Buzz Osborne wastes an unidentified real estate agent’s time in this amusing little video. Agent to Buzz: “Go back to Seattle!”

Redfin’s San Francisco blog had a wonderful post “Palo Alto: In Praise of Garages”, enumerating several noteworthy garages in the Bay Area. They noted both the garages of young Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard and another noteworthy garage, the place where Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs started their “Homebrew Computer Club.” This enterprise later became Apple.

I couldn’t think of any famous garages here in Seattle, unless you counted
Kurt Cobain’s, whose life ended in his garage.

HappyDeathInc.

Nirvana was arguably Seattle’s greatest garage band, though
not its only famous one.

Today, February 20th, would have been Kurt’s 40th birthday. He was born in 1967 in Aberdeen, WA.

The garage was torn down by Courtney, shortly after his death, perhaps because she couldn’t stand looking at it or maybe to avoid it becoming a shrine.

Courtney sold the house in 1997 for $2,895,000. The listing agent had a brokers Open House, and the curious were able to wander about for clues to the previous owners existence. The garage had been torn down by then, a fence put up around the property and a bench erected in Viretta Park, that has had to substitute for a shrine. Courtney had contacted Lake View Cemetery (where Bruce Lee is buried) and Greenwood Memorial Park in Renton (where Jimi is buried) but both cemetery owners were concerned about security. Cobain was cremated; the cremains are kept in an undisclosed private location. His family has yet to approve of any official memorial site.

Zillow has the home listed
with a ZESTIMATE of $5,861,884.00. Which is probably about right.

www.Flickr.com

This Saturday, February 24th, would have been Kurt and Courtney’s wedding anniversary. They were married 2/24/92 in Hawaii.

Angelo Bruscas in his PI blog,
Seattle@Nite writes of the 12th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death in an entry entitled “Nirvana at Nite”. The 13th anniversary is coming up April 8th.

The home where Nirvana played its first gig was on the auction block for sale last year.

This is not the first Cobain home lost .……Courtney Love lost both her New York home and a historic home in Olympia she bought for Kurt’s sister Kim.

Cobain listing on Ebay

The other members of Nirvana were Dave Grohl, who went on to front Foo Fighters and lives on the East Coast.

Krist Novoselic’s ties are deeper in the Northwest, and he spends time in Seattle and in his home Southwest Washington he shares with his wife, local clothing designer Darbury Stendaru, who had a studio on 1st Avenue, but now only does trunk shows. They also celebrate their wedding anniversary this month (2/27).

In 1995, Novoselic founded JAMPAC (Joint Artists and Music Promotions Political Action Committee), an organization that advocated on behalf of Washington state’s music community. Novoselic’s work with JAMPAC helped Seattle club owners find ways to host all-ages shows, and was instrumental in helping to overturn the (anti-)Teen Dance Ordinance. And sometimes making music and making a statement go hand in hand, as when Novoselic, Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil, and drummer Gina Mainwal backed Jello Biafra as the “No W.T.O. Combo” at a show performed during the World Trade Organization conference held in Seattle in 1999.

There have been other musical endeavors since Nirvana, as well as new causes. Novoselic is a strong supporter of electoral reform, an issue he writes about extensively on his website Fix Our United States.

He’s also published several books, including
Of Grunge & Government: Let’s Fix This Broken Democracy!

Instant runoff voting: speaking to voter needs
By Krist Novoselic (Seattle Times)

IRV, a better way, by Krist Novoselic, The Nation

Guide to Pacific Northwest Bands, garage or otherwise

Photos of Kurt Cobain’s Seattle house on Flickr

A walking tour of Kurt Cobain’s Aberdeen

33 things you should know about Nirvana — Blender

Cobain unofficial memorial at Viretta Park

Sad reminder of Kurt Cobain’s legacy
- Cobain/Love house sold in foreclosure

Kurt Cobain: Seven Years Later –
a Reflection by Clark Humphrey on HistoryLink.org

To Karen and Richard Carpenter fans, their home in Downey, California is their Graceland, so says Carpenters aficionado Jon Konjoyan, a 57-year-old Toluca Lake music writer and promoter who is leading a campaign to save the Carpenters house from destruction.

