Thursday night, I walked (but mostly drove) around the city to get a feel for its culture and history, both of which seem non-existent. I don’t mean it harshly, but I am having a difficult time understanding why the city exists, other than to provide an alternate, albeit cheaper, location for office towers outside of downtown Seattle. There are quite a few software companies in Bellevue, housed in a lot of glass-towers accessed by ridiculously wide streets. Other than that, there’s not much else.

I drove down to the city centre in the hopes of walking around its core to learn more about its inhabitants. Finding free street parking was next to impossible, with a mere 10-15 spots in the entire downtown area. They provide parkade parking at a cost, which I find ridiculous for a city that is a ghost-town after 5:00pm (other than the mass of traffic leaving the area). Even vacant buildings with vacant parking lots had signs posted that threatened users that their vehicle would be towed if parked. The streets are six to eight lanes wide, even in the downtown core. The traffic patterns are ridiculous with each of the four directions having their own exclusive access to the intersection, with prohibited left turn signals. Therefore, if a driver had just missed their left turn signal, they would have to wait seven lights until their next turn. This pattern did not change, even after 6:00pm when there were very few vehicles on the road. I could not understand why there was even a single vehicle on the road considering there was no where to go and nothing to do; everything is closed between 5:00pm and 7:00pm with the exception of restaurants (and perhaps the mall). The buildings are huge, with no real personality. The street-level entrances exist only as a means of access to the elevators, with very few shops at the base of a select few buildings.

The city boasts of its city park of green space. The park is large, but it is largely manicured green grass with soccer pylons set up in rows for practice. There is little available in the form of a natural forest. I was very impressed with the pieces of public art scattered along the park. I stumbled upon six of the pieces including the following.

Unknown

Holiest of Holies
by Bernard F. Hosey
Recycled steel

“Holiest of Holies” is a visual journey, an exaltation of the holiest and most basic creations of the human spirit.

Round and Round
by Bernard F. Hosey
Recycled steel

Round and Round is about having fun playing with an unyielding material to make a sphere. It is about having fun with another sphere, then playing with patterns transitioning from a hexagon to a triangle and having lines flow over and around the little sphere, which on the inside is also taken apart and exposed to give it more visual energy.

Building Wave
by Christopher Fennell
Repurposed wood

A new construction site looks like a sea of 2×4s reaching upward. Why not a wave in that sea? Instead of all the squares and rectangles, why not a graceful curved truss structure, a wave. While we build in squares, nature builds in circles. So here is a graceful construction that is somewhere between, A Wave of Construction Material, A Building Wave.

Nights Weigh
by Mary Kuebelbeck
Metal

While visiting Washington’s mountain range, I notice the Basalt formations, layer and layer of square forms repeating to create strength as a group, but fragile along the edges. The repeated crescent shapes are of the moon phases, each bringing a chance in the night sky and a pull on the earth’s shores.

Zen Beacon
by Thor Myhre
Recycled steel, cast iron, aluminum and brass

Zen Beacon was inspired by a pagoda in a secluded, peaceful spot perfect for meditation. The children’s tricycle seat in its center reminds me of the effortless mobility and empowerment I felt as a child gliding along a trike. That first, self-guided transport is a similar feeling to the joy I feel during meditation. While it isn’t physically possible to sit on that little token of a seat, through imagination or meditation, it is possible to arrive. Zen Beacon is my ambassador, radiating my token of peace beyond the reach of my physical body.

The sun was setting and I was having a difficult time taking photographs in the low light, so I decided to venture along the winding roads of the Washington Lake’s edge. This area reminded me much of West Vancouver, with its million dollar homes and thousands of dollars spent on multiple vehicles, including watercraft. The roadway was very narrow, with steep driveways off of it that disappeared behind the large conifers, leading up to the hidden million dollar homes. Water has the attraction of big money and rich owners; inaccessible to the common folk. I couldn’t find a single access point to Lake Washington. After a quick look on google maps, it seems as though there are very few publicly accessible parks along the second largest fresh water lake in the state; incredulous!

Once I tired of the money-in-my-face reality of Lake Washington Blvd, I made my way back to the downtown core. Just west of the core, along its perimeter, there exists an older section of the city. This section was quite quaint with tiny little shops that were housed in shorter, older, wooded buildings along the narrow streets. This area was likely the birthplace of the town before it grew into a city. It took many turns around the few blocks of the area before I found a parking spot. I grabbed my camera and made my way along Main street in search of a little cafe to grab a spot of dinner. Everything was closed and the streets were dark with very few lamp posts to assist the possibility of photographs. The only eateries available were restaurants and bars that were either too fancy or too loud for a laptop and a wanderer. I hopped back into the car to find something, anything that would closely resemble a cafe. My hope was severely diminishing and by the end of the search, I settled on a salad from Safeway brought back to my hotel room.