Probably the most remarkable thing about last night’s Sh!tstorm event, besides the fact that an overflowing amount of people tried to cram into the small Rendezvous Jewelbox theater, was that I knew almost no one in the room. Not that I am a social butterfly, but for someone who thinks they have been commenting about the Seattle art scene for the last two years (or something) it was a wake up call. An amazing range of people turned out, young, old, sober and not so sober. At one point I thought I might have been the only representative sitting there from the visual arts, forgetting that Seattle has an insanely dedicated theater crowd, but I imagine the actors just tend to be more vocal than most of us painters, etc.

Anyway, the good news is there certainly seem to be enough people this fine city here that I claim as my own that want to combat the ennui that the Seattle art scene gets tagged with constantly. There is another Sh!tstorm scheduled for October, we’ll see what that means. I imagine that some people who have been here for decades heard the same old axe being ground last night, but myself, being away and then still trying to figure things out since I came back a few years ago was surprised how different it all seems.

There is a website I found out about from attending, a guy was there last night from Seattleart.org. He was sound recording the event, but enough people seemed up in arms about being identified off the record that he has decided not to post it. Too bad, but then there was the argument that if people wanted to know what was going on they should have had their ass sitting there and then. I’m of the camp that thinks they should have gone ahead and hired a stenographer like evening moderator Matthew Richter said had been threatened.