Alameda & 38th

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Today's fascinating adventure takes us to the Alameda neighborhood and the 3-way intersection of NE Alameda, 38th Ave., and Klickitat St. There's a little triangle of land here that isn't quite a traffic circle (since it's not a circle) and not quite a city park. I'm not sure it really merits a post here, but I have a couple of photos and a couple of links to share, and bits are cheap on the interwebs, so I figure I might as well. The photos aren't that great because they were taken from a moving car; I hit this and a couple of other minor spots after tracking down the Vernon Ross Veterans Memorial, and I was short on time, and I didn't see any compelling reasons to stop.

The "park" made it onto the lower rungs of my TODO list after I saw a mention of it in this Urban Adventure League post from 2006, documenting one of their usual bike tour and hip-n-healthy vegan potluck thingys. Alameda is a fairly genteel neighborhood, and you'd think residents would be alarmed about their little park being invaded by a pack of hummus-guzzling hipsters. The post doesn't mention anything about people getting tasered by Officer Friendly, though. Maybe they just left that part out. I dunno.

There's one other brief mention of the place out on the net, in this doc from the city archives, where the parks bureau lists various esoteric locations it's done maintenance work on over the years. In other words, this isn't the last time I'll be linking to that list. Because if there's one common theme in this blog, it's chasing down obscure and esoteric crap that nobody except me cares about ( as proven by my usual readership numbers ). Half of the time, I barely care about it, or at least I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I do.

This time around, the excursion was partly an excuse to wander around the Alameda area a bit. It's a part of town I don't know very well. Apparently I'm even less familiar with it than I thought I was, because nothing looked at all familiar. Fortunately, the interwebs ride to the rescue once again: Check out Alameda Old House History, about the history of the neighborhood. From which I gather it's pretty much been quiet and respectable from day one.

A few semi-related pop culture tidbits to pass along: Klickitat St. features in the Ramona series of children's books by Beverly Cleary. I don't think I ever read any of those as a kid, but basically everyone else has. So this is the general area to make a pilgrimage to, if you're so inclined. Meanwhile, Alameda St. sort of figures in an Elliott Smith song of the same name. And nearby Alameda Brewing has a tasty Klickitat Pale Ale.

If there's any pop culture miscellany about NE 38th out there, I've yet to uncover it. So if I haven't linked to your epic poem about life, love, and death on 38th Avenue, or your gallery of watercolor streetscapes of same, or edgy indie documentary about same, I'm not ignoring you, I simply haven't found you yet. So feel free to post a link in the comments or whatever.

Thx. Mgmt.