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Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector

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Veteran's Cup Soccer, Bellingham WA

07-10-08
Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector
We have a big sports event taking place in Whatcom County this year -- right now to be exact. The Veteran's Cup, a soccer tournament with 85 teams participating, has been going on since Wednesday and it will continue through Sunday. There are different brackets (age divisions) and teams from all over, and I mean all over, have arrived in Bellingham to play the game. Both men's and women's teams are participating and age is not a drawback. In fact, you cannot even play unless you are 30 or over and some of the teams are comprised of players who are 60 and over.

Talk about great participation, a world event, there are teams from Japan, Canada, Hawaii, Boston, Michigan, Utah, Illinois and other states. I attended today and all of the teams were playing with great vigor and making a sporting time of it, win or lose.

The weather was cooperating and beautiful. The teams are playing at the Northwest Soccer Park, a nice grassy field. To get there, drive north from Bellingham on Northwest Avenue. All the signs and cars will let you know that you have arrived at the big event. It is near the county planning office on Northwest Avenue. Food and concessions are being sold on-site.

Try to catch the fun, and watch a game, if you can. 

Do any Active Rain members recognize this AR, and soccer, superstar?

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

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Pacific Northwest Music Legend -- The Genius

07-10-08
Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector

This is another in a series of articles on Pacific Northwest music legends. So far, response has been good, so I plan to write more. Today's artist was not born or raised in Seattle. He moved to Seattle as a teen and considered the Seattle jazz scene of the 1940's as crucial in his development and career.

Ray Charles Robinson was born in Georgia but spent his childhood in Florida. Many music historians believe that the artist later known only as Ray Charles or The Genius, had more to do with changing music than any other performer. Step aside Dylan and the Beatles. Ray Charles combined gospel with blues and jazz, later country, and that was crucial to the development of early rock n' roll. Back then, music was segregated. There was music recorded for white kids and there was "race" music. The race music, played by African American artists like Ray Charles, is what the white kids wanted to hear. Their parents, on the other hand, wanted to limit exposure to those songs, except for a few race songs that were fed to them by white cover artists like Pat Boone. One of Ray's first national hits, and a true classic, combines all of those elements -- blues, jazz and gospel -- into a huge pop hit. This was Ray Charles at his best, early in his career.

Ray Charles lost his vision, undiagnosed glaucoma, when he was six years old. His mother sent him to a school for the blind in St Augustine Florida. Years passed, Charles did well at the school and then his mother died when he was 15. At 18, he had had enough of Florida and wanted to move. A map was put on the table and a line was drawn, one corner of the USA to the other, and Seattle was chosen as the destination.

A young lanky Charles played on Jackson Street, at Pioneer Square, for about two years. Part of that time he mimicked Nat King Cole, a big star of the era, and he was pretty good at it. But it was in Seattle that Charles began to meld together the different forms of music that would later be his legend. It is hard to believe, if you know Seattle now, but it was a real jazz town in the 1940's after the war. There were 30 jazz clubs and they were open 24 hours a day. All of the biggest stars dropped in to do their gigs, including Louis Armstrong.

Charles continued to work in Seattle and experiment with his music. In 1950, after having cut a record in Seattle that was not really a hit but it got the attention of bigger fish, Charles moved on to LA. He was billed as "the blind singing sensation". His first big hit landed in 1954 -- a 78 RPM recording called I Got A Woman. The tune was recorded with a seven piece band at a radio station. That was the beginning of a stellar career.

When Ray passed away in 2004, he was universally acclaimed as the genius. The video below, which is probably more jazz than blues, was always one of my favorite Ray Charles classics. I loved playing it on the radio, when I was a disc jockey. Realistically, music doesn't get much more original than the early cutting edge Ray Charles songs. This man was, perhaps more so than any other, the creator of the music that is now called rock n' roll.

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

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Pacific Northwest Music Legend -- Talkin' The King of Crooners

07-09-08
Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector

In the past, I have done a few blogs about entertainers who were famous here in the Pacific Northwest. These have always received interest and comments. Many people do not know it but, over the years, the Seattle area has produced some of the biggest names in musical entertainment. In some cases those musicians were born elsewhere and found fame in Seattle. Other times, it was the other way around:They were raised in Seattle but found fame elsewhere.

I plan to, as time allows, write a few interactive (thanks to youtube) articles on some of these famous performers. We will start with the heavyweight of them all. You might be thinking Jimi Hendrix. Nope, think again. Think Bing Crosby.

