♪♪
-A little bit softer,
it's the dynamic range to be able to hold the scene
really well, it's nice.
-It's tough to beat digital for cheap
and easy picture taking.
So why is film photography enjoying a comeback?
-By the end of the week, they're jumping.
Go. Big run!
-A five time world champion jump roper
is training the next generation.
And they're already bringing home the gold.
These stories and more next on "CityStream."
♪♪
Welcome to "CityStream" from Kerry Park
on the south slope of Queen Anne Hill.
This has long been one of the most popular spots
to snap a picture of the city.
And it's the perfect setting for our first story.
Hi, I'm Enrique Cerna.
Film photography is making a comeback
as people trade digital images for the old way
of making pictures.
But as producer Michael Crowe explains,
one thing remains the same,
it's what you capture that matters most.
♪♪
-In a world that is increasingly digital,
the disconnect of bits and bytes flying through space
to bring us sounds and images.
People want something real.
Something they can hold in their hands.
-Put, can't remember, 400 black and white film in.
-And for Joe Tobiason this is about as real as it gets.
-I just always enjoyed film
and after college was moving to Peru to work for a non-profit.
So I bought a Minolta SRT101 film camera for $25 on eBay.
Just proceeded to try to shoot as much
as I could while I lived there.
-The rest is history.
Roll after roll he fell in love with photography
and has kept going through his adult life.
From making film photos for clients
on back country elopements and weddings,
to pictures of his kids as they grow up.
Today, he's out with his son Nico.
-Queen, you see a queen? -Yeah.
-Where's the queen?
-There. -Where?
Oh the crane, yes, you're totally right.
-Working an ongoing project exploring Seattle's
relationship with the ocean and water.
-I like film for a lot of reasons.
I love the color of it,
I think that color film has just a beautiful way of looking,
that it's a little bit softer,
it's the dynamic range to be able to hold the scene
really well, is nice.
But I take what I like most about the process is that,
I am in control of so many steps of it.
Like rolling the film, to putting it in the camera,
to shooting the pictures, to then developing it myself,
to scanning it myself and then getting it ready for delivery
or whatever, for me that it's like,
I get to touch every single level across the whole process.
And that feels very personal in each one of those steps.
-He's one of the growing number of people
that has made the old new again.
Trading digital cameras for film,
celluloid that has to be developed to see each picture
for going the instant feedback of modern cameras.
Whether it's the control or that intentional slowdown,
the process is part of the appeal.
-Film is not dead.
♪♪
People have rediscovered film, people are shooting film,
people want to make images from film.
-Mary Fleenor has noticed the surge of interest
these past few years.
She founded Panda Lab with Dana Drake in Seattle in 1983.
And has been operating here in the shadow
of the Space Needle since 1985.
-Both Dana and I were photographers.
We both had small children at the time we started.
And the idea was that we would have
more control over our lives.
While still leaving time for our families.
Those families have grown up,
we still have the love of the business.
-A business that has seen so much life past
through its doors.
The recent moments and frames
are draped all around the shop and prints
from some of the most famous images
they've handled hang on the wall of the dark room.
-Look who we've got.
We got Bill Gates in the early years.
And then next to him is Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
We got a lot of the presidents on this wall,
from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton.
There's Marilyn Monroe, there's Johnny Cash.
Jimmy Hendrix, it's been an interesting journey for us
from being a little black and white lab.
With just this one space to where we are now.
-Certainly some things have changed over the years.
Now most folks want digital scans of their negatives
instead of the contact sheets.
But the memories, the memories stay the same.
As Mary transitions the business more to her daughter, Jessica.
-Like literally my whole life
my mom has worked in a dark room in some capacity.
So, she would hand you rolls of film to shoot as a kid,
I have pictures of me with a camera as a kid.
Lots pictures of me as a kid,
because I grew up with a photographer for a mother
-The pictures have always been about family.
-I want to show you something.
This is part of the love. This is my mother.
-And some just mean more.
-In 1939,
this is the original and the photos that you take
and keep make a history of your surroundings,
your life, your passions, your love.
