In Praise of Rough Edges:

This is the third in an ongoing series in which inveterate saunterer Alan Rhodes “records random perambulations through various Bellingham neighborhoods, blending completely subjective observations with highly opinionated commentary on just about everything.” He can be reached at writealan@aol.com.

It is a great art to saunter. — Henry David Thoreau

Resolute saunterers don’t falter when the weather is cold and gray; in fact, some locales are actually enhanced when skies are overcast and the hills half-hidden in fog. I’m having coffee downtown at the Black Drop, warm and cozy, reading the newspaper on this dark winter day. In the car earlier I was listening to Clifford Brown play “I Cover the Waterfront,” and his smoky trumpet still plays in my head. “Waterfront” is a magical word for me, which, like “road house” and “badlands,” carries a romantic and mysterious aura infused with black and white images from old movies.

A waterfront saunter seems just the thing for this drizzly day, and as I ponder where to begin, I recall crossing Wharf Street many times when using the South Bay trail. A street called Wharf strikes me as a most appropriate place to set off, so I stroll a few blocks south on State Street until I run into Wharf, where I head downhill toward the water.

The street is thickly wooded at first, but as it curves around it opens onto the bay and a waterfront industrial area, shabby and forlorn, as any good waterfront should be. This is an area of grimy buildings, chainlink fences and weedy train tracks, so I’m surprised when I get closer to see that it surrounds a pretty little cove with island views and a stretch of beach dotted by morning walkers and their dogs. It’s one of those special finds hidden here and there amidst the city’s rough edges. I’m very fond of rough edges, and wonder how much longer before the picturesque, deserted and decaying old buildings that line the beach are demolished and replaced by upscale development.

The only way to continue from here without backtracking is along Cornwall toward downtown. When I get to Chestnut, I turn left to get back to the water again, passing one of the bright yellow notices that the city posts whenever someone has plans to build something. In this case the plan is to replace this empty spot with an eleven-story building with retail below and condos above: the new Bellingham.

I pause at Chestnut and Commercial and look at a large bare space once occupied by a lignin plant which, until its recent demolition, was part of the ever-shrinking Georgia-Pacific facility. When I first visited Bellingham in the early 1980s, an odd smell usually wafted from G-P, permeating downtown with an odor similar to that of stale, in-room coffee burning at the bottom of a glass pot in a shabby motel. I sort of miss this grungy perfume, an olfactory symbol of a time when we were still a dog-eared mill town with cheap rents, vacant lots, low housing prices and a thriving counter-culture. We were off the beaten path, scruffily authentic, blissfully undiscovered.

Crossing the bridge going northwest over the Whatcom Creek Waterway, I see one of those historical information signs that mark significant spots around Bellingham. This one features a picture of early settler Henry Roeder, looking a bit like Edgar Allan Poe, but without the substance abuse.

Roeder and his friend Russell Peabody, searching for a sawmill location, were led here in 1852 by the Lummi leader Cha-wit-zit, who told them this place was called Whatcom, which roughly translates as “where the waters are always noisy.” Had I been here in 1852, much of the nearby land would have been under water. It’s all been filled in, which means this prime waterfront property is perched atop a huge garbage pile.

Chestnut melds into Roeder Avenue, and when I come to C Street I’m able to walk back down to the bay. This is an area of quonset huts, boat yards, offices in trailers and business that are real, places where they actually do things. In a world that features such occupational titles as Life Coach, Scrapbooking Advisor and Fung Shui Consultant, it’s refreshing to see businesses with names like Bellingham Marine Repair, Industrial Electric and Machine, and the Kodiak Fish Company.

I take all this in for a moment, the boats and fog and squawking gulls. Growing up in Phoenix, landlocked in a sun-baked desert city without seasons, I devoured sea stories and watched any movie that featured the sea, from WWII navy films to grade B pirate movies. I must have read John Masfield’s poem “Sea Fever” a thousand times.

I must go down to the sea again,

To the lonely sea and the sky,

And all I ask is a tall, tall ship,

And a star to steer her by.

And to this day my favorite opening of a novel is the first page of “Moby Dick,” where the narrator Ishmael explains to us that “Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet...I account it high time to get to the sea as soon as I can.”

As I’m continuing along Roeder, it begins raining hard, so I cross the street and stand under an awning outside the old railway station. No longer a passenger depot, this place has a definitely inhospitable air about it, and is adorned with an over-abundance of No Trespassing and Video Surveillance signs. I don’t linger for long, as the rain quickly mellows down to a light drizzle, allowing me to saunter on comfortably. Wet trees glisten and the air is fresh and bracing.

I know there are people who prefer to do their daily walking in the climate controlled environment of Bellis Fair Mall, but that would be my idea of something one might be condemned to do for eternity in an absurdist existential play. I would rather trudge barefoot through snowbanks. How many times could I circle past Macy’s and Old Navy in the artificial light, listening to the insipid canned music before I ran amok, grabbing up the cutesy stuffed animals from the shelves of the Hallmark store and chucking them at perplexed mall-walkers?

