South Sound legend: The Martin

David Scherer Water

Several thousand feet of aluminum foil, a man-sized hamster wheel, a six-foot rubber duck, a closet replica, and a fake 50th birthday. These Martin shenanigans culminated in a New Year's Eve ball drop with snow machines. All of this occurred in the early 2000s, but The Martin has deeper roots in large-scale pranks. The building started as one.

 History

 In the lead-up to Prohibition, James "Old Man" Martin, a wealthy distiller and outspoken critic of the 18th Amendment, had a wild idea. Luckily for him, he was the richest man in town. He was going to build Olympia's grandest Volstead workaround.

Martin purchased the parcel at 505 Washington the same week Prohibition started. The two-story building was completed in 1923. On Christmas morning, he gave twenty of his favorite friends and family members a small gift-wrapped box. Inside was a key that opened a furnished apartment. He kept the largest one for himself.

There were no beds. Every room was made up as a living or dining area, and every unit came with a large, fully-stocked bar. For ten years, these twenty-one apartments served as the city's premier Prohibition bypass. The first rentals didn't occur until after WW II. 

 By the 1970s, there were only a few Martin family members with their original keys. It was around this time that Jack McConnehey took over as the first super. At the heart of Jack's philosophy was simple hospitality: leasing to anyone who was having a hard time renting. He didn't care how old a person was. Many of the young people who lived in the Martin in the 1980s and 1990s became major forces in the indie music revolution that started in Olympia, spread around the world, and became known simply as Grunge.

I met Jack in 1992. It was ten years before I moved in. I had no idea I was meeting my future self. We bonded over our shared love for old mechanical things, specifically typewriters. I had a 1938 Smith-Corona. I'd bought it at Goodwill, unaware the original seal was still intact. The typewriter didn't work, but when I brought it to Jack, he almost cried. He was in awe — not just because I had this particular machine, or that I got it for ten dollars — but because it was in mint condition. Jack had never touched one like this. He initially tried to convince me not to use it, to sell it to a collector who would keep it on a shelf or put it in a museum. Then Jack changed his mind. He appreciated that I was a young writer and wanted to use it, to write, to start my career. We broke the seal together.

Over the years, Jack was more than my mechanic, he was my mentor. He held court at ABC Office Equipment, his repair shop on Legion. Even when I had no reason for going, I'd drop by just to look at the gizmos on his shelves and observe the wizard at work. Jack had curious characters for friends who hung around like it was a bar. Jack was a performer, his show a mechanical menagerie.

Today, I do my writing on a yellow 1973 IBM Selectric, but thanks to Jack, the Smith-Corona is still humming. Jack died peacefully in No. 10. He was carried out on a stretcher. 

I've made continuing Jack's magic a priority. Initially, this manifested as decorating the halls with ornate mandalas fashioned from the lovely-looking junk and spare parts Jack left for me. I hosted illegal picnics and unsanctioned barbecues in parking spaces. I had a nightly poker game. I set up eight phone booths on the sidewalk (each paired with another). I started a neighborhood flea market where I rolled out the first Flat Win Products.

I also moved in all my friends.

This is what sparked the increase in good-humored mayhem, one not limited to consuming alcohol or questionable leasing decisions. The mayhem was heavy on absurdity. I can only take credit for orchestrating some of it, but I do take credit for cultivating the fertile ground.

Hamster wheel.

Courtesy of K. Jewell

The Big Party

T________ was the driver of "Around The Martin in Forty Drinks." Before the party even started, we all knew it was going to be a one-time thing. It's not that anything got too badly damaged, it was more the terrifying scale of it all. The experience left everyone with a deep appreciation for the number one thousand.

Before the night got going, V________ volunteered to remain at the front door. He liked being a bouncer, but he also loved statistics. He kept a count going. At the height of the party, we made the announcement into a guitar amp that was being used as a loudspeaker: we achieved the goal. There were one thousand people inside The Martin.

Most of them were in the halls. With the lights off, smoke machines, lasers, strobes, and two DJs at opposite ends transformed the horseshoe-shaped hallway into a makeshift nightclub. Many of the apartments were operating take-out windows, selling food, drink, or in my case, a prepackaged twig. 

