“Alki Point, one of the first locations settled by Americans in the area that would eventually come to be known as Seattle, is like an erect nipple sticking out into the inland sea. Less provocatively, it looks like a chicken’s beak, or from a non-imaginative, purely geographical point of view, a triangle. What would come to be known as the city of Seattle, what historically has been the stomping ground of the Duwamish people (of whom Chief Seattle was a leading figure), is composed of several peninsulas barely separated by thin, eminently traversable channels of water spilling over from the ‘bathtub’ that is the Puget Sound, the aforementioned inland sea.”
Here the speaking man paused pointedly, and plucked a few bars out of his guitar, which was missing both of its E strings. The man himself was similarly shoddy, with greasy semi-curly black hair that covered his ears, a black shell layer jacket complete with stains and rips, tan (or just dirty) cargo pants also complete with stains and rips, and shoes that were untied and too big for his feet. At least the willow trees that surrounded him swayed their thin golden branches sympathetically in the wind. The big leaf maples were blossoming and the sun was shining. It was spring in Seattle. He spoke on.
“Alki marks the southern terminus of Elliot Bay, Seattle’s trade-welcoming western boundary. Though the American pioneers of the Denny party landed here first, on November 13, 1851, it wasn’t long until most of them, and most incoming settlers thereafter, moved up a click to what’s now know as Pioneer Square, in the thick of the city’s downtown.”
A few gulls rode the wind like kites above the man. Curious squirrels hopped low around the small grassy park ahead of the beach, Alki Beach, as the man stopped speaking again to twang a mournful blues lick out of his less-than though workable guitar.
“The bathhouse here, nice as it looks, is a functioning bathhouse no longer. Now, it can be rented out by the hour from the city.”
Twang, twang, twang. A family on bikes rolled by.
“I’ve been here since the beginning,” said the man. “Before the damn Denny party, before the damn Duwamish too. This land is my land, you hear! And it’s your land too.”
The man spoke, sang, and played his guitar. He spoke to no one at all. He sang to the wind. And the gulls overhead were entertained by the twang of his guitar. And the squirrels hopped to the rhythm of his blues, his Alki blues, his blues that no human around cared to hear.