A start-up in the bay area is renting bunk bed pods for $800. Eight pods are all lined up within the bedroom of a larger apartment. If you ever wondered what it would be like to live in a train compartment, this could be for you. We wonder if this sort of phenomenon will come to Vashon, what with our lack of affordable housing.
We are told that this will never happen here because we don’t have enough water shares. But why couldn’t residents just limit showers to once every 8 days? And to avoid overtaxing the water system, renters could commit to only drinking Red Bull.
Still, others tell us Vashon isn’t desirable enough for people to cram together with strangers, and we should get over ourselves. I, however, refuse to get over myself. Who wouldn’t want to live in my cramped home, to be awoken every morning by the bucolic crowing of my roosters, and also be awoken in the middle of the night by the obnoxious crowing of my roosters? I could probably empty out the basement storage area that’s full of broken Christmas lights and years of accumulated cat hair. There may even already be a mattress at the bottom of the pile somewhere. That’s got to be worth at least $500 a month.
Vashon housing is so sought after that we appear on other Facebook groups, such as one called “For the Love of Old Houses.” The old house in question was built in 1923, and has been renovated so heavily it’s reached Theseus ship status.
Commenters on the post spread wild rumors about Vashon, saying there are no cars on the island. In a sense, it’s true. There are only pick-up trucks, hatchbacks, tractors, and few proper sedans. People also comment on how they knew the people who lived there, or at the very least that they remember the dog that lived there.
We have a question posed to the group: “Has anyone ever been threatened with a ticket by a sheriff for waiting on the hill to pick up folks from the ferry?”
I never have, but once an older man made the roll-down-your-window gesture at me, and stopped his car in the middle of the road, blocking the cars behind him, to tell me that I was blocking traffic.
We’ve heard the sheriff is ticketing you if you drop off in the bus lane at the ferry terminal. If you’re not familiar with the bus lane, it’s the one right under the sign that says, “by-pass lane.” Although there is a sign over the lane listing only 6 hours of the day when you cannot park, that does not imply that the other 18 hours of the day you can park.
Finally, a dog named Barney went shopping at Island Lumber for the first time. He handled the experience well, and we are all very proud. In my family, whenever we try to bring our dog into Island Lumber, he lays down in front of the door and refuses to go in. He was meant to run free on the steppes, not go shopping, which is a sentiment I can relate to. So instead he stays in the car and makes friends with everyone in the parking lot. Then, when you put the bag of stuff you bought down on the car seat, he snuffles through it to find a meat stick. And god help you if you didn’t remember to buy him a meat stick. You will get a look even more forlorn than the one on Barney, featured below.
Finally, we have a video of a jeep driving into the water, transforming into a boat, and doing donuts around a tropical marina. We all want one so we can taunt the ferry boat by zipping around it in circles like a mosquito. And maybe we could even take the amphibious jeep over to Seattle sometimes to pick up groceries, load them in the back, and have them get soaking wet on the rough ride home to our housing podshare.
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, 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.