And it shares that in some way with other people.
When people bring their copy work in,
they're preserving their own family treasures.
That I really love.
-And those are being captured every day...
-How is this boat from Vail, Colorado?
-...by photographers like Joe.
-That doesn't make any sense.
-Sharing time with their kids. -Do you see a yellow boat?
Do you see which one has yellow in it?
-Making memories...
-That one, good job, hey, good job bud.
-...and photographs.
-So when I had kids I wanted cameras
that I could take pictures of the moment.
And be done with it.
It helps us all
to just to be a little bit more present and stuff.
And it totally it's just, it's nostalgia,
like it's what I,
like I look at the photos of them from their childhood
and it feels like a bit of my own childhood in it
and I don't know, it's cheesy, but it also makes me happy, so.
-Family memories preserved for generations to come.
-But it also kind of makes it more fun to look back
and they're like, yeah, we took that photo together bud.
What do you see dude?
[ Speaking native language ]
♪♪
-Besides Panda Lab
there are several other film shops still operating in Seattle
and even more across the country
and that take mail orders to scan and deliver digital files.
And if you'd like to try developing for yourself,
the non-profit Photographic Center Northwest offers
dark room rentals for both beginners and professionals.
For more information checkout their website at PCNW.org.
She's a world champ at this.
Now she's teaching kids a few tricks.
And hopefully got a lifelong cash in for fitness.
That's next as "CityStream" continues.
♪♪
-Welcome back to "CityStream."
Several members of a west Seattle based team placed first
and third in the American Jump Rope
national championships last summer.
Their coach is a five-time world champion,
whose vision is turn jump roping into a lifelong love
for health and fitness.
As Tatevik Aprikyan explains, the jump rope is just a vessel
for kids to learn important life skills.
-Please give a round of applause
to Jump Rope Camp summer 2024.
Ready, set, go. Big run!
-As camp comes to a close,
it's performance day for these elementary kids
to showcase their new talents.
-One, two, ready, go.
-From single rope jumps, to double dutch, and freestyle.
Just one week of camp has turned these kids into little skippers.
-And one, two, ready, go. You're out, bow and wave.
Yeah, by the end of this week they're jumping.
You know, they're not perfect, but they're learning new skills
and there's enough variety in the camp,
because the way that you get better at jumping rope
is through repetition.
Ready, go. I tell the kids all the time,
the more you do it the better you get.
And so we just try to find really creative ways
to make it fun to practice.
Don't take that first stutter jump, run and leap, ready, go.
-It's fitness made fun with a few life lessons
thrown in between the turns.
-When I was teaching I was noticing
that a lot of the kids were giving up really early.
And I had to keep saying things like,
well, mistakes are normal, it's okay.
Go!
Keep trying, it's all about trying
and I realized I was just sounding like a broken record.
And so then I just decided
that instead of saying it to each individual person
that I would really make that part of the curriculum.
So, I would talk about making mistakes,
I would talk about comparing yourself to other people
and that everybody learns at a different pace.
And I would use examples and my own personal stories.
When I did that it changed the program.
Big run.
-The lessons are resonating with students
like nine year old Keva Bannon.
-One, two, ready, go, big jump.
-She always says when you first do it,
if you mess up it means that you're improving because,
if you never mess up then you'll never learn.
-And Rene's own personal story she ties into her coaching,
well those are made for the record books.
-My names Rene Bibaud.
I'm a professional rope jumper,
I've been jumping rope for 44 years.
Performing, competing, coaching, teaching.
I'm five time world jump rope champion,
I started jumping rope
when I was 10 on a jump rope team called the Hot Dogs.
-Yes, you heard that right,
Rene Bibaud is a five time world champion jump roper.
[ Cheers and applause ]
That's Rene on the Hot Dogs team
with her beloved coach Bob Melson.
-And I had really great coach who always knew
how to kind of have the next thing that would get us excited,
another trip, another competition,
he always set us up for success.
We lost him a couple years ago.
