we laugh at danger and break all the rules

Dan and I headed up to Seattle last night to go to the Against Me! show at the Neptune theater and I brought my camera along with my 90mm lens to sneak a few shots of the band before I hopped in the pit to scream my lungs out.  Against Me! is definitely the best live band I've ever seen, but I think I might be getting too old to rock out in the mosh pit, though, I woke up with pretty much every muscle in my body aching.   We got there a few minutes early and grabbed a couple drinks at the bar across the street.  I surprised Dan with VIP tickets that got us premier seating and special access to the bar, which ended up being super nice.  We sat next to some guys who were also from Tacoma, so it was fun chatting with them during the opening bands.   After the show we were wiped out and starving so we drove to Dicks and got two burgers, two fries, and a strawberry shake to revive ourselves for the drive home.  There's nothing like scarfing down fast food and unwinding after an awesome rock show.

the last great race

Growing up in Anchorage, the Iditarod was a big event every year.  We'd go downtown and watch the ceremonial start on 4th Ave, packed behind the fences cheering on mushers.  One year my dad's coworker mushed in the race and my Dad was a dog handler for his team so we got to hang out behind the scenes and went out to Willow for the restart.  When I was seven, my Dad and I had a hair-brained idea to serve the mushers espresso on the trail.  My parents had gotten into espresso in the mid-90s and bought an espresso machine to make coffee at home, and somehow we thought it would be fun to serve fancy espresso out on the most rugged of arctic races.  We picked Finger Lake as the checkpoint where we'd set up.  As the race progresses the mushers get more spread out, so picking a checkpoint early in the race meant that we'd get to offer all the mushers our services without having to be there for a week.  We had to have a clever "business" name (though we weren't charging any money to the mushers, and any tourists who wanted coffee paid on a donation basis), so we decided to call ourselves "Airborne Espresso" which was a riff of the air cargo airline, Airborne Express.  We thought it was pretty damn clever, but Airborne Express did not and forced us to change our name after the first year, so the subsequent years we went by "Idita-espresso."  Not quite as clever, but it did the job.

We flew out there to set up the day before mushers started arriving, pitched our tent, pulled all the espresso equipment and generator out of the plane, put up the table where we'd be slinging 'spro, and settled in for the night.  It'd frequently dip well below zero, so my dad had built an insulated box to surround the espresso machine so it could keep the water hot enough in the tank.  We lit up the kerosene stove in the tent and heated ourselves some beanie-weenies for dinner before settling in to sleep.  Depending on how fast the mushers were running some would get in to the checkpoint in the wee hours of the morning, so my Dad tracked the front runners and woke up early to catch the first mushers in.  I, on the other hand, have always been a night owl and a sleeper-in, so I usually missed the first few and dragged myself out of my sleeping bag much later.

After our first year, we learned that most mushers preferred hot chocolate, but were pretty flabbergasted at our offer of a vanilla latte or mocha.  Tourists, on the other hand, were huge fans of our fancy coffee, which was still a relatively new thing as the Starbucks craze hadn't quite taken hold just yet.  We were interviewed by the Anchorage Daily News and were on a few news stations.  Apparently a dad and daughter selling fancy espresso in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness wasn't too common.

We did this for a few years and it's still one of my favorite memories from childhood.  I was hoping to get out to Finger Lake again when I was up in Alaska for the Iditarod this year, but I wasn't able to swing it.  Maybe Dad and I can bring back Airborne Espresso now that Airborne Express doesn't exist anymore.  It sure would be fun to do it again, and there are still some mushers running that ran 20 years ago when we first started our crazy idita-espresso scheme.  And hey!  Now I can totally barista.  Back in the day I was on coffee delivery duty and my dad was the barista.  Maybe someday.






So many memories flashed back to me while shooting the teams whooshing past, through the trees.  I sat next to kids with dog booties clutched close, sacred treasures, watching teams go by and cheering on their favorite mushers.  They'd yell, "booties!" and the musher would toss a few booties their way, like candy from a parade float.  I realized that I still have my dog bootie treasures from when I was a kid, and I found them, squirreled away in storage, later that week.  Precious Iditarod memories forever preserved.  It was so special to see a whole new generation of kids experiencing the thrill of watching dog teams whizz by, a thousand miles to go.  Maybe someday I'll get to bring my kids to the Iditarod and they can start their own collection of dog booties.

those anarcho punks are mysterious

Tomorrow Dan and I are headed to an Against Me! show and as I walked Dusty yesterday I was reminiscing about the last time we went to an Against Me! show together back in 2007.  For a second I thought that my math had to be wrong.  It couldn't have been seven years since then, but yes, 7+7=14.  Seven years ago we met up in Seattle to see Against Me!  20-year-old versions of us.  Dan with his scruffy hair and me with my rainbow streak.  He was my best friend and I was hopelessly in love with him.  We were both still in the process of becoming the people who'd eventually promise their lives to one another.  It would be three years before we found ourselves gravitating towards one another, thousands of miles apart, talking on the phone, texting, and facebooking.  It's a little bizarre to me to think that we've already been in one another's lives for almost 9 years.  Has it really been that long?  From the moment I met Dan he's been one of my favorite humans and I can't begin to express how thankful I am that I get to share my life with him.

