DANIEL BLUE: MEET ROBBY REBEL >>>

Robby Rebel wants to change his name, because he is no longer in the band. 

What band? 

The River City Rebels, that's what band.   

Dangerous and covered in tattoos, Robby shoves beer in his pants before heading out to smoke a Camel Light at a house party on South G Street.   

Robby is currently involved in the mystery of the Motopony, a Tacoma local band that has yet to come out of the practice room with anything but a peek at their first album. 

Robby has lived in New York and toured with bands like the Strokes.  He has met John Lennon's son and looks a little like Joey Ramone (hair, height, weight). 

In person, Robby is sensitive and attentive, and his personality reflects the complex and moody guitar riffs that have made him so popular in the music industry in this country. He returned to Tacoma to get his feet back on the ground, high class elites in New York can sometimes cloud your vision and its nice to have a place to come home to.   

I like Robby cause he still gets nervous before he plays the smallest of shows, even though he has performed in front of 10,000 people.  Boyish charms and undeniable cool aside, Robby is a real kid and wont be the type to forget his friends when he is on the cover of Rolling Stone.

LINK: The Tacoma Files archive

DANIEL BLUE: MEET ANDY SHAULES >>>

Andy Shaules is also known as Bowljo Andy.  A bowljo is an instrument that Andy created by using new or used wooden bowls as the resonant chamber in a strange sort of hybrid guitar/sitar/banjo situation.  When I visited his shop quite some time ago he was at different phases of the tedious gluing process on several of his little babies. They sound amazing, and are actually very easy to begin playing. This is the only man I know that makes musical instruments by hand, much less ones that he invented.   

Pictured here with his "portable" computer it is clear that Andy is handy, and has taken a briefcase of sorts and fit it with the guts of a tower PC.  Upon leaving he shoved the LCD screen and cables into a cloth sack, picked the compy up by the handle and made his way to the vehicle. 

I rarely see Andy with his glasses off, but that is just because his future is so bright.  Once at an event called Art in the Park, this avant guard noise sculptor attached a bowljo to some sort of circuit bent processing unit with like 20 knobs coming out of it.  He began to create the strangest landscape of sound so alien and obscure that a woman actually came over and turned it down. Andy smiled and walked back over to turn it up, knowing that she was simply attuned to a different wavelength. 

LINK: The Tacoma Files archive

DANIEL BLUE: MEET GLEN WEIMAN >>>

Glen Weiman and I met several years ago at a mutual friend's house in Federal Way. Newly married, Glen and his wife, Holly, have purchased a cute home on South G Street right here in the heart of downtown Tacoma.

He is currently employed at Rusty George Creative and is a member of the sustainability and community activism group called Local Life Tacoma. I have worked with Glen on a few projects in the arena of freelance graphic design. He created the artwork that hung over the farmers market on the banners that dictated a poem about the beauty of farm fresh food. His work is precise and approachable. If you add that to the gentle and good-natured attitude he brings to the table, you have yourself an extremely hirable designer. Don't expect RJC to release him from their iron grip (rusty as it may be) anytime soon.

As we age, Glen and I have discussed the trappings of the American way. Long hours, big bills, swelling thighs - ahh -  to be comfortable in one's own backyard simply has failed to satisfy. Glen is looking for another path. The path of a being that needs to know that the world is well, even outside of his yard, even outside of his block.

LINK: The Tacoma Files archive

DANIEL BLUE: MEET CHRIS SHARP >>>

Many things have been written about Chris Sharp, which I believe is due to his name.  Chris is very sharp.  I have found him to be straightforward and confident in most all his endeavors.

Chris is kind of like a cool older brother to me and some of my contemporaries. We thrive on his creative wisdom. On several occasions I have consulted him for advise about projects I am working on.  His eye is explicit and his experience sets him in the major leagues.

He is forever bicycling and recently skateboarding about the downtown corridor, to and from multiple coffee shops and his studio in the Merlino Arts Center.  A sign maker, and a designer by trade, there are few hands that know both the digital and the analog versions of their craft as well as Chris. 

The most noticeable thing about Sharp is his deadpan sense of humor.  Often heavy handed in wit and intelligent sarcasm, I find myself laughing at things he has said far after they were removed from his mouth.

LINK: The Tacoma Files archive

DANIEL BLUE: MEET ADAM MARTIN >>>

Adam Martin might be too smart for his own good. When I met him a few years ago we knew instantly that we would be friends. He is easy to read, and the reading says, "good one."

Having started and grown weary with a green insulation business called BioIntegra, Adam is still passionate about the way we live our lives and the manner in which we treat the earth and one another. For a long time his favorite phrase was "off the grid," which to him meant a lifestyle independent of the machine of which Pink Floyd sings. These ideas are not new. Adam, however, is attempting to live this way not in a commune out on the prairie but in urban and population-dense areas. 

He reads too much, in my opinion, and knows too much and probably thinks too much as well.

His voice is soothing and his tone sometimes extremely convincing. Persuasive and demonstrative, he wants people to look at life a bit differently, perhaps take the bus to Seattle and walk your ass about, instead of taking space parking and using up resources. His business sense, conservation and intelligence will probably whisk him through the apocalypse and the next great depression.

