Site Report 1: The Deep Read

A view of University Way between 55th and 56th at night. University District (Seattle, WA). Photograph by the author, taken on 01/17/17.

The first time I saw my block I was not impressed at all, it looked old, broken down, and flat out boring! I did as I was told, took down some notes of things that I normally wouldn’t have even noticed, I even encountered a sketchy homeless guy in the middle of a dark alley-way. Things just didn’t seem to be clicking with this block, and my sense of fun, I was not enjoying this project nor did I think this project would do me any good. It wasn’t until the third time of going back to this block, which was at night, that I noticed the things I’ve been missing. I began to look at the block as its very own culture, separate from the streets and cars surrounding it, and noticed how surprisingly interesting it truly was.

To be honest, it started with the food! A section of my block is located on University Way (better known as “The Ave”), on University way side of my block there are a ton of smaller, almost hole-in-the-wall restaurants. Like I said previously, I didn’t capture the beauty of my block until the third time (at night) that I went to it, this third time featured one of the restaurants. To sum it up, I went back to my block to take a picture at night, but I ended up staying a couple hours, one of those was spent eating and the other was spent with my note pad, in the pouring rain.

The hole in the wall restaurant I went to was called Persepolis Grill. Like a lot of restaurants on the Ave, Persepolis served foreign dishes that I later found out were a mixture of Persian-Iranian foods (I did not know this walking in). Until that point, I had never tried Persian-Iranian food nor have I tried lamb. What I found out is that I really enjoy lamb and the style of food they serve there!

I didn’t get the best descriptions written down due to the rain washing the ink off my paper, but this is what I got. I noted the difference between the University Way side and the Brooklynn Avenue side. On University Way, there were restaurants, convenience stores, office buildings, and many other commercial type places. Brooklynn Avenue was completely residential with seven houses lining the street. A few notable things about the buildings on University Way are that most of them are an older style, and some were actually connected; some buildings had space between them while others didn’t. Brooklynn Avenue featured seven residential houses all with medium sized yards and fences between each house. There was also an alley-way between the two streets (splitting 55^th & 56^th in half) that featured parking. Houses on Brooklynn Avenue had a lot of trees, bushes, and various types of greenery around them as well. From University Way towards Brooklynn Avenue the landscape in down-hill, this meaning my block is on a hill. The fact that my block is on a hill made me think of the landscape before the block was constructed, was it like this? Three questions that were inspired by my first look are has this block always been half commercial, and half residential? What was the nature like on this street? Did any creeks run through my block? Was it forested? What type of people lived here in previous years?