We invite you to join us at our March community meeting on Wednesday, March 6, to discuss public safety in Leschi. We hope to bring together residents and local business owners for this discussion. Similar to last year, we plan to host meetings with Seattle organizations this year (Parks, SDOT, SPD, etc.) and last year the public safety conversation provided good context for those meetings. We would also like to assess interest in forming a Leschi public safety committee to make progress on the public safety issues throughout the year. (Venue is Grace United Methodist Church, 722 30th Ave S at 7pm) ~Ashley Martin

We are making some progress with the plans to replace the Yesler Pier (next to the Bluwater Bistro). After the October meeting with spokespeople for the Parks Department, the Parks and Greenspace Committee became increasingly dissatisfied with the plans for a new Yesler Pier. The existing pier is 47 feet wide and wood, but the new one is only 16 feet wide with steel grates. True, it is connected to a 12-foot-wide platform over a new breakwater that will be 500 feet long. But missing is a pedestrian-friendly space that can meet the social needs of the case in summer, small groups of friends and sunbathers, especially a lively place for teenagers to hang out on the pier in summer. Unfortunately, the project design was jelled three years ago without virtually no serious public outreach. When the Leschi Community Council protested the design–our letter was in the November issue of the Leschi News –the Parks Department responded that there could be no changes in the dimensions of the pier due to the status of permits that had been negotiated. Current environmental requirements are strict about minimizing the coverage of platforms on the lake—in order to protect the migrating salmon juveniles from predator fish that hover in deep shade. The most that could change, the Department said, would be the addition of a few benches. We don't have any places to sit now, so that is an improvement. We still were not happy after we found the 100% plans on the web. No benches are shown on the plans and there were no ladders to help people in the lake climb onto the pier. The best news is that instead of steel grates for the surface of the pier, we will get a soft fiberglass grate material. The surface on the breakwater platform, because it is over deeper water, will be solid concrete. We are pursuing an access landing and temporary storage for canoes and kayaks—to replace the low floating dock which was constructed by the Washington Water Trails and Leschi Community Council. Landscaping for the slope of Leschi Park south of the entry to the South Leschi Moorage: we have seen no landscaping plans. One other improvement we may get is an entry structure with a sign that denotes the public character of the new pier. City Council funded the project five years ago, but construction costs have climbed. The project, though, is a requirement tied to the environmental impact of the changes for the South Leschi Moorage. ~John Barber

Frink Park was created as, and remains, a natural, wooded park in the urban surrounding. It retains the Olmsted vision of a forest setting and rustic feel, with narrow, winding trails and dense foliage, without the formalized development to be found in places like Leschi and Volunteer parks. Originally known as Washington Park, Frink Park was platted as park space in 1883 by Judge Thomas Burke and intended as privately owned land. When it was acquired by the Frink family and donated to the city, it was renamed because Seattle already had a Washington Park. Seattle was extensively logged by 1920, and it is likely that the future Frink Park had the same fate. If it was not completely logged, at least it was relieved of its largest, highest-quality trees. Sawmills that existed along the Leschi shoreline would have been happy to receive the product. The native forest consisted of cedar, hemlock, and fir. A survey conducted around 2000 found the largest trees to be about 100 to 125 years old. There remains a variety of evergreens, along with bigleaf maples. A study noted that the dominance of maples has crowded out the establishment of conifer seedlings, slowing the transition to a forest dominated by longer-lived conifers. This raised the concern that the forest would not be able to grow replacements for overstory trees that die. Targeted planting of conifer seedlings was recommended by the study. Since then, over a thousand conifer starts have been planted in the park, with good success rates. Most of the conifers now seen in the park were planted by volunteers in the past 30 years. There are other, less welcome things growing in the park. One of them is English ivy, control of which occupies the efforts of many a park volunteer. Where did that come from? Photos from 1913 show new plantings that appear to be ivy. Olmsted planting lists for Frink Park have not been found, if they ever existed. However, Olmsted did recommend ivy for Interlaken Park, which is similarly steep and wooded. “Invasive species” was not a concept in Olmsted’s time. A survey, reported in 2000, listed 78 varieties of birds actually observed in the park, from American Crow to Yellow-rumped Warbler. Less rigorous surveys noted eight types of mammals (from bats to rats), three amphibians, and two reptiles. In addition to the plant and animal life described here, there are remnants of human habitation in the park as well. In 1910, a house with garage and storage shed was built as a rent-free residence for the person