Wednesday on the Water

It is going to be a great night down on the Ruston Way waterfront. The temperature is perfect, sun is out, sailboats should be everywhere.. Wednesday on the Water is just one of many reasons why summers in Tacoma are as good as anywhere. Kayaks, rafts, paddle boards and power boats are all great fun out on Commencement Bay.

For those of you who may be new to kayaking or looking to learn more about kayaks, please hit up Backpacker’s Supply on July 12th. They are running a free kayak demo (Paddlesports Demo Days at Owen Beach/Point Defiance). Take advantage of this rare opportunity to try several different boats! There is no better way to find the best boat for you than to compare different ones back to back on the same day. Free.

Happy paddling.

Wintergrass leaves Tacoma

The blues festival formerly known as Tacoma’s Wintergrass has left the building.

It gets worse. Wintergrass will now be in Bellevue. Here’s another giant step backward for the City of Density. Gracious me, what is going on in this town? We just lost a cool music festival to BELLEVUE!

That is disgusting.

Bellevue sucks.

They have no business pulling a rainy-season blues event out of the gritty city. It’s getting harder and harder for me to call Tacoma gritty. Who coined that anyway? If it was you, please chime in with justification for said nomenclature. We have an industrial port, our fair share of condemned buildings and a burgeoning meth scene. I guess that’s sorta gritty.

The economy is quietly bouncing back, spurring me to request no further setbacks for Tacoma until after summer. I want positive momentum. I want positive economic development. I want more culture, not less. The Old Town Blues Festival is coming up on July 11th; hopefully people will turn out in droves to show their support.

Tacoma Union Bank of California building for sale

The Bank of California Building at 1011 Pacific Ave in downtown Tacoma is for sale. I had the privilege of meeting owner Jay Yi last week and he allowed us a full tour of the historic site. The impressive structure is packed with an arsenal of equally impressive contents. Never having been used for anything other than a bank, the facility is uniquely tailored for a certain purpose. Like housing millions of dollars in cash, jewels and other valuables for decades.

You pass through the giant, classic pillars on the outside and into an expansive lobby where your eye is immediately drawn 40 feet upward to the cathedral ceiling. The ornate wood and plaster detail overhead is unlike anything you will find in new construction today. Gold carvings tell a story that wraps around the top of the room. Solid granite walls line the staircase leading downstairs.

An old bank manager’s office at the front of the building is luxuriously decorated with gorgeous wood paneling and feels like something out of Scooby-Doo. We could not find any of the secret compartments in the walls, but I’m certain they are there somewhere. If I had an office, I would want it to look just like this one.

We took the old world elevator to the basement and that is where things really got interesting. Exiting the elevator, I suddenly felt as though I were thrust headlong into the middle of a scene from Ocean’s Eleven. I’ve never had free run of a giant vault before. Have you? There were thousands of old, empty safety deposit boxes and multiple safes for the storage of exactly who knows what.

Movie set. That’s all I kept thinking. Well, that and the fact the building may have access to the old tunnels under Tacoma. Stay tuned.

Revolution. Reunion.

As everybody knows, the Facebook thing is completely bonkers. It is exercising viral domination on society like nothing I’ve seen prior, and along the way it is reshaping our culture. Email is a nifty idea. It provides a way to keep in touch with people you otherwise would not keep in touch with. Facebook takes this to an absolute extreme by putting you in touch with people you forgot you knew in the first place.

It used to take a class president hours to organize a mediocre reunion for one class back in the day. With the help of Facebook, a few girls from Lakewood have launched their own reunion. Not just for a graduating class at a particular school, but a sort of open invite to people from an entire town, from an entire era. The 80’s and 90’s era Lakewood kids have been summoned.

The Hub on Tacoma Ave near Stadium High School will be the location, and I am curious to see the extent of the actual turnout. It has been discussed that there will be many no-shows, but also that there will be plenty of attendees who don’t even participate in Facebook. At last count, the official “yes” RSVP’s totalled 26. I have this sneaking suspicion that there will be a lot more than 26 people there, but we’ll find out tonight. See you there!

Inaugural Lakehood Reunion, 8:30pm

THE HUB
203 Tacoma Ave S
Tacoma, WA
(253) 683-4601