Today on Sound Effect we look back at looking back as we explore the theme of nostalgia.
Skate King has been torn down and soon there will be a Harley Davidson dealership in that lot but the ghosts of athlete's foot past and the penchant for flared pants and disco dancing on wheels lives on in our hearts and minds. Gabriel Spitzer took a spin at the rink before the lights went down for good.
What does "American Idol" have to do with Fircrest, Washington? Sound Effect producer Kevin Kniestedt breaks down the path of Major Edward Bowes the man behind the city in the South Sound and his radio show from the 1930s, "The Original Amateur Hour."
Long before he worked at KPLU, Nick Morrison had a number of extremely odd jobs including managing a strip club in Pioneer Square. Nick tells Gabriel Spitzer about the downtown Seattle of the 1970s and a time when the answer to a childcare dilemma was to build a daycare — in a strip club.
Kathleen Wilson grew up loving gossip. Wilson would spend nights with Confidential magazine and later in her life ended up writing the column, "It’s My Party" for The Stranger. Wilson tells Sound Effect contributor Arwen Nicks about what it was like to write a gossip column in a smaller and slower Seattle.
The next story deals with stories — well, with movies and television. The editor has often received the bulk of the praise for a way a movie is cut but the last hands on the film are actually those of the film cutter, a profession that is being digitally phased out. Andy Pratt is one of the last film cutters and he runs Deluxe Archive Solutions. Gabriel Spitzer travels through film and time with Pratt to discuss the dying art of cutting film.
The appeal of a new home is obvious; fresh and clean it can be one’s tabula rasa, but all that newness can’t provide the comfort of memory and nostalgia. Author Charles D’Ambrosio reads an excerpt from his essay, "American Newness."
Sound Effect is your weekly tour of ideas, inspired by the place we live. The show is hosted by KPLU's Gabriel Spitzer.