The five-bedroom tract house and a smaller next-door dwelling that was connected to it by an enclosed walkway was where Richard and Karen Carpenter fine-tuned their greatest hits in the 1970s.

The pair lived in the main house with their parents. The adjoining house was where there was an office, rehearsal studio and recreation room. Karen passed away in 1983, the parents remained in the residence until Harold Carpenter’s death in 1988 and Agnes Carpenter’s in 1996. Richard Carpenter sold the place in mid-1997.

Now new owners want to tear down the house that was featured on their album “Now & Then”.

Fans love Carpenters, not carpenters

While most agents would consider the punk house a nightmare, but there is often artistry and beauty to these kind of squats that I enjoy.

I’ve only seen a few hit the market “as-is”, as most get cleaned up prior to listing. I like the idea of communal living, and did it myself for awhile during my pre-and-post college years, though we were never in one place long enough to amass the kind of squalor and filth pictured in the book “Punk House: Interiors in Anarchy”.

With the ones that I’ve listed, there is usually so much art on the walls, if we can clean them up, we can usually sell it to another artist.

Punk House features anarchist warehouses, feminist collectives, tree houses, workshops, artists’ studios, self-sufficient farms, hobo squats, community centers, basement bike shops, speakeasies, and all varieties of communal living spaces.

In over 300 images of fifty houses in twenty-five cities in the US, photographer Abby Banks finds the already weathered face of a seventeen-year-old runaway; the soft hands of a vinyl junkie (record collector); the mohawked show-goer; the dirty dishes in the sink; silk screened posters on the wall; and many other revealing glimpses of these anarchist interiors.

“Punk House” in New York Times

Where Lou Reed Peed: CBGB’s toilet

There seems to be a clamor by a certain segment of the real estate community who are looking for a leader, for a rock star of real estate, a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs to lead us into the next paradigm.

Does anyone remember when Century 21 hired Ringo as spokesmodel?

Century 21 even had an agent recruitment CD hosted by Ringo. Anyone got a copy of that?

Everyone’s looking for a rock star, even head-hunters: (Active Rain seeks Ruby-on-Rails Rock Star)

Yeah, yeah, the Feds cut the interest rate and Bush says he doesn’t want to raise FHA limits, but let’s get to the important news of the day: One of Seattle’s favorite sons, Sanjaya Malakar, is moving to Hollywood, Baby. His house (actually, his step-dad’s home) has been put on the market, as Sanjaya’s off to seek his fortune in LA and on the American Idol tour.

The listing agent is Dennis Fletcher, an agent with Windermere Real Estate, who formerly worked with Sanjaya’s step-dad writing radio and TV jingles when they were in the music business together.

Another American Idol contestant with a Seattle real estate connection was Leah LaBelle from Season 3. Her mother was Anastasia Vladowski, a musician and immigrant to the United States, who defected from communist Bulgaria during a tour of Western Europe in 1979 at the height of success with the Bulgarian Pop music groups Srebyrnite grivni and Tonika. She was also a Realtor and sales agent with Coldwell Banker Bain in Seattle.

Now that’s news you can use!

Leah Labelle Fan Club

So Long, Sanjaya

Matt Carter at Inman did a post a few months ago called The White Stripes are unZillowable, about lead man Jack White, who put his house on the market for $930K but Zillow had the Zestimate at $256,947.

Jack and Meg White / White Stripes

(Even if you’re not familiar with The White Stripes music, you may remember Jack and Meg White’s personal history. In early interviews, the pair presented themselves as siblings, two of ten. However, the Detroit Free Press famously produced copies of not only their marriage license, but divorce certificate, confirming their history as a married couple.)

