From the pen of my bar, continued

When business writers say things are looking up, they mean for banks. If there’s a trickle down effect in the art world, I haven’t seen it yet. (Image, on the wall at The Hideout. )

Rough, tough times continue for artists and everybody who relies on them (dealers, critics, museums, art centers). In Seattle, however, there’s the comfort of knowing that our local art bar is not just a hide out but an engaging correspondent.

Last week’s letter to customers – Does your bar write you letters? – here. This week’s is equally robust:

On Tuesday our ice machine stopped working. One day everything is fine,
the next it is broken. Just like that. It was only four years old and
had worked like a dream – not a hitch.

Every time we lifted the flap,
it was to the brim with sparkling, clear ice – hundreds of pounds – it was
like opening a treasure chest. If you ever felt down, you could just
lift up the lid and smile at all the dazzle, the technology, the purity
of it all. Have you seen 400 pounds of ice cubes, all at once?

Tuesday it all came to an end. The fan stopped spinning. Drips of cold
water leaked from the throat of this marvel. We gathered around,
pointed flashlights, plugged and unplugged, unscrewed panels and poked
around. When things are working great you just don’t ask questions, it’s
only when they break that you investigate.

Justin noticed the intake screen on the back. He saw a thick
fur of dust with bellybutton lint and eyelashes that stuck to the screen
like a sweater. We had killed it. All it ever asked was for someone to
clean the screen and let it breath. We killed it out of our own neglect.

There
is a price to pay for killing. When you kill a machine the price is
clearly written on a handwritten invoice with parts that you’ve never
heard of and labor rates that rival a doctor’s. It was a bitter pill.

We
encourage you to look at the things that are working so perfectly
around you and pay closer attention. Get your oil changed. Fix that
funky extension cord. There are batteries to
replace, filters to change, chimneys to sweep and letters to write. There
is nothing worse than realizing something died because of simple
neglect. We are just lucky that it was an ice machine.

Fondly, The Hideout