Last Wednesday,I shuffled myself up to Seattle, to meet with Aimee Curl, the writer of the Nickelsville article in the Seattle Weekely that initially sparked my interest.

Rewind a couple weeks: Courtney and I had been staying at the Moore Hotel which is right next to Josephinium where the Nickelodeons were meetin. I picked up a Seattle Weekly issue as these homeless people were filing out of the building and it seemed that some sort of event of something had just let out. Right after that we read the article and connected the dots… I had already been planning on doing a documentary on Dignity Village down in Portland, and this seemed like a perfect contrast to that (more on that later).

So back to last wednesday: I was supposed to go over and watch the final Nickelsville committee meeting before the building of the village, on a still-secret date in a still-secret location. Aimee had looked at me quizzically when I mentioned that the final meeting was in the evening; only later did I find out that the meeting had been nine AM not PM and that I had missed it. I only discovered that while I was sitting in the totally awesome Seattle library and got a phone call from Scott, who blamed himself for not being clear. Though neither of us HAD ever said AM or PM, it was clear upon re-reading Aimee’s article that the meetings were always in the morning (if I had known they had a website at that point I could have checked that as well). Trying to salvage the day, I call both tent cities and get them to agree to vote (everything is über-democratic in the tent cities) on whether I’ll be allowed to film. Tent City #3 votes that night and agrees so I head over to see them even though it’s too late for me to shoot, not having the right equipment for night shooting. Instead i just introduce myself and chat with Beatrice, who does not want to be filmed but is undeniably the head of the Nickelsville effort in TC3. She leaves but introduces me to a man named Lance who gives me a brief tour and then a crash course in the history of Seattle’s tent cities…