Sidebars

Bellingham Roundabout By Bob Sanders

Buoyed by the success of roundabouts in Cordata and increasingly aware of impressive traffic slowdowns on the Guide Meridian at

Squalicum Parkway

and

Birchwood Avenue

traffic lights, the Bellingham City Council has unanimously expressed interest in a super roundabout.

Described as being peanut shaped, the likely project-to-be appears to have a lot going for it.  Unanimity by the Council on a project with a $5 million price tag is not easy to come by these days.  Already there have been jocular references to the “peanut roundabout” and the Bellingham Herald recently reported that a much smaller companion roundabout, to be located 500 feet west on Squalicum, is now being called the “unsalted version.”  Public scorn may be just around the corner.

What the roundabout needs is some beguiling panache, a creative step forward, if you will to deep six disdain replacing it with mystique.

Warning flags went up when I heard that descriptive phrase “peanut shaped.”  Can’t you just hear hip ‘hamsters, not content with calling Guide Meridian “The Guide,” referencing the unique roundabout as “The Peanut” as in “to get to St. Joseph Hospital, you come south on The Guide, then take The Peanut about a mile to what eventually takes you left  to Birchwood and the hospital.  Nothing to it on The Peanut.”

Who needs The Peanut, anyway?  Peanut identification in the Fourth Corner is a mistake for any number of reasons.  In the first place, what is the connection between

Bellingham

and peanuts?  Planters Peanuts, Mr. Peanut, the late jazz musician “Peanuts” Hucko (were he alive) and Jimmy Carter might like the association, but let’s be realistic.  A Peanut Roundabout could be a perfect fit for Godforsaken,

Georgia

or Nowhere,

North Carolina

but, hey, this is the Fourth Corner where we think Hooters before Hoody’s.  Further, legume worship already is in shuckingly good hands in

Ashburn

,

Georgia

, a bastion of goober reverence where the world’s tallest homage to the groundpea, a 20 ft. monument, is located.   

Lest this situation get out of hand, there is a solution to the obvious problem.  Let’s render in-operative all references to peanut shape, The Peanut and The Unsalted Peanut and replace them with a bold concept: Number 8.

Tied to the concept is the good fortune attached to the number.  Recall the opening of the Beijing Olympics on

8/8/08

, an inauguration determined by the significance of the number 8 in Chinese culture. 

Further, in this age of corporate steamrolling, let’s make some money for

Bellingham

and our Soon-to-Be Incredibly Famous No. 8 Roundabout.  Let’s sell naming rights to a member of Corporate

America

.  Let’s honor No. 8, just like major league baseball does to ball parks.  If

Houston

can have its

Minute

 

Maid

 

Park

and Seattle Safeco Field, let’s create for the betterment of

Bellingham

a nonpareil natural: The Super Motel 8 Roundabout.

Selling naming rights to

Bellingham

’s Soon-to-Be Incredibly Famous Motel 8 Roundabout will bring largesse to reduced city coffers and result in the first of many Motel 8s as

Bellingham

becomes a hotbed of Fourth Corner motel development.  The first of two circles in the roundabout is the perfect place for a Motel 8 flagship operation.

Such a coup should work a positive effect on

Bellingham

’s money shortfall, already the source of intense bleating by Mayor Dan Pike and the City Council.  A microcosm of those monetary shortages lie a couple of miles north of the future home of The Soon-To-Be Incredibly Famous Super Motel 8 Roundabout, if you’ll pardon the slight narrative detour.  That would be in Cordata, recently awarded Cordata Park, the neighborhood’s one and only and a long time coming.  While the park exists in name, there is nothing on the City’s drawing boards for the next six years to make the park possible by extending

Horton Rd.

--the park’s only entrance opportunity where a close-by parking lot is planned. This tale of disappointment brings to mind further delineation of Catch 22 under the sub heading of: Details, Details. 

Ah, then, what to do about the other zero’s far ranging possibilities?  Think, for example, of

8/8/08

in

Palm Springs

,

CA

and round-the-clock marriages at City Hall among the matrimonially -inclined who dealt themselves in on the date’s good fortune. The Soon-To-Be Incredibly Famous Super Motel 8 Roundabout might very well include a Forever 8/8/08 Wedding Chapel where calendars and clocks never change except when 9/9/09, 10/10/10, 11/11/11 and 12/12/12 roll around.   

And, for those inclined to feel that Cooperstown, New York is too far away to travel for reassurance that baseball is truly America’s great pastime, the Soon-To-Be Incredibly Famous Super Motel 8 Roundabout’s vast properties might include a Fourth Corner Wing of the Hall of Fame featuring inductees who once wore number 8.  Among them are Joe Morgan, Cal Ripkin, Carl Yastremski and Yogi Berra, the latter famous for rules of the road observations including: “If you come to a fork in the road, take it” and “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re driving because you might not get there.”

