Gonzo TV chef and piquant culinary writer Anthony Bourdain recently played - make that worked - in the muddy sands of Puget Sound on Squaxin Island searching for huge geoduck clams which viewers will see rendered into sashimi, and also sauteed with wine and morel mushrooms. Exploring the South Sound is always a treat, but most often we end up at Seattle's premier sandy beach, Alki, in the neighborhood of West Seattle. It's hard by where Seattle's early white settlers landed and promptly named the place "New York Alki" - that last word being Chinook jargon for "bye and bye." As if.
Today was the lowest tide of the year in Seattle, a negative 3.18, which means it was officially way, way, way out there. With my son off at camp, my daughter and I went to play in muck and mire at Alki.
Here a few of the best pix, taken with my trusty Canon Power Shot A95, uploaded and edited with Apple's iPhoto software, and easily rendered into blog-friendly image code via my well-worth-it "premium" ($25 yearly for unlimited bandwidth) photobucket.com account.
Looking west by northwest across Alki's sands at Puget Sound. That ferry in the background is going between downtown Seattle and either Bainbridge Island or Bremerton.
More folks at play during low tide on Alki yesterday. We're looking north toward the tip of Duwamish Head, the name given to uplands of West Seattle's Duwamish Peninsula. Although the Space Needle looks like it's planted right there, it's actually north a mile or so as the crow flies, across the mouth of Elliott Bay, which connects the downtown waterfront to the Sound. To the left of the Space Needle is the city's Queen Anne Hill neighborhood, adorned by the landmark three radio transmission towers.
Exotic bird trolls for Sunfish goodies.
TECHNORATI TAGS: SEATTLE, WEST SEATTLE, ALKI BEACH, PUGET SOUND, LOW TIDE, ANTHONY BOURDAIN, SQUAXIN ISLAND, GEODUCK, WASHINGTON STATE FERRIES, CANON POWER SHOT A95, APPLE iPHOTO, PHOTOBUCKET, SUNFISH, FISH AND CHIPS
Posted by Matt Rosenberg at July 11, 2006 11:06 PM
Howdy Matt. I like the pix, even if they show a dozen violations of suburbia mom rules. Reminds me of the radar station out at Neah Bay where my dad hid us from urban sprawl until he mustered out of the Air Force in the mid sixties. My brothers and I are probably responsible for all the laws now promoting Safety! Sanity! Security! We got a lot of city kids in trouble, if not outright hurt. They got over it, but their mom's didn't. Speaking of which, I would have expected some Eco-forensic team to have CSI'd the area around those logs. Obviously some evil bastards have been at work cutting down habitat. Nice to see the foam missing where the waves lap up on the beach. Okay, mud. God, that can't be good for those kids. Last clamming I did was down at Longbeach. It was crowded, not anything like what I see here. It was the last stretch of beach we, I mean the public, could drive on. It was a lot like the frantic drive north from Kuwait City in '91, only more beer cans spilling out of pick ups, like somebody just won a football game. When the cops still knew how to laugh and the Reverend had the good sense to stay home and take the calls from mom's organizing a meeting with the mayor.
Posted by: Jj at July 12, 2006 06:03 AMJj, love your beach memories and observations. One of the funniest things I usually see down at Alki is those guys with the metal detectors looking for....what, lost keys, loose change, engagement rings? I always wonder a bit about them. About the stumps, I should have mentioned in the caption: they're actually the remnants of stone-composite columns that held up a long-ago ferry landing on Alki, in the days before the bridge connecting West Seattle to downtown. Vacationers used to debark for stays nearby. Some old coots here would like it if the bridge were still non-existent, but most of us have joined modernity in that respect, at least.
Posted by: Matt Rosenberg at July 12, 2006 07:10 AMGreat pictures
Posted by: jr at July 15, 2006 02:16 PM