The Barge Is Living And The River Is Dead

It's not easy to get to the South Park neighborhood of Seattle. At least it wasn't for us. We had directions to a marina where we would get a guided tour and we still had problems. With a guide! Last Saturday we drove around Harbor Island a little, saw some sights, met lots of friendly Chinese and finally arrived at the Harbor Marina just in time for a Duwamish river tour and the opening weekend of the Living Barge project.

In their words:

The Living Barge Project is a large-scale, temporary public art installation by Sarah Kavage and Nicole Kistler that is moored on Seattle's Duwamish River during April 2006. Native plants will be installed on an industrial barge, creating a temporary floating island full of ferns, shrubs and tree seedlings.

So, yeah, the Living Barge is a 60' barge planted with native shrubbery that wasn't actually inspired by Robert Smithson's floating park that was to circle Manhattan, but it's definitely along those lines

The Living Barge was cool but seeing the Duwamish from the water was even cooler. We've driven over the river a few times but not enough to really get a sense of what the river's like. It's a mess- a true environmental nightmare. There's PCBs, mercury, lead, stormwater spillover culverts everywhere; a whole host of common pollutants. We're still finding it hard to comprehend how we could have so many Superfund sites sitting in our backyard like they are. Lakes Union and Washington may have their problems, but nothing at all like this. Ok, the Duwamish is gross and you don't want to even think about touching the water, but if you get off on industrial decrepitude (and who doesn't) you should schedule a visit immediately. You got your big cranes, you got your ship yards, you got your abandoned Boeing Superfund sites, your abandoned conrete factories, and your oozing tar flows on the river banks just yards from a liveaboard marina. There's a car recycling plant that we hear is quite a show at night with lots of sparks flying and cars running through industrial chippers (and if you're up for an after-dark kayak past it sometime this summer shoot us an email). In the middle of it all is the Living Barge and it's very striking. Fantastic work by the artists Nicole Kistler and Sarah Kavage.

We also got to see some of the South Park neighborhood on this river tour. Actual waterfront homes, folks. They're not Lake Washington waterfront homes. They're South Park/Duwamish riverfront homes, where, like, normal people live. If they were Lake Washington-type homes we bet there wouldn't be mercury slicks floating by... Anyway, this weekend is South Park's inaugural art walk. There's also an architectural walking tour through the neighborhood that you can take with or without a guide and you can go here to see the Living Barge.

The river tour discussed in this post is by appointment only through the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition. You can email them at info@duwamishcleanup.org.