The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (AYPE) was a world's fair held in Seattle to publicize the development of the Pacific Northwest. The fairgrounds were designed by the Olmsted Brothers landscape Architecture firm and located on the campus of the University of Washington. The AYPE's amusement park and midway area was located along what is now 15th Avenue, and was called the Pay Streak, a phrase used to describe the richest vein in a mine. Here fairgoers spent considerable time and money, presented with "new mediums of entertainment and opportunities for vicarious travel in other lands" that attempted to instruct and amuse the visitors. With its bright lights an colors, as well as its electric architecture, the Pay Streak contrasted starkly with the stately main exposition.

In this image, several Pay Streak performers from the "Streets of Cairo" in the Oriental Village (at that time referring more to the Middle East than to Asia) pose together in costume. The performers were part of a recreation of a "typical" Middle Eastern bazaar. The use of architecture and landscape to tell a specific story was central to the ethnographic villages, frequently a part of world's fairs. In reality, however, the Pay Streak's concessions as well as the fair's main exhibitions reinforced many of the common beliefs of the day: the power of industry to transform savagery into civilization, the United States' role as leader of the industrial world and guardian of the Pacific, and the superiority of white people.

Photographer's number: x1908
Typed on verso: Oriental Village, or Streets of Cairo, performers seated around a table
SHS category: A.Y.P. - Paystreak

Caption information source: http://content.lib.washington.edu/exhibits/aype/paystreak.html
Caption information source: Chalana, M. (2008). The Pay Streak Spectacle: Representations of Race and Gender in the Amusement Quarters of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 100(1), 23-36. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/40492136