The Neon of Tacoma

I was looking at a discussion post in a Flickr.com Tacoma group and noticed that the Ed Murietta article on Tacoma restaurant neon has been published. Very cool article, especially how they attribute the whole Waymarking Website to me (Sorry, Groundspeak. He misunderstood the difference between the Wayward Waymarking and Waymarking Websites.)

The author interviewed the restaurant owners about their signs, and also some local neon artists and put together a very interesting article. It was very cool to learn some background about the signs, and the different owners' dedication to their vintage neon extravaganzas. So, I thought I'd give you a little photographic sampler of some of my favorite neon in the Tacoma/South Sound area.



The Poodle Dog Restaurant - day and night




The Frisko Freeze Drive-In near downtown Tacoma on 6th Avenue, and the Golden City Cafe in South Tacoma




The Lucky Silver Tavern in South Tacoma and the Pick-Quick Drive-In in Fife (burgers and shakes to die for!)



The Flying Boots Cafe in South Tacoma




The Daffodil Motel north of Tacoma in Milton - day and night

There are many more beauties here, and don't even get me started on Seattle signs, but I've got to get back to work. Happy waymarking, everyone!

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.

Neon in the News

I received an interesting call yesterday from a reporter with the Tacoma News Tribune who was doing a story on the vintage neon restaurant signs of Tacoma and what the look and style of the signs say about the restaurants they advertise. Of course when he did a Flickr search using the tags "neon" and "Tacoma" he happened on a few Hikenutty photos. After seeing my (Hikenutty's) set of neon photos and realizing he had a compulsive sign person on his hands he decided to give me a call because the Tribune still had my number from the Waymarking article they interviewed me for last Spring. He figured I might know who Hikenutty was since she waymarked in the Tacoma area.

We chatted about what waymarking is, what my Website Wayward is all about, and who this "Hikenutty" was who had a bunch of photos on Flickr. Some of the questions that he had for me were tough to answer. Why do I photograph them? What is it about them that I like so much? What are my favorite Tacoma area signs? (I had to give him three there - Poodle Dog Restaurant (night), Daffodil Motel (night) and the Golden City Cafe.)

How do you know why you love a certain thing? I love that neon can be art and science at the same time. I love how an old broken down, peeling sign looks - the colors and texture. I love how easy it is to turn an old sign into a very cool photograph. I love the history contained in some of them. Put that all together and add a complusive personality, and you end up with lots of sign photos. Plus, it helps that everyone in team Hikenutty is, well, nutty about old neon.

So for those of you out there who compulsively post waymarks to a specific category, what is it about that category that you love? What drives you to find yet another example to share with the Waymarking community? I'd love to hear any comments that you might have.

Waymarking injury

Yesterday morning we were killing time in Tacoma while my son was at orchestra rehearsal so we wandered over to the Stadium-Seminary National Historic District to waymark some of the contributing buildings within the district. This primarily residential district has over 175 contributing structures, so there's plenty there to photograph. I figured we'd waymark all of the "primary" and "pivotal" contributors along Yakima Avenue (33), or at least a get a few blocks done before we got too cold and headed over to the coffee shop to warm up.


We made it about 5 of the eight blocks when my feet went out from under me and I found myself skidding down the sidewalk on my side. There was ice over the top of a mossy spot on the sidewalk and that combined with the slope just took me down. Had I been paying attention to where I was going rather than gawking at all of the beautiful old Victorian architecture I probably would have seen the slick spot. Luckily my camera and gps were fine and other than a nasty scrape along the heel of my hand nothing was injured but my pride.

Troy, who was listening to NPR in the car while I walked down the block to photograph a particularly interesting turreted house, was disappointed to have missed the fall because he couldn't make fun of me.

The photo above is of the Charles Tucker Residence, a quaint Victorian on N. Yakima Avenue built in 1890. I haven't got around to waymarking it yet, but when I do it will be in the "NRHP Contributing Buildings" category.

Kickin' back at the Waymarking Cafe

I spent the evening kicking back in my favorite coffee house while my son had his monthly group bassoon lesson. My typical M.O. is to wander around Tacoma a bit after I drop him off at his lesson and grab a few waymarks, and then I make my way over to the One Heart Cafe where they have free wifi (and terrific coffee and atmosphere.) There I kick back, edit the photos that I took on the way over and then post a couple waymarks before I head back to pick him up. Two hours of heaven.

