Concrete is awesome stuff. The fifty-year-old walls in our basement took me forty minutes with a hammer drill and carbide bits to drill a tiny little anchor hole in. Good concrete gets harder and harder with age (unlike me).

Nice to see your brutalism showing here, Charles. Don't you think the Viaduct is beautiful?

Though your paper once derided it as the Most Dangerous Park in Seattle, I find a cathedral-like majesty to parts of Freeway Park, especially the Fortess-of-Solitude-like waterfall area.

Are there any people in Seattle's concrete monuments, or just blank edifices and empty windswept sidewalks?

I keep hearing that this Freeway Park is dangerous, why? Is it really, or were there just a couple instances a few years ago? And does it count as dangerous if I'm walking my dog through there? She barks at crazy people (and sometimes people she thinks might be crazy from a distance), if that matters.

Freeway Park has been a really, really bad place. There are a ton of places where you can deal drugs, have sex, or stab someone, depending on your mood, and not be seen. Beautiful? Maybe. Well designed. No. Tear that stuff out and make a park everyone can use.

There's a truly beautiful concrete home along the Burke Gilman trail between Ballard and Fremont.

Tiz, Freeway Park used to be notorious for its safety problems, but last year the Parks Dept. removed a bunch of trees and shrubs to allow more daylight in, upgraded the lighting, and added gates to some of the dead-end dark corners. I walk my dog there almost every day, even after dark, and have never had a problem. Keep your ears and eyes open, as you would in any empty place. It's a beautiful park--especially in summer when the fountains are roaring--with myriad routes to explore (and mutt-mit dispensers!).

I've lived a few blocks from Freeway Park for decades. I walk through it and sometimes throughout it almost every day. Love the place. Hate the Park's Department's recent clear-cutting, gaudy signs, and pressure-washing of the patina -- but the wonderfully designed park can survive even that.

Concrete grows a patina over the years. The second nastiest thing that can be done to it -- after painting -- is pressure washing.

I'm glad to see Charles giving it the love that the stuff deserves. Washington's concrete pioneer Sam Hill is smiling in his concrete grave.

The entire campus of Evergreen is built from concrete - with exception of the Longhouse and some student housing.

It's beautiful.

The Sheraton is a crime against humanity.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ellens_album/sets/1432509/

the concrete house on the fremont trail:
http://www.djc.com/special/concrete00/grand.html

the concrete house on the burke-gilman trail:
http://www.djc.com/special/concrete00/grand.html

When I was at UW we referred to Condon Hall as the Beirut Bomb Shelter. Beirut shouldn't be shown that type of disrespect.

"Tricky's post-Fanon reverie"?

now, correct me if i'm wrong, but was the name-drop really necessary? (the political essayist, not the rap artist)

You think that's bad, I once was a student at SFU (as seen in many Battlestar Galactica scenes of the library and quad) - talk about concrete overload ...

Freeway park isn't that bad. I'm ten times more scared of Summit St. at night right around the corner from the Cha Cha. I used to skateboard at freeway park at night and take my lunch breaks there when I had a pretty cool office job right by there. Yeah, there are some homeless drunks that live in the bushes, but they don't want to mess you for the most part.

Speaking of dangerous parks, Freeway Park has nothing on Ravenna Park. I've seen some pretty fucked up shit go down there.