Monday, June 29, 2015

Leads

Morning comes hard to the Hotel Ashmun; this is not a place where the guests spring eagerly out of bed to greet the fresh new day. Strange Rumblings in Aztlan, Hunter S. Thompson, Newsweek, Feb. 15, 1971

Tyler gets me a job as a waiter, after that Tyler's pushing a gun in my mouth and saying, the first step to eternal life is you have to die. Fight Club, Chuck Palahniuk

outline

Lead

Introduction to the setting

Introduction to the cars

Introduction to the people

Background and history

Upcoming event

Amidst of Slew of American Classics, a Quartet of Soviets Stand Alone

Over 500 cars sat gleaming in the high heat on Saturday as thousands of spectators walked the mile long stretch between North 88th Street and North 67th Street in the Greenwood neighborhood of Seattle.

Ford, General Motors and Mopar vehicles filled the street, but nearing the end of the section blocked off for the show, four cars seemed out of place geographically and generationally.

A Moskovich 427, Lada Riva, Volkswagen Type 181 (Thing) and a UAZ 469 B sat abreast one another on the west side of Greenwood Avenue. A Thing isn't terribly out of place, about a half dozen others were at the show, but the Moskovich, Lada and UAZ are cars one doesn't generally see on this side of the world.

"It just makes people happy when they see a car like this," said Rudolf Ross, who, along with his father, Simon Ross, brought these examples from their collection to the show.
This UAZ 469 B was given to a cosmonaut in place of a bonus
during the Soviet regime.

Born in the USSR in what is now Kazakhstan, Simon Ross always felt a passion for Soviet era cars. Simon owns 35 cars which all started their life in the Soviet Union, most of them in full working order and driven frequently. None of the cars at the show were brought on a trailer, although the iconic East German Trabant 601 was a last minute scratch, as it was spitting oil and sending up red flags.

"A car not driven is not a car," said Simon.

In order to keep his collection of notoriously unreliable cars running, Simon brought his father-in-law, a mechanic in Russia, stateside to work on the cars and keep them operational. He uses only original equipment manufactured (OEM) parts on his vehicles, which can sometimes take months to find and import, if the part is not something that can be found on many of the donor parts cars also imported.

A Moskovich 427 was a very high end car in the USSR,
this one belonged to an important Communist dignitary.
Finding the cars themselves is not an easy task. Under the Putin regime, exporting and importing cars out of the Russian Federation is heavily taxed, sometimes equaling or exceeding the original price of the vehicle. Because of this, Simon gets most of his cars from Bulgaria, Georgia or Ukraine.

The cars Simon is importing are not collectibles in their countries of origin, and this means they are not easy to find in good condition. It can take months, or even years to find the right car, so instead of spending most of the year traveling, Simon has people like Dmitri Vilchynskyi, of Ukraine, seeking out the cars for him.

Vilchynskyi, an old friend of Simon's, helped to bring more than 20 cars stateside. Vilchynskyi said he did it to help save the old cars, and he enjoyed the hunt. They aren't cars you can find at a dealer, Vilchynskyi said, you have to search them out and find a good one from a private seller.
The Lada Riva, based off the Fiat 131, was produced for over 30
years. Production finally ceased in 2010. This example is from 1976.

Simon and Rudolf Ross will be displaying their collection as well as auctioning off some of their vehicles August 14-16 at Saghalie City Park in Federal Way. For more information visit their website at www.sovietcar.com.

Friday, June 26, 2015

Charlie Hebdo

The decision on whether to or whether to not publish the cartoon of the prophet Mohammad is a difficult one, and one that can not be taken lightly. This is not a matter of free speech, or freedom of the press, this is a matter of the safety of the employees of publications. As an individual, I would not hesitate to post the image on my Facebook or Twitter, however, if I was the editor of a newspaper or magazine I would likely not run it. I think that before running the image, I would have a secret ballot vote at my publication asking every employee if they were comfortable with my publishing it. If one person said they were not, I would not run it. I do not care in the least about offending members of any faith, be it Islam, Christianity or Judaism. Religion is a choice made in life and open to all criticisms. However, due to terrorist acts from extremist groups against publications like Charlie Hebdo, I would want the full support of my staff before I ran something that could endanger their lives. I agree 100% on Steven Pollard's tweets about the decision, and it is likely the same decision I would make in his shoes. I would love to have seen every magazine and newspaper in America publish the cartoon, but I wouldn't put someone's life at risk without their full consent. The story can be told without showing the cartoon, and in this day and age with everything accessible on the internet, it just isn't worth it.

Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Possible Preview Stories

1. Perkins House Ice Cream Social
2. Moscow Farmer's Market
3. 6th Street Senior Center Dances

George Raveling

Lead: Former Cougar basketball coach has MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech, handed to him by King himself.

First quote: "The (I have a dream) speech belongs to America. It belongs to black folks"

Monday, June 22, 2015

Joan Didion Interpretation

I think what Didion is saying in the excerpt from The White Album is that as journalists, and, in fact, as a society, we look for the reasoning behind actions. Nothing is as it seems at face value. For example, with the Charleston shooting, some news outlets (Fox News) tried saying the motivation behind the shooting was an attack on Christianity, despite the quote from Dylann Roof that he was "there to shoot black people." Different people and different outlets can find different motivations for actions which lead to tragedy. Even if they are outlandish and all evidence proves them false. I think that what she is saying is that we all have our own interpretations on motive which can be skewed by our own loyalties which can blind us from the truth.

What is news?

News is timely information that the public needs to know.