It’s tourist time of year, which means we need to be prepared for visitors. One islander wants to make a bingo card and set their houseguests loose in town on a scavenger hunt. They provided the below example, and asked for others to chime in.
As for town, I think you should add the concrete bunt cake pans used as doorjams and the rhubarb plant growing in the patch of dirt by the broken water fountain. Your guests should also have to find a Mario’s pizza box that, as you eat the pizza, reveals a giant photo of a naked man.
Once they’ve finished off the pizza, they should have to build a structure using only the sandwich board signs on the corner of Bank and the highway, and then find the sign in front of the estate sale that says “Mom and Fawn 7am to 9am.”
They could then head to Dockton to see the deer crossing sign with a bat-winged pegasus on it, then the Danger Slow Fawns sign that’s accompanied by a picture of an Elk.
Then I think they should have to find Lost Lake.
As for the beach, one islander says, “Moon snail shell”
I think they should also have to find those moon snail egg casing things that look like deflated tires.
Now that I’ve exhausted my ideas, let’s see what other islanders suggest. One takes a more active approach to sightseeing and suggests: “Hit a deer”
Others want them to have a spiritual experience and recommend, “UFO at the airport & labyrinth at the Episcopal Church.”
And while they’re at the church, they could go on a side quest. One islander says, “I got a great one; behind the church with the Labrinth, there is a plastic Jesus in the woods down one of the trails.”
Nothing quite says spiritual enlightenment like a decaying bit of plastic idolatry getting swallowed by moss in the forest.
We also have this idea. “The bench that used to say POOP.”
If the bench no longer says, POOP, we should put a placard on it commemorating when it did say POOP.
One person has these suggestions: “The Bench, The Other Bench at Fern Cove.”
Note, neither of these benches ever said poop. We have at least three notable benches worthy of a bingo slot.
Another isalnder adds, “The red bench in front of the 150 yr old Roasterie.”
Make that four benches!
We suggest things that no longer exist, such as “Bishops, Becks, Sandy’s, Sound Food, Nike Site, etc.”
I like that we are sending out guests on a trip through both space and time. That should keep them occupied so we can take a nap and get dinner started.
I’m not so sure about recommending the Nike Site, though. In this political climate, it might not be the best idea to tell people to go check out where the missiles are buried.
One islander suggests something so easy, it could be the middle free space: “A free stuff pile, anywhere.”
We should definitely get visitors to the island hyped up about seeing half-empty paint cans by the side of the road. Maybe we should have them collect all the cans and then paint a mural of the Maury Island Incident.
We should also have them find the mural of the Maury Island Incident on the building near the high school and across from the propane place that blew up. I love how the centerpiece of the mural is a dog catching a frisbee that may or may not be a flying saucer.
Speaking of public art, many people recommended Singer the whale at the VCA, which is phenomenal and way more of a spiritual experience than finding a decaying Jesus toy in the woods.
When you go to Paris, you need to see the Eiffel Tower. And when you come to Vashon, we recommend seeing our local metal structures. Islanders suggest: “Osprey nest on cell tower”, “Radio towers in the sheep pasture” and “KVI tower with an eagle on it.”
Others recommend spotting local wildlife.
- deer on beach
- flirty seals
- check out what’s crawling around at low tide
- Coyote
- wandering wallabies
A few people said they should have to spot a cougar swimming over, which as far as I know has happened only a few times, and been seen by people only once. But every game should have a hard mode, so why not?
Some people require our guests to stay a year to get the full flavor of the island, Various ideas include:
- carved pumpkins at Minglement
- lit christmas tow truck at Engels
- forage for salmonberries
- July 4th hydros
- A tricked out bike from stupid bike night!
I recommend finding the bike that doubles as a hot dog grill.
We also want them to see the decay that undergirds island life. Some suggestions include:
- Beal greenhouses
- Quartermaster shipwrecks
- Rotting decks
- A vehicle being eaten by blackberries and ivy
On their way to the boat we want them to see the highway haiku. Then while they’re on the boat, we suggest they spot both the ferry puzzles and the purple V cards on our dashboards. I think they should also spot a line cutter on the ferry dock
One person says, “pet a goat or llama.”
The hard mode for that one will be: ride a goat or a llama.
And of course someone had to add, “Asphyxiation by washer dryer” We’re going on what, ten years of this joke?
Some people note that the card was made by ai. As one person says so succinctly, “Love this idea and just want to emphasize and support your idea to have a local artist create it instead of Ai!”
We have a post that shows one more thing we could add to our bingo cards: horny owls.
One islander says, “I feel for you. And it goes on and on. We have raccoons and Mrs. Raccoon is a screamer. OMG They’re at it all night with her screaming.”
You know what? Let’s just be happy for her. Life as a woman can be rough and full of unwanted judgements. We should support women when they succeed.
