trespass!

what did i do on valentine's day, the day of LOVE and RAPTURE and TASTEFUL SUCKING? i spent it in a weirdly gleeful state, having finally fulfilled a plan of several month's duration:
i drove to olympia, listening to the goddamn beatles, drinking an energy elixir, parked my car in the wide-obvious-open, and sauntered around the "private property" gate of the original olympia brewery.
my only regret: the sky is the color of nothing, and consequently the light is flat and without lustre.
from the front, sort of. i am trying to stay out of view of the park across the river, the park from which i took my first photos.

and various other exciting detritus!



adhered to a southeast-facing wall (sheilded from much sun by the flora), one of the coolest vines i have ever had the pleasure to witness:
that was an odd sentence to type.

the original olympia brewery was called Cascade Brewing Company. the building dates to 1896 in two websites, 1905 in the tumwater historical preservation records. after prohibition the brewery was moved to the new building up the hill (the present-day, also vacant, orangish monolith of wondrous art-deco sensibility, readily visible from the freeway). the old building went through several incarnations as various manufacturing plants, none of which i can remember at the moment. a deal with a bottled-water company fell through a few years ago. (i can imagine their gruesome proposed slogan now: it's still the water!) on the tumwater historical site there is a full proposal regarding use of the property; plans were underfoot to turn it into a Community Place with Scenic Grounds: a spot for people to get fucking married and hold government xmas parties and shit like that. i read through the entire proposal, because that is the sort of sexy thing i do on VALENTINE'S DAY, and was startled by how much hullaballoo goes into property planning. permits, utilities, building soundness, parking, ecological impedimentation, surveying. i much prefer it as it is: gated off and overgrown, it felt like my little secret as i walked around it today.
the signs surrounding it threatened of electronic surveillence, which i imagine to be bullshit, but i did not enter the building anyway. there wasn't really any way to. as it was, i spent a lot of time on the perimeter staring at the ground and expecting to find a rotting corpse. it would truly be an excellent place to hide a body.
i have always had this bizarre obsession with abandoned buildings. i love them. i think about them when i should be doing other things.
the brewery is too far gone to indulge in fancy of days past, as with tacoma. it is hard to picture stony-faced brewmasters (?) tending the casks when i am looking at a building with water seeping out of its bricks. this is a building that has always been exactly like this, in this state, vacant yet sealed, oddly free of graffiti and litter, getting slowly swallowed by its verdant environment.
i climbed up the hillside, over fallen logs and tangles of ivy, rather than return the way i came. i felt a peculiar unreality, not unpleasant, but that odd sense of not knowing quite what time it is, what year it is, what is and what was- like when i wake up from a midday nap and everything suddenly seems more cacophonic and complicated. but then i got a text informing me of jane fonda's cuntployment and the world regained its sharp modern edges.