bouquet & brickbat

If I knew her name and address I would send a bouquet to the property owner who hired Seattle muralist David Heck to decorate the oft-graffiti'd blank wall of this vacant building she owns at 105th and Aurora, on the border between my neighborhood and those to the east.

Her thinking is that even spray-paint vandals and would-be street artists will respect competent artistry enough to bypass this location, and she's probably about 90 percent right.

The mural, still a work in progress, takes us on a nostalgic drive down old Highway 99 (Aurora Avenue) as it was during the golden age of our car-centric society, when the automobile was an object of veneration and symbol of liberation rather than an odious impediment to progress, as it is more accurately viewed today. Heck included some still-existing landmarks such as the elephant, eye-catching enough to have survived over a storefront through many changes in ownership and function, and the Klose-Inn Motel, which still offers rooms although it has seen better days.

Most of what you see here, however, is long gone; the beloved Twin Teepees Restaurant is just a memory, the Chubby and Tubby hardware store is a now a used furniture, junk mart, and eyesore called "Stupid Prices," and Playland, the amusement park which stood on the shore of Bitter Lake, was demolished many years ago.

I have mixed feelings about celebrating the advent of something as incredibly destructive of the natural environment, the urban landscape, and social relationships as the car has proved to be, but I suppose it's best viewed as a celebration of innocence. Forty years ago we sat in our gas guzzlers gulping down burgers and fries without the slightest apprehension of what we were doing to ourselves or others. In those days, the answer to too many cars was seen as more of the same -- more and bigger roads, and everybody believed the tremendous traffic jams along Aurora/99 would be solved by building Interstate 5 through town. They were right in a way; Aurora is now a pleasant if somewhat scenically ugly drive most of the time, while I-5 is the largest parking lot in the state.










If I knew the name and address of the owner of this blight on the neighborhood at 107th and Greenwood, I would throw a brickbat at his car, which I strongly suspect is a Cadillac Escalade. I don't know how long this pestiferous blot has stood in its present condition; it was abandoned and trashed when I moved here over a year and a half ago. Why the city has failed to condemn and seize this property as a public hazard and eyesore is beyond me. The "For Sale" sign is still on it, along with a public notice that hearings to assess the environmental impact of erecting a four-storey apartment complex with shops on the ground floor have recently concluded. So there's hope, but the wheels of civic improvement grind extraordinarily slowly.

And it's the automobile (again) that's responsible for this affront to the community festering for years. People driving by it at 40-plus miles an hour don't notice it enough to care. How long do you think such an insult to civic pride would be allowed to stand if all those drivers had to walk past it every day?

Photos by Catboxer. Click on them for larger views; click a second time for even greater embiggening.

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