The new library

When I was a boy, the library in downtown Seattle was a favored haunt of mine. It was five stories tall and a city block wide, so big that nobody would even wonder why a 7-year-old kid was there by himself. Who's to say my mommy wasn't one of the ladies at that table over there? Ha!

So many tables, so many books, so much freedom for a kid. I rode the bus downtown alone, and in the library I could go anywhere and read anything off any shelf, and I did. Never caused any trouble; I was the quiet boy with a stack of books at the table by the window, and the librarians either didn't notice me, or correctly assumed I'd claimed sanctuary.

I skipped a lot of school, and about a third of my truancies you could've found me at the downtown library, where I was learning lots more than whatever's the teacher was teaching.

And I don't even mean raunchy things — libraries don't have much of that, believe me (I'd looked). I read books on archaeology and architecture and art, and all the greats of 1940s-1970s science fiction.

Man, I loved the downtown Seattle library. The seats were comfortable, the books were millions, and the whole place smelled of literature.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Then I left Seattle, lived a life, and when I came back the downtown library was gone. It had been deemed unsafe for earthquakes, and too small for the city's needs, so they'd bulldozed it and built a new library on the same Duwamish ground.

The new place is eleven stories, cost $169-million, and it opened in 2004, so it's not really 'new' any more.

Lots of people love it, but the all-angular exterior seems showy to me. If instead of splintering off at angles the walls went straight up and down — like, you know, walls — there'd be room for 100,000 more books.

The interior is mostly concrete and bland, not weathered and welcoming like the old place. Twice I've tried to read in the big reading area, but it was too dark, too cold. It has countless windows, but the glass is covered with netting, which filters out lots of the light.

Or, maybe I'm trying to find excuses not to like the place. No doubt it's objectively better than the old library, and I haven't been there often enough to have an informed opinion. It's a gut response — I'll never love the new library, because it'll never be the old library.

♦ ♦ ♦ 

Check your local listings, but in Seattle, old movies are shown once weekly at the library, and it's free so I'm there.

The screening room is on the fourth floor, which is called "the red floor" because the walls and floors and doors are all a garish shade of purplish red, with what looks like molded plastic softening every corner. No sharp edges; everything's smooth — and red, and the opposite of welcoming.

Thought I'd elevator up, find the men's room, and then find the auditorium and watch the movie, but all the 4th-floor restrooms are locked, always. Had to hurry back down to the huge, moist, and messy men's room on the main floor, then elevator up to the red floor again. Which is really, shockingly red.

Inside the movie auditorium, though, the restroom passcode is writ large on a marker board on the wall: type 104 on the keypad and you're good to go. Good to know, after I'd needed it.

Thankfully, the restroom and movie room aren't red.

♦ ♦ ♦

First time I saw a movie at the downtown library, it was the old library. It was 1975, so a librarian actually spooled A Hard Day's Night into a projector, which went clackity-clackity all through the movie. And with only one projector, we had to wait between reels.

At the new library, films are streamed from online, and the sound system is impressive, almost Dolby when it's cranked up.

My first movie on the red floor was Ball of Fire (1941) a couple of weeks ago. It's a charming screwball comedy from Billy Wilder, about a flock of crusty old white professors who share a house while they write an encyclopedia from scratch.

Gary Cooper plays the youngest of the professors, and his wooden acting fits the character, who knows everything about language and literature but nothing much about being alive.

Along comes Barbara Stanwyck, playing a floozy and gangster's moll. She needs a place to stay, and brashly forces her way in with the professors, and especially with Prof Cooper.

Stanwyck is luminescent as she always was, and Ball of Fire definitely gets a thumbs up from me, though it loses some of its oomph as it goes along.

The chairs in the auditorium are hard plastic like the walls, very unyielding against my flabby butt. And the air conditioning was blasting so strong it was uncomfortably cold, and it was 95° outside so I hadn't brought my windbreaker.

♦ ♦ ♦

Returning to the library for Charade (1963) this week, a cushion and light jacket were in my backpack. Armed with the code — 104 — I peed in the clean, quiet 4th floor restroom, then walked down the ghastly red hallway and into the auditorium.

Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn star, so you're expecting stylish and smart, and the movie exceeds expectations.

Hepburn plays a widow without the grieving, because she never much liked her husband, and anyway, he emptied the house and sold everything while she was gone, before he got shoved off a train in his pajamas.

It's set in Paris, where everyone's convinced that her dead husband had a quarter-million dollars in stolen money stashed somewhere (that's $2.5-million in 2024 dollars), but she knows nothing about the money.

She bumps into Grant, their eyes twinkle, and pretty soon they're all smoochy, and he's going to help her find the cash before the bad guys kill her to get their hands on it.

The movie's tone remains light, almost comedic, even as people are bloody murdered, and the plot twists get mighty twisted, but I'll say nothing about that.

Directed by Stanley Donen, it's playful, clever, almost chipper, with a funny funeral and ample banter between Grant and Hepburn. It co-stars James Coburn, George Kennedy, and Walter Matthau, before any of them were big names.

The music is by Henry Mancini, and you know the theme even if you've never seen the movie. I'm still humming it.

♦ ♦ ♦

I was alone of course, front-row right on my comfy cushion, and I noticed a woman too young for me to notice, who was sitting alone, front-row left. What I noticed most was that she had pen and paper, and was occasionally jotting notes during the movie, same as me.

Which is wacky. Everywhere I go, I bring a notebook and pen and jot my thoughts — that's how I write drivel like this — but I've never seen anyone else take notes during a movie. I wanted to ask if she'd be writing about the movie and the library, like I would, but you can't ask questions of a stranger ten seats away while the movie's running, so I waited until the movie was over.

The movie was so good, though, dang it, she'd left before I remembered to ask, so I sighed and 104'd myself into the men's room to pee before my bus ride home.

She must've been in the ladies' room, because when I got to the elevators, there she was. Waiting for our ride down, that's when I should've asked about her note-taking, and I was about to, but she smiled and asked if I'd seen the movie before. I said no, and she said Charade was one of her favorite films, and while she was saying that, bing, the elevator came.

We got on, and again I wanted to ask about her note-taking, but she asked if I'd been surprised at the movie's final twist. I explained that I'd been sorta surprised, but the whole movie had been surprise-after-surprise so by the end you knew there'd be one more surprise, but the surprise wasn't the surprise I'd expected so, yeah, I'd been surprised.

She laughed, the elevator doors whooshed open, and she said "G'bye" and was gone.

Add it to the list of things I don't like about that new library — the elevators take their sweet time coming, but once aboard it's a lickety-split ride to the main floor. 

7/19/2024   

 itsdougholland.com
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