On Aurora, addicts shoot up at bus stops and piss in corners while immigrants line up for work along the Home Depot labor gauntlet as contractors in trucks drive by.
Across Aurora, Washelli Cemetary is a vast patch of manicured green surrounded by a blighted corridor. Sex workers walk along the avenue, enticing motorists to pull into parking lots and motels. Aurora reminds me of writer Richard Mabey’s idea of the “unofficial countryside,” nature fighting to survive against our anthropocentric whims and desires. We are the arch-enemy of nature -our cape emblazoned with a ©️.
This area is not a walking zone. There are old sidewalks that are thin and crumbling, underused on a stretch where there is nowhere to walk to. Vehicular detritus and convenience store trash accumulate in fencing and drifts of loose gravel—only those with no destination walk Aurora, while those that do drive.
The dead rest in Washelli.
It's a road built for cars and convenience. After revitalization projects and mini-malls failed over the decades, there is a mix of boarded-up motor inns, industrial structures, fast food, car dealers, chain stores, and vast parking lots with vast vacant commercial spaces. It's the shrimp vein of Seattle.
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My oldest, a high school senior, plays “Assassin” with the graduating class. When I was in middle school, we called it “Killer.” Using toy darts or Nerf guns, each player is randomly assigned another player to kill. The last player standing is the winner. “Kills” cannot occur during school hours, increasing the difficulty of finding and eliminating your target.
In the eighties, the game was popular on school and college campuses. Two movies, TAG: The Assassination Game and Gotcha!, were about the game with deadlier results. I was eliminated at an 8th-grade dance in a bathroom near the gymnasium, out of breath and euphorically laughing with the player who got me - a dart under the locked stall.
Games like these are what young people need again - streets filled with neighborhood kids playing until after dark, ring cam alerts driving bourgeoisie Seattleites mad, Tesla alarms going off, Seventh Generation toilet paper strewn from the trees.
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