Maureen Francis, of SKBK Sotheby’s, had several articles about this home, as I guess it created quite a buzz in Detroit. From what I understand, the particular district of Indian Village, where Jack’s home was located, is a beautifully preserved neighborhood, a historical oasis in a sea of crime and decay, and very few homes in Detroit proper ever get close to the $1M mark. The city itself has been steadily losing population since the 1970′s and many beautiful and historic buildings have been abandoned.

(As a side note, Seattle has been lucky enough to stem the flow of “white flight“, even though we had the same court-mandated forced bussing program for integration that Detroit did. Now, the Seattle Public Schools are some of the best in the country, Garfield High School, an inner-city school, has more National Merit Scholars than tony Lakeside School, Bill Gates Alma Mater, and the suburbs have more gang activity than any inner-city neighborhood. The city of Seattle has higher property values than many suburbs, and the suburbs, if not crime-ridden and full of functionally obsolescent homes and bland architecture (think Kent, Auburn, Lynnwood, Crossroads) are culturally a wasteland with nary a professional theater, orchestra or fine art museum to be found. Redmond, home of Microsoft and a nearby suburb of Seattle, doesn’t have a lot of crime, but it doesn’t have anything else either, except for a mall with a couple of movie theaters. Bellevue, with a population of over 100K and a vibrant economy, has no professional theater, orchestra nor ballet and the only fine arts museum closed and re-opened as an arts & crafts venue with no permanent collection to call its own.)

So, in the Inman blog post, Matt had noted that the Zestimate for Jack White’s house was $256,947, with a value range of $156,738-$706,604. But now the Zestimate is $26,944.

I realize that Michigan does not allow official publication of sales information from their public records, so Zillow can be very ineffective in this situation. But that’s a pretty wide range of value there. Especially since Maureen just told me it sold and closed for $590,000.

I happen to live in a state that allows public viewing of this information and can only imagine how my hands would be tied if not allowed to know what the last sales price was. But, at the same time, it seems like a pretty big invasion of privacy for everyone to know what one paid for ones house. There’s your transparency for ya.

Long Gone John

One of the White Stripes first albums was released by Long Gone John and Sympathy for the Record Label. In the seventeen years SFTRL has been in existence, John has released over 750 records and helped launch the careers of several other well known, controversial and talented artists, including Courtney Love and her band Hole and The Donnas first incarnation, The Electrocutes. Some of John’s less famous but yet still very notable Sympathy acts over the years have been The Muffs, The Von Bondies, Rocket From the Crypt, The Mumps, April March, The (International) Noise Conspiracy, The Dwarves, Buck, Suicide, The Gun Club, Billy Childish, Turbonegro, Man or Astro-man?, Scarling, Inger Lorre and Motel Shootout, and Redd Kross.

Long Gone John is moving himself, having sold his mid-sized Spanish-style home in Long Beach CA, to a mini-mansion on the shores of Puget Sound in Pierce County (where, for the same price as a mid-century rambler in Southern California, he bought himself a waterfront dream home).

John has had a film made about him, “The Treasures of Long Gone John“, about his music business, his impact on music and culture and his fabulous art collection.

Now the same film director, Gregg Gibbs, is making a new film about the MOVE of Long Gone John called “The Gone World“. Apparently, John has so many possessions, items, art, furnuriture, collectables, ephemera, souvineers, object d’art, crap and crapola that it’s been taking months to pack it and Greg is documenting the packing and subsequent move.

(We visited his home last year and documented a bit of his super-fab art collection.)

Apparently it’s taking months longer than planned and more than one moving van. Too bad he didn’t use one of those real estate agents in Southern California who advertise a free moving truck.

The White Stripes (as interpreted by uber-cool Seattle artist Sara Lanzilotta.)

