Colin Marshall

This is a special preview episode of A Year in Seattle, Notebook on Cities and culture’s upcoming sixth season. Or rather, it will come as long as we raise its budget on Kickstarter by Saturday. Check out its Kickstarter page to find out how you can help make it happen. Thanks.

In downtown Seattle, Colin talks with comic artist Peter Bagge, creator of the legendary alternative comic series Hate, contributing editor and cartoonist at Reason magazine, and author of such graphic novels as Apocalypse Nerd, Other Lives, Reset, and Woman Rebel: The Margaret Sanger Story. They discuss whether Seattle is still the place to be for the Buddy Bradleys of the world; the cheap “place to invent yourself” he first found there; the ever-increasing importance of place in his work, and its necessity in telling longer stories; how Seattle won out as a storytelling location versus the other “cities where hipsters gather”; what Seattle once looked like from his perspective in Manhattan; the feeling of a “pioneer town” then and now; how he found Seattleites who took the time to live elsewhere differed from Seattleites who’d never left, and what it has to do with the Seattle inferiority complex; the relationship between Seattle and the alternative comics scene; how he convinced his publisher Fantagraphics to come join him in Seattle, and how the town came subsequently to crawl with cartoonists; Buddy Bradley as a young cynic, and Seattle’s accommodation of the young cynic; what the fictional life of Buddy Bradley and the real life of Margaret Sanger have in common, beginning with their premises of “doing exactly what they want to do”; which of Sanger’s many accomplishments and battles (which she never fought on straight gender lines) he usually uses to explain her life; why Sanger’s achievements in birth-control legalization became so important to all society; our transition out of “the age of stuff”; the probable fate of bookstores, and how they might succeed through the social dimension; why conventions have become more important than ever to comics, and why cities have become more important than ever to life; the impossibility of the Spokane swinger; what his visit to the depleted city of Detroit taught him, especially about the ways the government itself holds back a potential revitalization; where he thinks Seattle goes too far, politically; why he prefers the monorail Seattle might have built to the light rail system it is building; whether governments just can’t build transit right, or whether specifically American governments just can’t do it right; what happens when anyone’s shovel hits an Indian artifact in Seattle; and how to win mayoral office by campaigning against the inevitable.

Download the interview here as an MP3 or on iTunes.

As I announced last week, Notebook on Cities and Culture‘s sixth season will take place in Seattle — for an entire year. As we together explore the city of grunge, Microsoft, Amazon, the Space Needle, Buddy Bradley, Archie McPhee, sleeplessness, and Starbucks, we’ll discover how much there really is to it in at least 52 in-depth conversations with its novelists, journalists, comic artists, filmmakers, broadcasters, explorers, academics, architects, planners, cultural creators, internationalists, observers of the urban scene, and more.

The Kickstarter drive to make it all happen begins now. But wait: the season could easily bring you more than 52 episodes, depending on how the Kickstarting goes. Once we raise the full $6000 budget, the show will go on as planned. And for every $200 we raise over that $6000, the season will include an additional episode. In other words, if we raise $10,000 rather than $6000, you’ll get 72 Seattle interviews rather than 52.

Depending upon the amount you pledge to back Notebook on Cities and Culture‘s year in Seattle, you could get a mention at the end of each episode, you could get postcards from the city, you could get me talking about your project or message at the top of one episode and its associated post, or you could get me talking about your project or message at the top of all of them and their associated posts. But do note that we only have five days to raise the money, since nobody likes prolonged Kickstarting.

Before the drive ends on Saturday at 10:00 a.m. Pacific time, I’ll put up a special preview episode featuring a new interview with a favorite Seattle-based guest from whom, if you’ve followed my interviewing career for a long time indeed, you’ve heard a couple provocative and funny hours of conversation before. Stay tuned, and pledge at season six’s Kickstarter page if you feel so inclined. Thanks!

Over its past five seasons, Notebook on Cities and Culture has taken you to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Vancouver, Osaka, Kyoto (see the show’s guide to Japan), Seoul, and Busan (see the just-completed Korea Tour), to name only a few extremely interesting Pacific Rim cities. Next season, the show has another one in its sights for its most in-depth exploration yet: A Year in Seattle.

Just think of that name, and you think of the city of rain, the city of grunge, the city of Microsoft and Amazon, the city of the Space Needle, the city of Buddy Bradley, the city of Archie McPhee, the city of sleeplessness — the city of Starbucks. But having spent my own adolescence hanging out there, I know Seattle as even more than that, and it’s only grown more interesting since I’ve grown up.

So it’s time to explore, the Notebook on Cities and Culture way — through a year of in-depth conversations with Seattle’s novelists, journalists, comic artists, filmmakers, broadcasters, explorers, academics, architects, planners, cultural creators, internationalists, observers of the urban scene, and more. We’ll Kickstart the season as usual a little later this week. I certainly won’t delay in letting you know when!