elger bay institoot
Folks are always a little surprised to learn that the South End is home to a school of higher learning, figuring, I guess, that a brackish backwash with virtually no commercial potential, with no public schools even, might be likelier to have a minimum security penitentiary than a college. For awhile we had the Tucson School, an unaccredited mail order degree factory run out of Nate Benson’s basement for a few years before enough irate students complained to the state attorney general. Nate did get his opportunity to attend a minimum security prison, but not around here. He graduated in 3 years with good behavior and no one has seen hide nor hair since, but late at night I notice TV ads for university degrees that sound vaguely familiar.
The Elger Bay Institoot of Aesthetic Enlargement has been training young artists for nearly 25 years now. Half the graduates end up staying here and some become instructors themselves. The pay isn’t great, but considering the graduates who don’t teach are making far less, it beats the options. President Otto Vermouth runs a pretty tight ship, near as any of us unwashed masses can tell and nowadays you can find art plastered everywhere from Tyee Store to Jolene’s Beauty Salon and Boutique. Even the Marina and Bait Shop sports watercolors and bird sculpture. It’s practically a Louvre down here, although sadly I won’t say most of us have really had our aesthetic consciousness blown up too large. The Mabana Body Shop has an egg termpura of one of our more infamous graduates, Safari Jack. Jack says it’s worth more than Roadkill Ronald’s 1964 Mustang convertible, fully restored, but right next to it is a 2003 girlie calendar Ronald must like as much as that egg tempura of the Clamdiggers. Most of us like it even better, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder and Miss July 2003 fills the eye, believe me.
The Institoot has classes in everything you can want to study art-wise. Right now they’re running Winter Classes. I thought about taking something myself, stained glass maybe, but it cost a bit more for the supplies and anyway, I figured I’d lacerate a finger or an artery and my literary ambitions would be ruined.
Maybe in Spring session I’ll take Figure Studies, if they can squeeze another voyeur in. Jerry Cochran’s wife models for the class. She’s no Miss July, but it seems safer than stained glass anyway. At least until Jerry finds out where she’s been moonlighting….
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