Amid rumors that our commissioners have decided to divest the county of its parks, the South End Environmental Koalition (SEEK) has begun a campaign to Save Our Parks (SOP). Ginny Davis, the newly appointed president, spoke at the South End Chamber of Commerce, arguing that parks mean tourism and tourism means dollars. Ralph Hinshaw asked if she thought our little 5 acre park —Hutchison Park — really brought tourists into our \u2018economic sphere\u2019. <\/p>\n
\u201cSeriously, Ginny,\u201d he asked, \u201cwho the hell comes to that park except teenagers doing drugs and having sex? You think they\u2019re going to fuel the economy down here?\u201d Ginny realized she\u2019d maybe gone down the wrong cul-de-sac, citing economic growth where economics barely existed, but Harry Walton, owner of Tyee Megastore, stood up and declared he sold a lot of ice cream bars to the bicyclists who stopped at the store and he\u2019d seen more than a few eating popsicles at the picnic tables down at the park an eighth of a mile north.<\/p>\n
Ralph avowed how he\u2019d never seen a soul down there much less a motorcycle gang with sweet tooths. Ginny, who didn\u2019t catch the humor in that, asked, \u201cWhat do you think, Ralph? Sell the park for a building lot? Not much revenue in a single house on a lot zoned for 5 acre rural residential.\u201d<\/p>\n
The South End only has this one park. Course it only has one store. One diner. One hair salon. And two art galleries. Which are extraordinary if you\u2019ll allow me to play art critic. We got plenty of art studios, some good, some not, but they all add to the mythology of the fabled South End, if not, admittedly, to the tax base.<\/p>\n
Personally, I think the park should stay. I don\u2019t give a fig or a fart if folks throng to its short trails and its unused BBQ grills or notice the flowers or idiosyncratic sculpture. Some day when this is an art mecca for weary urbanites, they\u2019ll have a place to pull in and check the GPS for how to get home. Meanwhile the teenagers got a place for backroad sex.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Amid rumors that our commissioners have decided to divest the county of its parks, the South End Environmental Koalition (SEEK) has begun a campaign to Save Our Parks (SOP). Ginny Davis, the newly appointed president, spoke at the South End Chamber of Commerce, arguing that parks mean tourism and tourism means dollars. Ralph Hinshaw asked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[7667,3385,4697],"class_list":["post-19919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rantings-and-ravings","tag-save-our-park","tag-south-end-chamber-of-commerce","tag-south-end-economics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19919"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19920,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19919\/revisions\/19920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.skeeterdaddle.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}