4A • August 18, 2017 • Seaside Signal • seasidesignal.com
SignalViewpoints
Seaside’s latest innovation
is a topsy-turvy experience
SUBMITTED PHOTO
Kevin the Octopus, by Karynn Kozij.
Artist transforms
marine debris
G
KEITH BAKER/SUBMITTED PHOTO
The author takes a ride at the Inverted Experience, a new business that is the product of Keith Baker’s imagination.
SEEN FROM SEASIDE
R.J. MARX
Viewing the world
upside down
I
f the world seems to be a little
upside down, you’re not alone.
Keith Baker fi rst imagined a top-
sy-turvy outlook as a kid watching TV
shows upside down while lying on the
living-room couch. During the long
months as a commercial fi sherman in
Alaska, he would let his imagination
run as he gazed over the horizon.
Back in Seaside, Baker has turned
his longtime vision into a reality at
the Inverted Experience, appropriately
located at the former location of the
Ferris wheel on Broadway.
Today, the room is decorated like
a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers Holly-
wood stage set, with fi xtures on the
ceiling and upside down on the walls.
Barstools are upside down at the
“inverted saloon” and on a side wall,
a 1950s kitchen scene hangs from
above.
Reactions are “unbelievable,” Bak-
er said. “It’s steamrolling.”
He developed the concept about 10
years ago, during those long moments
on a fi shing boat in the Bering Sea.
“When you are isolated on a boat you
have a lot of time to think,” Baker
said. “You don’t have a lot of infl uenc-
es, TV or i nternet.”
The Inverted Experience is the
product of Baker’s imagination and his
love for Seaside.
A $6 admission fee gains entry; a
family pass is $20 for four. Visitors
COLIN MURPHEY/EO MEDIA GROUP
Roscoe Baker, left, takes photos of Reed and Cooper Helvey of St. Louis, Mo., at
the Inverted Experience in Seaside. The attraction, owned by Keith Baker, features
sets that are upside down.
pass their phones to an attendant, who
snaps and rotates the shots so people
appear to be hanging, fl oating, running
or scrambling upside down.
The surreal images hang like a
Salvador Dali in cyberspace. The em-
porium’s Facebook page is fi lled with
children “diving” into a toilet bowl,
families blown in the wind clinging to
bicycle handlebars or holding onto a
lamppost in midair.
New technology
Baker, who lives in Gearhart, is a
fi fth-generation North Coast resident.
His grandfather was stationed at Camp
Rilea Armed Forces Training Center,
and family members remain.
He recalled the memorable up-
side-down Astaire dance scenes and the
1980s Lionel Richie video, “Dancing
on the Ceiling.”
A Google search revealed a house in
Orlando, Florida, made to look like a
mansion uprooted by a tornado. Other
than those, he said, he hadn’t seen
anything like this before.
“It’s only come to light in the last
four or fi ve years,” Baker said. “Every-
body has a camera. You just invert that
on your phone. That is the nature of the
experience.”
Baker designed the room at 111
Broadway himself, and called on
friends to help install props.
Images include the Prom, a side-
walk, the “inverted saloon” and a
vintage kitchen.
Baker plans on changing it up this
winter and adding a mural. Decor will
be changed at Halloween and Christ-
mas time to refl ect holiday themes.
He hopes to make it a family-friendly
destination suitable for birthday parties,
receptions and reunions. Next door, the
Pacifi c Pearl Coffee Co. sells T-shirts
reading “The Inverted Experience” and
“Inverted Lives Matter.”
EARHART —In the interest of full disclosure, my
husband, Mr. Sax (RJ Marx), made contact with
Karynn Kozij, the Gearhart postmistress, 2 1/2
years ago, a few weeks before we moved to the area.
“You’re really going to like her,” he said after speaking
on the phone to her at length as he set up our new mail-re-
ceiving situation. It would be my fi rst time having mail
delivered to a Post Offi ce box. Knowing my penchant for
becoming cozy with the folks who handle my mail, he
rightly project-
ed Karynn and
I would become
VIEW FROM
friends over the
Post Offi ce counter. THE PORCH
EVE MARX
Last spring,
Karynn mentioned
her participation in
the Cannon Beach Earth Day 2016 celebratory art contest
and juried show held in the Cannon Beach Chamber Com-
munity Hall. I went to the event and that was the fi rst time
I saw her art. I stood in front of her “Octopus’s Garden
Family Reunion at the Beach” and was awed. By the end
of the evening, Karynn was crowned with the people’s
choice award winner and took third place in the judged
Steve McLeod award.
Karynn doesn’t just collect beach debris and cleverly
arrange it. Her gift is creating characters, real personalities
she breathes life into. There’s Fritzy, Aunt Kay, Neil, Kim,
Kevin, and Gary, to name just a few. Great-great-grandfa-
ther Kraken, fashioned, from what looks like an old bell
buoy, says his arms don’t work too well. Mike, born of old
rope and plastic, is a MacGyver fan who spends his time
scouring the beach for potential disguises and useful tools.
