Resident Engagement this Week - Be Informed, Give Input, and Have Some Fun!

All work and no play make Jack a dull boy.

That phrase is actually an old proverb, but you probably know it as the sentence that Jack types over and over again during his psychotic break in the movie The Shining. If you are the literary type, you might remember the phrase shows up in Jack Kerouac’s novel Big Sur.

Well, don’t worry, nothing that heavy or scary here - just a full week of ways to have fun and to “go to work” as an engaged citizen in downtown Tacoma.

Because, all play and no work make Tacoma a dull place.

Bike Train: Bike Me Out to the Ballgame

June 24, 2015 at 5:30 pm

​The Bike Committee is going to bike train from downtown to Cheney Stadium to watch the Tacoma Rainiers play the Reno Aces. The game starts at 7:05 and anyone who bikes to the game gets a special ticket rate of $11.50, which gets you a seat, a hot dog, a bag of chips, and a bottle of water.  Just tell them at the ticket counter that you biked to the game. If you want to join the bike train, meet at S. 11^th and Pacific Avenue.

ST-3 Tacoma Open House

June 24, 2015 at 5:30 pm

Good and plenty of public transit is an important factor for a thriving urban region. You can show up at this open house and give your input to The Sound Transit Board on which projects they should study as final candidates for the ST3 public vote that could be happening as soon as November 2016. The presentation will begin at 6 pm and the open house will take place at the Greater Tacoma Convention and Trade Center at 1500 Broadway.

Public Hearing on Draft of Paid Leave Rules

June 25, 2015 at 10:00 am

You have probably heard by now and I will likely be writing more about this soon, but beginning  in February 2016, Tacoma employers will be required to provide up to 24 hours of Paid Leave annually to employees within the City of Tacoma. You can read about the paid leave rules and regulations that have been drafted for review at cityoftacoma.org/paidleave. You can attend the public hearing, and provide your feedback at the Tacoma Public Library Main Branch – Olympic Room at 1102 Tacoma Avenue South.

1st Annual Tacoma Waterfront Crab Feed

June 25, 2015 at 5:30 pm

If you are allergic to crab, well, I feel really bad for you and you definitely shouldn’t go to this event. But, for the rest of you – strap on your bib and join the Tacoma Waterfront Association (TWA) this Friday for the first ever Waterfront Crab Feed fundraiser at the Foss Waterway Seaport at 705 Dock Street.

Beyond eating all the crab you can, there will be chances to bid on or win prizes at the silent auction, raffles, and a ring toss. This fundraiser will be an opportunity to highlight Tacoma’s waterfront and the community and businesses within it. The event will feature prominent figures in the waterfront speaking to the latest activities and plans for the future of Tacoma’s waterfront. This fundraiser will help TWA continue its mission of making the waterfront enjoyable and accessible.

You can get your tickets now at: TWA-CrabFeed.brownpapertickets.com!

Pop-Up Art Putt! in Downtown Tacoma

It’s finally here – the U.S. Open Golf Championship has come to the 253. For many, the anticipation has been building for years.

There has been word of Tiger Woods sightings as he played some practice rounds in the weeks leading up to the tournament. Some are hoping that practice might lead to a Tiger return to glory. It seems doubtful.

Others dream of a local boy like Michael Putnam or Ryan Moore coming out of nowhere to win their first major. That also seems unlikely, but would be really cool.

Whatever happens with the actual golf, we are all hoping for a nice economic boost for the city, county, and region. We can anticipate the world will fall in love with the pure aesthetic beauty of the course and its surroundings, as they watch the tournament unfold later this week.

I will not be heading out to Chamber’s Bay for the tournament. I’ve never played the golf course because, well, I’m terrible at and easily frustrated by the game of golf. Why pay all that money to be pissed off and when I can enjoy the course and the view for free by walking the trail? I’ll track the tournament and the coverage on T.V. this week.

If I actually grab a golf club this week, it will be to play something a little more my speed – like the Pop-Up Art Put mini golf course being brought to downtown Tacoma by the Tacoma Art Museum (TAM) and the Tacoma Arts Commission.

Ten local artists have been commissioned to create ten sculptural miniature golf holes for a course that will span TAM’s Paul G. Allen Family Foundation Plaza, Tollefson Plaza, and the Prairie Line Trail.

