Understanding Aurora

by Neal Herbert
(this page "Under Construction" -photos to be added later)

WHY?

The street. To me, it's the most interesting element of a city. Small enough to concentrate on yet large enough to allow for a diversity of experience. About some streets, you could say 'there are no others like it in the world.' Aurora isn't one of them. Every American city has an Aurora. A street that sweeps away from an urban core like the tail of some great comet that left in its wake the debris of American post-war growth: neon hotels, used cars, guns, linoleum, small appliances, strip malls and strip teases. A street where you can buy anything, usually pretty cheap. Maybe this is what whoever named Aurora was thinking - I couldn't find out for sure.

There are no cute little craft shops or clothing boutiques on Aurora. It's raw, often uncivil. People don't browse. In essence, Aurora is a freeway, since there are far more ways over it and under it than there are across. It's a hideous, cruel current of traffic that puts 60 feet of asphalt between north and northwest Seattle - but if it's a symbol of America, I hoped, there has to be more to it than that.
So, generally forsaking both cars and buses, I explored Aurora from the tunnel at Denny Way to the cemetery at 120th. South of the tunnel is a deadly walk, while north of 120th is a strip-mall nightmare - a death of a different sort.



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Contents on this page were published in the October/November, 1993 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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