variously known as the foreman or caretaker of Frink Park and perhaps Leschi Park as well. The location remained in use until 1964, when the resident maintenance supervisor died. A couple years later, a cooperative pre-school asked to use the structure for the children. After an inspection by the building department, however, it was found to be unsafe and was demolished immediately. What little remains had once been used for picnicking but now is just a curiosity. The site of the former residence, which was given the address 322 34th Avenue South, can be found by following the trail up the hill from the intersection of Frink Place, Jackson Street, and Lake Washington Boulevard. County records show the one-story structure as having been 20 feet by 44 feet, but you wouldn’t know it from what’s left. The house had an 8’ 6” ceiling, one 4’ dormer, and no attic. After the remains of the residence – not much more than a chimney – the path leads through the woods back to a small meadow and the upper end of Frink Place, where the block-long Washington Street used to dead-end from the hilltop. A century ago, the path was an old wagon road, wider in those days, used by motor vehicles for access to the caretaker’s home. Until 1927, Frink Place did not exist. That connection between Washington Street and Lake Washington Boulevard was recommended by the Olmsted Brothers consulting firm as early as 1912. It was not created, however, until an act of the City Council. Frink Place is not to be confused with what was once called Frink Boulevard, from King Street to Colman Park—now known as Lake Washington Boulevard South. Continued next month. ~Roger Lippman The author writes monthly about Leschi history and his experiences over his 48 years in the neighborhood.

Retrospective Exhibition to February 25, 2024 Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, 550 Winslow Way E. 206.451.4000, Hours: 10am-5pm daily. Dazzling color paired with emotional depth and brilliant handling of the watercolor medium strike us right away in Linda Okazaki’s paintings in her retrospective exhibition at the Bainbridge Museum of Art. Okazaki has lived in Port Townsend for decades, and before that she lived in Eastern Washington, attending Washington State University for two degrees and then joining the faculty there in the 1970s. She was part of an informal group of faculty and graduate students, a relaxed connection because of the isolation of Pullman. I can remember when I was on the faculty there in the late 1980s (long after Linda Okazaki had left) the rural setting affected the artists in unusual ways. We had parties to look at the stars, bonfires for the fourth of July, and still plenty of time to work. The artists often engaged with the unique landscape, its stillness, its creatures, its odd palimpsests of earlier times (such as a disused railroad track). Gaylen Hanson, by my time retired and painting full time in the tiny town of Palouse, was one of Okazaki’s professors. Near the beginning of the exhibition is a “studio conversation” of Gaylen and Vincent Van Gogh. We see Hanson’s presence in her art in the benevolent animals and birds that fill her paintings. But her birds multiply and congregate and disperse as in the wonderful recent painting, Birds Take Flight into Twilight , 2023. We see twenty different species of birds, each carefully observed, in a landscape filled with a rainbow of colors. Another inspiration was the Bay Area artist Joan Brown, who also pursued a personal vocabulary of self-portraits, dancing, and swimming, in a fantasy world. Also important to her was the anguished imagery of Frida Kahlo, as we see in Letter to Frida , 1985. The exhibition has numerous themes, but they are not clustered together; Curator Greg Robinson, in collaboration with the artist, conducts a symphony of phrases that build on one another, and repeat, each with a new variation. The themes given are “Personal Narrative, Domesticity and Nature Morte, Dream Logic, The Mother Wound, Landscape and Waterscape, Music, Song, and Theater, The Briarcliff series, and Birds. My own response is that water is the dominant subject that encompasses all the others. First, there is the transparency of watercolor which conveys many moods. At the outset of the exhibition, we see Evening Departure , 1980. The sea (Puget Sound) swirls around the boat, as the artist, accompanied by her dog, is held in the arms of a large wolf. The embrace is tender, but the image suggests anxiety. This represents on one level her departure from many years in Eastern Washington to live in Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula. But on another level, we can sense her fear of starting over in an entirely new environment through the imaginary, but gentle embrace of a wolf. In River Story Return , 1989, the artist now depicts herself nude in the water, carrying a raven and reaching for the shore as a glass vessel floats toward her and a person in a red and black striped robe fails to connect to her. Desperation is palpable, expressed through the color, textures, and images. Crypt Swimmers  heightens the sense of danger as several figures swim among heavy columns and arches. When Okazaki was six, her mother was murdered by a stalker who then committed suicide. For the first time, the artist is showing several works that refer to this trauma, each more explicit than the last. The earliest is a pencil drawing made while in art school, but later large watercolors confront this painful subject with a courageous directness. Not surprisingly then, the