I Like Your Pin Shot

 Done Up In Blue Print Blue

Willow and I back before she was born. This isn't the Spanish Prisoner con--now the Nigerian Prince con-- but is, instead, artificial intelligence. I read recently you can get a pill to extend your dog's life for a year. We must be getting close with humans and life extension. You think oligarchy sucks now, wait until the oligarchs can live to be 200. Wm. Gibson foresaw this in Mona Lisa Overdrive back in the 1980s, that day is approaching, as is the immigration of the masses--The Sprawl as Gibson called it. Substitute the Japanese for China, and Gibson makes Alvin Toffler look about as prophetic as a Magic 8 Ball. 

Back in the very old days--the 1980s, one of my go to restaurants was Franco's Hidden Harbor over on Westlake. I last went there in the mid-1980s--I loved it's old Seattle feel. When I moved

Franco's in the mid-1960s, windows looking onto the covered marina that I loved so much.

back to Seattle from NYC back in 2003 and tried to go there for dinner, I learned that it had moved in the 1990s after a kitchen fire and then died a few buildings away where the Rock Salt replaced it until recently. 

It was an old Seattle landmark, one that you instantly recognized as great service, lovely ambiance (yachts bobbing while moored on a covered marina few feet away from your table and visible through the window that faced the marina) on Lake Union. 

Franco's was a long time resident of the city, here since the 1940s. I went on a lot of dates there when I had a damn good union job and threw money away like a kid wastes time. The memories were worth it, the food even more so. I am now the proud owner of a matchbook from the 1950s and early 1960s, when it was still John Franco's and not just Franco's. While I can't have their amazing dinner rolls--likely made by Gai's Bakery--seafood fettuccini, excellent service, their lack of pretentiousness--unlike the Mirabeau Room--and great bar, I am pretty damn happy to have this memento to remind me of simpler times.