Afterwards, there was widespread agreement to never do it again. It was time for a new era, the golden age of large-scale pranks.

Foil

C________ was going away for a week and within an hour of his departure, I looked the other way while a group of his friends borrowed my keys, broke into his apartment and worked around the clock for days. The sheer magnitude of this first major prank is captured in photos, but really, you had to walk around inside it and feel the colossal iridescence. Individual coins, books, CDs, utensils and even the toilet paper were consumed in perfect, dazzling silver. To this day, a small area of the apartment remains wrapped in aluminum foil.

Hamster Wheel

L_______ was one of the masterminds of the foil prank, but at the time he didn't live in the building. We saw an opportunity for payback when he signed his lease while still out of state. It gave us time to prepare. K________ was the engineer of this one, and had the custom welding completed. When L________ arrived at the apartment, he found a furry suit hanging on the front door. He entered the apartment wearing it and waded through three feet of shredded newspaper. There was a large beach ball and a round tote filled with cheese doodles. In the window, a five-gallon plastic water cooler hung off the roof as a man-sized water feeder fitted with a three-inch PVC pipe with a racquetball stuck in the end. When the ball was tapped, a rude splash of cold water was dispensed. 

Giant duck 

M________ was the genius behind the prank on K________, who had a collection of small rubber ducks. When K________ was switching apartments, before he moved into his new place, there was a period of a few days when M________ coordinated the styrofoam sculpture and painting. I supplied the three-hundred-gallon horse trough as the pond. All of K________'s small ducks were arranged to appear to be worshipping their god.

Fake closet

The bridges were burnt. The next pranks required subtlety. G________'s apartment had a closet door near the front door. There had been a long-running joke that likely extended back to the 1920s about how the two doors were so similar, surely someone had accidentally confused them. In secret, a group built a modular replica of the closet. When it was finished, while G________ was asleep, the contents of the actual closet were smuggled out into the hallway and placed into the fake one, which was then affixed with duct tape to the outside of the exit. The next morning, people waited in the hall for G________ to leave for work. When G_______ opened his door, he spent about sixty seconds in a Twilight Zone-level fugue state.

Fake fifty

The most subtle of all the pranks is my favorite. The targets were about a dozen residents. J________ went around knocking on doors, having people sign a 50th birthday card for P________. He also collected money for a present, a 30-can suitcase of Milwaukee's Best, supposedly P________'s favorite beer. It was genuinely depressing. One resident actually gave notice, writing, "Look, it's still twelve years away for me, but I need to grow up, I can't turn fifty here with you people…" Everyone went to the dreaded party. When J________ let the cat out of the bag, P________ was outraged that we all thought he could pass for 49. He was turning 38.

Snow rave

The city's public events permitting guy eventually apologized to me for shutting down our flea market. That's a whole other story, but the short version is that a certain fancy shop didn't like what we were doing, and pulled some strings. The city said if I applied again, they'd approve my next one. I didn't want to do another flea market. I did want to do something for New Year's. They reluctantly issued a permit for a block party. 

We started doing publicity in August. All of it mentioned a ball drop and multiple snow machines that promised to turn the neighborhood into a winter wonderland. On December 31, 2011, we set up a large sound system with speakers set on all four buildings at the intersection of 5th and Washington, and staged all the secret stuff on the roof of The Martin. At the stroke of midnight, with a crowd over two thousand dancing in the street, a dozen people wielding tennis racquets began rapidly swatting solid white twenty-inch beach balls down onto the revelers.

The future

The fun hasn't stopped. It has only evolved. For every bridge we've burned, we've built ten new ones. We've stretched out into increasingly subtle and creative manifestations of the original magic that started this place. I love this building with all my heart and look forward to its next 100 years.

David Scherer Water | The JOLT News

 David Scherer Water's previous projects include leading a cult for six years under the name Fezdak Clamchopbreath, running a burnt toast business, and hosting a parody New Age guided meditation series that got accidentally sponsored by Pfizer. Beyond his creative work, David is employed, sober, and has good friends. Discover more of his work here.