overall sensation of the exhibition is one of unease, everything is off kilter, filled with undecipherable metaphors, particularly in the still life paintings of tables set vertically against the picture plane and filled with odd objects. Much of the imagery is from dreams, dreams that suggest struggles to just find a firm footing particularly in juxtaposition with water. It is timely that the exhibition “Hokusai Inspiration and Influence” is at the Seattle Art Museum: Hokusai was a master of painting water. The artist clearly has an affinity with him. But I will end where I began with the dazzling color: Okazaki immersed herself in a study of Goethe’s color theory and then made her own color charts in order to exactly convey the emotions that she wanted to express. So seeing these paintings through color first gives us a feeling of comfort and sometimes joy, even as the paintings themselves take us on a fantastic adventure. ~Susan Platt, PhD www.artandpoliticsnow.com

Caretakers of the Leschi-Lake Dell Natural Area Obit/Remembrance: Betsy Zickler remembers Leschi volunteers superb, Fran and Bunny Wood, who both quietly passed away in the last two years. The couple were the leading stewards of the Leschi-Lake Dell Natural Area, 36th and East Terrace. For many years this beautiful hidden gem of a park was lovingly looked after by Fran and Bunny Wood, whose home a few steps away allowed them easy access to the park on a daily basis. They both worked tirelessly in the park and with Seattle Parks and Recreation crews, as well as with Forterra, an organization “dedicated to conserving wild lands and green and prosperous communities” and Earth Corps when large tree removal and steep hillside work was required. Their friend Rich Appleton also spent hundreds of hours over the years working with Fran and Bunny in both the hard labor of maintenance in the park and serving as a liaison with Parks, Forterra and Earth Corps. Fran and Bunny organized monthly work parties for on-going maintenance, purchases of plants and trees and work parties for fall and spring plantings. Most work parties consisted of a small dedicated group of five or six folks [Fran and Bunny, Rich Appleton, Diane Morris, Marianne Steele (traveling from Olympia!) and Betsy Zickler), with larger work parties sometimes joining in during the planting sessions. Other organized groups volunteered from the University of Washington typically on Earth Day and Martin Luther King Jr Day. Occasionally a few individuals from the surrounding neighborhood would stop by to help. Throughout it all Bunny would supply everyone with lunches she made–sandwiches from homemade bread, just-baked cookies, chips, seasonal fruits and vegetables and drinks–we never went hungry and some folks noted they came for the food and fell in love with the work. Work parties were held regardless of the weather, and we ate a number of lunches in their garage to keep warm and dry with Bunny providing warming soups to keep us going. Fran would make daily (or more) trips to pick up trash left behind by visitors and maintained a vigilance over the site. He befriended everyone who visited and continuously encouraged all to join in the work parties, with varying success. Fran and Bunny’s tireless efforts in maintaining this park ended a few years ago when they relocated to Corvallis, Oregon, to be closer to Bunny’s family. Sadly, Fran died in July 2022, aged 93, and Bunny passed away in September 2023 at age 92. The park has lost its leaders, and due to aging and illness the remaining few members of the work parties have been unable to continue. Thus, the park has declined in the recent years, in part due to the Parks department being so thinly stretched in its maintenance of our city park areas due to budgetary cuts. It would be nice to see younger members of the community begin regular work parties again to restore the Leschi-Lake Dell Natural Area to its former beauty. Such efforts would be a welcome tribute to Fran and Bunny's love and care of this natural area, ready to be enjoyed again by future generations. ~Betsy Zickler

TASTE OF LESCHI RETURNS DECEMBER 6th, 5-7pm Taste of Leschi, our school's annual celebration of our many diverse cultures and traditions, will be on Wednesday, December 6 and all are welcome. Families are invited to bring a dish of cultural significance for a community potluck, and there will be an open mic for students or family members to share cultural attire, music, or other items of note. 14th ANNUAL GIVING GARLAND The Giving Garland is geared towards the children, providing families with support during the winter holidays in gift cards and gifts… HOW CAN YOU HELP THIS YEAR? Buy a gift from the Amazon wish list, purchase grocery cards or gift cards for a teen who wants to shop for themselves, and more! Please go to https://www.leschipta.org/giving-garland for specific actions you can take to support Leschi Bullpup students and their families. The Giving Garland support comes in different forms…some items are fun: toys, bikes, art supplies, board games, balls, books and some are basics: clothing, bedding, warm coats or diapers. And every family receives gift cards for easily accessible grocery stores. In 2022 we distributed nearly $12,000 in gift cards for groceries, clothing and specific gifts and approximately 700 gifts! Over the last 13 years, the Giving Garland has supported nearly 2,000 children and their families during the winter holidays. It is made possible by the Leschi school and neighborhood communities, and sponsored by the Leschi PTA.

