Heads and Tails: The Senior Council of Anything that Mattered

I have a great and impossible fortune. I came out here in the 1970s, with not a friend, nor phone number and made many friends. But the tale is particular, as many of them were architects. They had the best of it, the best of its smile, the best of its food (the Brasserie Pittsbourg was theirs), the best of its art. The town was on its lips – Boeing hated or at best distrusted design and later Airbus would shove that up its butt, with great pleasure.

I never knew there was such a thing as architects but this group was irresistible and right and funny. Walker, Fukui, Sundberg, Suyama, Olson, Miller, Schorr  – a goddam Mafia of humor and thought. They travelled to Italy, to Copenhagen and Stockholm, to Turkey (Jerry Williams went to Istanbul and died. A man so sweet, I miss him to the day). 

They were the senior council of anything that mattered. They saved bakeries – they saved the market, they saved wine, they tried to save Starbucks but Howard missed it. They were what need be. They never rested, never stopped. And when I would open the bookshop, they laughed and came and made it brilliant. And when I was forced to move, they did it again. And when I was forced again, they laughed and said now we will do it so well, they have no power.

Early fall, let me tell you some Gordon Walker tales. 

He and Jim Olson started Olson/Walker in 1970 and quickly set a pace and a style that made them the hippest firm in town. For most of their time together, they called each other by their last name, Olson and Walker. Gordon had schooled in Idaho, Jim had schooled at UW, ostensibly they were the proper and the improper but the truth was many details more than that. 

Gordon was the oldest of four brothers, raised in Sandpoint, Idaho. I asked his dad once, if he had a pocket knife I could borrow – he laughed and said, I got my pants on, don’t I?

Olson/Walker were busy but they always shut the firm on December 18th and reopened after New Years. The doors were locked. They loved giving Christmas presents that caused a stir. One year, they gave me a frog, in a glass aquarium, with instructions. This frog only ate mice. Once a week, I had to go to the pet store and buy a few baby mice. You would put  the little Pinky ( as they were called) in, and the frog, after days of literally not moving, would suddenly lurch and swallow most of Pinky. We named the frog Jet.

There were no other design shops with a mouse-eating frog but things fell apart quickly. We put a mouse in that Jet could not catch. I waited well past closing time and finally left for the night. In the morning there were a dozen notes under the front door, what kind of a shop or person would leave a poor mouse to be chased by a mad frog. 

Lisa took the poor mouse home and we called the Zoo, they were thrilled to get a mouse-eating frog.