You can get your club, golf balls, and score cards at the TAM and when you are finished playing the course you can vote for your favorite artist-designed hole. Unlike Chamber’s Bay – this course is FREE to play.

As the first day of play is winding up at Chambers Bay, the party will just be getting started at the Pop-Up Art Putt course in downtown Tacoma.

The Opening Party for the exhibit will be this Thursday June 18 from 5-8 pm. You can dance along the course to tracks spun by a live DJ. There will be food trucks along the course and of course a beer garden, because this is Tacoma.

Come on – go ahead and check this out! This is one hell of a cool idea. Bravo TAM and Tacoma Arts Commission!

Pop-Up Art Putt! Hours will be…

Thursday, June 18, 5 pm – 8 pm
Friday, June 19, 10 am – 8 pm
Saturday, June 20, 10 am – 8 pm
Sunday, June 21, 10 am – 4 pm

New Tacoma Awards 2015 Nominations Open

Each year the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber works with the downtown community to recognize outstanding individuals, organizations and events.  Well, it is that time of year again.  


Next month, on July 10th, downtown standouts will be honored at the New Tacoma Awards luncheon.  Last year's award recipients include:




Ghilarducci Award: Foss Waterway Seaport’s Rehabilitation

Popham Award: Justin Mayfield of Downtown Block Party

Public Places Award: Downtown On the Go’s Walk Tacoma

Schoenfeld Award: Tinkertopia

Union Station Award: Children’s Museum of Tacoma 

For more on last year's recipients:
http://tacomadowntown.blogspot.com/2014/07/new-tacoma-awards-honor-downtown.html


Who will be nominated to receive the awards this year is up to you.  Nominations are now open: http://bit.ly/NewTacomaAwards


If you love what someone is doing downtown, nominate them for an award:

• Popham Award: Building community spirit


• Schoenfeld Award: Retail/Restaurant pizzazz


• Ghilarducci Award: New development or renovation


• Union Station Award: Building momentum for revitalization


• Public Places Award: Activation of a public space

The online nomination form can be found http://bit.ly/NewTacomaAwards

Registration for the event is: http://business.tacomachamber.org/Events/details/chamber-luncheon-featuring-new-tacoma-awards-7-10-15-2532

I love trains.

I just took the Amtrak down to Portland a few weeks back for a work trip. It is my favorite way to travel to PDX, which I do for work and pleasure at least a few times a year. Portland’s walk-ability and transit system also make it really easy to be without a car.

You may have heard by now that WSDOT will be breaking ground on the new Amtrak station at Freighthouse Square this next year and that new station is schedule to open in 2017.

Parts of the plans for the new station include a clock tower that WSDOT and the Citizens Advisory Committee on the project have hopes will be an iconic addition to the Tacoma landscape.

The proposed clock tower will stand 80 to 90 feet tall and be located on 25th Street, in front of the Freighthouse Square building and across the street from the commuter parking garage.

Whenever someone uses the word iconic – I’ll admit I get a little nervous.

Not because I’m against iconic structures. No, in fact, I think iconic design and architectural elements are an important factor in a community’s identification with its city.

I get nervous because sometimes what gets produced in the service of iconic is something ugly, something out of place, something that isn’t functional, or something that is trying entirely too hard.

I’m not an architect or a designer, but like most of you, I know when something works and doesn’t work. It’s a fine line – trying to create something iconic

In some ways there are a lot of things out of the control of the designers and decision makers that end up making something iconic. Sometimes it is just about timing. Sometimes it’s about the cultural evolution of a place that can’t be anticipated in the moment.

Interestingly enough, we already have an iconic structure in the vicinity of the new Amtrak station – the Tacoma Dome.

The T-Dome is a good example. I’m not sure anyone would call it attractive and in fact many people might call it an eye sore. Nevertheless, it is iconic and you can’t think about the Tacoma landscape without calling to mind the dome.

The structure itself is iconic and that doesn’t even take into account the history that it holds. I wore out my Sonic’s T-Shirt that had the Tacoma landscape worked into the Sonic’s logo from their time playing in the Woodshed in the 1994-95 season. That’s just one of my many favorite pieces of T-Dome history.

