BRIAN LIBBY

Stories that never ran: Stall & Dean vintage athletic wear

Continuing the theme of the last post, another article I wrote a few years ago that never ran, this one for the New York Times business section, was about a really cool vintage athletic apparel company based out of Seattle. It was for a section in the times called 'Grassroots Business', profiling smaller companies. But they discontinued the series before my piece was published. 

Although I never got to see this piece published, the owner of the company did give me a Soviet Union baseball hat that I still cherish to this day (pictured below). Meanwhile, here's the piece...

SEATTLE--It is somehow fitting that Jerry Cohen was born in Brooklyn the same year that the Dodgers baseball team moved to Los Angeles. As the CEO of Stall & Dean, a Seattle-based manufacturer of vintage sports jerseys and apparel, he is in the business of celebrating and selling history.

“I grew up learning baseball from my dad, who was originally a Brooklyn Dodger fan, but also taught me quite a lot about the Negro leagues,” Mr. Cohen recalls from Stall & Dean’s headquarters, a warehouse around the corner from Safeco Field, the Seattle Mariners’ stadium. “Even as a kid, the two things that I like most about baseball, as opposed to my peers, were the history and the uniforms.”

Today Stall & Dean is a leading manufacturer of vintage athletic apparel, which has become a $2 billion per year industry. “Retro or vintage licensed apparel has grown pretty nicely over the last twelve to eighteen months,” says Noelle Grainger, an apparel industry analyst for JP Morgan. “I think when you’re looking at any type of change in the growth rate over and above low- to mid-single digits [as the vintage market is today], that’s more a reaction to fashion trends than something driven by the fan consumer, because the fan consumer is fairly consistent,” Ms. Grainger agrees. “At some point that growth will wane, but there will always be a core base there.”

It’s no wonder, then, that Mr. Cohen says he is, “very uncomfortable with trends and fads, even when it benefits us. I never approached it that way. We always sold the idea of timelessness.”

Mr. Cohen’s company began in Seattle as Ebbets Field Flannels in 1987, offering hand-sewn, button-down wool flannel baseball jerseys in an era when most Major League teams were still wearing pullover polyester. A former rock & roll musician, Mr. Cohen’s company started modestly, with catalogues made at do-it-yourself copy shops and word of mouth the only promotion.

As sole proprietor, Mr. Cohen could not afford licensing contracts necessary to produce major league team apparel, so he began to make jerseys of old Negro League and Pacific Coast minor league teams, which at the time were public domain. But before he could make the jerseys, Mr. Cohen had to spend thousands of hours researching their look at libraries and the homes of collectors and former players. “I was a bit of a history detective,” he says.

The company’s name change, made official XXX years ago, reflects Ebbets Field Flannels’ purchase of Stall & Dean, an athletic apparel manufacturer founded in 1898 that once produced jerseys and shoes for Major League Baseball, but has in recent years been reduced to producing special-order uniforms for small amateur teams.

“We convinced them that their future was in their past,” says Stall and Dean’s current chief operating officer, Joe Cuff. By taking on the Stall & Dean name, Ebbets Field Flannels was able to claim a century’s worth of history and a moniker that better reflected its expansion beyond baseball jerseys into apparel from a variety of sports.

Stall & Dean occupies a niche between retro athletic apparel makers who are more fashion-oriented, such as Blue Marlin, and companies who make replica jerseys of major-league teams, such as Mitchell & Ness. The focus is more on quality than quality, with Stall and Dean charging as much as $300 for a single jersey.

“We don’t make 100,000 of every garment,” Mr. Cuff continues, “and you don’t find it on every corner across the country. The fabric and craftsmanship helps to drive our price up, but so does the fact that it’s special.”

Indeed, Stall and Dean has grown significantly over the last few years. In 1998, it reported sales of $1.68 million. This year, the company is projecting $8.73 million.

Although in the past Stall & Dean produced a small amount of jerseys and other apparel of major league teams, today the company has abandoned that side of its business entirely.

“The problem with licensing is it’s a dual-edged sword,” Mr. Cohen explains. “When you’re dealing with an NFL or an NHL, they give you the opportunity to use their team names and marks, but you do all the research for them, and they turn around and give the contract to competitors two years later. They also tend to edit and sanitize the history, and I never responded well to being hemmed in and edited in that way.”