Some pervert adds, “I remember- they used to keep me up….i loved it. You could record it. Owl sex tapes ”
One islander is happy to hear that the sound is owl sex, which implies there will be more owls to eat the voles, who keep multiplying due to having so much vole sex. They say, “Oh WOW they are really owls!!? I’ve been hoping they are to control all these rodents! Got to make some owl boxes. We’re suffering trying to control rodents without poison. They breed so fast, especially those voles, cranking out 6k per female per year! One cat can’t keep up”
One islander gives a helpful hint for how to make the rodents easier for owls to catch (presumably so the owls spend less time hunting and have more time for copulating.) “Put a bowl of seed or grain in the middle of your yard to attract the rodents for an easy owl snag! Works great!”
Speaking of wild animals helping rid us of other wild animals, we have this post:
I’ve always wondered how people can have dog doors because I just assume racoons would saunter into your house, eat your garbage, and give you rabies. And I’m not wrong! Someone comments, “I’ve had one let itself in through the dog door before. Not a fun experience It was crazy. Woke up in the middle of the night to our black lab freaking out. Went into the kitchen and she had it cornered. If I remember right my dad was able to chase it out with the broom
”
Another adds, “Eek! I used to have a cat door and a raccoon would poke his head in occasionally. I can’t let the cat out anymore due to coyotes so that’s not a problem anymore.”
Some people think the raccoons are just working smarter and not harder. One person says, “Perhaps he wanted to help himself to some of your groceries! You know, skip the trash cans behind the house. ”
And then they added this little image:
Animal domestication is kinda weird. Like, we take a creature out of its natural habitat, train it to live in the human world, then have to protect it from the nature it would have been part of if we hadn’t domesticated it. But animals are super cute when they do people things like wear hats and push grocery carts, so all in all I’m in favor of domestication.
One person says, “I love that the blue jay was like the little kid that’s all, teacher! Teacher! Look what that kid is doing wrong!
Blue jays are narcs and raccoons are bad boys. Did you know that originally a racoon was going to be cast as Danny Zuko in Grease, but at the last minute he was hit by a car and had to be replaced by John Travolta?
This is one of the fun facts that I know. Another fun fact is that there may once have been a flashing traffic light at the four way.
We immediately get some answers. One person says, “They were removed the last weekend of April.”
I love that so many islanders are keepers of our infrastructure history. The Heritage Museum should have an exhibit on the oral history of Vashon signage with a special section devoted to the wonky candy cane.
We even have explanations for why the change has happened. One islander tells us, “Apparently it will be less energy because the new flashing ones are solar, so no electricity needed”
Who needs a stop light when you have disco lights surrounding your stop signs, as well as flashing lights warning you that there’s a disco stoplight 50 feet ahead?
One person says, “Should’ve been replaced with a red and green light instead of this 4 way stop bs.”
Can you imagine if we had an actual traffic light? I think some islanders would treat it as a sign of the end times, of the Californication of Vashon, as too big a step away from our rural roots, where we drove pickup trucks full of sheep through town until the trucks rusted and were sent to the truck graveyard to be swallowed by blackberry bramble.
But others think it would be a practical upgrade. One says, “people are going to hate it, but its true. The 4 way uptown will continue to get backed up every time a ferry unloads if we don’t build a traffic light.”
The person who runs the estate sale says, “Uh…I did not take them down, I swear! And I can neither confirm nor deny that a few may have been saved from obscurity…well, the intact ones at least. Uh, they fell off a truck!”
Whoa! The traffic lights themselves! Great work to our island curators who knew not to let this piece of Vashon history get lost to time.
One person is happy to see they’ve been saved. They say, “perfect we can put them back up.”
Wait! It turns out there used to be an actual traffic light at the four way! An island historian tells us, “There used to be only one set of lights on the island into the late ‘60’s and it was the main intersection uptown with a green/yellow/red light. It was replaced with a four way flashing red that was recently removed in favor of the flashing stop signs.”
Another person makes this astute point, “If it’s taken this long for everyone to notice they’ve been gone for the last 6 weeks are we really doomed without them?”
I already forgot they ever existed.
But some of us are pretty sentimental about the lights. One person has this haunting reminiscence, “Wow…..we’ve been looking at those lights our whole lives. Coming through those intersections late at night with no one in sight and those flashing lights silently guarding them meant you were home….”
Another adds, “so well put. In the dark, in the fog, silent but so present. And so un-frenetic. The epilepsy signs just don’t have the same romance. ”
Others want to turn that intersection into a boondoggle. One person says, “I suggested a stack interchange for towns 4 way stop to deal with the frequent Vashon traffic jams where 2 stoned people are waiting for the other to go first.”
I had to look up stack interchange, and it’s one of those things where highways are elevated on top of other highways.
This is an example from wikipedia:
They also include this helpful graphic, which looks like a Celtic knot, but is somehow an illustration of how roads could work:
Looking at this, all I can think is that we need to have a light rail and turn the main two blocks in town into a pedestrian only zone.
Others think we should replace the intersection with a roundabout, not because it would be useful, but because it would be amusing. They say, “Hence the entertainment while people learn how a round a bout actually is meant to work”
Another adds, “It’d be fun to sit there and watch how many of our befuddled drivers complete more than one entire loop before exiting to get back to driving 25 in 35 zones.”