Date: Wednesday, Dec 6th 7:00pm Location: Grace United Methodist Church, 722 30th Ave S, Seattle, WA 98144 Details: Please join us for light refreshments, good company and to share your thoughts on what the Leschi Community Council should focus on in 2024. Even if for only ten minutes, please stop in for a cookie and to provide input to inform next year's plan.

120 Lakeside Ave. Hours: Mon- Thurs 11-8; Fri 11-9; Sat. 9-9; Sun. 9-8 Meet Alejandro Martinez, the new general manager of Pablo y Pablo. And where is that you might ask? It’s residing in the same spot where Meet the Moon was once! Asked about the change in concept, Alejandro said the former menu was a bit of everything. It was hard to put a label on it. The tacos were popular and there is no Mexican restaurant close to Leschi, so it made sense to introduce Pablo y Pablo to our community. Alejandro was born and raised in Cancun and attended culinary school in Mexico City. Beyond his classes, Alejandro learned much from his abuela (grandmother) who taught him that food is an act of love. One shows their love to others through food and the serving of food. Her specialty was a spiced ham which she served for important holidays. He is trying to duplicate that dish, but it is not quite the same and he continues to tweak. Alejandro moved to the United States in 2018 and came right to Seattle. He began as many do washing dishes, then line cook and on up the career path. He has worked in Human Resources and accounting as well as everything to do with food. He is well suited to become a general manager with an understanding of all the positions and his own personal philosophy that serving food is a team effort and making it work seamlessly is what makes a meaningful experience for the visiting diner. Alejandro meets with his team 3 times a week to ensure this flawless performance on everyone’s part. One problem of the moment is no sign; banners are obscured by the overhangs on the building. But be assured, Pablo y Pablo is open and waiting to serve you. Don’t miss the warm crispy chips and salsa seasoned for your taste buds: mild or spicy. Tacos are served with a side of your choice; the rice and beans are not your usual; pinto and black beans are not mashed and refried and the rice is in a flavorful sauce. And if you have room, top it off with a crème brulee for dessert. Pablo has a full bar as did the waning Moon and they still have the favorite avocado toast on the menu! ~Diane Snell

Happy Holiday Season Leschi! Giving the gift of wine can be equally as fun for the gift giver as it is for the recipient. When choosing a bottle of wine (or two) to gift, keep a few basic ideas in mind. Know what the recipient tends to like and have a rough estimate of what you would like to spend. Many great wines can be found across all ranges of price points. When in doubt- ask an expert- like US! Leschi Market will be well staffed with wine experts throughout the month to assist you with all of your wine needs. A comment that I will never forget, was said to me one of my first holiday seasons at the Market. “Giving wine just seems so last minute.” We have discussed the art of gift giving many times before. As we embark on the biggest gifting season of the year, let me offer some ideas on putting a little meaning behind those gifts. Trust me, in general, everyone loves to receive wine as a gift, and if you put just a tiny amount of thought into it, it won’t seem so last minute at all. Personally, I anticipate quite a bit of wine gifting (and drinking!) this year! Theme based wine gifts are creative and fun. These definitely show some amount of planning and thought. They are just as fun to assemble as they are to receive. All you need to do is choose your price point and choose your theme. Here are some of my favorites from over the years. For the bicyclist on the list, a “ Tour de France ” package can include a wine from several different regions in France: Alsace, Beaujolais, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Chateauneuf du Pape, Gascogne, Languedoc-Roussillon, Loire, and Rhône are great starting points. These regions are so diverse themselves that you could easily choose a few wines from within each region. With even more of a return to normalcy and increased travels during 2023 and beyond, the “ Around the World ” packages might be a great way to revisit or anticipate those far off destinations. Focusing on one country, or several, is easy enough to do. Rieslings from Germany, Barberas from Italy, Tempranillos from Spain, Bordeaux style wines from Mexico, Malbecs from Argentina or our unique “stamp collection” section that houses wines from Georgia, Greece, Lebanon or Romania. Domestic sets can be great too. Walla Walla, Willamette Valley or Napa would provide great themed packages. The possibilities and spin-offs are truly endless. From an “ Italian Getaway ,” to an all natty grouping, from all under $10 wine, to an all animal themed label, use your imagination and creativity, and most of all, have fun with it. This brings me to Champagnes and Ports. These are ultimate gift wines, if not for the sole fact that people rarely buy them for themselves. Who knows why, but we tend to put off splurging for these special wines for ourselves yet are ecstatic when we are gifted them. When in doubt, look to the Port and Champagne sections. Many of these wines are discounted during holiday months, and great finds can be had for under $50. Vintage Champagnes and Vintage Ports are more expensive and harder to find, however “Colheita” Ports (years of ports not designated as “vintage”) can be found for a lesser dollar amount and for nearly every year; a great idea when trying to match birth years, anniversary years, and other significant dates in one’s life. Finally, let’s conclude with highly sought after wines that are in fairly limited supply. Collectors, cellar builders, and new winos alike will appreciate getting their hands on some of these rarities! These are just a few of our offerings. Take a look at our lockbox, located next to the Champagne in the wine aisle–it’s full of treasures as well! 2015 Quilceda Creek Cabernet Sauvignon Columbia Valley ($180) 99-points, James Suckling 2017 Dow’s Vintage Porto ($150) 96-points, Robert Parker 2015 Clos des Papes Chateauneuf du Pape ($125) 98-points, Wine Spectator 2006 Tolaini Picconero Toscana ($125) 93+-points, Wine Advocate, Galloni 2015 Reynvaan Stonessence Syrah ($98) 95-points, Robert Parker 2015 Muga Prado Enea Gran Reserva ($94) 97-points, Robert Parker Champagne Billecart Salmon Brut Rose NV ($85) 92-points, Wine Spectator 2017 Le Vieux Donjon Chateauneuf du Pape ($65) 95-points, Robert Parker 2014 R. Lopez de Heredia Tondonia Vina Gravonia ($50) 95-points, Robert Parker 2016 Domaine Saint Damien Gigondas Louisiane ($36) 94-points, Robert Parker Still unsure what gift to give the wine lover on your list? One of my favorite reminders is that accessories like wine glasses and decanters rarely need a gift receipt! Have a safe and memorable holiday season and we’ll see you next year! CHEERS! ENJOY! ~Kenneth Benner Kenneth Benner, a Seattle area native, is a trained chef and has worked in such restaurants as Barbacoa, B.O.K.A. Kitchen + Bar, and Dahlia Lounge. Ken is the wine buyer at Leschi Market. He has a passion for learning, a meticulous palate, and a tenacity for searching out the best for his customers while offering some of the most highly coveted wines in the area. His monthly column is intended to inspire and explore new choices in wine, learn about wine with his readers, and share his knowledge and experience in the wine world. Check out the latest at www.LeschiMart.com or to request to be added to email updates at wine@leschimarket.com .