The first big name crooner was born in Tacoma. Bing (real name Harry), as a youth, moved to Spokane to study law at Gonzaga University. Ends up that, while in Spokane, he also played with a local band. Bing moved to LA to play and sing and, in the early 30's, a recording he made fell into the hands of the president of CBS. A crooner was born!

Ever heard the term "crooner" and wondered what it really meant? Well, best as I can figure, a crooner was a performer who learned how to use a microphone to his advantage. In the early days of singing, having a booming voice that would fill an auditorium was a must. After radio came into play, volume had little to do with it. A whisper could be amplified to an audible level so some of the crooners were more "intimate" or one to one. Subtle nuances were the rage. Bing was the master of this and, by some accounts, he is the most recorded human voice on earth, even today.

Below is a video of his single most famous song -- White Christmas. I know, not the right season, but his song is/was a monster. As someone who worked in radio, I read over and over in all the trade magazines that this was the best selling record of all time. Forget the Stones and the Beatles and Elvis. We were talking White Christmas by Bing. As a followup, it is my understanding that in the last few years White Christmas has dropped to number two. Elton John's tribute to Lady Diana -- Candle In the Wind -- has since bumped White Christmas out of that top spot. To see other articles in this series, click here.

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

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Government's Crazy Solutions to Non-Problems

05-21-08
Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector
I thought you might get a kick out of the photos below. They are good examples of city government planners trying to figure out a way to solve a problem that does not exist.  In my view at least, what they came up with was more amusing and silly than beneficial.

Regarding the Bellingham warehouse below, my then business partner owned it about 15 years ago, when it was first built, so I remember the details well. I had not thought about it in a long time, but drove by the other day and decided it would be good blog fodder. This was a good-sized furniture warehouse. It is in a neighborhood that is largely retail, with a few, mainly non-owner occupied, residences mixed in. The city decided it was fine to build the warehouse at the site, but the side that faced two rentals or apartments, had to be camouflaged to "protect" the neighborhood.

Well, if you are outside at night wearing sunglasses, and standing on your head, this facade might fool you. Probably it will not however, unless you think the residents all died because there are never any lights on. It is black 24/7. Everything you see is a grand illusion -- stuff stuck on the building. The doors go nowhere, they do not even open, the windows look into the black. There are three fantasy residences here; I have taken photos of the two end units. You can see parts of the center unit hiding behind the trees in the other two photos.

 king of the house, bellingham wa home inspections  king of the house, bellingham wa home inspections

The photo below is the "working" side of the same warehouse. Had the city simply demanded that the backside have no entry or exit, as is the case now anyway, it would have probably looked just as good. People who see the "residential" side of the building think it is amusing. They shake their heads and usually say "what a joke."

king of the house, bellingham wa home inspections

This true story also reminds me of the time, back when I had a radio station, that we put a 10' satellite dish on the roof. To get a permit to do so, we had to plant 12 poplars at the other end of the lot, about an acre away. While these trees were put in as was promised, the nursery did a lousy job and they all died within a year and then had to be removed. The county had no requirements whatsoever that the trees had to be maintained or replaced -- just that they had to be put in one time. A few years later, Western Washington University bought the site leveled everything and turned it into a parking lot. I do not oppose government regulations, they are necessary, but sometimes the rules they come up with are so vacuous and poorly conceived that they result in many of us running in circles trying to catch our own tails.

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

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Mirror, Mirror On The Wall Who Is The Silliest Of Them All?

05-13-08
Steven L. Smith, Bellingham, Wa. Home Inspector

It is odd to be out and about and to, suddenly and unexpectedly, run smack dab into a storybook house.

king of the house home inspection photo

When I say I ran smack dab into it, I mean it figuratively. Today I was many miles away from Bellingham, in the woods up by Mount Baker, and I could not resist taking a photo of this place. I was out on a short walk and there it was. I did not know just who to expect, Lil' Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, a witch, Snow White and the seven dwarfs, Peter Pan and Charles Buell, or is that Tinkerbell, no matter the same thing. It must be amusing to live in a house like this, all the possibilities. Grandkids would sure love it. But would your friends think you were a bit nutso? A little too cute perhaps?

A couple years ago, I actually inspected a storybook house of a similar design, but it was not nestled in the forest.

king of the house home inspection photo

This house was really compact inside, almost like a mobile home. I also remember that going up onto that deck, if you were about six feet tall, you had to be careful or you would whack your head on the bottom of that scalloped front fascia.

Steven L. Smith

Bellingham WA Home Inspections

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