Although it would be anathema to larger manufacturers, Stall and Dean’s abandonment of major league licensing agreements may have been for the best. Not only are the teams it features—an assortment of defunct professional league teams as well as international leagues and college teams—more unique in identity and look, but they collectively also represent a more untarnished spirit of competition.

“We want that purity from the days when it was about sport,” Mr. Cuff says, “not corporate sponsorships and ticket sales. Negro League jerseys like the 1940 New York Cubans and 1942 Newark Eagles continue to be top sellers, as do the 1968 Portland Buckaroos minor league hockey team, and even a line of roller rink teams such as the lightning bolt-festooned Latin Liberators.

Stall & Dean also has a licensing agreement with Harlem’s recently reborn Rucker amateur basketball league, whose circa-1950s and 60s vintage jerseys have become some of the company’s most popular items while also tying into its urban youth demographic, one of vintage apparel’s most enthusiastic. “Everything comes from the streets, and everything comes from the community,” says Chris Rucker, who operates the Rucker league and is the grandson of its founder, Holcombe Rucker. The Rucker Shamrocks jersey is easily the most popular, worn by a host of celebrity rappers and professional basketball players.

Next, Stall & Dean will release this fall a line of early- to mid-20th Century Ivy League sweaters, akin to what one might imagine a character from a J.D. Salinger novel wearing. After that, Mr. Cohen would like to expand various lines of international league jerseys, complementing teams already represented like the Tokyo Giants and Mexico City Diablos Rojos. And special orders continue, such as the new Slim Shady line for rapper Eminem.

“The interest in retro is cyclical, and now it happens to be in a really high cycle.” Mr. Cohen says, “but when it’s not a trend anymore, we’ll still be here, and still be making stuff that I consider timeless.”

Interviews that never ran: Jamie Oliver

For quite awhile I've been meaning to go through some of the past articles I've written and see if there's anything from the batch of stuff that was never published but might be worth dusting off now. My first choice is this 2002 interview I did with chef Jamie Oliver.

The circumstances were weird. I'd been doing a series of Q&A pieces for Salon at the time. The magazine's Life section editor approached me about doing a recurring series of interviews with famous or otherwise leading people about parenting. I told the editor I didn't have kids, didn't want them and had no plans to do so, but she didn't care. For reasons long forgotten, the series never came about. I had a couple of these Q&As in the can, including this Jamie piece and one with a child expert of some kind, Penelope Miller, and then suddenly they decided to cancel the whole series. I was actually kind of relieved, because I had to send out a whole lot of requests out just to get these couple bites. And it's a pain trying to figure out the name and contact info, for example, for actors' publicists and agents and stuff like that.

Anyway, these were pre-written questions written by the editors, but it was still great fun to talk with Jamie. I'd sought him out to talk to because I was a huge fan of his first show, The Naked Chef, as well as (to a slightly lesser extent) his several additional shows. He was also, when I talked to him by phone, in the process of starting Fifteen, his London restaurant run by under-priviliged teens that he trained. Many celebrities are mean or insincere, just like people anywhere, but Jamie was right up there with the very nicest among the handful of famous people I've ever interviewed. I remember when we were hanging up Jamie saying, "Alright mate, best of luck." In fact, I'd say that Jamie and Michael Palin may be tied for first place. (Palin also said to be sure and say hello to my girlfriend after I told him what a big fan she was. "She sounds like a lovely person," he said.) Must be something about those Brits.

ME: Why did you choose to become a parent?

JAMIE: As soon as me and Jools formed a really serious relationship after a couple of years, we both were kind of well up for kids. But we didn’t have any cash to get married and were trying to get our jobs sorted out. We gave it five years and then got married about two years ago and tried to have a kid straight away.

Have you changed for the role?

Absolutely, like a slap around the head with a sack of potatoes. You can talk about how it’s going to change your life or this that and the other, but when that little thing comes out it’s almost like an instinct that takes over. When they’re that small and that dear, and obviously between you and your partner, it’s just an amazing experience. I think it can make you more levelheaded. It certainly makes you less selfish and definitely makes you more patient, because you have to be. I’ve found throughout the whole experience just trusting your instincts is the best thing.

