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Celebration of Olympia Artists – May 1983 – By LLyn De Danaan

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In 1983, Lynn Patterson (aka LLyn De Danaan, photographer and cultural anthropologist), Marilyn Frasca (visual artist and Evergreen faculty), Shannon Osborne (owner of Smithfield Café), Mary Fitzgerald (photographer), Candy Street, Cappy Thompson (glass artist) and Carolyn McIntyre (the founder of Radiance) created an arts feast to demonstrate that artists were at the core of a new Olympia. They organized a month-long “Celebration of Olympia Artists” and, in the spirit of inclusivity and collaboration, invited the community to submit information about their own events and to participate in a variety of shows.

Life on a Hippie Farm By Anna Schlecht

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In the early days of Evergreen there was little housing on campus and not much rental housing available in town. Apparently, many of the first students lived in tents and lean-tos in the woods surrounding campus. When I first came to Olympia in the mid-1970s, I was enchanted by those stories and decided that was the life for me. Somehow I heard about IOCWAT Farm (In Our Community We Are Together), most likely one of the other residents rolled through my check-out line at the downtown food co-op and told me there was an opening. Or perhaps I found a flier about the farm with a tear-off number to call. However it was that I found the farm, moving to this rural commune began my chapter of living off grid.

The Launch of the Columbia Street Food Co-op – By Anna Schlecht and Beth Hartmann

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In 1977, the brand new storefront Co-op was coming together, the result of volunteers building shelves, plugging in coolers, and setting out the food. Over the years, the migrating co-ops had gone through numerous incarnations. Finally, the Columbia Street Food Co-op emerged in its current form, built on an organizational foundation that would last into the future. We were both part of the launch of this community cornerstone.

Coming to Olympia – By Susan Christian

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I had never seen such a beautiful place as the western side of the Cascades. I drove to Olympia, little and peaceful. I found Marilyn living in a small old house with a big chicken coop. I slept in the chicken coop which was also Marilyn’s studio. Now the spot has a Big Lots store on it. The land where the mall is now, across West 9th Street, was acres of Scotch broom.

Going to the Left Coast – By Anna Schlecht

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Without consciously knowing it, I had moved two thousand miles away from my family to come out—it was other gay people I was looking for. Once I admitted that to myself, it seemed like Olympia was crawling with lesbians. In my daily flight path of looking for work and trying to meet people, I often circled by Laura’s store downtown, the Rainbow Grocery. I have no idea how she identified, but her store sure seemed to draw a lot of lesbians. They all seemed so much older and wiser, as everyone older than nineteen seems to an eighteen-year-old.

Gay Nights at the Conestoga! – By Anna Schlecht and Alexis Jetter

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After a few minutes, though, the tone changed, and the music stopped. The owner, who was at the club that night, cut us off from the bar and ordered us to leave, telling us that we’d be arrested if we returned. We were shocked—as were several people at the bar, who looked at us with a mixture of curiosity and discomfort. We refused to budge from the dance floor and demanded an explanation. The owner said he had the right to refuse service to anyone he pleased. “If you let certain types or elements, take over a place,” he later told the Daily Olympian, “you’re going to be hurting.”