Reaching Saturation

I'm meeting fishingwishing for coffee today as she makes her way home from Seattle and something she joked about made me think. She said, I was thinking of stopping in Tacoma to do a little waymarking - is there anything there that you haven't waymarked?

My answer - "there are a ton of McDonalds there that are waiting to be waymarked." I thought about it and when it comes to history/culture categories Tacoma is pretty much done. Well, except for "NRHP - Contributing buildings". Tacoma has 5 National Historic Districts, if I remember correctly and I have waymarked the contributing buildings of the two smallest ones. There's a residential district called the North Slope Historic District that has over 750 contributing buildings, so unless BruceS moves to Washington state, I don't see that getting cleaned out anytime soon. :)


Some people like to save waymarks for other people - they feel guilty about saturating an area with waymarks. Personally, I've never had a problem with it. I would rather have a place marked so that it's out there on the Web and interested people know how to find it. And sometimes I do leave a spot - for instance, there are two Ansel Adams photo locations in Western Washington and I've waymarked one. I've been to the other spot, but am leaving that for someone else because this category has so few possibilities. For most categories though, I figure that people can still post a visit. And in my defense, there are only about 10 of the nearly 700 categories that I have saturated. That leaves a lot of possibilities. I guess if I lived in a remote area I might feel a little guilty, but come on - Seattle is barely touched when it comes to waymarking. Bellevue and the eastside are even cleaner slates. That's a lot of waymarks there for the taking within a 30-40 mile radius.


So, if you want to come to waymark in Tacoma, here are some categories that you will find plenty of spots waiting to be waymarked, not necessarily because I hate the category, but because it's just not my thing:


Police and fire stations, art galleries (love them but don't tend to waymark them), any of the business commerce categories other than indie breakfast spots (Tacoma has almost no good spots for breakfast - if you find one PLEASE waymark it), bells and anchors, bridges (especially RR bridges), Wi-fi hotspots (most anywhere downtown has free wi-fi and I just can't post every building in the city), ghost signs and murals (again, almost all the downtown buildings have ghost signs and although I love them, I don't tend to waymark them), benchmarks (I think I have one posted in Tacoma), stained glass, libraries, Starbucks (I've waymarked one in Tacoma and trust me, this is Washington so that leaves about 30 or 40 for the rest of you), indie coffee houses (again - 30 or 40 of these are available - it's Washington for Christ's sake), most of the sports/recreation categories, municipal parks (tons of them), weird story locations and haunted locations (lots of old buildings listed on "haunting" databases), post offices, Washington State Historic Markers (check out Point Defiance Park), "building buildings" (constant construction of downtown condos), fountains, any of the cemetery categories, playgrounds, golf courses...............

So if anyone is planning on spending some time in Tacoma, there's a long list of categories that really need help getting to the saturated level. Just be sure to let me know you'll be there so I can meet you at one of those coffee houses that I left for you to waymark so we can do a "Sticker Seeker" visit!

The photo above is of a 1889 Queen Anne Victorian house that is a contributing building to the Stadium-Seminary National Historic District. I'm slowly working my way through this district and waymarking all of the primary and pivotal contributors. It will take awhile since there are over 175 contributing buildings in the neighborhood.