                                                            #          #          #          #

More Subdued Excitement By Bob Sanders

In something of a jocular mood, I recently posted in this space some observations of a troubling nature. They were about Bellingham, Washington, a Fourth Corner community beset by a very real problem: massive amounts of publicity suggesting that people move here because it’s such a terrific city. I write from a point of vantage. I live there.

In suggesting the need for a reverse public relations program to accent the negative, I used the wise words of a friend, the late Ernie Gann, who refused to tell the media he lived on nearby San Juan Island. An adventure novelist whose books include The High and the Mighty, Gann figured the less known about his version of paradise, the better off islanders would be.

The current issue of National Geographic Adventure offers a case in point by listing the “top 50 next great towns” where one can both live and play. Bellingham is on the list and among the outdoor hosannas included in the publication’s story, written in what appears to be some sort of Chamber of Commerce School of Communications writing style, is: “This is a paddling town.” Not to put too fine a descriptive point on matters but “puddling town” would have been more accurate due to our over-abundance of rain and more about that a bit later.

At the risk of being called an alarmist, I believe it’s time to inject some good sense into a situation that keeps worsening. We must paint for public consumption as dismal a picture of Bellingham as we possibly can. Get out the verbal tar and feathers, Bellinghamsters. It’s time we unsold our fair city to the media.

Having suggested the possibility of re-writing our current unofficial motto, “City of Subdued Excitement,” to “City of Sublimely Subdued Subjective Excitement,” I also offered a further possibility: “Tony Soprano’s Kinda Town.” This, at least for now, is unnecessary.  

While Bellingham has become gallingly comfortable with “City of Subdued Excitement,” no one has brought up the why of it all. Is there something inherent, perhaps sinisterly so, in ‘hamsters that makes us lethargic, indifferent, and, yes, depressed? Even something as inconsequential as observing clothing style in what must be the U.S. Dress Down Capitol offers such limitations that anything natty here is found almost exclusively in a Bellwether Hotel dining room or among tourists in Fairhaven. The thought that it was time to explore why ‘hamsters are different was too compelling to ignore.

My first stop was at the offices of Dr. I.B. Spacey, our world-renowned master of medical world stuff and all-around smart ass. Getting quickly to the point, I asked the obvious and received the following: “You have raised a transcendent question and here’s the answer. ‘Hamsters are suffering from vitamin D deficiency. It’s been going on a long time and, in truth, has been one of those dirty little secrets. Check in with other doctors, if you don’t believe this world-renowned expert. What you’ll find out is more than 90% of blood tests ordered by doctors here reveal vitamin D deficiencies.”

This was a startling piece of news and I plodded forward asking what causes such a deficiency. Suddenly invoking John McCain-like familiarity, Dr. Spacey suggested: “It’s the weather, my friend. We rank among the least sunny cities in the Nation, so low, my friend, that we aren’t even mentioned in Weather Research Center listings although Quillayute near Port Angeles ranks first in the lower 48 with 239 cloudy days—13 more than Seattle’s 226. Since Bellingham gets 10 more inches of rain a year than the Emerald City, it figures we must be somewhere in between. No wonder we have a lot of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) cases.”

It appeared Dr. Spacey was on to something but there was more ground to cover. Having had our lack of sunshine explained by an MVP of the medical world, I wondered about Bellingham darkness, the vitamin D deficiency and possible linkage to the lack of excitement in the city.

“Not having enough sunshine brings on vitamin D deficiency which, in turn, makes us lethargic, we acquire low self-esteem and depression sets in. Severe moping ensues, we begin drinking even more coffee to un-mope ourselves, the Herald prints stories out of Olympia without localizing them and, what the hey, we do goofy things like pay $49 to watch unknowns do impressions of Ethel Merman and George Burns.”

Kicking into high gear, Dr. Spacey appeared nearing conclusion. “We’re all living like moles in a hole in Bellingham and the answer might be the tanning bed but don’t tell that to dermatologists. One nationally-known vitamin D expert suggests everyone take 2,000 IU daily regardless of whether they live in Bellingham or Palm Springs. Life here is challenging and highly complicated to say the least.”

One of the complications involves sun-soaked Californians who retire in Bellingham. “I call it the Sun Screen Flummox Factor,” offered the pre-eminent medical sage. “They continue to slather on big numbered sun screen and rob their bodies of vitamin D. The result is linkage to colon, prostate and breast cancer and opens the door to heart disease, MS and other chronic health problems.”

Warming to his subject, Dr. Spacey observed: “The really whacko thing is we know so little about vitamin D. You know why we don’t know enough about vitamin D? It’s because it’s so damn cheap and absolutely no one makes any money on it. Get smart, go outside and grab some rays. Just not too many.”

