Walking Tours of Northgate: Tour #1: My house to QFC
Vintage photographs taken on December 1, 2013, starting at 8:47 in the morning
1. Head south on 3rd Ave NE
This little spur of 3rd Avenue Northeast starts at Northgate Way and terminates at 115th in a permeable cul-de-sac. Why do we call them that, anyway? Huh. It means, literally, “bottom of the bag” in French. Cul-de-sacs are also called “dead end streets,” which is also the name of a fairly awesome Kinks song.
2. Cut diagonally through Hubbard Homestead Park from 3rd to 5th and 112th
The pedestrian walkways through this park zig-zag in a peculiar fashion which I believe is meant to mimic the path of a spring that used to be on the land. Apparently, when they first went to create the park, they thought the water would still be there. Nobody knows what happened to the water. Is somebody stealing it, Chinatown fashion? No updates as of yet.
3. Turn left onto Northgate Way. Walk .3 miles to the corner of Northgate Way and Roosevelt Way.
The parking lot in the foreground is where they sell Christmas trees in December. This walk was taken on the first day of December, however, and obviously there aren’t any Christmas trees for sale yet. Sometimes this lot also has people selling decorative rugs, or Seahawks memorabilia.
You can see a Patty’s Eggnest location right next to the QFC. Impressively, this is the first restaurant to last more than a couple of months in that building. It’s not a large restaurant and gets really crowded once the Sunday morning after church crowd starts to trickle in. And it really does seem to be an after church crowd, too, which is a little unexpected for Seattle, coming in at number 3 on a list of least religious US cities. Who is less religious than we are? Tampa, Florida (#2) and Portland, Oregon (#1).
4. Leaving QFC, you can see a TJ Maxx across the street
I’m not really sure what they sell at TJ Maxx. I’ve never bothered to walk all the way across the parking lot to find out.
5. Almost home, and the park is still empty