Further on I amble out toward the Bellwether, a gray, boxy structure that gets my vote as the ugliest luxury hotel in Bellingham. We are definitely in the high rent district here; the hotel is surrounded by brokerage firms, a jeweler, a personal trainer gym and the Zazen Salon Spa where, for a mere $475, one can indulge in the “Bellwether Bliss,” an all-day treatment that includes among its many pleasures a massage, pedicure, body mask, manicure and something called “exfoliation,” which puts me off a bit, as it sounds like what Agent Orange was used for in Vietnam.

I walk into a clothing store called Blue Willi’s, where I see a cotton pullover sweater I like, until I notice the price tag. I suppose there are those who would consider it a good buy, as it’s marked down from $315 to $189. I’m a dedicated cheapskate, however, and the entire pants-shirt-sweater ensemble I’m wearing was purchased at Goodwill for a total of $14. Shopping at thrift stores is also consistent with my commitment to recycling and my hostility toward the fashion industry, so I leave the triple digit sweater on the rack at Blue Willi’s, rare bargain though it may be.

The Tom Glens Commons are in the middle of this hotel complex. While I’m not sure it gets a lot of use as a “commons” in this opulent setting, it does offer a beautiful view of the bay and city skyline. Looking across the water toward Fairhaven, I try to imagine how it must have appeared to Roeder and Peabody in 1852, how dense these woods would have been, how remote and lonely it all was.

I walk around the Bellwether grounds on the perimeter trail. The sun comes out for less than a minute, and the sailboats in the marina sparkle. The path leads me to the Harbor Center complex, where I poke around in the Marine Life Center, a display sponsored by the Port of Bellingham. Some kids are picking up and examining the sea critters in the Touch Pool, so I join in and we have an earnest though unresolved debate on whether it would be better to be a starfish or a crab.

Leaving the Harbor Center, I continue northwest and the ambiance turns decidedly industrial once again as I pass Bellingham Cold Storage and various fish packing plants. At Bellingham Plywood I cut up to Eldridge Avenue, deciding to saunter back along Holly through Old Town. I pass by the XXX-rated Video Extreme and since I’ve never been inside, I decide that in the interest of journalistic thoroughness I should investigate.

The salesgirl does not fit my image of a purveyor of pornography, looking more like someone you might see strolling across the Western campus on her way to a modern poetry class. She tells me all about the porn business while I peruse the riot of pink flesh on the DVD boxes. I’m told that the most in-demand rentals these days are “Pirates” and “Fashionistas,” popular because they are multimillion dollar, high-quality productions that actually have plots. I recall that when I left my house earlier in the day my wife suggested I pick up a couple of videos on the way home, but I don’t think “Fashionistas” is what she had in mind, so I return it to the shelf and continue my journey.

I stop in a small convenience store and buy a pack of gum from a cheerful fellow in a turban. The numbers of different ethnicities are growing here, which is good to see. Years ago when I was boring all my California friends by waxing poetically about my upcoming move to Bellingham, I was asked if there was anything about the place I didn’t like. I answered that it was too white. Coming from the Los Angeles area, I was accustomed to ethnic diversity. The high school where I taught looked like an adolescent United Nations. I knew I would miss the richness and vitality of multiculturalism. But slowly I see positive changes here: an Indian gentleman sells me gasoline; a Vietnamese woman waits on me in a mini-mart; I buy Eastern European and Middle Eastern foods in specialty shops and dine regularly in the ethnic restaurants that keep popping up around town; I see more African-American faces everywhere I go. We are looking more and more like America, in the best sense of the word.

I pass the Lighthouse Mission at Holly and F Street, where a few guys are standing outside smoking, Their faces are deeply etched with failure, disappointment and hard knocks. At E Street I stop to take a closer look at the oldest brick building in the state of Washington, constructed by Thomas G. Richards as a mercantile business back in 1858, a frantic year in which over 30,000 quasi-hysterical people surged into sleepy Bellingham on their way to the Fraser River gold fields.

Bellingham’s current building boom is probably tepid in comparison to the greed-driven frenzy of those gold rush days. That boom, however, went bust as quickly as it started. British Columbia’s crafty Governor James Douglas began requiring gold seekers to stop off at Vancouver Island to get a mining permit. Bellingham, like a town bypassed by a new Interstate, was suddenly off the gold rush trail. Folks began dismantling buildings and hauling them to Victoria, leaving Richards’ sturdy brick structure to stand like an ancient ruin on a deserted plain. The county bailed it out in 1863, purchasing it for a courthouse, and it served in that capacity until 1888. Since then it has been many things, including a pottery studio, woodworking shop, Jehovah’s Witness Hall, and an underground railroad for young men on their way to Canada during the Vietnam war.

