To This Brit, Aurora Is City's Own Kitschy Coup

If you don't like Aurora, you won't like America.

That's the thesis of a recent Seattle transplant, Brit author Jonathan Raban. In the July American Airlines magazine, Raban writes not to bury but to praise Aurora Avenue, that kitschy stretch of plastic-bannered car lots, no-tell motels and signboards gone seismic.

Flying in the face of the good-taste police, Raban offers an immigrant's-eye view of Aurora. He writes, "When I came to live in the United States a couple of years ago, I took to haunting Aurora because, in this age of the ersatz, it is the real thing."

Raban admits that Aurora is tacky (Rick's Auto Wrecking) and vulgar (Club Extasy - All Hot, All Nude, All Exciting Showgirls). He agrees that its architecture is primitive and its maze of neon signs and readerboards glitch-prone ("like an unfinished crossword puzzle").

Yet he treasures the avenue's surprises, stopping at the Twin Teepees for a chicken-fried steak, at the Timid Gun Shop for a gun lecture and at the Aurora Flower Shop to inquire about the concrete elephant. (It was a public-works project during the Depression.)

Rabin contrasts Aurora with "planner-beloved" Pike Place Market, saying, "On Aurora one can see the region's face, without makeup, caught in an unguarded and unself-conscious mood. What you see on Aurora is what people here are really like."

Rabin's final point: "It is mercifully impossible to imagine Ralph Lauren opening one of his clothing stores on the strip; the down-to-earth context of Aurora would make it look instantly ridiculous."

Hmmmm. Do you suppose the National Historic Register is ready for Aurora?

CAFE WEDGWOOD: Brace yourself. What may be Latteland's first espresso garage sale - but probably not the last - takes place today in the Wedgwood neighborhood.

Susan Weiss organized the sale for the Children's Campaign Fund. She says, "It's one alternative to continually asking friends for money."

She happened to have a commercial espresso machine, so she gambled that free espresso would draw customers. Among the eclectic items Weiss is offering at her garage sale: used hockey pucks.

QUEASY RIDER: Madison Park residents can be excused for doing a double take. Tooling around the quiet neighborhood is downtown developer Martin Selig, mounted on his brand new Harley Davidson. The color is banana yellow.

But, on the good side, Selig's Harley pales beside the two-wheeler owned by John Carlson, conservative columnist and KIRO-TV commentator. Carlson has less conservative tastes in vehicles. His Harley is flamingo pink.

BUSMAN'S HOLIDAY: How do Seattle bike cops spend their time off? Off-duty SPD officers Bob Besaw, Greg Calder, Tom Henshaw, Mike Pugel and Phil Wall recently rode their own mountain bikes from Seattle to Vantage, Kittitas County, via the Iron Horse State Park Trail.

Temperatures in Vantage hit 102 degrees, but the resourceful bikesters (copsickles?) cooled off by riding through irrigation sprinkers. Their consensus: After that ride, Seattle's downtown potholes feel like sofa cushions.

IRON JANE: Spotted on Roosevelt Way near University District was a red Nissan Sentra with a MUSCLES vanity plate and an "I'd rather be pumping iron" bumper sticker. But the driver wasn't Iron John. It was a long-haired woman athlete. Jean Godden's column appears Sunday, Monday, Wednesday and Friday in the Northwest section of The Times. Her phone is 464-8300.