LINK: The Tacoma Files archive

DANIEL BLUE: MEET ALISON COFFEY >>>

  Alison Coffey moved to Tacoma when she was 12. She attended the School of the Arts, from which she graduated last year and is preparing for her second year at Tufts University in Boston, Mass.

Alison is extremely intelligent, and the first bits of our acquaintance were spent musing over a crossword puzzle, which we were too stubborn to put down until it was completed, Internet cheating or not. My input was primarily to pencil in the answers that she was somehow able to pluck from the meta-consciousness square by square. 

She has been gentle and soft spoken with a consistency that cannot be pretended, her nature is simply to be very collected and consciously pleasant.

Alison is interested in non governmental organizations and rural to urban migration worldwide. She explained to me that over half of the world's population live in urban settings and that number is rising all the time. We talked for a bit about forced evictions, which has the softer term of "resettlement."

Her care for people is clear, and her education will allow her to care with purpose. Most days she is dutifully studying at the BW or managing to conquer the crossword with her psychic prowess.

LINK: The Tacoma Files archive

DANIEL BLUE: MEET JEFF THOMAS >>>

Jeff Thomas moved here recently from the Midwest. He plays bluegrass bass and means to live a conscious and healthy life. He and his wife, Amy, are calm people with well thought things to say about most educated subjects.

Jeff can in one sitting hit me with two to three anecdotes that I am forced to record on my notepad due to their mountain-man-esque wisdom and simple delivery.

It seems there is a bit of the old pioneer spirit written into Jeff's very soul. I sometimes find him to be altogether too darn happy for my cloudy spirit, and find myself jealous of his easy-going nature. To be fair, I'm sure it's not easy being the new guy in town, and it makes sense to have a good attitude about it and put one's best foot forward. This simple kind of decision making is what distinguishes Mr. Thomas's character to me in my memory. He is logical and straightforward.

Currently he is attempting to operate a house-painting rig, where in college children are hired to recolor domestic settings.  As frustrating as I have seen this become, his diligence and stick-to-it nature are inspiring and speak to the standup man that I believe him to be.

LINK: The Tacoma Files archive

DANIEL BLUE: MEET RYAN WALLING >>>

Ryan Walling is my cousin. He has lived in Tacoma longer than I have. I remember visiting his house on the eastside when I was a kid. Ryan taught the younger cousin boys (me, Mike, and Zac) how to skate on the half pipe in his backyard. His father, my mother's brother Mike, let me borrow his skateboard and I dropped in from the top within the first day. I think I was 10. I remember that my uncle was building an airplane in the garage - no shit.   

Ryan just grew up cooler than us other kids.  Snowboarding, girls, music, most everything we wanted he got to first and mastered.  Here he is pictured with his iPhone, which he acquired before I purchased mine. 

Ryan runs marathons for fun. Sometimes you can see him, like a picture out of NICE BODY magazine, jogging around downtown with sweat glistening of his well-tanned shirtless stacks of muscles. 

Currently Ryan works for the City of Tacoma in the water division of our public utilities. 

He just purchased a black Ducati Monster "naked" motorcycle, which is faster and more attractive than anything made in America. 

Somehow Ryan achieves all of this coolness without being a douche bag, not even just a little bit.  He is nice and gentle with his words, as if he actually gave a damn about your touchy-feely art world.  Maybe its cause we are family.

LINK: The Tacoma Files archive

DANIEL BLUE: MEET JAMES DARDUNGO >>>

James Dardungo and I bonded in a tent-awning outside of Bob's Java Jive over a chamomile-laced cigarette. Chamomile is calming and a pleasing mellow aromatic smoke.  His friend Potter showed up and I told a Harry Potter joke that made everyone uncomfortable. 

We first met inside the Jive while he was apologizing to everyone about the noisy Tetris arcade unit that he could not get to shut up when the music started. That's OK James; the sound at the Jive is so ear bleedingly loud that no one can hear your video game or your apologizing for that matter. 

Pictured here enjoying a frothy Seattle Pilsner outside of The Monsoon Room, James is looking to the sky in praise of Bacchus, to whom he has given his mortal body.   

Once outside of Mike Ball's house James was zipping around on an orange bicycle and exclaiming about the wonders of 10-speeds. I hope you got your very own bike by now, James.   

He has lived in Tacoma for two years and his favorite part of the whole city is the Port.

LINK: The Tacoma Files archive

DANIEL BLUE: MEET MELANIE CANTARA >>>

Melanie Cantara moved here in 2004 to help take care of her mother who has since continued her journey in other forms than our tangible cage.   

Melanie and I have much in common. I moved back home in 2001 for the same reason. Melanie is a special girl. There is something wonderful about her countenance. I find her to be overwhelmingly easy to behold.  Our culture has managed to tangle sexuality into nearly every activity you can imagine, yet somehow Mell can kiss your cheek and bring to mind a familial warmth that exists in very few places on this planet outside of my childhood memories of being loved by my Aunties. 

Soft and often smiling, Melanie is an example of feminine prowess that was lost to women for decades after the roaring twenties came to a close. Never coy, her matter-of-fact nature of conversation causes one to feel important and heard. 

Last Halloween, she and her friend led me around the dance floor in a series of charades that I have not appreciated the likes of since I was a teenager in the spiritually charged steppes of New Mexico. 

I am very glad she has decided to stay around in the wake of all that has come to pass.

LINK: The Tacoma Files