One of the things that will make the Tacoma dome even more iconic (in my opinion) is the Warhol Flower being painted on the top of the dome. I know that everyone doesn’t share that opinion, but what I like about it is that it takes something that is already a known quantity and connects it even more deeply to a significant part of our identity as strong artistically oriented city.

Plus, it takes a bit of a risk – which sometimes is needed when trying to create something iconic.

WSDOT put a call out for residents to weigh in on three proposed designs for the clock tower. Today was the deadline for input. I will be interested to see what the feedback is.

I won’t get into the proposed designs, but if you want to read more about them you can check out Matt Driscoll’s article in The News Tribune. Like Matt, I think the clock tower is a good idea, but I’m not sold on any of the current designs either.

Here is the thing about creating something iconic – you can’t let the limitations get in the way.

There are plenty of potential limitations – cost, the limitations of the location, and trying to meet particular deadlines.

Taking a risk is not the same thing as settling for something less the desirable because we lack the will, the imagination, and the determination to create something that really works.

I vote that we take our time.

Matt points out that City Councilman David Boe (an architect) has some ideas, including a city run open design competition – after all Tacoma is full of many great artists, designers, and architects that I believe have the capacity to imagine something that will indeed be iconic.

In my opinion it would be worth the time and effort – let’s get this right.

If at this late hour you still want to weigh in. You can access the survey here - online survey .

Spaceworks Tacoma - Activating Space

Activated space.

It’s one of the most important elements of community development and neighborhood revitalization. It’s importance is understood by both high level urban planners and grass roots community organizers. It speaks both to architectural design and the importance of third spaces for people to gather, and it speaks to everything in between.

In Tacoma we have an inventive and robust effort that understands the importance of activated space - it’s called Spaceworks Tacoma.

Spaceworks is a partnership between the City of Tacoma and the Tacoma-Pierce County Chamber of Commerce that is designed to activate empty storefronts and vacant spaces in the city with art and creative enterprise.

Property owners donate their vacant spaces and Spaceworks makes those low-cost temporary spaces available to artists, entrepreneurs, organizations, and community groups who transform those spaces with creative business, art installations, short term community based projects, or pop-up events.

Spaceworks also provides training, professional development and technical assistance to the participants in the program. 

Have you seen a Spaceworks installation around town? Have you visited a Spaceworks business? Have you attended one of a plethora of creative events and parties held in a Spaceworks activated spaces?

If not, what are you waiting for? They are all around you - in the downtown neighborhood, the Hilltop, the 6th Avenue corridor, and throughout the city.

On June 3rd from noon - 1pm, Spaceworks Tacoma will be highlighted in the Walk Tacoma series for 2015. Spaceworks is hosting a free, guided Public Art Walk that will be lead by Public Art Specialist Rebecca Solverson with the City of Tacoma.

This particular art walk will be 1.5 miles and will explore the local public art and murals found throughout the Hilltop neighborhood. The walk will start at People’s Park on S. 9th and MLK Jr. Way.

One of the more whacky and fun projects that Spaceworks will be involved with is in partnership with the Cartoonist League of Absurd Washingtonians (CLAW) and Downtown on the Go (DOTG).

CLAW has their Open Swim event tonight, May 27th, 7:30 pm at King’s Books. DOTG is sponsoring this open swim event by providing ten blank white bike helmets to be drawn on and decorated by attendees.

The plan is to have the decorated helmets serve as a traveling exhibit for DOTG to be orchestrated by Spaceworks. Rumor has it these helmets might end up on the heads of some well known Tacoma personalities during the Downtown to Defiance event in September. Finally, the helmets will be auctioned off and the proceeds split between DOTG and the CLAW Student Scholarship Fund.

Now that is some creative partnership if you ask me.

The thing about activated space - it is both a function of the space itself and the people that populate it. Spaceworks is doing it’s part. Let’s do ours and populate these spaces with our presence and our dollars.

Creative Colloquy - Kicking the Gate Open

In a world full of gate keepers - Jackie Fender, Joshua Swainston, and William Turbyfill have dispatched the guard and kicked the gate wide open.

