"Fellas, Coincidence and Fate Figure Largely in Our Lives."
Words and images from the aftermath of Twin Peaks
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention for eleventeenth time that the first issue of slips slips has been printed for your perusal and pleasure! Please follow the blips blips newsletter for upcoming contributor profiles and process insights. Moving forward I’ll be keeping The Jeff Stream pretty Jeff-centric for the most part, which is only appropriate. Thanks, I knew you’d agree.
In the midst of this week’s hubbub, I also had a new piece of writing published! Generous genius Adam McGovern, in his role as an editor at HiLobrow, invited me to contribute a short piece for the publication’s Defer Your Enthusiasm series. Description: “A new series on… late-breaking obsessions, avoided discoveries, and devotions delayed!” I’m a belated bloomer in most respects, so I briefly considered suggesting “Life Itself” as a topic, but that would have been very teen-angsty of me (only proving my point more effectively, but I’ll let that go).
Instead, I chose a pop-culture property that has loomed large over my psyche for this past year. I first wrote about Twin Peaks in the immediate wake of the presidential election, and since then I haven’t been able to shake the feeling that it’s an essential ur-text for mayhem of the 2020s. A community of people are confronted with a violent horror and try very hard to keep their little world on track, only to discover that the rot and chaos go far deeper than they ever allowed themselves to suspect. And yet life somehow… goes on. We jump the shark and then come back, and things keep getting weirder. And scarier. But are we supposed to stop living or something? Not if we can help it - hope and redemption glitter from between the cracks, if we can manage to open ourselves up to it.
Anyway, the primary goal of today’s post is to get you to go to HiLobrow and read what I wrote about trying and failing and finally succeeding in discovering the magic of Twin Peaks. Then, stick around and read the other wonderful pieces in this series, including entries from slips slips contributors such as Heather Quinlan, Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons, and Adam himself.
In anticipation of this occasion, I’ve been holding back a few photos from our Seattle trip last month because they make the perfect accompaniment to this piece. We were lucky enough to be able to rent a car and take off to the Cascade region to the east of the city and visit a couple of the show’s original filming locations.
In North Bend, WA we visited Twede’s Cafe, known to fans of the show as the Double R Diner. This classic 1941 eatery was scouted for the pilot of the show, reproduced in a studio for much of the original run, and then used again as a shooting location for 2017’s The Return. Apparently it caught fire in between (suspected arson in 2000 - pure soap-opera shit) before being restored. Renovations to the exterior were also underway during our visit, as you can see here.
Inside, though, I wouldn’t know the difference - arriving at 10am on a Monday morning was eerily like walking into an episode of the show - but if, you know, the show were a shrine to itself. The decor hasn’t been changed much, but every surface and cranny is bursting with show memorabilia, fan tributes, and more. A few other pilgrims showed up while we were there, but the main customers were a group of locals who lingered in the back booth where Norma used to tally up the accounts. It was appropriate that this spot felt off-limits - I felt weird enough hanging out in a booth where we’d seen dozens of character conversations from the show.
There was also a thick album of handmade fan tributes to David Lynch left by visitors. We didn’t participate (Dash was at his wit’s end with our geekout as it was), but we did buy a mug as a souvenir.
I’m afraid that our second location, while spectacular, did not photograph as well. The Salish Lodge & Spa is better known to fans as the Great Northern Hotel - exterior only, but what an exterior! The iconic waterfall seen in the original series opening credits (and, vertiginously, flown over by drone in the opening credits of The Return) is truly a sight, but unfortunately for my dumb phone camera, the falls were churning up so much mist on an April morning that you can barely see how wonderful it was. The front of the hotel wasn’t nearly as picturesque, so we avoided that - though I did buy a nifty Great Northern keychain at the gift shop.
Anyway, this post is for the purists - I imagine that, if you’ve read this far, you’re a fan of the show. I’m not a big fandom guy in general, but it was exciting to visit these locations in a spirit of reverent fun. Johnny-come-lately that I am, my memories of the show were very fresh, and so the sites still felt like an exciting secret, despite the fact that countless thousands of people have made the pilgrimage before me. I guess that’s one of the glories of pop culture - there’s plenty of it for everyone.