What would you like your child to be when he or she grows up?

Happy and inspired are the most important things. That’s the greatest gifts in life.

What do you most fear your child will be when she or she grows up?

The impression I get is that it’s not one lesson to learn, but as you get older things constantly change. I think at the end of the day if you have the best intentions for your kid and a lot of love and time to talk, you’re pretty much on a good track.

What was the last book you read to your child?

I’ve read books to her, but being less than a year old she doesn’t really understand me. You get those books where when you open the page it makes a noise: That’s what it’s all about at this stage. I think I was entertaining myself more than her.

What do you fear about yourself as a parent?

Not noticing problems. How many kids have committed suicide and had their parent say, ‘I didn’t notice a thing.” I fear not being vigilant enough about both good and bad things: I want to be supportive.

What do you value?

I actually take quite a lot of pride in the fact that I’m a nice guy. That sounds really puffy to say that, but I know a lot of horrible people I get on with. I hate the idea of upsetting anyone. There’s so much stress in my line of work, and I think it’s important to tell people, “It’ll be alright.” I also think charity is really important. For example, we’ve set up this restaurant were we take on 15 homeless and underprivileged kids every year who want to cook. It’s fabulous to be able to give these kids the simple things they haven’t had: Being talked to, trusted, cuddled, and told, “Good job.” Any good kitchen will tell you their place is like a family. That’s something I take very seriously.

If you could protect your child from one thing -- forever -- what would it be?

I think drugs more than anything. I grew up in a lovely part of England, but there were always drugs all over the place. Now living in London and traveling around the world, you see all the problems it causes. No man wants his little daughter to get involved in that sort of thing. You kind of wish them luck, really, don’t you? If you try too hard to protect them everything, you end up with an insecure kind who never wants to walk out the bloody door.

What is the trait you would least like your child to inherit?

Trying to do things too quick. I try and do ten things instead of just five. I just want to get things done. I’m quite manic, which I suppose is why I’m a drummer. But I think it’s important to just chill out sometimes.

Who are your child-rearing heroes?

Definitely my dad. I always thought he was cool because he had the answers to everything. He’s also a massive doer: People would ask him to do stuff and he’d just get it done.

How do you answer when your child asks, "What is God?"

Organized religion has caused some of the biggest wars in the world. But as a synopsis of the philosophies of life and what you should do in terms of what you should or shouldn’t do, the Bible still relates today. I’m not really a very religious person, but I know what’s right and wrong. And maybe that is religion: knowing right from wrong.

If you could pick your child's mentors, who would they be?

I think real mentors are not people you see on the telly. I think it’s always lovely to think of local people as mentors you can draw from: family and friends. The whole celebrity thing can be good, but it’s a lot of bullshit too.

What cherished object will you bequeath to your child?

I’ve got a 1958 VW camper van. I’ve spent 5 years doing it up, and now it’s a beautiful thing. I never want to sell it. But maybe the best thing to pass on would be my pestle and mortar. Either that or it’d make a good gravestone for me.

How would you like your child to remember you?
Just with a smile, really.

Willamette Week alumni club

The other day, while at a press screening for the new Danny Boyle film Sunshine, I learned from Oregonian movie critic Shawn Levy that our mutual former colleague, Kim Morgan -- now a freelance Los Angeles print and TV film critic but previously of The Oregonian and, before that, Willamette Week -- recently appeared as a sub for Roger Ebert on Ebert & Roeper. In this brief YouTube clip of the episode, she tells Richard Roeper, "Severed heads are beautiful." Vintage Kim.

This is an aside, but coincidentally, I also met both Ebert and Roeper briefly a few years ago while covering their "Film Festival at Sea" on a Disney cruise to The Bahamas for a travel magazine. The article was rejected (quite unfairly in my opinion) but it was worth it for the free trip, and the total surreality of sitting in a bar called the 'Cadillac Cafe' (decked out like Caddy interior) with the show's producers and Roeper, as well as director Jim Sheridan and his daughter, and a loud tween dance happening in the next room over. (The Sheridans had screened In America, which Ebert & Roeper fawned over but I wasn't very into; I resented being pulled away from my first ocean swim.)

Kim's 15 minutes got me thinking about some of the other people who were working at the paper while I was freelancing there (from 1999-2006). Where they are now? Let's see how many I can remember.

