IT’S BEEN A WILD COUPLE OF WEEKS for many of us. So today, something lighter, from my forthcoming Seattle photo book with ace shutter-clicker Lori Lynn Mason.
FOR THE LONGEST TIME, I believed the Interstate Highway System was one of the things that ruined American society in my lifetime.
It destroyed urban neighborhoods, ripped cities’ internal social fabric, and propagated suburban sprawl. It destroyed the glorious creativity that was once roadside America, and instead gave us malls and bland chain motels.
But I’ve more recently learned to like a few things about the freeways, particularly our own I-5. Still not necessarily as a road, but as an engineering feat and a public artwork.
So it was easy to see the idea behind a poster some folks put up around town last year, trying to promote car-free and greener cities. The poster’s illustration of a fantasized post-car future had I-5 still standing (as was the Kingdome), only used for bicycles and P-Patch gardens.
There’s a beauty to the freeway, both graceful and grandiose.
Especially where it rises into the sky, and where its lanes combine and recombine with other highways’ lanes. Such spots include the Spokane Street interchange with the West Seattle freeway, and the almost Greek-ruin-esque pillars west of Capitol Hill.
The freeway’s sheer, outscaled beauty in these places makes one almost forgive its sins.
Almost.
NEXT: Another piece of the Seattle character–its work ethic.
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