Unfortunately it's getting so dark that by the time I drop my son off at 4:30 I don't have enough light to get any photos, other than of neon signs. That would be fine but I've already waymarked all of the good neon signs in the city of Tacoma, so I guess I'll just have to work on my cross-posting backlog when I'm back for the December bassoon lesson. Sometime in the Spring I can start working on waymarking some of the Victorian Houses in the historic district near the coffee house. That will keep me busy for awhile. There are 950 contributing buildings in the district. :)

The photo above is of half of the back lounge area of the One Heart Cafe, my favorite coffee house. Tonight a jazz pianist came in to practice on their piano so I had live music to waymark to.

Happy waymarking!

Unlucky 7

Today I had decided that I was going to do some armchair waymarking - you know, categories like Lucky 7 and Waytours where your waymark is actually a collection of other waymarks. Anyhow, I put together a couple of Lucky 7 waymarks and was in the middle of posting one when I accidently hit backspace. GONE! All that work was gone. I was going over the top too. I had added tons of html - links, photos, you name it - along with a description of each of the waymarks listed as part of the Lucky 7.

Now one would think that this loss taught me a lesson and instead of starting over I opened up MS Word and first typed the waymark information up there. But no, I did indeed start retyping the waymark into the submission form. This time I had completed the whole waymark. It was beautiful other than one typo that I caught, so I hit backspace to jump into that section and correct the mistake and @#$%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You guessed it. Gone. All gone.

At first I had to grip the edge of the table to keep myself from tossing my laptop across the room. Then I decided to be more constructive and to write this post with a plea to Groundspeak. It would be so nice if the site autosaved the submission page as posters filled in the info. For simple waymarks this doesn't matter, but for the more entailed waymarks like the history categories or some of the games this would be so helpful. Even now as I type Blogger is saving this post in the off chance the power goes out or I do something stupid. If an autosave feature is asking for too much, what about a window that opens when you try to navigate away from the form and warns you that you will lose your work if you continue. It could say something like - "Hey, BOZO! Yeah, you! Do you realize that by leaving this page you will lose all of this information that you've typed in?!" - or something to that effect. I know that you guys get requests about new functions for the website all of the time, but the painful loss is fresh in my mind so I decide to beg while I can still visualize that fresh, totally empty screen in my mind. Please, help this poor fool and save me from further loss!

The above photo is of a glass installation by Dale Chihuly at Union Station in Tacoma, Washington. The piece, entitled Monarch Window, is waymarked in the "Abstract Public Sculpture" category and is one of the waymarks that I plan on using in my new "Union Station's Lucky 7" waymark when I calm down enough to post it.

Rain, rain and more rain: Waymarking in Washington State

So, the rain is upon us in ernest here in Washington state. We're not talking a downpour: a storm with a beginning and end. No, we're talking gray skies and a steady drizzle that will continue through April. Okay, I'm exaggerating a bit, but not much. We will have some dry days, but the gray is here to stay. Blue skies won't be back until spring. It will slow my waymarking, but it won't stop me.

So Saturday while my son was rehearsing with his orchestral group in Tacoma we wandered over to the New Tacoma Cemetery to do some waymarking. The grass was deep and spongey with moss, each step squishy with water, as we wandered the rows looking for the grave of a Medal of Honor awardee. The water slowly seeped into my shoes, soaking my socks and numbing my toes. After five minutes the grave was found and a transformation had taken place in me. I had let go of my longing for more sunshine and resigned myself to the long damp fall/winter ahead of me. I started to appreciate the beauty of the drizzle and what it means for the landscape: mosses of every shade of green, from deep evergreen to a startling chartreuse; evergreen trees everywhere that in the winter try to make up for the lack of color elsewhere; the sound of the water dripping from leaf to leaf like some massive yet gentle percussion instrument.

It is what you focus on that gets you through the gray season here. You can either mope around inside about the summer you're missing, or embrace the simple beauty of the rain and get out and experience it. Whatever the case, get your raincoat and umbrella out. You'll need them.

The picture above is of a moss-covered gravestone I came across while waymarking the waymark "Pfc. Richard Beatty Anderson, Marine Corps" in the "Medal of Honor Graves" category. After waymarking at the cemetery we warmed up and an incredible bakery, Corina Bakery, in downtown Tacoma with french-pressed coffee and cake.