It's fun getting to see a band that so permeated the beginning of our friendship.  Dan was the one who introduced me to Against Me! and hearing those old albums takes me right back to freshman year of college.  Against Me! has changed over the years and so have we, but I'm so excited that we get to go see them again.  And this time I can totally make out with Dan after the show.

choosing to leap

I've been becoming more and more of a neo-hippie over the last few years and I think it might be manifesting in my clothing choices now.  One of my favorite things about personal style is that it's constantly changing with me.  I think a lot of people think that fashion is serious, but for me clothing is almost always a way for me to play.  Playing with shapes, proportions, patterns, colors.  Playing with how I feel that day, how it wants to manifest in what I put on my body to express those feelings.   I've been thinking a lot about where I want to go next, not necessarily physically because even though I'd love nothing more than to hop back in the Winne and drive into the sunset, we've built a little homestead here and at least for now I've planted some roots.  I feel like the last big passion project I embarked on was my Winne trip, though.  I've been bobbing around, trying this and that, but never diving into anything headfirst with reckless abandon.  In many ways I feel like I'm probably afraid of failing, but I also don't know if I've felt the same draw to anything else like I did with the Brave trip.  What do I jump into next?  I've been standing on the edge of the cliff seeing different places to leap, but never feeling certain enough, or brave enough to close my eyes let my toes release from the precipice.  What's next?  I walk up to a cliff, look out into its void, and I can't decide if it's a void I want to commit to, and wander off to the next cliff to see if it stirs some passion in my soul.  
I'm afraid that I'll spend the rest of my life wandering from cliff to cliff, never releasing into the unknown.  I'm afraid that I'll leap off a cliff, thinking it will suit me, only to find out halfway down that I'd really had rather not leapt.  


top/vintage :: pants/courtesy of modcloth :: hat/courtesy of tittle millinery necklaces/courtesy of adorn by sarah lewis + via craft fair

adventures in oz

In one month I'll be performing in my first burlesque production!  Back in November I was sitting at a bar chatting with one of Dan's coworkers when it came up that she did burlesque with a local troupe.  I got super excited and we started talking about burlesque which is when she mentioned that they were having auditions in a few days for their biggest production yet, a sexy adaptation of The Wizard of Oz!  I decided then and there that I was going to audition, and was so excited about it that I had some serious insomnia that night brainstorming ideas for my audition act.  I hadn't done any kind of dance performance since college, but I was bursting with ideas and thrilled at the opportunity to break into something that I had dreamed about for years.   I was obsessed with pinup and hot rod/muscle car culture throughout high school and into college, but never had the confidence during those years to do anything about it but paint flames, traditional tattoos, and pinstripe designs on everything I owned.  While my style has gone through some major transitions since college, I still love rocking a pin-up inspired look, and my confidence is probably at the highest point it's been in 27 years.  It was the perfect storm and I auditioned four days after I heard about the show.  I came up with my routine practiced my audition for hours and it gave me the perfect excuse to go out and buy some sequined, fringe panties to put the cherry on top of my striptease.
I got a part in the show as a poppy girl!  There are four of us poppies and we do the bidding of the wicked witch, seducing Dorothy and her friends into a deep sleep to keep them from reaching the emerald city.  We're one of the only non-striptease acts in the show, which I actually kind of like.  Maybe someday I'll do a routine going all the way down to pasties, but for my first foray into burlesque I'm happy to do a sultry little dance without the stress of taking off my clothes.  The top and bottom photos in this post are sort of what we'll be wearing but we're in the process of customizing our tops to be ridiculously fabulous with rhinestones, flowers, and petals.  It's been so much fun getting to dance again, do fabulous craft projects, and make tons of new friends I never would have met if it weren't for this show. 

We're in the final month of rehearsals and, you guys, it's going to be off the hook amazing.  There are so many incredible acts.  I'm actually really disappointed we only get one show, but maybe someone will want to bring the show to a venue in Seattle or Olympia after they see how mind blowing all the acts are.  It's been such a treat getting to see the progress on everyone's acts and costumes every week.  If you're local to the area, there are still some tickets left, but get on it because I have a feeling it's going to sell out!  You can also follow the Gritty City Sirens on facebook for little updates. 
One of the fun things about burlesque is having a kicky little stage name!  I'll be performing as Bettie Klondike.  Bettie obviously has ties to Bettie Page, but Bettie is also a nickname for Elizabeth.  Klondike is drawn from Klondike Kate, a famous performer who became famous for performing in Alaska and the Yukon and actually ended up down here in the PNW after she married a man who stole her fortune and used it to open a theater here in Tacoma!  Bettie Klondike it is!
One of my favorite things about burlesque is the incredible variety in bodies.  Every single woman (and man! ooh la la!) in the show has a completely unique body, from slender fit bodies, to big and bodacious, from itty bitty, to tall and statuesque.  And everyone's act is sexy as hell.  I love how burlesque fights our cultures assertion that sexiness and sexuality are only accessible by those who have Victoria's Secret bodies and porn star grooming.  I also love that burlesque invites a humor into sexuality, which is void in so much of the sexuality that we experience in culture, movies, and tv where sex is serious business.  But sexuality is so much more than serious and passionate, and it's so much more than pleasing someone else.  Burlesque gives women permission to be sexy in any way they want, and to do it for no one else but themselves.  Even though it is a performance, and in that way it's for others, there's an ownership over sexuality that the performer has.  She gets to choose how she wants to be and feel sexy, and it's a totally solo endeavor.  I think a lot of women experience their sexuality differently when it's with another person vs. how they feel sexy when they are alone.  Burlesque gives women permission to feel sexy in anyway they want, at any size they want, to any music they want, with any outfit they want.  You can take off all your clothes, you can take off a few clothes, you can do whatever you feel comfortable doing.  Burlesque gives women permission to own their own sexuality and the more women are owning their sexuality the harder it will be for rape culture and sexism to continue.

Okay that got real serious there for a sec, but burlesque!  It's awesome!  If you're local you should come to the show!  You can see the event page on facebook here, or buy tickets here.  Another cool thing about the show?  Proceeds will benefit the Carol Milgard Breast Center!  A sexy night that benefits a great cause, what more could you want?

Photos of me by Willow's Photography.  Hair by Paige Pettibon. Makeup by Athena Renee Artistry