Greenwood Avenue will be closed from 65th to 87th streets next Friday, April 10, from 6-9 p.m. for the Seattle Summer Streets event, inviting pedestrians to take over the streets. Businesses will be having special sales and events, and neighbors are getting together to plan their own fun.
The Greater Greenwood Bi/Ped Safety Coalition is hoping to have a game of wiffleball:
What better way to celebrate the opening of this much urban space than by playing ball in the street?! To that end, we’ll be playing wiffle ball starting at 6:00 PM near the intersection of N 72nd St & Greenwood Ave N. If enough players show up, and I surely hope they will, we will split into two games, one for younger players and one for older players.
I fondly remember playing wiffleball with neighbors as a boy on the quiet residential streets of Flushing, Queens, NY, and I would love to see our community turn out for a street wiffleball event here. This street closure looks like an excellent opportunity to do just that.
I encourage you to arrive by walking or bicycling - a local school has agreed to lend a large bike rack for this event. I also encourage you to bring cloth shopping bags, as this event will be held adjacent to several locally owned businesses (including Ken’s Market and Greenwood Hardware) in case you want to get a little shopping done while the games are going on. See you there!
2 responses so far ↓
1 StephenC // Apr 5, 2009 at 5:27 pm
This sounds like a great idea and I’m all for a civic event that brings people out to get together and has the potential to be a boost for local businesses, but “Summer” Streets on April 10? Why does Seattle always have to take a great idea and make it a marginally mediocre one? Wouldn’t this be better on a balmy night in August? Maybe calling for “summer” weather in early April falls in line with the mayor giving the city a “B” for their snow removal effort during the Christmas snow storm. Delusional.
2 Patrick // Apr 7, 2009 at 2:55 pm
If you click through to the organizing site’s list of the “Summer Streets” events, this is the first and by far earliest of the series: http://www.seattlecan.org/summerstreets/
The next one after this in the series is in Ballard in the middle of May. Overall I have no real gripes about the timing. I’d rather if it were held later, but there are 12 of these (it seems) and maybe this is the first and they’ll take notes and incorporate that into the others and make them even better.
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