Posting a Waymark from a Waymark

Have you ever posted an Internet cafe or wifi waymark from the waymark? I suppose those of you who pay for wifi on their cellphones or PDA's find nothing interesting about this, but it was kind of cool to be sitting inside an internet cafe and doing the write-up describing my surroundings. I felt a bit like a restaurant reviewer and was trying my best to not seem sneaky, but I didn't want a waitress looking over my shoulder and seeing a bunch of pictures of the place on my computer. I didn't feel like explaining waymarking - I just want to kick back on their comfy couch, drink my coffee and post away.

I sat there and posted waymarks for the building (an old Odd Fellows Lodge,) and for Dog-Friendly Restaurants, Internet Cafe and Wifi hotspots (the One Heart Cafe that I was sitting in.) What a cool location. The Merlino Art Center is this great old building that was built in 1925 as a fraternal lodge but is now an art hotspot in the very artsy town of Tacoma. The building holds a non-profit indie film theater, a cafe, 2 art galleries and a bakery on the retail level and above it is filled with artists studios, most of which are open to the public on the third Thursday of each month. I hear the bakery, Corina Bakery, is excellent and I'll have to go back and waymark it, along with Two Vaults Gallery - one my favorite art galleries in the city.

So it goes without saying that a pretty artsy crowd hangs out here. Typically I wouldn't be too out of place here, however last night I was covered in Nike swag given to me by my sister who works for Nike at their HQ. What can I say? It was free and comfortable. I had my t-shirt, pullover, and hat on and "swooshed" my way through the restaurant while onlookers stared. The uniform of choice at the Merlino is funky mismatched clothes, Converse hightops, and multiple piercings so I stuck out like a sore thumb. That's the funny thing about the arts community. They get very pretentious about not being pretentious. :)

Some of the above waymarks are still waiting to be reviewed, so you might not be able to view them immediately.

Surprise Disoveries

Have you ever been browsing the grid and all of a sudden you remember a location that you can cross-post into an especially tough category? Or out of the blue remember a location that you drive by daily that would fit into one of those tough categories? This happened to me three times this week.

For my bingo I needed to find a WWII Site and a Railroad Disaster site. I knew of several WWII sites that I could use, but the railroad site eluded me. Then out of nowhere I remembered some info I had come across when doing research for some of my Seattle monorail waymarks. The monorail had crashed at the Seattle Center station back in the 1970's and I have that station waymarked in 5 or more categories - a happy discovery.

Another discovery was a forgotten shipwreck. I was looking through past summer photos and remembered a cool park that I had visited two summers ago on the Pacific coast. While there I waymarked the ruins of an old ship, the S.S. Catala. I hadn't thought about the category at the time - just waymarked the place so I could find it later on my next visit to the coast. So I loaded the info and photos up and at this point am waiting for it to be reviewed.

The final find is a place that I drive by every Saturday on my way to downtown Tacoma. There's a gated community with a faux lighthouse that's used as the guardhouse at the front entrance. I've always thought that it was so cheesy, especially for a development with only about 10 houses that have a water view (of the distant industrial Tacoma harbor). The gatehouse isn't one of those. As I drove by it today it finally clicked, "hey, a landlocked lighthouse!". I'll be finishing the submission of that waymark later today.

There are so many categories now that it's easy for me to forget about a few until I browse the grid trying to fill in holes. As new categories are created I forget about some of those older waymarks I have that can be cross-posted. It's my own version of being a dreaded armchair waymarker. So you waymarkers out there, don't forget to look back at some of those old waymarks. You never know what you'll find.

The above photo is of the S.S. Catala. It was taken the day before it was discovered that the ship was full of oil. A couple friends and I just happened to discover it on a girls weekend to the coast. We returned home to see it on the front page of the paper. The EPA is now excavating the vessel and removing the oil from this protected habitat of two birds on the endangered species list. So far 13,000 gallons have been removed from 2 of the 5 tanks.

Competition

When the Engineering Landmarks category showed up in the directory I looked through the various databases listed in it's description and found a local bridge on a list that was only about 15 miles from home. The problem is that the bridge, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, has already been waymarked in other categories - by two people in three different waymarks - and for all I knew those waymarkers were busy crosslisting the bridge in the engineering category as I was dinking around looking through the databases.

