Café Racer shootings -- a day-after analysis

Yesterday the Café Racer shootings occurred.

     Why?

Mentally ill guy, off his medication, walks into café, opens fire on people inside.

Word around the neighborhood is that the guy had been to Racer previously, apparently being creepy. He'd been 86'd once or twice.

What was going thru his head? Will it make sense to a person who isn't mentally ill?

Possibly he wanted retribution for being treated as less than a good customer. Maybe he saw his 86ing as an injustice.

Possibly he perceived everyone in Racer as his enemies, everyone against him, and he wanted to end their lives.

Some guy was in his own little world, deep inside his head, slaughtering people who, outside his head, were innocent café regulars. The rage burning behind his eyes was probably too much for him to turn off.

The Racer customers were probably having a good time just hanging out, laughing and talking and consuming delicious drinks and pastries, enjoying the atmosphere. Our gunman was probably jealous that he couldn't do that himself.

One man's malfunctioning brain was the death of five people yesterday.

     How it affected me

This is my neighborhood--the Roosevelt district. The Ravenna district is further west, towards the Rav Tav.

See the two yellow stars near the middle of the picture? Café Racer is the one on the bottom, with the "A" marker. My house is on 12th, just above NE 62nd St.

It was way too close to home. I started getting really scared. There was a gunman on the loose. Not only that, but he fled north from Racer.

He could have been anywhere around my house. I was home with my kids,  effectively trapped inside.

I was afraid for a good deal of the day. The fight-or-flight instinct was kicking in. It was sunny and warm outside; dark inside.

I was vigilant in keeping my eyes and ears out for strangers coming up my stairs. Any random noise outside was suspicious. Like a fool, I went downstairs and checked my basement, to see if there was anyone hiding out down there. If the gunman was down there, I might be dead now. Next time there's a gunman on the loose in my neighborhood, remind me not to leave my kids alone in the house for even one second.

The gunman looked just like a Seattle hipster--white dude, unkempt mop of brown hair, and brown beard. He could have been any one of the many dudes around our Roosevelt neighborhood here who fit that exact description.

So the day is dragging by, and I'm sorta glued to the computer for any updates on the situation. Megan came home from work at four, and I went to school. I had three papers due last night by seven--I finished two, and got an extension on the other.

Before I could even start writing, however, I had to follow the news a little more and do some Tweeting and Facebooking of the unfolding details. It was an exciting time, though disturbing, terrifying, and sad.

My bus ride to school was not the normal kind, cause I sat in the forward-facing seat nearest the front. This middle-aged black dude with beanie and a fucked up tooth or two was right in front of me. He was having an adamant but civil conversation with a slightly older middle-aged black dude, thickly and tastefully bearded with a ball cap, sitting directly across the aisle and facing him.

Dude in front of me was saying that if Mt. Ranier blows, there's no way the city would be evacuated in time. It would take about 15 days, he estimated, for everyone to leave the city. Other dude was saying he'd take his truck on the back roads to get outta town. 

They start looking at me as they talk, I start reacting and soon I'm part of the conversation. Neither of them had heard about Café Racer yet, so I told them about it. The whole time dude in front of me was talking about natural disasters, all I could thing was that that's far down the road, and the murder going down that very day was far more pressing.

Another middle-aged white man with this cool goatee, curly, previously-blonde dyed hair and business attire, who sat across the aisle from me sometime during the conversation. He joined in the conversation as soon as I told the two black dudes about Racer, mentioning the carjacking at 8th and Seneca.

Everyone on the bus behind us got real quiet, too. They heard our whole conversation. It was an almost-full bus. We were all joined in solidarity on the issue--all siblings in fear, so to speak. A few more people joined in the conversation. The issue right then was whether or not the police had procured a photo of the guy.

Seriously--when shit like this happens, people really come together. It's beautiful to experience, yet sad, because tragedy is often the catalyst.

I got to school. My nervousness about leaving Megan home alone with the kids was dispelled as soon as I opened my computer, in a lone classroom, after I'd gotten food.

For an hour or more, I was further glued to my computer. The killer was caught; killed himself; the downtown and the Racer killings were linked, tentatively, then definitely.

I calmed down and got to work.

     Resuming normal life

When class started, Florangela gave a little speech, from the bottom of her heart, about the shittiness of the day's events. She spoke about how, on a day like yesterday, everything else can feel less important; useless, even.

But the silver lining in all of this is that there are many, many people doing nice, beautiful, artistic things. The world is not full of people doing terrible things, though it can seem that way on such a shitty day.

And telling stories about people is an important part of keeping terrible things at bay. People knowing about other people helps keep us grounded and relatable with one another. Love pervades in this way, which hinders hatred.

I gave my presentation in class. I mentioned how I had interviewed my subject at Café Racer, and there was a band setting up at the time and making music in the background, and that we could have been hearing a ghost in the recording. 

The whole class gets heavy faces. My presentation was marred by the Racer shootings, even.

It was our last class together. I sort of bolted out of there--some people, I could tell, wished I would have stayed. They were giving me forlorn glances as I walked out.

Riding the bus home, I got off a couple stops early. I walked to Café Racer, without knowing if anything was going on.

First, I saw news vans with antennas reaching high into the sky. Slowly the mass of people materialized as I turned the corner from Ravenna onto Roosevelt. It was a full-on vigil, son. A beautiful, though saddening thing.

I stayed for a while. The flowers in front of the place were beautiful. It was an altar of life, given to the dead. I didn't know anybody there, and yet they were all my friends. 

So many people were affected. Everyone living in the Roosevelt and Ravenna neighborhoods either knew directly, or was one or two degrees from them.

And, of course, it was like Café Racer had died a little itself, that day. It was up to the vigilant to breathe new life into it, by sharing in their sorrows and mourning together.

Here are a couple photo galleries of the vigil that I found this morning, from The Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Time.

The real show was across the street from Racer, down NE 59th St. Check my map above for a reference. The street was full of people, young and old, hipster, punk, normal, abnormal, all races. I slowly mulled through the crowd until I got to the middle, where there was this big circle of people singing some sort of traditional Jewish song of praise.

A guy I used to work with at Pies and Pints, Gus Clark, was leading the song, holding his accordion, face to the sky. Feeling it.

Two people that died yesterday were in God's Favorite Beefcake, of which Gus is a member.

Though I have a grudge against Gus, because we didn't get along, and I got fired over writing harsh notes to him, calling him out for his sloppy bullshit and how he's a shit cook... I have to respect what he went through. Loss of life is devastating when it comes too quickly; too suddenly.

Reanne was there, too. Crying and hugging desperately on somebody, which she is want to do in tragic times, or when she drinks too much. I was with her at Pies when Vincent Gallapaga died. She wouldn't look at me after I caught her eyes.

I walked away. I wished someone would walk after me and ask me to stay, but I also knew it wouldn't happen. The reason I left was selfish. I wish I would have stayed longer. I'm kicking myself for that. I might have been able to make someone feel better, and that should have been enough for me. I owed it to my neighborhood to show solidarity, but I left for a personal, long-standing, deep grudge.

Call it what you want.

However, it was good to go home to Megan. We spent much of the rest of the night talking about it. We were both freaked out, and needed to get a lot of stuff off our chests.

Everything was fucked yesterday. 

However, my family is safe, and my neighborhood is effectively stronger. I'm planning on going to Racer tonight after class too.

Thanks for reading. My sorrow runs deep and I'm glad I got this story off my chest. I hope I get the chance to read others' personal stories of what happened yesterday.