Back in the day, as in a few months ago, there was a nice little
give and take between Bremerton and Bainbridge Island on the
Bremelog. For the record I suspect sock puppetry,
really, and the moderator has now become a Bremerton slumlord and
bolted from the finer side of the sound. There isn’t much going on
over at the Bremelog anymore.
Still, there are real differences between Bremerton and
Bainbridge Island, namely the kinds of Toyotas we drive and the
quality of our ferries. When I covered the island I always
approached the supposed snootiness of islanders as overblown. But
last Saturday my family and I went with family members who were
visiting the area from Vancouver, B.C. to play in soccer matches on
the island against island teams. Some guy wearing a BIFC scarf
asked us if we were from Canada. My wife pointed to her sister and
said she was, but that we were from Bremerton. Our islander
acquaintance lost interest in us. It made me feel better about the
fact that my nephews totally trounced the island kids. One of my
nephews scored three goals, one with his right foot.
Nonetheless, it appears there is something on which the elect on
the island and the great unwashed in Bremerton can agree: marijuana
laws.
The Seattle Times has a story about marijuana
legalization efforts in California and includes information about a
signature-gathering effort here in Washington to get something on
the November ballot. Included was this:
It’s “a little less predictable” to gather signatures with an
all-volunteer staff, Dawdy said, but the group has had success
across the state. He said one signature-gatherer working the
Bainbridge Island ferry run collected 800 signatures in 21/2 weeks
and that a Bremerton head shop collected 400 by putting a copy of
the petition on the counter.
I assume the head shop is Pied Piper’s, but there may be other
shops I don’t know about. Since I don’t have much demand for their
products, I’m not a customer. The one time I did go in was when the
store had to move the first time, out of the space it once had
where the Tim Ryan building is now. I naively asked if it was a
place to buy things to help to smoke pot. I was informed it was a
clothing store, a place where one could buy artistic pieces of
glass. It was true. There was clothing and glasswork. The shirt was
very comfortable on me when I later smoked from a glass pipe I
bought there using pot I bought from my island source. I kid. The
source was from Port Orchard. I kid again.
Now it’s easy to assume that ferry commuters on Bainbridge are
not from the same demographic as artistic glass aficionados in
Bremerton. But my point to to that scarf-wearing dude at the soccer
game is that we’re not so different. We can find common ground.
I wonder if one of the 800 signatures on Bainbridge came from
this guy. I can’t tell you how
glad I am when something like this didn’t happen in Bremerton.
