m.v. kalakala
Re-homed in Seattle, Bevis’ battered but beloved Kalakala ferry boat awaits its fate as a re-polished metropolitan icon, or a pile of metal heading to the scrap heap? Photo by Paul Joseph Brown/Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
Peter Bevis: A Man And A Mission -- `The Kalakala has Magical Qualities'
Seattle Times | Dec 7, 1998 | Lynda V. Mapes Seattle Times Staff Reporter
,,,Derided by many as The Silver Slug, the Kalakala to Bevis is a treasured public sculpture. Like his road-kill bronzes, he hopes it makes people think - about the kind of place Seattle was, and is becoming, and how to care more for each other in a world of traffic and hurry.
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"It was not the Kalakala herself, although she has magical qualities," Bevis says. "The Kalakala is a way to build and bind us as a community in ever-growing Seattle."
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Artistic, idealistic zeal. But then, if Bevis were the type to color inside the lines, he never would have gotten into this in the first place.
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Bevis' mad crusade to rescue the ferry from its muddy grave on a beach in Kodiak, Alaska, should have failed - or never begun - for scores of good reasons.
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Just last June, as the tide rose to float the Kalakala free, Bevis still had no title to the boat, no insurance, no permission from the Coast Guard to move the ship, no money to pay his work crew....
He sleeps on the Kalakala these days, in a walk-in cooler on the car deck, warmed by a woodstove made from an old depth charge. The ship is moored at Pier 66 in Elliott Bay, with Lucy, his spaniel, standing watch.
Bevis never doubted he would get the Kalakala home.
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"You have to listen to yourself, listen to what's important to you, then act on it," he says. "Have the confidence in yourself that you are not crazy, and that what you do is worthwhile."
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But rescuing a clunky slice of art-deco coastal history has always been, for him, about more than salvaging an old boat.
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Over the decade of his odd and stubborn quest, the silver ferry built a sense of community goodwill bigger than any one person's role in its return.
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"The Kalakala has her own magic," he says. "I feel fortunate to have participated in it."