Together they are the team behind Creative Colloquy (CC), an online literary site that hosts a monthly reading in Tacoma’s Opera Ally at the B Sharp Coffee House (every last Monday of the month at 7 pm). In addition to the site and the readings, CC has an annual print literary review and a regular podcast that William hosts called LiterallyTacoma. CC primarily focuses on short fiction and novel excerpts, but they also include poetry and other prose.

CC was founded in February of 2014 and their mission is to foster relationships built upon the mutual admiration of the written word and provide a platform to highlight literary talent in the South Sound.

This coming Monday May 25th, I will have the pleasure of emceeing this months reading, along with my fellow co-founder and co-producer of the Drunken Telegraph (DT), Megan Sukys.

I don’t know the team at CC all that well.

I have attended a few of the readings, peruse the site regularly to read what local writers are putting out, and of course I bought a copy of this last years literary review, Creative Colloquy - Volume One. Jackie and I have crossed paths in other storytelling and literary circles.

We were grateful when Jackie invited the Drunken Telegraph to host the upcoming show and cross promote our final  Drunken Telegraph show of the season at Studio 3 of the Broadway Center for the Performing Arts on June 13 at 7:30 pm.

However, beyond my gratitude lies my admiration for CC and it’s team. Certainly, we share some things in common - not the least of which is a love for a story well told, albeit our focus is grounded in the oral tradition and their’s in the written word.

However, my admiration doesn’t end with CC’s fine work of highlighting and promoting storytellers and writers, and in fact is highest as it relates to their commitment to build community.

You see it in that one line of their mission statement - to foster relationships built upon a mutual admiration of the written word.

CC & DT have that in common - it’s not just about the stories and the writing - it’s about community and building relationships.

Going back to my opening point, I grow weary of the self appointed or privilege appointed gate keepers of the arts here in Tacoma and elsewhere. They never really grow the arts, they just recycle through the same old manifestations, which rarely serves more then their out of touch donors and their own egos.

This is why CC is so refreshing.

If you read their publications or come to a reading you will find the words of established and talented local writers - as you should. You will also read and hear the words of emerging writers, of writers who are sharing their work for the first time in a public forum, and yes, sometimes you might hear or read something that you think is really bad.

Perhaps that bad writing will never be any good. Then again, with practice, and with the forum they are provided through CC, perhaps it will get better, and even become great.

Right now I am reading the book The Republic of the Imagination: America in Three Books by the author Azar Nafisi, best known for her book Reading Lolita in Tehran.

Both of Nafisi’s books are about the power, the necessity, and the subversiveness of literature (and story) to transform peoples lives and to re-imagine and shape the identify of a generation and even a whole culture.

This is why I think the two most important words in CC’s mission statement are mutual admiration.

Too often the gate keeper approach to things only allows the ones deemed the most talented to get up close. This isn’t just true in the arts.

I think anyone that has lived in Tacoma for a while can attest that part of our problem as a city has been the role of gate keepers who hoard to much of the power within a chosen few and thus stifle the creative imagination of the masses.

Certainly this isn’t the only issue, but you’d be hard pressed to convince me that it hasn’t been part of the problem.

Not every arts based organization can be or needs to be as egalitarian as CC. But, every community needs a few groups like it to create a place not just for the super talented (whatever that means), but for everyone trying to tell a story.

Luckily CC isn’t the only group that refuses to play a gate keeper role in Tacoma. We have a lot of community based and in touch artists who are focused on building community and developing artists, wherever they are at in their development.

It is true that the tellers of stories and writers are transformed by the process and practice of sharing their words and stories. Still, the greatest service of stories and literature is to the masses. It is to the admirers. The readers and the hearers - whose imaginations, actions, and trajectory are forever changed by their encounter.

So, I say thank you to Jackie, Joshua, and William. Thank you for not only highlighting and cultivating the literary talent and culture of our city, but thank you for building community and opening your gates to every budding writer and storyteller that risks sharing their words and story with us.

I invite all of you to come out and join us this Monday night, right here in the Theater District of downtown Tacoma

Bring your own stories or just bring your imagination. Bring with you a belief that part of how we build the strong community we all want, is to build on our already vibrant arts community, and most importantly take the time to listen to one another’s stories - perhaps even risking to tell our own.