I’ve been stuck in a roundabout on Ruston Ave in Tacoma for six hours now. I’m dizzy and getting tired. Someone please come help.
We move now from a problem that always plagues us, namely traffic, to another problem we all have: existential dread.
We have one of those posts that’s worded vaguely enough that we can all understand it differently when we read it.
My goal is to figure out what this is in reference to. From the jump, it sounds pretty dicey. Anything that starts with ‘maybe segregation should occur’ definitely hits my bad idea radar. But I think the writer is coming from a place of sadness and is looking for something more akin to a safe space than a segregated space. My nosiness and gossipy nature made me read on to find out what the backstory was.
The first comment was, “Queen didn’t you just make a super mean post about a stranger the other day.”
The plot thickens! Apparently this post is a reference to a previous post that I never saw and has since been deleted. I’m sorry I missed it. I’m trying to piece together what it contained based on this latter commentary. It’s like trying to figure out what Shakespeare’s lost plays were about (probably sex and murder.)
The original poster clarifies a bit in another comment, saying, “So I live in a world that I can hardly participate in because when I think I know the rules of the game I’m told I’m wrong.”
That’s a feeling I can relate to. There’ve been plenty of times I’ve tried to find out the unspoken rules of a place or a group and only learned them by accidentally breaking them and then feeling like an asshole.
The poster then describes that they went to a venue to see a band they love. They got excited and made noise and sang along, which I’m pretty sure is normal to do at concerts. Then someone said something to her along the lines of “shut up. I didn’t come here to hear you sing.”
That’s an incredibly dick thing to say to someone. The mean woman could’ve just moved to a different spot in the crowd.
Many of us would have brushed the interaction off, but some people are really sensitive. It seems like the poster was torn between wanting to express her joy at the music and feeling ashamed for not understanding the rules and thus getting yelled at by a stranger. And her negative feelings were exacerbated by a lifetime of these types of things happening, so she spiraled emotionally, thinking that she didn’t know how to be a person. This one incident that may seem small to an outsider was a tipping point for her. So she did the most reasonable thing to do when you are upset at the world and at yourself, perturbed and in a dark place – she posted about it in a local Facebook group.
Some islanders don’t take the time to do a close reading of the post and comments. One says, “Respectfully, what in Facebook slam poetry is this?”
The original poster responds, “the thoughts of a mad woman.”
I like that the OP is not upset about her words being called slam poetry but is instead like, yeah, I’m the bard of early 21st century social anxiety.
I do think what she wrote was poetic. She says at one point, “I don’t know how to live in this space at all I felt like I needed to yell and scream and instead I sat outside of a venue singing along against the wall crying.” I think she’s one of the people that Allen Ginsberg called “angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.”
The more I reread the comments, the richer the poster’s internal world becomes. She references “…a place in the family hierarchy of who matters and all that lies in a look of a stranger who didn’t want to be disturbed by my voice, but I couldn’t be bold and yell and swear, I collapsed.”
Imagine the idea that just having your own voice and opinions made the people in your life angry, that everything you said was devalued, shot down, disrespected. And then you go out into the world, and you want to join your voice to the voices of musicians you feel connected to, and someone tells you to shut it. They don’t want to hear you. Your voice is again seen as invalid. It’s the symbolism of the situation that’s getting to her. There also appeared to be some Freudian ‘the woman yelling at me represented my mom’ stuff going on.
Now that we’ve completed our psychological reading, it’s time to look at the post from a sociological viewpoint. We have the following comment, “Segregation really isn’t the word for this or whatever else white islanders have been doing or going through.”
I agree with this comment. I know the poster didn’t mean it in the historical sense, but it still comes off badly, and ideally they would have chosen a different, less historically loaded word.
The poster says she didn’t intend to cause harm.
The commenter says, “intention doesn’t change impact. Thank you for reconsidering and reflecting on that. I can tell you’re passionate.”
Another commenter says, “intention absolutely can change impact. You are just choosing not to be gracious lol.”
They say this because the commenter had said, “I did see what happened and I’m sorry. AND? tell people to fuck off. You can sing however loud you want to. Nobody can stop you.” Which is not taking into consideration her mental state and past traumas that she laid out, but is ultimately sympathetic to her situation.
So does intention matter? Can we reliably divine an author’s intention? Or should we let the words speak for themselves with full awareness that the words allow unconscious biases and ignorance to creep in?
The argument goes back and forth, but I’ve decided that the answer is we should balance between recognizing the author’s intent, but also placing their words in the broader social context. We should be able to point out when there are problematic elements hiding beneath the surface.
Unless I’m the writer. My intent is always 100% good and you should interpret my work accordingly.
That got kinda heavy. So let’s end with this post from Visual Delights Vashon:
I’m pretty sure this was made by horny owls.
Author: Anna Shomsky
I'm a former teacher and a data engineer living on Vashon Island. My writing has appeared in Five on the Fifth, Broken Spine, Women on Writing and on the Post-Culture Podcast. I wrote and produced the radio show Whispers of Vashon for 101.9 KVSH. I’ve had short stories published in the anthologies Island Stories and Chicken Scratchings, as well as through the Open Space Literary Project.
