it called Rat City before, and the Wikipedia entry on the name is fascinating. It's short enough that I'll just quote the whole thing here:

Rat City is a colloquialism for the area of White Center, Washington, a small, low income suburb of West Seattle. White Center garnered a poor reputation due to its high crime rates and small homes. An alternate scenario for the moniker is that the name refers to the "rink rats" who roller skated at the Southgate Skate Center (which still stands). Rat city is also known as mice city There are a couple theories as to how "Rat City" got its name. Some people assume there was once a prolific rat problem in the 1940s, but RAT might have also been an acronym for Restricted Alcohol Territory, which Seattle was designated as during WWII. Unincorporated areas such as White Center were a draw for servicemen in part because of less stringent liquor regulations. Additionally, a military Relocation and Training (RAT) Center was located in the area during that period.

Somewhat incoherent even by Wikipedia standards ("Rat city is also known as mice city"?), but I love the indeterminacy and sheer weirdness of some of the derivations. If you google "Restricted Alcohol Territory", you mostly get references to this Wikipedia article. Even HistoryLink.org seems to be paraphrasing this article. Very strange. Google finds no references to Restricted Alcohol Territory that aren't an explanation of how White Center got its nickname. Smells fishy to me.

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