May Day, Downtown Flower Baskets, and Social Connections

Did you celebrate May Day this year? Odds are that you didn't.

For one, May Day is now associated with not only the Americanized version of an ancient pagan (sometimes Christianized) holiday that is celebrated under many names across the world, but in the late 19^th century May Day was also chosen as the date for International Workers’ Day. Since 2006 May Day has been a day of protest in the U.S., largely around immigration reform.

The ancient practice of celebrating May Day is tied the Festival of Flora, honoring the Roman goddess of flowers, also to the Walpurgis Night in Germanic countries, and the Gaelic Beltane celebrations to acknowledge the coming of summer.

I’m not sure I've ever really celebrated May Day. No May baskets and no dancing around the May pole. If anything, I've been more engaged in the more modern expressions of May Day as they relate to worker’s rights and immigration reform. Mostly on May 1^st, I’m looking to see how many games out of first place the Mariners are already.

Just after May 1^st this year, a friend told me a funny story.

As a family they assembled some May Day baskets and set out to leaving them on their neighbor’s front steps. However, their younger kids got a little confused, and after ringing the door bell, they had a flash back to Halloween and instead of running they just stood there and offered the May basket.

The neighbors were very confused. As their dog was barking crazily, they awkwardly accepted the basket, looking more annoyed then delighted. The parent had to say “It’s a May Basket, you know, for May Day”.

We Americans are prepared for strangers to come to our door on Halloween, but outside of that, the only people who knock randomly on our doors are religious missionaries, occasionally politicians, or someone doing a survey.

In the community organizing work that I do, going door to door is a primary strategy for groups trying to build social cohesion and connections in their neighborhoods. However, it scares a lot of people to begin with. An uninvited knock at the door, is always first met with suspicion and annoyance in most cases. Heck, we are even put out when people we know (family included) drop by unannounced.

As I was thinking about all of this, I began to remember some of the crazy kinds of merriment that have accompanied May Day celebrations all over the world.

They include things like a naked viewing of the sunset followed by a naked procession with torches to a location where a huge party ensues. In all cases, the celebrations are communal in nature – bringing friends together yes, but also strangers - to dance, to sing, to eat and drink, and to take in the beauty of the season.

Just this May Day, my partner Holly celebrated by gathering with friends and strangers and to hula hoop and to dance around a May pole that was lit on fire! Now, that’s the way to do it!

It has all reminded me that the most important thing in community development work is social connection. As much as people talk about the freeze in the Northwest, certainly more so in Seattle then Tacoma, we have so many opportunities in these coming months to thaw and connect with one another. In the coming weeks I’ll be writing about and highlighting many of those opportunities.

It’s always this time of year that I notice the flower baskets go up in downtown Tacoma. The BIA (in partnership with Metro Parks Tacoma), does their version of May baskets and the floral hues and shapes add to the life and color of our downtown corridor.

So maybe you don’t do May baskets, but you also don’t have to wait for the festivals and events that others plan to connect with your neighbors – you can do your own thing.

I was reminded of the housewarming party we threw in a communal living home we used to live in. Sure, we invited our friends, but we also invited all of our neighbors, and our friends invited some of their friends.

What ensued was an amazing party and a group of diverse people gathered, who didn't even realize all of the connections they had. You might realize that the people living around you, are more curious about you then you realize, and having and exploring the curiosity we have about one another is key to building community.

We just moved into a new place a few months back. We haven’t even really met all of the folks who live in our building. Our plan is to throw a little happy hour and dessert and to invite all of the folks in our building. Sure, my social anxiety kicks in a little bit, but my curiosity and my belief that knowing these folks (even a little bit) will add to the quality of life for all of us – wins out.

May baskets are great. Dancing around a May pole that is lit on fire sounds exotic and exciting. The summer festivals around Tacoma are a treat. The flower baskets in downtown add to my aesthetic pleasure of the community.

As the poet Mary Oliver says “We need beauty because it makes us ache to be worthy of it”. That is true, beauty often begets more beauty. Like the writer and ever quotable G.K. Chesterton said, “People didn't love Rome because she was beautiful, she was beautiful because people loved her.”

Still, beauty is even more beautiful when we celebrate it with new friends - with one who was once a stranger, but is no longer so.