For a couple years at Willamette Week, Kim and I were a two and then three-person review team along with Dave McCoy, both of whom I believe write for MSN now (in addition to Kim's TV stuff). Our overall arts editor at the paper in those days, Caryn, left for a fellowship at Columbia and then became arts editor for a new Associated Press entertainment website called ASAP. The theater critic at that time, Steffen Silvis, is now a critic for the Prague Post and a playwright himself. The music critic, Zach Dundas, is now freelancing for the Associated Press and Maxim. Reporters Bob Young and Maureen O'Hagan (also a couple) are both reporters at the Seattle Times, although Maureen has also been on staff at The Washington Post since leaving WW. Christina Melander, an assistant arts editor I often wrote for, is now writing regularly for The Oregonian about food.

And my best friend from WW, Mac Montandon, has been an editor in New York at Radar and several other magazines while also editing a collection of reviews and essays about Tom Waits and writing for places like the New York Observer. One of the best concerts I ever experienced was going to see Waits in Eugene with Mac, his awesome wife Catherine (who recently edited a collection of reviews and essays about J.D. Salinger) and Valarie. I remember blissfully eating together at Denny's at about 1AM with our ears ringing and our conversation re-hashing the show. Years later, Mac and I also saw a great night of jazz in New York and walked across the Brooklyn Bridge with Catherine. I remember taking a photo of the World Trade Center towers - it was exactly two weeks before they were attacked.

Anyway, there's also a ton of people who worked at the paper in other capacities (production, classified and personals) I knew. Valarie of course ran the personals section, and I've kept close track of her whereabouts. Two friends from classified and productions, Andrea and Steeler fan extraordinaire Scott, wound up getting married and having a kid. Another graphic designer from production, Valarie's pal Barb, is becoming an art therapist. Two other WW'ers who married, our friends Irene and Ben, are down in Oakland now, she getting her PhD in film and he teaching young kids. Our friend Becca, still another WW alumnus from the same group of friends, recently returned from grad school in London and is helping to organize this year's Wordstock festival.

A few others are still at the paper, like IT guru Brian Panganiban, who also competed recently on the VH1 game show The World Series of Pop Culture with his brother Paul. They are perhaps the only friends of mine who can top my knowledge of Flintstones and Brady Bunch episodes. Nigel Janquiss, an excellent reporter who was overshadowed by Bob and Maureen to some degree while I was there, went on to win a Pulitzer Prize reporting for the paper on Neil Goldschmidt's affair with a teenager while mayor. And he didn't ditch the alternative weekly after the big honor - Nigel's still there.

Not bad for a bunch of over-worked and underpaid twenty-somethings getting their start in late-90s fin de siecle Portland, huh?

Critical Condition

Recently I was listening to Bjork’s album Vespertine, and it reminded me of how I’d reviewed the album for Willamette Week when it came out five years ago, just after the September 11 terrorist attacks. I gave the album a good review, but I also didn’t really get to know Vespertine anywhere near as much as one ought to if rendering an opinion that’s going to be printed in 100,000 copies of a newspaper.

I wish I could tell you this is the exception to the rule with arts criticism, but it’s not. The system just isn’t structured for someone to be able to really ponder and, more importantly, get to know any work thoroughly.

Only in the last year or two, for example, have I come to really get a feel for Vespertine. But there’s very little media interest in people writing about albums that came out five weeks ago—hell, maybe even five days.

It’s funny how on one hand I’ve always felt proud and privileged to be in a position to write arts criticism over the last several years: movies, architecture, music, visual arts. Yet at the same time, in writing those reviews over the years, I’ve grown more doubtful about most criticism that’s out there.

Besides, I’ve always felt my editors were looking for good writing more than any particular verdict one way or the other. As long as you can support your argument clearly and succinctly as a piece of persuasive rhetoric, you’ve essentially done your job. But even though any opinion is just that—there is no fixed answer as to the quality of a piece of art or lack thereof—I’ve always felt a desire to keep gaining a deeper feel for certain works.

