Pike Place Secret Garden
The Pike Place market was oddly cleared out today - the summer crowds were back to work and vendors stood around in the margins between their booths commiserating about the slow sales. You could walk right up to things usually hard to get close to – the theatrical fishmongers, the fortune telling Zoltar in front of the magic shop, the entrance to the “first” Starbucks. The usual chararacters were absent: violinists in rubber cat masks, the sidewalk pianist, panhandlers, typewriter poets, produce stand guys handing out apple slices. An offseason tourist couple asked me how to find Ghost Alley Espresso and I told them to go to the bronze pig statue and turn around: they’d see a staircase descending to the gum wall.
Each time I visit I find or maybe re-remember a passage to something specific that I maybe had trouble finding on a different visit. It seems to me like ramps, doors and entryways move around a little in my memory or maybe for real. Today I wandered through the door to the Pike Place Secret Garden, a rooftop urban garden overlooking the waterfront and ferris wheel. Pictures sometimes don’t do the market justice but this one captured it exactly.