sidewalks

Pacific Avenue in ruins

Pacific Avenue Trees removed
Photo of old Pacific Avenue trees lining the street Dec. 2012

It’s hard to pass through the northern end of Pacific Avenue right now without feeling like excrement. After driving through earlier, I am unable to fully comprehend what is happening down there. It has been puzzling for awhile now and I’ve been doing my best to keep quiet, not judge, wait and see..

But I can’t be completely silent! It looks awful and there are a lot of missing trees and ginormous trenches in the sidewalks! Tomorrow I plan to take some pictures of the whole mess and try to figure out what I’m seeing. Immediately afterwards I plan to cheer myself up with a visit to RR at Tinkertopia. Maybe he can help me understand?

North end walking

I took my first walk through the north end with my daughter in a stroller and my faithful puppy dog earlier today. While it has always been apparent that the neighborhood is walkable, it occurred to me that I couldn’t ask for a better place to raise a child in this region.

During a 45-minute walk, I encountered very few cars, enjoyed smiles from several other walkers and enjoyed the nice, smooth sidewalks some of us may take for granted. Never have I lived anywhere with better sidewalks. The city recently forced many residents to pay for sidewalk repairs, mostly due to tree-root damage. At first this seemed unreasonable to me, but today I realized the benefits.

Little kids, skateboards, strollers, inline skates, wheelchairs… whatever it is you use to travel our sidewalks, you should have no trouble getting from point A to point B. Just another reason North Tacoma is the best neighborhood in the world.

Partridge District?

I had a conversation with myself and decided to go ahead with this thought. Before I begin, let me just say that I love the Proctor District, especially when it’s not crawling with middle schoolers.

The honorable Proctor District has left a sour taste in my mouth lately. There is considerable traffic, delay, construction and hassle abound in the area. I’m starting to wonder if the time and money spent on the intersection at 26th & Proctor is ever going to pan out. Currently, it looks terrible. So far we’ve got a raised, white concrete circle (fit for a roundabout, god forbid), pink masonry, black asphalt patchwork, white curbs and green poles.

One thing comes to mind when I look at this work in progress these days..