There’s not enough hours in the day to read, watch or listen to all the works being generated, of course, yet so many works over the years I’ve only come to fully appreciate after experiencing them many times and having plenty of additional time in between to walk away from the works and view them fresh again down the road. I remember seeing The Limey at the KOIN Center Cinemas when it came out a few years ago, and I liked it pretty well on a surface level as a kind of lone-wolf revenge orgy. But only after Valarie and I watched it several times on DVD did I come to truly appreciate the incredibly rich nuances of the movie’s editing.

Being a good critic, I guess, requires a twin set of skills. You’ve got to be perceptive about the work itself, but you’ve also got to be able to do so very quickly.

All the time I was growing up and into adulthood, whenever I went to a movie with someone I disliked it when he or she would start talking about whether the movie was good or not as soon as we walked out of the theater. It’s a natural thing to do, of course, but I always wanted to digest it a little bit before deciding. As a movie reviewer, I remember having kind of grow a new muscle in my brain for rendering a verdict a lot more quickly than I had ever been used to. But it’s still hard. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that any kind of review done for a weekly or daily publication is going to be rendered hastily. The old cliché calls journalism the first draft of history. I guess I liked to think of the criticism side of media to be something more enduring, but in the end it’s very transitory.

Actually it’s another form of writing, weblogs, that has taught me a good lesson about reviewing: that it’s not an end, but a beginning. That success can be measured not simply by whether the writing’s good, or if one succeeds in getting the verdict right, but in how successful it is at getting a conversation. Even then, however, it’s not an open-and-shut case, because some of the best conversation starters are the one’s most guilty of hyperbole and extremism. I don’t want that either.

It’s funny: I’ve actually made myself more confused about the role of criticism as I’ve written this. In searching for some kind of final words or theoretical connecting thread, the only thing I can come up with is just to continue the pursuit.

Localized Scrutiny

Recently Valarie wrote a weblog post that got me very inspired but also, for a time, questioning my own way of writing. I hesitate to paraphrase her piece too much, but it was called “Language Barrier” and related Valarie’s developing outlook towards death and afterlife relate to both her love of language and her suspicion that words aren’t sometimes adequate to express her most fundamental ideas and emotions. Along the way, she referenced performance art, Oasis, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Goldsworthy, Kierkegaard, and an out-of-print book on running.

I saw Valarie preparing to write this piece over the past weeks, if not months. There were Post-It notes affixed to book pages, saved programs from museum visits and festivals, and many sessions at the computer.

When I have an idea swirling around in my mind, on the other hand, it often feels like a firefly whose light will only be around for a short time. I want to capture that idea and commit it to words as quickly as I can, before it's gone. So if I get a blog idea, I basically write it down and feverishly upload it, as though it's the cure for cancer or a hot stock top. The problem, though, is that virtually everything I write here is essentially a first draft. Yet I know from experience that all my best writing has been poured over and fine-tuned numerous times.

Actually, while thinking about my own writing process compared to Valarie's, I was most encouraged by something to do with photography. Two years ago, when I had a gallery show of my pictures, critic D.K. Row wrote a review in The Oregonian describing how I applied a “localized scrutiny one gives to headshots or portraits” in my capturing small details of place. (One photograph from the show, for example, is a closeup of shreds of paint and paper from hundreds of advertisements stapled to a telephone pole. But it's hard to tell exactly what you're looking at, and that was a very conscious move.) “The up-close and personal perspective,” Row continued, “seems to cut them off from the larger streets, buildings and spaces they inhabit.”

I think much of the personal writing I do has this same manner of "localized scrutiny", whether it's applied to Cool Whip, experimental cinema or Oregon Ducks football. Somehow, I seem to be able to make sense of things by taking them out of context. Or more accurately, it's that I tend to focus in so tightly that context takes a back door. I feel like I’m casting a spotlight on my subjects, and I like the fact that many of them are more mundane ones. As Forest Whitaker's character says in the movie Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, "Matters of great importance should be taken lightly. Matters of small importance should be taken very seriously." Or maybe I've just watched too much Seinfeld.

But somehow this all brings me full-circle to that "Language Barrier" post. Ultimately Valarie resolves "...to keep working with the tools I have, and the language I already know, to articulate myself as best I can." That's all anyone can ask of themself. And I think understanding your own limitations can be oddly liberating.

