PhinneyRidge.org regularly showcases top local writers who provide a unique perspective on the Phinney Ridge and Greenwood neighborhoods. Matt Caliri shared his take on Greenwood with a walk through some of the community’s most interesting spots presented here…
They serve Chimay at the coffee shop a few blocks from my house in Greenwood. Chimay. At a coffee shop. Across the street from the coffee shop is a Space Travel Supply Company. The name of the coffee bar I’m at is Neptune. I just finished staring at a black trash receptacle that is an exact clone of the one I purchased from Fred Meyer. It’s black and durable and cheap and it’s now in my basement. So my basement is on planet Earth, even though I’m a couple hundred yards from my basement and I’m already in Neptune. What a wild town.
Greenwood does have its wild sides. When I began writing this article 3 months ago (did some research-based space travel in the interim thanks to the store across the street) the weather outside the coffee shop window looked to be in hot competition for the most fall-looking day ever. Yellows and oranges swirled in battle from both ends of the street. A white, indignant gloom of a sky hung as a backdrop. The people inside the café were in deep post-pumpkin depression. Eating treats at home. No Breaking Bads to watch. It was tough. And it’s still tough, even tougher now, in this biting, late-winter frost and dandruff sprays of snow stopping Seattle in her tracks for days at a time (as the people cry: “We shouldn’t go out there, there’s white stuff!” “My tires will turn into giant ice cylinders and eat my children at night!” “Snow is poison!”). And yet, there’s a lot to explore in the Hiptropolis of 85th and Greenwood, regardless of the weather. Wild & phantasmagoric elements abound, past and present.
Welcome…to Greenwild.
Greenwood was first a bog and cemetery before the boutique life took hold. For 17 years things were pretty dead around here until Governor Henry McBride interred the bodies (so much for rest in peace) out of Greenwood Cemetery and started building residential plots in 1908. Where did those interred bodies go, you may be wondering? The answer could be one of two possibilities: Either Governor McBride moved them to Ballard’s Crown Hill Cemetery, or he let them loose and they still mill about Greenwood to this day as half-functioning, latte-ordering, eco-conscious zombies (“Don’t waste the skull like that!” “That jawbone makes for excellent compost!”).
Kidding aside, there has been documented paranormal activity in the area, particularly on 85th, where they started digging up bodies and building houses. Fellow resident of Greenwood and Seattle author Emily Hill has written books about the haunting in her neighborhood on 85th St. She’s convinced that her 1907 house, as well as the house next door and the house across the street from hers, are the dwelling places of restless ghosts. (Can’t you just imagine “this is not my beautiful home” playing incessantly in their poor, ghost heads?).
Here’s Emily Hill in her own words: “The residents of all three houses experienced hauntings [sic], paranormal activity, and the presence of ghosts. I’ve included my own experience in ‘Ghost Stories and The Unexplained’ and ‘Ghost Stories From Beyond the Grave.’” She went on to describe watching door knobs turn when no one else was in the house, and the “ghost child” that played with the little girl in the house across the street. Spooky wild.
So we got zombies (most likely), ghost testimonials, and, get this: no sidewalks! This town has been waiting for sidewalks since 1954! Ever since they annexed the hinterlands that ran north to N 145th St., the Greenwood we know now north of 85th St. has been waiting for sidewalks ever since (as was promised in that annexation). Greenwoodlin creatures have been risking their lives on these roads since they were plank and trammeled by horse, buggy, trolley, and confused, youthful zombies and ghosts lurking about in need of decent coffee. Think of the smooth transit a sidewalk would provide for a Greenwood zombie. Sure they represent unforgivable wrongs, but at the end of the day zombies have rights, too. They just have a hard time expressing them.
In my prying about cyberspace in search of olde tyme Greenwood tales, I found very little. Though there is hope in finding places where they reward you for how much you can read while feeding you “pizza and snacks” (though I think it’s actually a pizza-eating marathon disguised as a reading marathon…least that’s what I would do.) Unfortunately, you have to be a teenager to be eligible for this event, says The Greenwood Library. The Reading Marathon for “teens” is at the Greenwood library on Saturday, January 28, from 11am-5pm. Bring You Own Fake Middle School ID.
If you’re too old, tried, and sophisticated for pizza and library books and in you’re in search of a more mellow wild, check out Couth Buzzard Books – Espresso Buono Café. They’re vying hard for the Greenwood Community Hot Spot Award, as they trumpet all they provide on their website: “Open Mic Nights, Acoustic Music Jams, Local Arts and Crafts, Monthly Cabarets, Family Events like Game Night, Writer’s Groups, Meeting Space Groups…and…Spirited Conversation!” And they serve Fremont beer from the Fremont Brewery. Nothing says “wild” like fresh beer brewed just 5 minutes away.
Also note that the Greenwood Animal Hospital will spade your babies, no problem, according to one of many rave reviews by customers, who also lauded there 7-days a week availability and free 1rst appointment. Says one customer, “I just got my baby spayed here and they are giving Seattle humane society prices to all their clients.” Finally, you can spay your baby in a humane fashion. How wild!
To conclude, I’d like to end on a Greenwood legacy that is sadly coming to an end this Feb. 4th. The Greenwood Market. After 20 years of serving the community as a meeting place of food and ideas and beer, the bigger fish across the street, Fred Meyer, is gobbling up the property Greenwood Market currently sits on by adding 55,000 sq. ft. to Fredkenstein’s current 118,000 sq. ft. How is Fred Meyer able to do this? They applied for a permit to expand back in July (what a wild permit). In fact, the FM expansion still needs city approval.
Spooky side note: The Greenwood Ghost Collective has in fact shown up weekly at town meetings to protest this action, though no one ever responds to their concerns…since they’re ghosts and no one can see them.
One customer laments over the types of food she will miss discovering at the Market, saying, “It was a cornucopia of organic produce and odd, fancy things – pomegranate molasses and Swedish sugar pearls, to name a few – has made [the market] it a favorite for foodies.”
Greenwood sugar pearls? Heck, I remember picking wild sugar pearls out back with my zombie ghost grandfather behind Greenwood Elementary when I was just five years old. Those were wild nights…
Whoa. A 10-year-old Bob Dylan just walked into Neptune wearing a dark poofy rain coat and plaid shorts. He just ordered a jelly doughnut. It’s 4 in the afternoon. Kid must be from Mars.
By: Matt Caliri
