EVERGREEN STATE COLLEGE, OLYMPIA, WA (2021)

Nothing like Riot Grrrl—whose shock waves are still bouncing around within our culture—has come out of Berkeley in half a century. Maybe "sunny" California is no longer the future of America.

I had to drive to a conference in Seabeck, WA and while planning my route, I saw I’d be passing through Olympia.  Which meant if I left early, I could stop and spend a few hours at Evergreen State College, a place I’d heard about for decades but never visited.

Evergreen is the legendary alternative college which made Olympia a focal point of the 1990s musical explosion in the Pacific Northwest.  Many considered the two anchor cities of the seminal Riot Grrrl movement to be Olympia and Washington DC.

Famous Evergreen alumni from that era include:  Kathleen Hanna (Bikini Kill), Calvin Johnson (Beat Happening), Kim Thayil (Soundgarden), Carrie Brownstein (Sleater Kinney), Slim Moon (Kill Rock Stars), Tobi Vail (Jigsaw zine/Bikini Kill), Bruce Pavitt (Subpop), Molly Neuman (Bratmobile).  Not to mention non-musical luminaries Matt Groening (The Simpsons), Lynda Barry (cartoonist), and Charles Burns (graphic novelist).   

When I arrived at the Evergreen campus the gates were open but no one was home.  It turned out the previous spring had been a remote learning/hybrid semester.  So the campus had probably been empty for months.