Jack White’s Michigan crib under contract

Jack White Slept Here…and Recorded Here…and Ate Over There…

Jack White’s house sold on Modern Age (with photos)

I couldn’t think of any famous garages here in Seattle, unless you counted
Kurt Cobain’s, whose life ended in his garage.

HappyDeathInc.

Nirvana was arguably Seattle’s greatest garage band, though
not its only famous one.

Today, February 20th, would have been Kurt’s 40th birthday. He was born in 1967 in Aberdeen, WA.

The garage was torn down by Courtney, shortly after his death, perhaps because she couldn’t stand looking at it or maybe to avoid it becoming a shrine.

Courtney sold the house in 1997 for $2,895,000. The listing agent had a brokers Open House, and the curious were able to wander about for clues to the previous owners existence. The garage had been torn down by then, a fence put up around the property and a bench erected in Viretta Park, that has had to substitute for a shrine. Courtney had contacted Lake View Cemetery (where Bruce Lee is buried) and Greenwood Memorial Park in Renton (where Jimi is buried) but both cemetery owners were concerned about security. Cobain was cremated; the cremains are kept in an undisclosed private location. His family has yet to approve of any official memorial site.

Zillow has the home listed
with a ZESTIMATE of $5,861,884.00. Which is probably about right.

www.Flickr.com

This Saturday, February 24th, would have been Kurt and Courtney’s wedding anniversary. They were married 2/24/92 in Hawaii.

Angelo Bruscas in his PI blog,
Seattle@Nite writes of the 12th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death in an entry entitled “Nirvana at Nite”. The 13th anniversary is coming up April 8th.

The home where Nirvana played its first gig was on the auction block for sale last year.

This is not the first Cobain home lost ….Courtney Love lost both her New York home and a historic home in Olympia she bought for Kurt’s sister Kim.

Cobain listing on Ebay

The other members of Nirvana were Dave Grohl, who went on to front Foo Fighters and lives on the East Coast.

Krist Novoselic’s ties are deeper in the Northwest, and he spends time in Seattle and in his home Southwest Washington he shares with his wife, local clothing designer Darbury Stendaru, who had a studio on 1st Avenue, but now only does trunk shows. They also celebrate their wedding anniversary this month (2/27).

In 1995, Novoselic founded JAMPAC (Joint Artists and Music Promotions Political Action Committee), an organization that advocated on behalf of Washington state’s music community. Novoselic’s work with JAMPAC helped Seattle club owners find ways to host all-ages shows, and was instrumental in helping to overturn the (anti-)Teen Dance Ordinance. And sometimes making music and making a statement go hand in hand, as when Novoselic, Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil, and drummer Gina Mainwal backed Jello Biafra as the “No W.T.O. Combo” at a show performed during the World Trade Organization conference held in Seattle in 1999.

There have been other musical endeavors since Nirvana, as well as new causes. Novoselic is a strong supporter of electoral reform, an issue he writes about extensively on his website Fix Our United States.

He’s also published several books, including
Of Grunge & Government: Let’s Fix This Broken Democracy!

Instant runoff voting: speaking to voter needs
By Krist Novoselic (Seattle Times)

IRV, a better way, by Krist Novoselic, The Nation

Guide to Pacific Northwest Bands, garage or otherwise

Photos of Kurt Cobain’s Seattle house on Flickr

A walking tour of Kurt Cobain’s Aberdeen

33 things you should know about Nirvana — Blender

Cobain unofficial memorial at Viretta Park

Sad reminder of Kurt Cobain’s legacy
- Cobain/Love house sold in foreclosure

Kurt Cobain: Seven Years Later –
a Reflection by Clark Humphrey on HistoryLink.org

Yes, Virginia! There is a Poncho Claus! We spent a lovely Xmas with Elvez, the Mexican Elvis. www.Elvez.net

¿Mamacita Donde Esta Santa Claus?

Max, Jack, Sam and Elvez wishing you Feliz Navidad!