One of the waymarkers, Rose Red, is currently taking a trip along the Oregon Trail with limited computer access so I was safe on that count, but Prying Pandora is quick on the draw. I needed a picture and coordinates and I needed them fast.

Having waymarking competition in my home area is a new thing for me. A couple weeks back I waymarked a historic church in Elbe, Washington on the way up to Mt. Rainier National Park only to come home and find that someone else had already waymarked it. ELBE!! A town with about 5 people in the middle of nowhere!! Not to worry though. The waymarker had a home base south of me.

But lately I've been watching with worry as Prying Pandora, a well-known local geocacher with a few thousand cache finds, has started listing waymarks. Her home waymarking base is only a couple towns NE of our town and if she's becomes as avid a waymarker as she is a geocacher then I'd better worry. This is all in good fun of course. It's very exciting to have someone visiting my marks and leaving marks of some cool new spots that I didn't know about for me to visit.

Yesterday I visited her Tacoma Narrows Bridge waymark in the "Suspension Bridges" category, pondering whether I would beat her to the punch listing it in the engineering category as I was stuck in traffic on the bridge, high above the Puget Sound. It's a new waymarking era for the Hikenutty crew. We can't poke around when a hard-to-find category gets listed on the directory. I think I like it, though.

My engineering waymark, "Tacoma Narrows Bridge", was approved yesterday just hours after it was submitted. One more category down, only 250 or so to go. :)

Goodbye, Tacoma. See you in September

Every Saturday since mid-September I've spent 2 and 1/2 hours waymarking and drinking coffee in Tacoma while my son has orchestra rehearsal. I've learned so much about the history of Tacoma, it's art, it's museums, its coffee. But today was the last full rehearsal before the end of the season concert and my freewheeling waymarking Saturdays are now a thing of the past.

To mark the end of this great "waymarking/symphony season" we decided to hunt down some waymarks for my new favorite category - Neon Lights. I had googled "Neon Tacoma" during the week and found 3 signs that I just had to waymark, and so we headed out this morning in search of great neon. Great neon we found. The thing about these signs is that in context they might seem cool and maybe a bit funky but nothing to make you gasp. The peeling paint and broken tubes tend to blend into the transitional neighborhoods that they are often found in. But once you get home and upload your photos, you realize how great they really are. A close-up photo crops out the tacky storefronts, city dumpsters and beat up cars. All you see is the sign - every flake of paint and broken tube. For me, the timeworn look of a neon sign is part of the beauty. It says, "been there, done that." It becomes a glowing, buzzing memory of what was and a truthful tale of what is.

Last September I thought these Saturday's would be a dreadfully boring, but I've had so much fun waymarking in Tacoma that now I'm sad to see the season end. Saturday mornings spent waymarking and finding new coffee shops will become Saturday mornings spent working in the yard. Ugh. Maybe I need to declare Saturday mornings as waymarking time. That way I still get to enjoy the calm quiet of waymarking for a couple of hours before life catches up with me. So maybe I won't wait until September to get back to Tacoma, after all.

Along with a few waymarks in other categories, we posted waymarks for 4 neon signs in Tacoma today. If you're interested in checking them out, the signs are the Flying Boots Cafe & Spur Room, the Golden City Cafe (seen above), the Lucky Silver Tavern, and Tacoma's Elephant Car Wash.

Happy waymarking,

Hikenutty

Waymarking Hits the Newstands

The Tacoma News Tribune article on Waymarking came out today. I would have completely missed it except that we received a bunch of emails stating that my husband was in the funny pages (it's on the cover of the "Soundlife" section, which has the funny pages in it.) He's going to have a hard time living this down. Hmm... This is a strike against my campaign to interest him in waymarking. Anyhow, the cool thing is that they have posted a contest as part of the article. Anyone who can post a "News Article Locations" waymark using a Tacoma News Tribune article can enter their name in a drawing for a prize. They don't say what the prize is, but hey, I'm going to be wandering around town on Saturday waymarking anyhow. Might as well get a cup of coffee or something out of it. For details on the contest link to the article.