This holiday be sure to make time to go to the Seattle Art Museum to see “Hokusai Inspiration and Influence” (to January 21) and “Calder: in Motion, The Shirley Family Collection” (to Aug 4, 2024.) Both expand our understanding of these two famous artists. In “Hokusai” we see the larger context of his work possible because this exhibition comes from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, a pioneer collector of Japanese woodblock prints. The Calder is a delightful exploration, the first in a series based on the wonderful gift of forty-five works by Calder by Jon and Kim Shirley. Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) is familiar to all of us for his Great Wave also known as “Under the Wave of Kanagama” part of his Thirty-Six Views of Mt Fuji . It depicts three fish delivery boats caught up in a huge wave (had you noticed there are three boats in the wave?) Thirty-Six Views of Mt Fuji (1830 -31) was immediately popular. The exhibition demonstrates that artists from then to now have been inspired by it. Hokusai moved beyond the traditional scope of ukiyo-e prints that present Kabuki actors and women dressed in beautiful clothes (his teacher Katsukawa Shunsho’s specialty). Ukiyo-e means “pictures of the floating world,” and that world was the well-off educated urban middle class of Edo, Japan (1615-1868). Hokusai expanded those subjects to include landscape, folk tales, history, and literature. The exhibition includes his teachers, his pupils and others who were inspired by Hokusai. Wave (2006), a seven foot intaglio print by Peter Soriano, suggests we are inside the wave with its vertical thrust of water that breaks at the top. One unusual series is One Hundred Ghost Stories (Hyaku monogatari) . The most famous, The Ghost of Oiwa (Oiwa-san) has a strange, distorted face on a lamp. According to the catalog: “A man killed his wife in order to marry the rich girl next door, using a poison that caused poor Oiwa to become disfigured before she died. Her ghost returned to torment the killer by possessing everyday objects, such as the lantern that takes on the distorted shape of her dying face.” “Calder: in Motion” ranges from large complex hanging mobiles to tiny wire sculptures of animals. I was amazed at the astonishing skill involved in putting these works together. How did Calder get them to balance? How did he decide how to attach the different parts, what colors work? But above all you see the playful humor of Calder, a perfect exhibition for these depressing times. My favorite work by Calder is still his wonderful circus. I saw it at the Whitney many years ago, along with a movie of Calder manipulating the tiny wire animals. It came out of 1920s Paris, that exuberant period of experimentation in all the arts. Calder set it up in living rooms and the celebrity artists of the time came for the evening watching him bring the little circus alive; he even had music. In this exhibition we see a set of seven prints of the circus performers that remind us of this playful, experimental era. I also loved the Bird , the Rat , and the Cow , created out of wire and found materials. Calder’s ability to capture the nuances of moving animal forms in just a few lines, or pieces of wire, is the result of making hundreds of quick linear drawings at the Bronx Zoo in the 1920s. Calder works from very small to very large. Space itself was a primary material for him, and we have to look up and down and sideways to fully experience his inventive work. Although using different media in different eras, both Hokusai and Calder are about motion, scale and perspective. Hokusai pioneered a landscape art that included great changes in scale (he was familiar with European linear perspective; although his overall image size was small, we perceive vast distances. His other focus was moving water of which he was a master. In the 1930s Calder began to create mobiles that are thought of as abstract. He also began to make monumental stabiles that shape space but touch the ground like Eagle in the Olympic Sculpture Park. Given this title, I like to think animals are lurking behind all the abstract forms. Expand your sense of space as you visit these two shows! ~Susan Platt, PhD www.artandpoliticsnow.com

Established in 1906, Frink Park, Leschi’s vast, rambling woods, lies in the neighborhood’s geographical heart. Yet even those who are well acquainted with its hillsides, trails, and creeks may not know its history, flora, and fauna, nor even where its unmarked boundaries are. In the coming months we’ll take a long stroll through the park and shed some light on these obscurities. The park originated as a land donation from John and Abbie Frink. Having obtained the approximately square parcel bounded by Main and King Streets, and 31st and 34th Avenues South, the couple promptly donated it to the city for park purposes. In 1908 and 1909, the city acquired a few small parcels along the edges and added them to the park. Frink Park, along with Colman Park, Mt. Baker Park, and the Dose Terrace Stairs, was added in 2020 to the National Register of Historic Places. Upon a visit to Seattle in 1903, the landscape designer John C. Olmsted conceptualized a parkway along 31st Avenue South, the top of Mt. Baker Ridge, from today’s Colman Park to Leschi. He was the nephew, and later the adopted son, of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., who is considered the father of landscape architecture in the US, having designed New York’s Central Park, along with numerous other significant public spaces. After