And his impact has been huge.
I mean, you ask any of the kids
that worked under coach Bob Melson,
and they say how he impacted their lives.
-She quickly fell in love with the sport of jump roping
after joining the team and hasn't put down the rope since.
-It's a creative outlet,
it's something that you can do at your own individual pace.
It's a full body workout, it's a great alternative to running.
If it's raining outside,
you can jump rope indoors
and still get sort of that cardiovascular conditioning.
And then all the jumping is really great
for bone density and building up that bone density.
So, I mean, it's just like,
for me, I think it's the perfect cardiovascular exercise,
because it hits a lot of your major muscle groups.
-While competing at world championships,
Bibaud began doing color commentary
on jump roping for ESPN. Then a special viewer
who happened to be watching her on TV gave Rene a call
that would transform her life.
-I got a phone call back in like late 1990s,
somebody speaking French to me.
Asking if I wanted to be in the circus.
And it turned out it was Gilles Ste-Crois from Cirque du Soleil.
And I went and saw the show, I fell in love with it.
I ran away and joined the circus.
-She was asked to coach the acrobats on a jump rope number
and also be a featured artist,
performing with Cirque du Soleil.
-I had very little exposure to the arts.
I didn't know what Cirque du Soleil was.
We were more a sport oriented community, right?
Baseball, basketball, football, it was odd enough
that we were doing jump rope as a sport.
Joining the circus and meeting other people who did odd,
interesting, different things
and it was put to music and lighting and costume and makeup,
I mean, it was like coming,
it was the whole nother dimension
that I didn't even know existed. So I fell in love with it.
-Bibaud is now the owner of Ropeworks based in west Seattle.
She's an educator, a motivational speaker
and entertainer with a focus on youth fitness
and specialty performances.
-You got it girls!
-This past summer her advanced students placed
in the American Jump Rope National Championship.
-Alright! See if that helps.
-Now those students help out at her summer camp,
inspiring the younger kids to keep turning the rope.
-Yeah, I want them to come away with life skills.
Out, out, steer.
-But for Bibaud at the root of it all, it's personal,
paying it forward in honor of her coach
who sparked the love for jumping when she was this age.
-I always thought, I want to return the favor,
I don't know what that's going to look like
and I know I'm not doing it nearly as well as he ever did.
But, that's really my inspiration is just trying
to kind of give back.
And it matters to me. Arms up!
Now jump rope camp performance, 2024!
Thanks everybody!
You know, I really care about the kids that I work with.
It was great to have you in camp.
It feels good to do something positive in the world,
that you really love and enjoy to.
Oh good. Thank you.
♪♪
-Rene Bibaud runs year-round workshops,
including after school programs, camps
and she also coaches kids and adults.
To learn more about the sport or Ropeworks
check out learntojumprope.com.
We're at the point in the show when we turn back the clock
and explore a fascinating bit of Seattle history.
In this installment,
Julie Kerssen of the Seattle Municipal Archives,
explores the Cutlet Curfew.
-In 1965 the Seattle Junior Chamber of Commerce
lead an effort to amend an old law
that prohibited the sell of red meat
after 6:00 p.m. in Seattle stores.
The ordinance stated that a licensed meat salesman,
meaning a butcher,
must be on site for customers to make a purchase.
Since butchers did not work past six o'clock,
this meant no one could buy meat after that time.
This was referred to as the Cutlet Curfew.
The rule also applied all day on Sunday's.
The chamber collected over 15,000 signatures from citizens
who agreed it was time for the law to be changed.
And some media outlets joined the campaign as well.
KAYO Radio ran six editorials encouraging the change.
One of the spots noted
that the existing ordinance was written in 1931
before modern refrigeration technology.
Another editorial pointed out
that it was possible to buy fresh fish and poultry,
which they argued was more perishable than red meat,
without a butcher being on hand.
And called the law antiquated and ridiculous.
KAYO also noted that in both Spokane and Tacoma,
consumers could buy meat after six o'clock and asked,
why is the city of Seattle so different?
