#david culp

Fresh off the MANTS (Mid-Atlantic Nursery Trade Show) floor in Baltimore, I made lots of fresh contacts and found many exciting plant introductions that I want to use in my future landscaping projects. I am stoked for the 2024 gardening year and the new plants and ideas that are hitting the nursery and garden center shelves. In this post, I will review the plants and products that interested me,…

A Year at Brandywine Cottage: Book Review--A Year at Brandywine Cottage complements David Culp's previous book, The Layered Garden. They each inspire in different ways.

It’s the middle of January, and I’m hungry for spring. Spring won’t come for another couple of months in my climate, so I whet my appetite with inspirational gardening books. One of my favorites is The Layered Garden (aff. link) by David Culp. I reviewed that book seven years ago and it’s still one of my all-time favorites. I re-read it at least once a year, and often more frequently, for the…

The Galanthus Gala: Where Snowdrop Addicts Get Their Fix--and renew their friendships with fellow galanthophiles. Want to know how much a snowdrop addict will pay for a snowdrop? Click through and read on.

In 1997, Mona Wysocki gave me a “sod” of snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis) about the size of a salad plate. (I call it a “sod” because it was as densely packed with snowdrops as a piece of lawn is packed with grass.) I carefully separated the bulbs and replanted them about six inches apart. (Detailed instructions here.) Twenty-three years later, they have formed their own sod.

The original…

New Post has been published on http://www.cinephiled.com/seattles-first-dive-bar-film-festival-celebrates-swiftly-disappearing-taphouse/

Seattle’s First Dive Bar Film Festival Celebrates the Swiftly Disappearing Taphouse

Contributed by Gwendolyn Elliot

When the iconic Rainier R was restored to its original perch atop Seattle’s Rainier Brewery last year, it seemed nostalgia for the vintage life had literally reached its zenith. From craft cocktails and old-fashioned ciders to retro regional beers, the love for time-honored libations in the Emerald City has never been so popular.

Finding an equally storied watering hole in which to imbibe, however, is becoming harder and harder. Times are tough for the dive bar, and recent years have seen beloved joints like the Alki Tavern, the Comet Tavern and the Canterbury shutter in the name of rebranding or urban development. Justin Freet, Program Coordinator for Seattle’s first Dive Bar Film Festival, has a problem with that.

“l’ve always loved dive bars,” says Freet. “When I would meet other filmmakers while I was finishing school and scraping around for film gigs, when I would have a drink, I would go to a dive bar. Places like the Moon Temple, Blue Moon, the Baranof. Those dive bars were a huge part of my creative and social energy.”

A co-founder of Seattle’s alternative film festival Rawstock, Freet said that when he heard his favorite dive, Wallingford’s Moon Temple, was the next to go (as of this writing, it’s slated to officially close this summer, for what Justin says will be “a CVS”), he felt he needed to do something.

“One of the few things I’m comfortable throwing together is a film festival,” he says. Together with Rainier Beer, members of Rawstock and Mike Seely, former editor-in-chief of Seattle Weekly and “Seattle’s Best Dive Bars: Drinking & Diving in the Emerald City” author, he did just that.

The three-day fest will feature a number of dive bar-themed short films including music videos, animated shorts, and a retrospective of the work of David Culp, the revered Northwest filmmaker who brought Pacific Northwest TV land Ivar’s iconic dancing clams and those roaming herds of Rainier Beer cans. Freet promises other surprises, along with speakers like Seely, who estimates that 15% of the 100 dives reviewed in his book have either closed or are “on the chopping block.”

“One of the most unfortunate and largely unspoken Seattle civic tragedies is the amount of storied neighborhood institutions that have too quietly faded away without a fight,” he says. “What’s so crucial about the Dive Bar Film Fest is that you’ve got some talented artists committing themselves to making sure people realize how important lived-in, unpretentious neighborhood bars are, before it’s too late.”

Freet agrees. The dive bar is “no nonsense,” he says. “You can get a Rainier tallboy and a shot of whiskey. No one’s going to judge you. It’s a rarefied quality in Seattle’s social scene right now.”