the elder Olmsted’s brother died, he married the widow and adopted her three children, including John. When Frederick retired, John and his half-brother, Frederick Jr, continued his work, as Olmsted Brothers, of Brookline, Massachusetts. Historically the area below crest had been prone to landslides, most recently in the late 19th century, attributable to clearcutting. But there had been slides centuries before, held in the cultural memory of Native peoples and attributed to the resident earth-shaking spirit A’yahos (described in my January 2022 article). Olmsted thought that any development below 31st would only consist of cheap housing, and that the maintenance of streets and utilities in a slide zone would be a never-ending expense. Construction of foundations and trenching for utility services would only exacerbate the problem, he feared. So instead, he recommended that parkland be extended down to the lakeshore and all the way south to Colman Park. Olmsted’s concerns about landslides were reasonable, but probably worse than justified, due to observations he made within the future Frink Park itself. On the steep hillside, he noted disruptions in the surface that he ascribed to earth movement. He wrote that he had seen “sudden depressions which I thought were and recorded as numerous landslides.” But, on a later walk through the area, J. W. Thompson, the superintendent of parks, told Olmsted that the depressions were left “when the footings were set for a great trestle used by a cable railway years ago to get from the top of the hill down to Lake Washington.” Olmsted wrote, “After the street railway was taken away leaving no sign except these long trench-like holes, I saw at once that they were artificial as soon as their origin was stated.” This huge, rickety bridgeway (built with 330,000 board feet of lumber) had been the return pathway for the Mill Street (later Yesler Way) cable car, which began service in 1888. But the structure, at a 15% grade and rising to 140 feet above ground), was dangerous and scary. In 1890, due to high winds that swayed the trestle, a car derailed and lost its grip. Passengers leaped from the car and held onto the side railings of the bridge as the car rushed downhill. Fortunately, no one was killed or seriously hurt. The bridge was decommissioned not long after, leaving behind the scars that Olmsted observed. No trace of the trestle is to be found at this late date, except perhaps by the most eagle-eyed among us. (Watch for more on the Leschi cable car in a future article.) During a 1906 return visit, Olmsted proposed a viewpoint at the corner of 31st and Jackson. He described the view from there as “almost unobstructed and very fine.” It’s hard to visualize that now, after a century of tree growth, but we must recall that the trestle had been removed not long before, leaving a clearing along the Jackson Street corridor below. The good view to be had nowadays is from the upper part of 31st, above the retaining wall, at King Street. The park enlargement did not come to pass, partly because the city was under pressure to complete Lake Washington Boulevard in time for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition of 1909, which attracted numerous visitors to Seattle. Thus, a less ambitious boulevard wound through Leschi’s parks, and the park did not reach Olmsted’s expansive vision. Thanks to Frink Park advocate Darrell Howe for his assistance with this series. Continued next month. ~Roger Lippman The author writes monthly about Leschi history and his experiences over his 47 years in the neighborhood.

At our November Board meeting, John Barber’s letter to Parks was approved. He expresses concern about the proposed new pier. November 20, 2023 Superintendent A.P. Diaz Department of Parks and Recreation City of Seattle Email: parks_info@seattle.gov RE: Yesler (Leschi) Public Pier Dear Superintendent Diaz, The Leschi Community Council is concerned with the plan for replacing the Yesler Pier. The plan limits public access while changing the primary function of the Pier from public access use to power boat use. The Pier currently provides a public facility that is 47’ wide with wood surfacing (decking). It is used throughout the year as a place to gather and enjoy the views available from an over-the-water location and is especially heavily used by youth to socialize and sunbathe on summer weekends. The new design is only 16’ wide with steel grates. Is there a more user-friendly alternative? Shoes can get caught in grates. The lower floating dock attached to the Pier is used as a launching and landing platform for canoes and kayaks and, as we recall, under a grant from the Washington Wildlife and Recreation Program which requires permanence of function. The permission process appears to be ongoing and not yet finalized. We understand that a primary purpose of the Shoreline Management Act is to increase not decrease the public’s access to state waterways. Access to the water’s edge is a strong neighborhood value for us, as we demonstrated with the String of Pearls shoreline street ends. We request revision of the proposed plans for more inclusive public access like what currently exists. Please advise us of how we can best contribute to the community input process. Sincerely, Janice Merrill Brown, President (206) 679-4004 LCC Community Council janicemb@comcast.net Cc: Mayor Bruce Harrell, City Council of City of Seattle Members The Leschi CC Board would like to know the community thoughts on this issue; send your comments to Leschicouncil@gmail.com.