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!

Wearing Wayward

Okay, just a quick ad here. Our Website, Wayward Waymarking recently opened a little store selling a few items with our logo on it. Here Mr. Hikenutty is modeling the ringer T.

So you, your kids, or even your dog can spread the word about the fun hobby of waymarking! Come on - you know you want one. Help pay my hosting fees so my husband will stop griping! :)

Alright, advertisement over. If you decide you want to check the store out at a later date, you'll find a link on Wayward's home page. Happy Waymarking!

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.

Smile for awhile

We had the good fortune to spend the day with the waymarker S5280ft (Smile) on Sunday and decided to drag the poor jet-lagged soul up to Mt. Rainier with us. It was a full day and by the time we finished with dinner it was about 12:30 a.m., Michigan time. Hopefully we didn't wear him out too much, but it would have been criminal to pass up the chance of showing off a wintery Mt. Rainier on a clear day (few and far between in Washington state.)


I grew up in Washington and had never once been up to the Paradise area of Mt. Rainier National Park during the winter. The roads were clear and sanded, but at the top the snow towered an amazing 10 plus feet on either side and it was like driving through a tunnel. Only the top of the great googie style Jackson Visitor Center stuck out of the snow and a 12-15 foot deep channel was carved out so visitors could get inside.



The mountains are my favorite part about Washington. As great as Seattle and Tacoma are, I'd rather hit the hills any day, so anyone coming to visit us be forwarned. In fact, you might want to have a little discussion with S5280ft before you let us know you'll be in town. He might have a few words of advice for you. :)



Above is a photo of the historic Paradise Inn. Currently it's being restored - well, it was being restored last summer and restoration will continue on the far side of the inn once the snow melts off in the early summer this year. We also stopped at the Longmire Administration area National Historic District so S5280ft could waymark a few Washington State Historic Markers, but alas, they were all under about 10 feet of snow. We did find a couple at lower elevations, thank goodness.



The above photo shows Paradise's Jackson Visitor Center, sunk in the snow with the sun setting behind it. I love this shot, particularly because it may be my last time to see the building. It is slated for demolition this summer when the new visitor center that was built last summer opens. It just can't handle the snow loads that Rainier gets at this elevation and the energy spent to keep the snow melted off of the slightly slanted roof just doesn't make sense. If you want to see a few more photos of the building check out waymark WM1M0N.

Thanks so much to S5280ft for taking time out of his busy schedule to ride up to the mountain with us. You have to admit, it is a pretty incredible place for a "Sticker Seeker" waymark visit photo. ;)

The Backlog

I was reading BQ's thread in the Waymarking forums about how much his backlog was overwhelming him and that he finally got to the point where he dumped his backlog waymarks and just started from scratch. Quite drastic. But it reminded me that I had about 15 waymarks in my backlog that I wanted to post to the "NRHP Districts: Contributing buildings" category. I sat down to start in on them and realized that my sheet of paper with all the coordinates and notes written on it are in my camera case, which is currently with my husband in Orlando. He's working at a builder's convention there and wanted to bring my camera to take some photos of the firm's display.

Anyhow - the result is that my good intentions will have to wait until he returns on Friday with my camera. I did post a few of them and saved them to submit later, but I hate not having the reward of completely finishing the waymark if I'm going to spend the time writing the descriptions and uploading photos.

I've really been enjoying the category lately, since I found a site that has online pdf's of the historic district narratives in Washington state. These can be tough to find, and so on Wayward Waymarking I've created a page to list the various states' historic properties databases that include narrative information. Right now we have Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri, Wisconsin and Washington links listed (thanks BruceS) but would love to have any links that you might have found when posting in this category.

The photo above is of a the Ralph Metcalf house, a colonial revival style residence that is considered to be a "pivotal" contributor to the Stadium-Seminary National Historic District. The district is a historically intact residential area within Tacoma that was popular from the 1890's to the 1920's. It has wonderful examples of nearly every residential style current in the Pacific Northwest between 1888 and 1930. Also located within it are the public Stadium High School and the private Annie Wright School (previously "Seminary" - it's a boarding school for girls) for which the district is named. To learn about the district and see more photos check out my Stadium-Seminary National Historic District waymark in the NRHP category.

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.