 # # # #

City of Subdued Excitement By Bob Sanders

Adventure novelist Ernie Gann became a neighbor in 1990 when my wife and I moved to San Juan Island, a somewhat secluded place in this country’s Fourth Corner. The relocation was from Chicago where I had lived 22 years; island life took more than a little industrious acclimation.

 
I had had an introduction to Gann beyond his novels seven or eight years earlier. On the set of PBS’ Book Beat, I asked host Bob Cromie with whom of the authors he had interviewed would he prefer spending a whole lot of time. His answer was Gann. “A funny thing happened when I interviewed him. He’s the only author who wouldn’t tell me where he lived. His explanation: “’If I tell you where I live, then you’ll ask me what it’s like and I’ll rave about the place and more people will move there so I’ll take a pass on your question.’” 

Four years ago my wife and I left the island for Bellingham. The reasons were largely medical plus the island’s isolation. Gann’s words of caution are something the people of Bellingham might consider since the city has been deluged by stories telling America what a great place it is to grow old under the best of circumstances.    

While publications can give cities such identities as Worst Air, Top Ten Flood Prone, Most Murders Per Capita and the like, Bellingham is getting far too much positive editorial attention. Last fall Mother Earth commended the city as “a great place no one has ever heard of.” These accolades are bringing far too many people here to escape all those things that make big city living disagreeable. Our population is swelling to the point where something has to be done. 

Having spent a great many years in publicity and public relations, I can assure you that there is only one way Bellingham can escape the inevitable and become a minor league Los Angeles. The way is a dexterously-handled reverse public relations program. We must draw a line in our clay. 

First, we have to re-write our current unofficial motto.  “City of Subdued Excitement” is simply not enough of a turnoff to reduce in number the growing hordes. Let’s go for a line like “The City of Sublimely Subdued Subjective Excitement” set against a man contemplating his belly button. That should make America aware that Bellingham is of narrow mind and not a place for such popular pursuits as listening to Art Bell’s enchantingly bizarre “Coast to Coast AM,” participating in paint ball wars or playing human croquet. The latter, British fun likely inspired by a Monty Python skit, is threatening to invade this country--probably by way of Texas where so many questionable ideas and strange people are encouraged to ferment.    

Of course, we could take a less subtle course. Something like “Tony Soprano’s Kinda Town” complete with a northwestern Badda Bing Club where the strippers wear checkered flannels to hide their tattoos. The possibilities are as numerous as “American Idol” contestants. Borrowing a page from the remarkable Hank Meyer, we’ll find a way to make certain that all Bellingham weather is of a negative nature as if 45 inches of rain a year isn’t off putting enough. It was Meyer, a public relations miracle worker, who persuaded Jackie Gleason to originate his TV show in Miami Beach. He also made sure the media never reported temperatures beyond 89 in the Sun and Fun Capital of the World. 

The media should play a vital role in sullying Bellingham as we erect walls of attitude to keep out people insistent upon clogging our streets and jamming our schools. With Florida’s Red Neck Riviera as inspiration, let’s get some intrepid shore-line developer to create a wide open White Neck Riviera based on the principles of Kansas City Boss Tom Pendergast complete with a crooked police chief. Further, let’s get a White Neck Riviera story of citizen abuse by the cops in the local press at least once a week thus also satisfying the insatiable thirst of the wire services. Our PR campaign also could make much of the delights of nearby communities including Leavenworth where cuckoo clocks meet Wiener schnitzel in a tourism wunderbar explosion of high kitsch.  

Also, let’s not forget the frightening increase of Canadian border crossings as our dollar shrinks thus attracting  Maple Leafers seeking even worse clothing here than attire offered in their drab stores. Let’s publicize Bellingham as the Milan of the Northwest offering nothing of what has become much sought after celebrity fashion road kill. Couture turnoff possibilities are breathtaking in potential.  

That observation a few paragraphs back about drawing a line in our clay could be advanced—particularly if the threatening crowds don’t believe those stories about our awful weather. Surely a series of stories about gardening difficulties in our truly ridiculous soil has considerable potential. We could create a Worst Gardener in the World Contest whose bleat of defeat each year would direct ire on our wickedly woeful soil so near and yet so far from Victoria’s famed Buchart Gardens. Think of the exposure in gardening publications and let’s not forget Martha Stewart—always a powerhouse in public persuasion.  

While we are it, let’s do something thrillingly horrendous and have a Festival of the Moles and Voles to honor our second worst aspect of gardening. That might not get Bellingham recognized by Oprah’s people but it’s a cinch for Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown” on MSNBC. 
 

                                                           # # # #