They summed up,
we must concede that it surely takes a qualified butcher
to cut and wrap your fresh meats properly.
But it completely escapes us
why it takes a butcher to sell that package meat.
A collection of post cards addressed to meat at KIRO Radio,
shows that KIRO had also been seeking opinions
from the city's consumers.
Some messages were simple like, meat, yes.
Other comments called the cutlet curfew the craziest law
I've ever heard of and another out of date law
that serves to give the state of Washington a backward look.
One writer declared that, my friends are crooks,
they phone their butcher to put aside meat for after six pickup.
Whoever heard of bootlegging meat except in Seattle?
The Director of Public Health was reluctant
the ordinance and in fact wanted to strengthen it
to include poultry, rabbit and fish.
He pointed out that the original law was written
because adulterated meat and meat
from diseased animals have been being sold
and that the ordinance done its job
of keeping the meat supply safe.
However, after the mayor also endorsed the change,
he seemed to see the writing on the wall
and he recommended that a committee be appointed
to write any amendments.
The ordinance was indeed amended in April of 1965
to allow the sale of prepackaged meats between six and nine pm.
♪♪
-Just ahead, recent sightings of lights
in the night sky prompts the return of "CityStream's"
most watched story, ever.
♪♪
-In the past few months strange lights in the night sky
prompted a flood of calls to authorities on the East Coast.
Closer to home, "CityStream" aired a story in 2019
that would become the most watched video
on our YouTube channel, with nearly five million views.
It delves into a subject
that humans have pondered for millennia.
Today the search for truth continues, Feliks Banel reports.
-Unidentified flying objects, UFOs,
for decades people in the pacific northwest
have seen things in the sky that they can't explain.
-We saw this immense object in the field over there.
And lights that were spinning,
that had something we never seen before.
It took up most of this valley
and it was just hovering, it was just hovering.
And we were mesmerized.
-Gloria Bonacci and her friend Mary saw something too.
-We were walking along and all of a sudden we looked up
and there was an object.
It seemed to come out of nowhere.
And of course we were scared
and we ducked down in some tall grass behind a fence line.
It was football shaped,
it had red lights, all of sudden it went up
and horizontally it went toward the high bluff
and it just kind of went below the bluff
and then seemed to just go really fast and be gone.
-Susan and Gloria both live on Whidbey Island,
not far from the Navy base.
They don't know each other,
but on separate occasions in the 1960s
when they were kids,
they say they saw something in the skies above the island
that neither could identify.
Whatever they saw Whidbey Island resident
and former NASA scientist Dick Haines,
asked that you please not call them UFOs.
-It begs the question, unidentified flying object,
we don't know they're objects, yet, right?
Do they fly?
Well some do and some don't, right?
They're certainly unidentified,
so we like the u part.
So we say the UAP is a better way of presenting this idea.
It's aerial and it's a phenomenon,
that's all we know.
-Haines grew up near Seattle,
he worked as a NASA scientist
and though he was skeptical
about unidentified aerial phenomena,
he eventually founded a group
that collects anonymous reports from pilots.
-I heard these stories from pilots that just blew me away.
And they forced me to move that hypothesis
that it was all controlled variables
and so forth, it was something totally different.
And that's what got me started.
-The northwest has a long history
of unidentified phenomena.
And people around Seattle saw things
before that more famous Roswell incident in New Mexico.
A pilot named Ken Arnold
famously coined the term flying saucer,
when he saw a group of silvery discs in skies near Mt. Rainier,
way back on June 24, 1947.
And it was three days before that
when something called the Maury Island incident took place
on Puget Sound near Des Moines.
Steve Edmiston, along with Scott Schaefer made a film about it.
-On June 21 a man named Harold Dahl,
who has a 50 foot boat,
he goes to a dock in Tacoma and he picks up two dock workers.
He also brings his son Charles,
also brings the family dog Sparky.
And they're all on the boat and they're,
go three miles and they're just off Maury Island.
When they see, allegedly, six flying discs.
They describe them as round and hollow like a doughnut.
