Once upon a time there was a cow on the Seattle City Council who exemplified that part of the Seattle Spirit that believed success came to those who wait in the right line. Now about 1972, as she was presiding over a meet-ing, some Paul Revere wannabe rushed in and announced: "THE NORTHWEST IS ABOUT TO BE FLOODED WITH PEOPLE!"
"Ridiculous," she mooed. "Whoo would want to move to Tacoma?"
The audience howled because, as Seattleites, we'd been trained to laugh at any Tacoma punchline.
Twenty years later, Jerry Seinfeld said at coffee, "You notice, everybody's moving to Seattle."
"Yeah," George said, "it's the pesto of cities."
Now, Seattleites may be weary of their city, might even enjoy a little a little trip down Puget Sound to Tacoma, where the parking is cheap, the people friendly and they happen to have a baker's dozen of great things that we don't.
Number one is the new Tacoma Art Museum. Inside this award-winning architectural show-piece - it looks like two boxes mating - are some pieces of art that are everything the building is not: lovely, real and original.
Their current show is "The Great American Thing, 1915 to 1935."
It includes atmospheric photographs: a row of generators at the Niagara Falls power plant by Margaret Bourke-White, called "March of the Dynamos"; portraits of those first New York skyscrapers by Alfred Stieglitz and others; and a portrait of a weathered Georgia O'Keeffe by Ansel Adams.
They look like two million dollars.
Beyond the photos are things, like a shiny black Underwood Noiseless Typewriter looking like a sleek roadster, and O'Keeffe's uniform, a black kimono with a silver belt and broad-brimmed hat.
There are paintings here I lack the education to appreciate.
But everyone can enjoy "Rumba" and "The Lindy Hop" by a contemporary of Diego Rivera named Covarrubias.
As the story goes, Miguel Covarrubias was an immediate sensation in New York when he arrived. The New Yorker couldn't get enough. But he died young and was forgotten.
One of women in the crowd studying his work said to her friend: "You can hear the music."
The young guides are friendly and honest - qualities more present in towns than cities. They like the museum's architecture, but admit it would make a great roller rink. The architect, some bird from New Mexico, said the ramps were "inspired by Mount Rainier." Heavy, man.
Not that Seattle did any better.
Upstairs here are some photographs of gardens that look like covers Sunset had to discard after the printers got into some bad LSD.
Now step out onto Pacific Avenue.
It's a real Edward Hopper, a boulevard of brick, fascinating to study under a shifting sun. And just south is a giant brick period where the transcontinental railroads stopped, now the Washington State History Museum.
It's a must visit for anyone who considers themselves a Washingtonian. Check out the material artifacts from when we had the greatest timber and salmon resources in the world.
A shingle weaver sat below a conveyer belt and had to make 45 cuts a minute. You could tell how experienced he was by counting his fingers.
And check out the spinning knives of the salmon butcher they called the Iron Chink. Whites earned $4 a day; the Chinese, $1.50.
Here's the story of the army of loggers sent into the woods for World War I, taking 10 million feet a month, spruce for airplanes, fir for boats.
The cedar Indian lodge is lovely. Hanging from the ceiling is the aluminum skeleton of a Boeing bomber.
My favorite thing is a hay fork, as delicate as calligraphy; its fine-grained handle perfectly curved and meshed with long tines the color of an old nickel. Made me want to hay.
Across Pacific Avenue from the museum the University of Washington has done a fine job of taking old Tacoma and transforming it into a campus.
The centerpiece is a library made out of a power station. Where juice from Snoqualmie Falls once poured into Tacoma, are stacks of books. A man named Sayre designed it in a Neo-Classical style. Its outline is uplifting, the brick is a warm orange and the tall-paned windows are capped with palladiums. It's majestic.
Below the History Museum is the new glass museum reached by a Chihuly walkway filled with a lot of junk. But the museum not only has a fascinating glass workshop slash theater; inside the exhibition spaces are some flabbergasting exhibits of where glass has gone. Last month I saw some William Morris work there. Long after he stops being the best-looking glass artist, I would expect his work to be still drawing wows.
On a table was piled a safari's loot, long luminescent tusks of many colors, delicate and as finely shaped as ivory. Across from them were what looked like authentic Japanese boxes for the ancestor's ashes.
The museum district is an inviting first step to discovering Tacoma. Afterward, may I suggest a walk uptown to Fireman's Park for a grand panorama, from Mount Rainier on your right, almost touchable, to industrial Tacoma belching smoke, but no longer stink, below you. In Commencement Bay, freighters lie at anchor. And behind you is the fine Tacoma tower that once housed City Hall, and behind that, Stadium High School's turrets.
I'm guessing, as its boosters once claimed, "You'll Like Tacoma."[[In-content Ad]]