The "Reporter" Retires

In the summer of 2001, acting on a whim, I sent a letter and a portfolio of my best writing clips to the nearest New York Times bureau office in Seattle. I had no expectation of ever hearing anything back from them, but a couple days later the Seattle bureau chief, Sam Verhovek, gave me a call.

Sam told me that while he wasn't calling to offer any writing assignments, he could from time to time use some help when a story of national significance broke in the Portland area. If I were willing to help collect data or conduct interviews on short notice for another reporter's story, it might eventually be a way to get my foot in the door with the Times in hopes of writing my own articles for the paper down the road.

To me the Times has always been the undisputed greatest newspaper in the country, if not the world. I don't remember my exact words to Sam, but the spirit of my response was that I'd be happy just to clean toilets for the Times, let alone be one of their journalists. Nevermind, of course, that I had never worked as a straightforward news reporter for any publication in my life.

In July of that year, I got my first call to assist on a story. It involved covering Ralph Nader's first major public speech after the infamous 2000 election. The upcoming speech was going to be in Portland, one of the cities where Nader enjoyed his biggest support. Would he repent for splitting the vote and costing Al Gore victory? I sure hoped the motherfucker would do just that, but of course I had to be impartial. As it happens, neither Nader nor his staff members, a couple of whom I interviewed, were willing to budge an inch from their assertion that Nader didn't bring down Gore, but rather Gore brought down himself.

A few months later in December 2001 came a story about how immigrants were being arrested without access to an attorney as part of attorney general John Ashcroft's anti-terrorism efforts. I particularly remember interviewing Portland mayor Vera Katz over the phone about her city being the first one to take issue with the Justice Department's actions. In the years since, Portland has come to be known by right-leaning feds as "Little Beirut", and I think this is where it began.

A few days later a call went out from the National desk in New York to all its stringers to find ordinary people who had been adversely affected by the recession, now at one of its worst points. I wound up interviewing a tech industry worker who had been unemployed for months after previously earning a six-figure salary.

In January of 2002 came what I'll always remember as one of my biggest moments professionally. A bizarre scene had occurred in Portland that typified the nation's anxiety about terrorism: At a tiny airport in rural Scappoose, Oregon, a man had jokingly said he was going to crash his Cessna plane into the tallest skyscraper in Portland. A few hours later, long after he had safely landed, the Air Force sent two F-15 fighters into the air to find the culprit and potentially shoot him down. (I had heard them flying very low over our area near downtown--a thunderous roar--and wondered what was up.) To my astonishment, the Times wanted me to write a story about it for the Sunday edition. It became my first published article in the paper, with the headline, "A Terrorism Comment In Oregon Prompts A Comedy of Errors".

I remember having my old college roommate in New York go out to get a copy of the Sunday paper the Saturday night before to verify the article was there. It was a little disappointing because my name wasn't on the article, as per Times policy that only staff writers or 'contracted stringers' get attribution in the National section. But still, I could say that I had written for the New York Times. Valarie bought me dinner to celebrate.

Over time there were a variety of additional assignments, mostly work for other people's stories but a couple articles of my own as well. One morning Valarie woke me early to say New York was on the phone. They wanted me to drive up to Tacoma because the DC sniper, still on the loose at the time, was discovered to have roots there. I remember talking to a saleswoman outside the sniper's former home who kept saying, 'Oh my God, we sold him a Kirby!'

Another time a military rescue helicopter crashed at Mt. Hood trying to save some trapped climbers. I interviewed a handful of climbers who had been trapped in a deep cravasse, one of which had seen his close friends die. I didn't have a cell phone at the time, so I also remember sitting beside a payphone for seemingly hours playing phone tag with an editor in New York after I gathered the interviews. Initially I was to write that story too (ultimately a guy in Denver rewrote it and put his name on it), which I composed it on the back of a piece of scratch paper between calls and then read over the phone to New York as a staffer transcribed.

On my 30th birthday the following Spring in 2002, after being up all night with heart palpitations, I worked on a story about Enron and the Portland utility they owned -- Portland General Electric. A couple of former Enron energy traders based here had been subpoenaed to testify before Congress, and I had to go knocking on their doors.

