Kinnear Park is All Kinds of Shady

Creepy and overgrown; Kinnear Park offers something for everyone. Photo courtesy of LaChance from the Seattlest Flickr Pool.

A month ago, the Seattle Times told us a Honduran crack syndicate had been operating within the forested sketchiness of Kinnear Park, before realizing Belltown’s traditional function as the area’s go-to drug market.

Oddly enough, nobody seemed surprised, probably because nobody really knows what goes down inside the shaded underbelly of Queen Anne’s most dubious green belt.

Kinnear’s geography is a microcosm of social disparity on display in a single wooded stretch that separates the train yards of 15th Avenue West from the mansions of Queen Anne’s south slope. The upper portion is manicured and beautiful like any neighborhood named for a queen should, while the lower swath descends into a shady underworld of unmaintained foliage playing host to the usual suspects who gravitate towards forested urban centers.

This portion feels like the creepy stretch of some mean-spirited German fairytale. If it feels like strange eyes are on you, it’s because they probably are. Transients and the late-night park crowd frequent the green mystery slope running steeply down from West Olympic Place. People don’t stroll so much as they stagger or quickly jog through this portion of trail. It isn’t a place for moderation, or a place the average Seattlelite feels all that comfortable within.

Wedged at the crossroads of Kinnear’s split personality stands a lone tennis court--a post-apocalyptic Wimbledon that wandered off like an old cat and decided to die quietly in the deciduous jungle where no one would find it.

Upon this shady stage, Queen Anne’s tennis crowd nervously coexists with wayward transients and apparently the occasional Latin drug ring. Vastly different worlds bonded by the same need to find a place of refuge, it isn’t perfect but it’s better than some development.