Stark Street Island expedition

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Today's expedition takes us to semi-fabled Stark Street Island, off in the mysterious, exotic lands east of I-205, where one occasionally sights "pickup trucks", some of which bear mysterious inscriptions such as "McCain-Palin", whatever that means.

Ok, ok, I'm trying to spice things up here, and it's not really working, is it? The place really is called "Stark Street Island" (except when it's called "Park 51"), but it's really only an island in the traffic sense. It's a little triangular wedge of land at the corner of SE 106th & Stark, a few blocks east of Mall 205. And don't bother looking for it on the parks bureau's website, because it's not there.

The park's one feature is the Rose Petal Fountain, one of the short list of fountains run by the city water bureau. There's a Water Blog post from early May when they turned it on for the season. I was hoping it'd still be running now, but sadly it's not. That part of the expedition was kind of a complete bust, as it turns out. So instead I had to try to make a dry fountain interesting, which is rarely easy:



So, uh, imagine it just like this, except with water. And with the sun shining, 85 degrees outside, so long as we're busy imagining stuff.

Updated: Here's a Yelp review of the park & fountain, if you can believe that. Apparently this little park is jammed with kids in the summer. I guess that makes sense, since this is the only public fountain for miles around on the east side.

Also, if you're visiting here and you're on Stark anyway, might I suggest some of the other local sights? Milestone P6 is just 7 blocks west of here. And 11 blocks east will get you to Milestone P7, and Ventura Park with its small-ish rose garden. And those are just things that've shown up on this humble blog. The street also features various things of interest to normal people, or so I'm told.

I hate to say it, but I'm starting to think "explore-the-world season" is about over for the year. I'm still quite willing to drive out and take photos, or take the bus, or walk, or whatever, but if I do that I'll just make everywhere I go look cold and dreary and uninviting. Which would give everyone the wrong idea. Or rather, it would give everyone the right idea about what our fair city's like 9-10 months out of the year. And although that might keep a few Californians from moving here, doing it gets old (and depressing) rather quickly. So I suppose I'll have to find something else to blog about until the weather improves someday.

Or, I suppose, I could move to a distant, tropical, real island, off in a genuinely mysterious and exotic corner of the world -- but not so exotic that there's no broadband, obviously. Also, there needs to be a ready supply of fruity drinks with parasols, or maybe those little plastic swords. Yeah....