Probably the weirdest and most emotional story I wrote involved a murder-suicide in my home town of McMinnville. A husband/father named Robert Bryant, whose family had been excommunicated by their Jehovah's Witness sect in California, had shot his wife and kids and then himself. My friend Paul, a teacher at our high school, even had one of the kids in his class and was among the first to suspect something was wrong when the student didn't show up at school. And weirdly enough, this was the second such murder I had covered within the course of that year; earlier in Newport Christian Longo (also an exiled JW, by the way) had killed his family, only Longo tried to run afterward. He was later caught in Cancun.

I worked on the so-called "Portland Seven" case, in which a group of local Muslims had planned to fly to Afghanistan and fight against the United States. I remember being at a court hearing, sitting in the jury box (often that's where they let press sit when a jury isn't present), a few feet away from the defendents and their lawyers. They later pled guilty.

Working on these stories was always exciting. Not only were they serious, nationally significant subjects, but the reporting almost always had to be completed within a few hours. But part of me never felt right about doing this kind of work. Although I've written about all kinds of subjects - film, architecture, sports, business, food, science, travel - I never considered myself a news reporter. It's just different. I never wanted to let down the Times, but I always dreaded the prospect of them calling.

Which brings me to the voice mail I received a few days ago, from an assistant to the current Seattle bureau chief. Was I still willing to act as a stringer for the paper on news stories? I finally gave them the answer that had been building for at least the last year or so: "No."

On one hand it feels ludicrous to get a call from the New York Times offering me work and to turn it down. But at the same time, it feels good knowing that I feel confident enough about what kind of writer I am to be able to be honest about what kind of writer I'm not. I don't want to talk to people at the most difficult and tragic moments of their lives. I don't want to be one of the horde knocking on people's doors or surrounding them on the street. I don't want to write important stories with just a few minutes to spare. (My sister Sara is infinitely more cut out for this than I am, incidentally.)

I also think I held out for as long as I did - nearly four years - in part out vanity. I liked the idea of reporting for the Times more than the reality. Corny as it sounds, I want to be in this for the right reasons. And the foot in the door I got seems to still be open; I'm actually working on two science stories right now.

I hope I don't regret turning my back on this work someday, and I hope this decision will go down as gutsy more than gutless. But it's not a decision I arrived at hastily, even as the further I get away from it, the more obvious it all seems in retrospect. After all, I'm a deliberator, and you can't deliberate with a deadline in two hours.

Freelancer's Schizophrenia

As a freelance writer I cover many different topics: film, architecture, food, travel, business, sports, science, books, television, politics, and so on. From day to day it usually doesn't seem so crazy, though. Different deadlines throughout the course of any given week or month create their own schedule for what story I work on when. But every once in a while there is a day like today, which leaves me feeling downright schizophrenic.

This morning I was just having a first sip of espresso and reading the paper in bed, as is my daily ritual, when the phone rang. It was a member of the National Horseshoe association calling in regard to a story I'm writing about how to win games traditionally played at summer barbecues.

A few minutes later, just as I'd slipped back into bed and reached again for the sports section, the phone rang a second time. This time it was an architecture firm returning my call about a condo project they're doing in the South Waterfront neighborhood; I had wanted to know if their switch from two skinny towers to one bulky tower was due to neighborhood pressure to preserve views of Mt. Hood. These activists are threatening to derail efforts to make this new Portland neighborhood again fall victim to the collective squattiness that already mars the city's architecture.

Back to bed I went, but the phone wasn't done ringing. This time on the line was the editor of a small newspaper I take pictures for; she needed me to resend a shot I took last week of a woman and her dog at a senior center.

Afterward I turned off the ringer and turned down the answering machine volume so I could finish my paper and espresso, not to mention get dressed. But I had to hurry because it was time for another scheduled phone interview. This time it was with an expert on croquet, as part of that same article about summer barbecue-oriented games. He explained to me all the different ways of gripping a croquet mallet so as to change the ball's topspin, depending on how far you want it or your opponent's ball to be sent flying.

Next I drove over to St. Vincent's hospital near the Portland/Beaverton border for an interview with the head of the Oregon Medical Laser Center. I'm writing a science story about the use of a naturally-occurring protein in the human body called elastin to make replacement tissue for arteries, stomachs, etc. It really feels like science fiction. The doctor came to the conference room for our interview straight from stabilizing a heart attack victim.