Industrial Strength Waymarking

Today we found ourselves back in industrial Tacoma, waymarking the mouth of the Puyallup River for the River Origins, Confluences and Destinations category. Now THIS is the Tacoma I remember from childhood. None of the beautiful museums and the active arts community. No, what I remember is the stink - what was fondly called the "aroma of Tacoma." These days the smell isn't nearly as pervasive with EPA regulation of the paper mills, but if you wander down Portland Ave to the heart of Super Fund Central the stink is still alive and kickin'. After taking some pictures of the dismal destination of the Puyallup River and jumping back in the car, my husband asks me, "Ughh, did you step in shit!". And, honestly I had to check, because it's hard to tell the difference between the smell of industrial Tacoma and a steaming heap of dog poo. There are so many Super Fund sites that I haven't even bothered trying to waymark them. It's too hard to figure out where one ends and another begins.

The day was dismal - a steady rain pouring from steely skies - but the weather tied in well with the gray stinky spot we waymarked. Why waymark such a disgusting spot, you ask? Well, herein lies one of waymarking's greatnesses. It isn't just about fun and pretty locations - it's also about informative locations that make you think, and sometimes informative isn't pretty. The Puyallup River waymark highlights what can become of a glacier fed river when the environment isn't protected.

Commencement Bay on the Puget Sound is ringed by EPA Super Fund clean up sites, and right into the middle of these toxic tide flats flows the Puyallup River. The Puyallup is fed from glaciers on Mt. Rainier and has a fall run of Chinook salmon. Coho, chum, and pink salmon are also found in the river, along with steelhead, sea-run cutthroat trout, and a threatened species of bull trout. Sockeye salmon are traditionally indigenous to the basin. Look at the picture - do you really want that salmon on your dinner plate to have swum through a Super Fund site? It may have done just that.

I posted in 6 new categories this week: TV Stations, River Origins et al, Nature Centers, Ice Skating Rinks, Lighthouse B&B's, and Publicly Held Corporate Headquarters. Okay, I'd better sign off and go grab my decon box. I'll be back to talk at you in a few days.

Embracing the Inner Geek

Well, it's official now. Everyone that reads the Tacoma News Tribune will soon be alerted to my true state of geekiness. On Saturday morning Troy, my husband, and I went waymarking with a TNT photographer. She followed us around for about an hour as we waymarked several historic buildings and a community garden. In this picture we're at Fire House No. 1, which is on the U.S. Register of Historic Places. Troy is being photographed taking a waymark and you can see by his expression that he's not yet buying my "embrace your inner geek" stance.

I thought that wandering around with a photographer taking pictures of me waymarking would be embarrassing. Actually though, I felt like it made me seem a little less weird. I mean, if you're on your own and you climb up a wall to take a picture of a weed-filled community pea patch, people start to wonder if they should cross to the other side of the street. But if someone with a giant camera is taking a picture of you taking a picture of weeds and dirt, well, people are going to assume that your doing something legitimate. Either way though, I didn't have to worry as it seems that citizens of Tacoma are all still sleeping at 9:30am on Saturdays.

After we had done a few waymarks the photographer said goodbye and headed off to her next assignment. She had to photograph some new immigrants finally arriving after their relative has worked for something like 5 years to bring them to the country. Great story, but I don't see how it can compete with a spot on waymarking. We'll see. ;)

If you're interested in seeing the waymarks we did with the photographer, here are the links: Neighbors Park Community Garden, Fire Alarm Station, McIlvaine Apartments, and the Fire House link above. I'm guessing the story will be out in the next couple of weeks and I'll post a link to the article when that's available.

I've been outed!! Wayouted!!

Yes, you read right. I've been outed! No, not that way - my husband and I are still together. It's my waymarking habit that has been outed. The Tacoma News Tribune is doing an article on waymarking and they've interviewed me for the story. You see, up until now this waymarking habit is something only my family truly knows about. Now all of that inner geekiness I've been hiding from my friends will be out in the open. Those weekends spent searching for interesting intersection names and ginormous everyday objects will be known to all. Oh well, I suppose it had to be. At some point I have to embrace the inner geek and stop hiding it from those I love. Oh, the freedom!! The joy!!

On Saturday I'll be waymarking with my husband and a News Tribune photographer, and on Sunday I'll be waymarking in the land of geeks, Redmond, Washington, home of Microsoft and Nintendo. I'll write about it here on Sunday or Monday and give you the status of that inner geek embracing I'm working on.