Currently unoccupied, it looks bedraggled and neglected, but the Whatcom Historical Society has big plans for its restoration-a touch of history in an Old Town that someday could be a brave new world of shops and condos.

Every waterfront area needs a good pawnshop, so a little further along on Holly I stop at Jack’s Pawn Shop to look around. All the usual hocked stuff is here, musical instruments, jewelry, electronics, but I’m quite taken with a vintage Veltex gasoline pump, the real thing, bright orange with the word “Ethyl” in bold black letters. I’d love to put it next to my carport, a sort of driveway objet d’art, but I’m dissuaded by the asking price of $6,000.

Another essential component of any waterfront worth its name is a couple of no-frills taverns, so I poke into the Waterfront Seafood and Bar to see if it qualifies. It’s perfect: a scruffy, worn, serious drinker’s establishment, smelling of a century or so of stale beer and cigarette smoke. This would have been my kind of bar back in my drinking days. While I no longer habituate watering holes (to the detriment of my pool game), I do hang around here for a while, finding the afternoon crowd a pleasantly engaging and cheerfully misanthropic assembly.

Among this bar’s distinctions is its fame as the favorite boozing spot of some of America’s most notorious serial killers. Ted Bundy once drank here, as did Kenneth Bianchi, the Hillside Strangler. More recently, John Allen Muhammad frequented the Waterfront Seafood and Bar, knocking back a few drinks before moving on to Washington, D.C., and a series of random sniper shootings.

On the way back to my car, I’m distracted by the profusion of antique and secondhand stores around me. Distraction is a key component of sauntering, so I wander in and out of a few of them: Penny Lane, Barley Twist, Wise Buys, Ertha Kitty’s and the Pink Flamingo. They all have an old musty smell that reminds me of my grandmother’s house, and some of the furniture looks like it could have been hers.

In Aladdin’s Antiques, I’m tempted to buy a theater poster from the 1956 film “The Girl Can’t Help It,” one of the first rock and roll movies. I remember it well, though I haven’t seen it since I sat in a Phoenix movie theater as a teenager, bouncing in my seat to the music of Fats Domino and Little Richard, when I wasn’t staring fixedly at the female lead, Jayne Mansfield, the platinum protagonist of the pubescent fantasies of an entire generation of 1950s teenage boys.

Before reclaiming my car and returning to the more mundane demands of everyday life, I linger for a while at the corner of Holly and Bay to admire the huge mural done in 1999 by artist Lanny Little. He has captured a 1906 street scene at this spot, compelling in its sweet nostalgia, suggesting a slower and more innocent era. The panorama is so realistic, the perspective so good, that I feel as though I could walk into it and join the leisurely strollers on a sunny day at the turn of the last century.

The Holly Street of 100 years ago doesn’t look much different in this mural than it does now. That will probably not be the case for someone standing here 100 years in the future, as the waterfront and Old Town are already bracing for dramatic changes. I’m reminded of the words of writer Samuel R. Delany who, lamenting the Disney makeover of New York’s Times Square, observed that he had naively assumed that “the world—the physical reality of stores, restaurant locations, apartment buildings, and movie theaters and the kinds of people who lived in this or that neighborhood—was far more stable than it was.”

As Bellingham is swept along in this time of rapid growth and change, I worry that we will see too much smoothing and polishing of our rough edges, too much cosmetic treatment for our blemishes. Is Fairhaven a dire portent, a template for what all Bellingham could become: something between a perky, contrived tourist destination and a tidy, California-cloned retirement community? How I would miss our warts and scuffs and scratches, the wonderful rough edges that give a town much of its character.

Before departing these pages, let me mention a new book that my fellow saunterers may enjoy: “How to Be Idle,” by Tom Hodgkinson. Especially satisfying is the chapter entitled “The Ramble,” which reads like a saunterer’s manifesto, with such bold pronouncements as “the act of ambling is an act of revolt. It is a statement against bourgeois values, against goal-centered living, busy-ness, bustle, toil and trouble. For the creative spirit, the act of walking harmonizes work and play.” Right on, Tom. Solidarity, brother.

Hodgkinson celebrates such legendary saunterers as Whitman, Beethoven, Wordsworth, Coleridge and Blake, and defines the saunterer as “the highest and most mighty of beings; he walks for pleasure, he observes but does not interfere, he is not in a hurry, he is happy in the company of his own mind, he wanders detached, wise and merry, godlike. He is free.” At last, the respect we deserve!

Hodgkinson goes on to explore the French word flaneur, which means stroller or idler. In the 19th century it came to describe the lifestyle of those who “ambled purposelessly through the Parisian arcades, watching, waiting, hanging around.” So relaxed and leisurely were the flaneurs of this era that they often observed the fashionable trend of walking a tortoise on a leash. Ah, life at a pace where one can truly observe, appreciate, savor, dawdle and fritter.

Does anyone know where I can buy a tortoise? §