Kevin, a self-described loner, was created from debris
plastic and marine rope.
Months ago while writing for this newspaper about
another art endeavor, Beaver Tales, I mentioned Karynn’s
work to Denise Fairweather who has a gallery in Seaside.
I told Denise, “You probably already know her; she is the
Gearhart postmistress.” So I was very happy to learn of
Denise’s promotion of Karynn on the Fairweather House
& Gallery blog under “Findings: Karynn Kozij’s marine
debris art.” Or, as Denise put it, “Found While Picking Up
Mail.”
Karynn says her artistic vision was developed when she
was growing up in the province of Saskatchewan, Canada,
on a farm. She spent a lot of time perusing her father’s
stash of materials kept in myriad sheds, outbuildings and
barn.
To this day she has a tough time passing up stuff other
people might call rubbish. I know she drives and walks the
beach in all weather , searching for who knows what.
Last March, after spring storms dumped marine debris
across our coastline, she found so much trash on the shore
disheartening. For days she took it on herself to drive the
beach after work to haul away carloads of trash. Unable to
abandon so much good rope, she began considering what
might be done with it. Finding inspiration in the old Beat-
les’ tune, “Octopus’s Garden,” she found a treasure trove
of potential art. The rest, as they say, is history.
I’d like to be under the sea, in an octopus’ garden in
the shade
He’d let us in, knows where we’ve been, in his octopus’
garden in shade.
“Octopus Garden Family Reunion” is on display
through the month of August at Fairweather Home &
Gallery in Seaside located at 612 Broadway. Or check out
fairweatherhouseandgallery.wordpress.com.
LETTERS
Initiative underway to form utility district
Three wise monkeys
Last Tuesday night another power
outage blacked out all of coastal Clatsop
County for three hours. The night was
peaceful and rain had not fallen in two
months. So it came as somewhat of a
surprise.
The cause of the outage according to
Pacifi c Power was the failure of a single
pole transformer in Seaside. Chalk it up
to “a bird or a chemical reaction after
rain,” says the Wyoming-based Pacifi c
Power. “It’s the same idea as the breaker
box in your garage,” Pacifi c Power
stated.
I hate to be the bearer of sad news
but in 2017, the failure of one of the
thousands of pole-mounted transformers
Regarding the connection between the dwindling rental
housing stock in Seaside to prolifi c short-term vacation rent-
als, the Seaside City Council remains willfully blind to the
impropriety or the consequence of such commercial activity
in residential areas.
“Who’s going to enforce more restrictions? We don’t
have the staff,” bursts City Councilor Dana Phillips (“Want-
ed: Long-term rentals in Seaside,” The Daily Astorian, July
19). Who needs any restrictions where zoning laws have no
effi cacy?
Seaside is a tourist free-fi re zone. The city is addicted
to its lodging tax revenues, and now it appears to rely on
Airbnb to police itself and to collect the city’s lodging
tax revenue (“Seaside inks tax deal with Airbnb,” Seaside
Signal, June 20). Be my guest. On the honor system. See no
evil, hear no evil, speak no evil …
Gary Durheim, Cannon Beach
PUBLISHER
EDITOR
David F. Pero
R.J. Marx
should not cause this level of outage in
a well-designed power grid. It may be a
trivial problem to Pacifi c Power but it is
evidence that the electrical grid in this
area needs a lot of attention and modern-
ization to become more fault-tolerant.
Please consider carefully the initiative
now about to circulate to form our own
People’s Utility District (Cascadia PUD).
We can join all our neighboring
communities in Oregon and Washington
who already have successfully operating
PUDs. They enjoy local management and
because PUDs have access to Northwest
Bonneville Power, a 30 percent reduction
in your monthly electric bill. In addition,
Cascadia PUD has plans to construct a
CIRCULATION
MANAGER
PRODUCTION
MANAGER
Jeremy Feldman
John D. Bruijn
ADVERTISING
SALES
SYSTEMS
MANAGER
Brandy Stewart
Carl Earl
local renewable power generator, which
Pacifi c Power rejected because they plan
to build wind farms in Wyoming and
make us pay to have it delivered 1,500
miles so its cost to us will be another 30
percent higher.
Cascadia PUD will save everyone
in the community hundreds of dollars
a year, require no increase in property
taxes to operate and will create local
jobs. In the event a Cascadia event does
occur, it will be located and designed to
provide electrical service to our commu-
nities immediately instead of our homes
not having electricity for a projected six-
month outage with the current system.
John Dunzer, Seaside
STAFF WRITER
Brenna Visser
CONTRIBUTING
WRITERS
Skyler Archibald
Rebecca Herren
Katherine Lacaze
Eve Marx
Esther Moberg
Jon Rahl
Seaside Signal
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