Spun is helping Tacoma get dirty...and creative! If you aren’t paying attention, you might just miss it.
Tacoma is a beautiful city with many memorable sights but even if you’ve lived here your entire life, it’s unlikely that you’ve ever seen it quite like this. When viewed from above, our familiar city takes on a graphic quality, sometimes resembling abstract modern art more than historical architecture.
If you have lived in Washington state for a while you know about the stark differences between east and west. I spent the first half of my life on the East Side and I'm just starting the second half on the West Side, here in Tacoma.
Let’s be honest, nowadays, with our smartphones, we are all basically amateur photographers. Of course our phone pictures are no replacement for professional portraits, but that doesn’t mean they can’t look good!
Say the words "Steve's Gay '90s" and you're sure to confuse anyone new to Tacoma or born in the 1980s and beyond. For those in either group, we're talking about a restaurant that used to rock South Tacoma Way — and the 1890s.
Like it or not, the nighttime look of Tacoma's city streets and suburbs is changing. Tacoma Public Utilities (TPU) and the City of Tacoma are sweeping from south to north in 2018, replacing 75% of our aging streetlights with new, energy efficient LED fixtures.
Here’s the backstory: People talk a lot about busted roads in Tacoma but this 500 foot strip of awful is literally more patch than road at this point. The potholes are so deep you can actually damage your chassis if you don’t navigate them properly. Its infamy is so widespread that, in years past, whenever there was a paving project elsewhere in the city that ended up with surplus asphalt, the crews would bring the extras here to dump into the potholes.
The term “hidden gem” gets thrown around a lot but Salmon Beach really exemplifies it in every way. It’s one of the most wonderful parts of Tacoma and it’s about as hidden as you can get while still being in the city.
People take a lot of big scenery pictures of Tacoma. It's hard to pass up a view of the Narrows, when Mt. Rainier comes out to play, or even downtown from high in the sky, but Instagram user Where.is.Willis has taken to looking at the city from a closer perspective.
There’s a new crane on the block, right next door to the Tacoma Public Library’s Main Branch. It’s part of the work transforming the parking lot located at 1210 Tacoma Ave. S into a $40 million, 166-unit, mixed-use private development called Hailey Apartments.
The phenomenon which was previously confined to the Ruston Way waterfront has now shown up in downtown Tacoma. Whether or not it's the same person(s) responsible for the original guerilla art project is unclear. Whoever it is, though, seems to have stuck to the theme of mid-century folding bikes.
When I walked into Victoria Woodards’ office on her 61st day on the job, she looked up sheepishly from her sandwich. She asked if I minded if she finished her lunch. I said no, and as she thanked me, she checked her phone, the back of which read in gold letters, “Glitter is my favorite color.”
