SAFEWAY CLUB CARD PHOTOBOOTH PHOTOS   OLYMPIA 1990’S

I am a card carrying member of the club are you? If you’re not hip to the scene, just go down to your local Safeway and sign up, it feels good to be a part of something bigger than yourself and the it feels great to save money every time you shop!

This is my first Safeway Club Card. I’ll never forget the day I got it…actually I have no idea when I got it. In fact all I remember about the card is that I resisted getting it through a few purchases at Safeway because it felt ridiculous and demeaning. I felt like I was being coerced to jump through a silly hoop by a huge corporation dangling the Pavlovian promise of “savings” in front of my face. Savings I could only get if I got the harmless little card.

I could almost hear the genial spokesvoice over the P.A.:

“Dear valued shopper, you don’t have to get the card or anything. No one is forcing you to get the card. If you really don’t want the card for some reason (we can’t imagine why) all you have to do is pay a little more for the things you’re buying today or go shop somewhere else, but why would you want to do that when you could simply join the club and get a nice new attractive card for your wallet? Won’t you join the club and be a part of our family of savings?”

Okay, okay. Lemme have the card. I don’t know what the card does. I don’t know what it’s for. I don’t know how it is that stores could survive for centuries without the card, but WTF, I’m here now, buying this salsa and I want to save a dollar so I’ll take the card. 

Fast forward 15 years…

I shopped at Safeway yesterday, as I do occasionally, and I used my current Club Card to save $3.33 which was 12% of the cost of my total purchase. Imagine how much I’ve saved since getting my first Club Card back in the 1990’s! I’ve probably saved enough to buy a plane ticket to an exotic vacation destination. All because I took the leap and joined the club. Thank you Safeway!

Speaking of clubs, there once was a club in Olympia called the North Shore Surf Club where bands used to play. I saw a couple shows there when it was the NSSC but its heyday was before my time in Olympia. I saw more shows in the room when it was called Thekla.  I won’t go on too much about the venue because I’m not especially qualified to, I’ll just say it hosted tons of great bands over the years. Bands like Black Flag(*), Nirvana, The White Stripes, Beat Happening, Bikini Kill, Bad Brains, on and on.

My most vivid memories of the place are not of shows at all but rather they’re of the ordinary weeknights when the place was just a bar where different friends of mine and I would hang out and have a good time. Thekla was home to a really fun Karaoke night. Jared Warren of KARP, The Whip, Big Business, The Melvins fame was sometimes the KJ for those nights. Was Kathleen Hanna a KJ there too? My memories are a little foggy. Who worked there? Did Brian Boswell? Vern Rumsey comes to mind (*). Why am I asking you?

The Karaoke scene was a blast. I remember Chris Smith from KARP doing his spot-on Brian Johnson on “You Shook Me All Night Long”, then there was that one guy who always did “Friends in Low Places” by Garth Brooks, I myself pretty much always did, and still do, Journey or GnR. I remember one time when Ad-Rock was in town, he got up and did “U Can’t Touch This” by M.C. Hammer. As he stumbled through the track I was standing next to a hippie fella who turned his open-mouthed gaze from the stage to a friend standing beside him and said “That dude sounds like the guy from the Beastie Boys” It was true, in fact he sounded exactly like him. 

Thekla was home to another import from Japan as well: one of those new-fangled digital photobooths with the silly caption and border options. This is the place in the story where the the Safeway Club and local night club meet because I used my Club Card as a wallet gallery of my friend’s sticker portraits.

Looking at the card today I see a nice little snapshot of the time as I knew it. This snapshot has a particular poignance because Scott Jernigan (top center) isn’t here to read this post and make a funny comment about his funny face. To say Scott was one of the most talented (really talented as in world class, drum-hero drummer), sweetest, and funniest people I’ve known still feels like I’m selling the guy short somehow. I guess it’s the past tense phrasing that gets me: he’s gone but on the other hand, he isn’t really gone at all.

Maybe it’s the Facebook effect, where everyone we’ve ever known seems to be out there somewhere doing their thing or maybe it’s just that his energy is too near and vital to the many people who love him, myself included. It just doesn’t feel appropriate to use the past tense when talking about him so I won’t. It’s not a cliche, it’s a fact that Scott lives on in all the people who love him and hold his memory and his music dear.

I’ll leave it to you to figure out who else is who on the card (consult the tags for the answer key). I’ll close by saying that that happy looking, attractive couple in the bottom right hand corner, Casey Lynn McKee and Noah Herlocker, are now married and have two of the coolest, funniest kids ever. Those kids are almost as funny as Scott Jernigan!

I don’t mean to sound glib about it, it’s just that as you get older and you say goodbye to more members of your family it is very heartening to meet fresh new additions to the human family that have a spark that makes you believe there is hope for us all in this crazy crap-shoot.

Hakuna matata, that beat up old circle of life bounces along.

*Sarah Utter says: “Jared was the KJ at the ‘new thekla’ and Kathleen was the KJ at the original. good times. employees were Brian Boswell, Vern Rumsey, Mike Elvin, Jennifer Hukee, myself (new thekla) and countless other weirdo punks. Joe Preston checked id’s for a while!”

*Tobi Vail says: “Before it was the North Shore Surf Club it was just The Surf Club a teen disco for 80’s new wave kids. Their 80’s night was weird because they often played the same songs as they did in the 80’s to the same audience who were in their 30’s. Black Flag played The Tropicana not Surf Club!

A very surreal moment for me was watching Alec Mackaye dance to Styx Mr Roboto at Thekla’s 80’s night in 1996 after Berzerk covered Minor Threat opening for the Warmers in the building where the Trop used to be….which is called Jake’s now…I can’t’ remember what it used to be called though?”

R.I.P. and hilarity Scott Jernigan.

(Safeway Club Card from my personal archives)