After the interview I got talking with the head of PR at St. Vincent Hospital, who used to work in Hollywood on Baywatch and other TV shows. She told me all about Tony Danza, whom she worked with for years just after Who's The Boss. Apparently he's an extremely hard-working guy and usually very nice, but once in a while he throws quite a temper tantrum, which this woman from the hospital was once victim to. She also told me about a tirade thrown by Joey Lawrence (of Blossom fame) and and his brothers. As watchers of the show understand, naturally my response to the story was, "Whoa!"

Now I was running late for another interview. This one was back at home over the phone, and was for another science story. (Science was always my worst subject in school -- how did I ever get into writing this stuff?) The topic was a new generation of treatments for acid reflux. In the past there were two treatment options: surgery with a few nights' hospital stay and a two-week recovery and limited long-term success rates, or taking acid-inhibitor medication like Nexium and Prilosec for the rest of one's life. But now there are new endoscopic procedures that can be done on an outpatient basis and involve strengthening the esophageal valve at the opening of the stomach. The most promising procedure involves injecting a fluid that hardens in the esophagus into more of a spongy solid form and ultimately is covered by the body's tissue, thereby keeping more acid from coming back up the esophagus. Acid reflux isn't a very sexy topic, even for science, but about half of the entire adult American population suffers from it to some extent, so the story ought to be of interest.

As soon as I got off the phone with the doctor in New York I was interviewing for that story, it was time for the fourth interview of the day, which continued the odd back-and-forth between hard science and frivolous picnic games. I was scheduled to speak with another croquet expert, who was talking while on the road in Mississippi. He said all that information I'd gotten earlier in the day from the other croquet expert, about different mallet grips, was largely irrelevant to casual backyard croquet because casual players overwhelmingly use lighter, more toy-like mallets. He also discussed the different types of croquet, both the sophisticated traditional version of the game and the more recent and easy-to-learn "golf style". Apparently the Egyptians are the world's best at golf-style croquet, because after the British ended their occupation of the Suez (after World War Two, I believe), they left all their croquet equipment behind but there was no one to teach the Egyptians the traditional game. So the Egyptians enthusiastically took up croquet but played it more like golf.

Today was exceptionally hectic, but I think it represents very well the odd balance I've been able to strike thematically with my writing. It's not something I've consciously pursued, just an unrepentant dilettante by necessity writing about anything I can think of and, with the help of an editor here or marketing coordinator there, lots of stuff I never would dream up.

Bread For Thought

Yesterday I worked a nine-hour shift at the Pearl Bakery in Portland as part of a food magazine article I’m writing. I got there at 3AM and helped make dough and form hundreds of loaves. In particular, forming the already-made dough into Ciabatta, baguette, Kaiser rolls, and pastries was a lot harder than I expected. Each one required a very precise hand motion, which had to be repeated hundreds of times as a group of us churned out enough bread to be sold at several markets and restaurants throughout the city. You had to make sure after folding over the flattened piece of dough that the seam was on the bottom. You had to shape certain loaves in a meticulous oval that was at once properly kneaded but still of sufficient shape to rise properly. And it all had to be done according to a rigid schedule that anticipated scores of other steps to follow.

The article is about a company called Vocation Vacations, which allows participants to choose one of several different careers and basically participate in a job shadow. For some it’s a trial run for a career change. For others it’s just to see what another life is like for a spell before going back to your own. You can be a TV producer, a winemaker, even a cowboy (misguided voting tendencies are hopefully not required for that job).

On a personal level, the practical applications of Vocation Vacations don’t interest me very much because I’m not seeking a career change. But the idea of walking in somebody else’s shoes for a day or two is something I find fascinating. With the Pearl Bakery stint, not only was it fascinating to spend a day behind the scenes as all this terrific bread was being made, but it was also a treat—despite the brutal 2:30AM wakeup time—to observe a city asleep. I drove from our apartment in Southeast through downtown to Northwest Portland to get to the Pearl Bakery, and I saw maybe five cars the entire time.

Considering an imaginary list of things that will never happen, I think it would be great for the country if everybody had to do another person’s job now and then, just to get a sense of how it feels: both the work itself and what it requires to go there and do it everyday. Not to get all “Kum-ba-ya”, but we’d probably all get along a lot better.

And in my case, it didn’t hurt getting a free Parisienne loaf to take home.