To: Ski to Sea visitors
From: Local newspaper editor
Re: Bellingham, for better or worse
Welcome, all! Don’t get any ideas about putting down roots and buying a house.
You can’t afford one. Also there are none. And if all that is not enough, consider this:
There’s a LOT of acid in our past.
This is true pretty much any way you look at it.
If you’re down at the waterfront in Fairhaven this weekend, for instance, just look north, up Bellingham Bay, and you’ll see the two local city icons.
One is a big metal ball. Acid ball.
Down the way is a row of 90-foot, ungainly minion-shaped digesters. Chip digesters. Acid and steam powered digesters.
#Acid, trending!
Seriously you can ask older folks listening to the endless Foghat Loop at Classic Rock 92.9 KISM — or the Department of Ecology — and get the same response: This is a place literally built on acid and heavy metal.
Not that this is a bad thing, per se. It’s not something civilized, modern folks who buy cars based on Bluetooth connectivity, really want to be ZIP-code-associated with. And that includes you, an assumption burnished by your arrival in a plug-in Volvo with a UW Arboretum rental canoe on a $2,600 roof rack.
So let’s just set that aside. Meantime, feel free to kick around for a couple days, taking time to take in all the top local sites. These include:
The Marianas Trench of Local Thoroughfares: You probably already saw (or felt) this on your way in, as do most folks arriving through the gateway to Our Fair City: The city-“maintained” roadways all over town, but particularly around the Interstate 5 Exit 252 (Samish Way) overpass, have not been resurfaced since the Zachary Taylor Administration. As a result, substantial rivulets have formed in the crumbling remnants of the Roman-era pavement.
Not gonna say these ruts, literally decades in the making, are super-deep, but:
- Sean Connery once drove a submarine to the very bottom of what is now a city left-turn lane during filming of underwater scenes for “The Hunt For Red October.” Charlton Heston reputedly threw a chariot wheel making the left turn onto Ellis Street.
- Last week we got a news tip about a guy roping up and rappelling down into one of the Samish Interchange crevasses on a spelunking expedition in search of the idler arm for his Subaru, ripped off by the impact of trying to hang a right to acquire some Mexi-Fries.
- Insurance adjusters and grief counselors are standing by for your return trip through here at night’s end. May the tie-rod gods be with you.
Local products: Whatcom County is a significant producer of microbrews, digital Bible software, ship lines, solar panels, university degrees padded by “ghost courses,” aluminum boats, trees of great girth, expensive-but-disregarded waterfront-redevelopment studies, tasty berries, milk, hay, gas and jet fuels, aluminum (sorry scratch that one), chainsaw bears, fishing kayaks, mixed salad greens, organic pork, algae, honey, scrap metal (dang, again!) and carb-loaded breakfast cookies.
We’re also regional leaders in tree huggery, various toxic sludges, faux local news, real local news, overpriced apartments, various fish-based products, mead, hundreds of thousands of miles of unused bicycle lanes and whatever in the world they are making this week at Janicki Industries.
The Kerf. It’s a massively out-of-scale, black-walled new apartment complex in the spreading “urban village” on Samish Way, just up from the city’s Dilapidated-Asphalt World Heritage Site (see above).
We suspect that the developer, Pete Dawson, gave the building the odd name specifically and exclusively to get Cascadia Daily News to do one of its signature quick-hit pieces with a headline: “What’s the Deal With: The KERF?” This may or may not occur.
The Parks. Bellinghamsters do not like to talk about this but after many decades of struggle, the city has finally achieved a resident-to-park ratio of 1:1. Yes, that means a taxpayer-acquired park for every single resident, exclusively. (It might sound outlandish, but actually is reasonable compared to other local factors such as the vaunted 33:1 brewpub-to-person ratio.) Please stay out of our parks, especially Ron C. Judd Memorial Park. Whichever one you might visit, you’re going to upset that one person. Why would you do that?
The Race. OK, most of the above is a long stretch of silliness to make the point that we are a people who can, at least in small doses, make fun of ourselves. In the current national era, this is a notable achievement, and one which should engender much civic pride.
On the serious side, we also take time to engage in rituals that hold up the pieces of our local existence we most treasure for some brief celebration and adulation. One of those is our natural setting and outdoorsy orientation, and it is best exemplified by the Ski to Sea race, from mountains to Sound.
It’s not really the race that matters. It’s the size, scope, shape and spirit of it. Memorial Day weekend is the one time of the year when a population with wildly diverse ideas and interests puts down its wrenches, textbooks, mouses, milking gloves and paintbrushes and goes outside to celebrate what brought many of us here: craggy, icy mountains, big trees, fresh air, saltwater and islands. And the various means of human-powered recreation that connect them all.
You couldn’t do the same, in as grand a fashion — with as many community volunteers working to keep this incredibly complicated logistical dance in step — in very many other places.
That makes it unique. You won’t find many people blabbing about it, but we’re proud to have Ski to Sea remain Bellingham’s unquestioned annual Big Event. And, at CDN, we treat it as such.
So truly: Welcome, and enjoy. We even hope y’all come back — especially if it’s without a moving truck.
Ron Judd's column appears weekly; ronjudd@cascadiadaily.com; @roncjudd.
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