But then there's this explosion and according to the accounts,
the explosion is almost like a molten lava.
They refer to it as slag.
And it's pelting down and it's right above the boat,
Harold's son is burned badly on his arm.
The boats being badly damaged.
So they are so frightened they take that 50 foot boat
and they actually race it up on the beach on Maury Island
to get off the boat and hide in cliffs that were there.
-The objects flew away and the men returned to Tacoma.
They agreed to not tell anyone what they had seen.
The next day Edmiston says,
a mysterious man dressed all in black showed up at Dahl's house.
That man took Dahl to a diner
where he encouraged Dahl to remain silent.
-You shouldn't tell anyone else what you saw.
-Dahl eventually claimed the whole incident was a hoax.
But Steve Edmiston thinks Dahl was just tired of
not being believed.
What does Steve Edmiston believe?
-This is not something to dismiss as a hoax,
it at least belongs over here.
If nothing else it belongs over here with the Roswell's
and the other great stories.
-Now to Burien
where the community was embraced
the Maury Island incident and Steven Scott's film.
And created an annual celebration inspired
by what happened.
-This is a BUFO, Burien UFO Festival.
So anything that happened, today in Burien
it's like aliens everything.
It's pretty much a day for the community to come out
and celebrate their weirdness.
♪♪
-Well I'm dressed up because I came to this show here before,
a couple of years ago.
And I love Burien, it's just one of my favorite little towns.
-Though she's dressed in a funny costume,
does Lorraine believe in UAPs?
-I want to put it this way, I don't not believe.
Okay, I would never not believe.
-Back on Whidbey Island what does Gloria Bonacci believe?
-I suppose really before I saw this with my own eyes,
I really didn't believe.
But after I saw that, you know,
I kind of think there probably is things
that we don't know about.
-Dick Haines was one of the first people
to take Gloria Bonacci and Susan Gonzales seriously.
-When I interviewed each of them separately,
the two groups had never met,
didn't know about each other's sightings.
And asked them to draw picture of what they saw,
they were drawing pretty much the same object.
-What does Susan Gonzales believe?
-We're not crazy and this really did happen.
And it really did happen on this little wonderful island.
It's not craziness, they're here.
They've been here a long time.
-And what do you believe?
Have you ever seen a UAP?
Until there's scientific proof it comes down to each of us
to imagine the possibilities.
♪♪
-Now if you see something in the sky that you can't explain,
The National UFO Reporting Center based near Spokane
is standing by to take your report.
To contact them just visit their website, nuforc.org,
that's nuforc.org.
♪♪
-Said we won't stop until our people are free.
I can hear my neighbors crying, "I can't breathe."
[ Crowd chanting indistinctly ]
-Man, just paying homage to the people
that did it before us, to get us where we are today, you know.
Trying to keep the movement moving forward.
This is my first time actually coming to the march
and participating that way.
It's big turnout, a lot more people than I thought are here,
or are going to be here.
We're all in this together and we got to figure out a way
to make it work together.
-We have to stand up, we have to use our voice,
we have to advocate.
We have to stay strong together and in unity.
Black lives matter!
That's why it's important to me to be able to do my part.
I'm here in solidarity. [ Laughs ]
[ Indistinct chanting ]
-I'm named after Martin Luther King
and wanted to make sure that we are human rights, civil rights,
make sure that the future generations understand
equality and peace and justice.
His name is Justus, right?
So making sure that we go forward, you know,
having equality, equity and peace, you know what I'm saying?
-Every year since I was born I've been going here.
It's human rights and black lives matter.
We will be here next year,
and the year after that and after that.
-It's been difficult for 400 years
but we've always had hope and we're still here.
Right, so it's, we endure, right?
And we keep pushing on.
♪♪
-Well, that wraps up this edition
of "CityStream" from Kerry Park.
If you'd like to see more outstanding
Seattle Channel programs, go to our website,
SeattleChannel.org and search for feature shows.
I'm Enrique Cerna, thanks for watching.
♪♪