Nobody Beats Tacoma

 (reposting one from a while back)

Here's how it works: Beginning as North 27th Street,

North 21st Street just gets its confidence up

when North I Street slugs it and takes over,

only to be vaporized by South Yakima Avenue,

which morphs into something called Thomson.

The streets of Tacoma are so mean they're

mean to each other. Nobody beats Tacoma. Nobody.

Seattle has forever misread the meaning of Point

Defiance. It's not a park or a peninsula,

or a place to play dress-up on your bike.

It is a destined middle finger pointed

vaguely north. Put a penny

on the railroad track down by the port,

and you might well summon Guy Fawkes,

Richard Brautigan, a Chinese laborer,

or a skeptical Puyallup woman, pre-contact.

Whoever it is will take your penny

and invest it in a cloud-cone

hovering above Rainier like the saucers

Kenneth Arnold saw, 24 June,

1947. About the time

you think you have Tacoma solved,

you find yourself on a suspension-bridge,

with a dog, and the bridge starts

writhing like a boa constrictor. Then

it flaps and twists, snapping itself

free from blueprints, taking a dive

like a punch-drunk stevedore

trying to earn a buck at a smoker

in 1931. The dog lives. If you remind

the tattooed woman at the drive-in

that you ordered everything on your

burger, she will tell you, without

animus, "That is everything."

Nobody beats Tacoma. You have

to understand: Tacoma is more

than a grit city that keeps its

bourgeoisie on a leash like a pit bull.

Tacoma is a sense of humor.

Once you get that, it may take decades,

you'll understand everything. I

mean, really, after embedding

yourself in a group of eccentrics

at the Parkway, the Acme, or

the Goldfish Redux taverns, you'll see

the folly in naming streets

and other ambitions. You'll realize

you are Nobody, the only person

ever to beat Tacoma. Good night.

© a month ago    cities • aliens