Walking Into Kroger & Being Transported Back To Washington Via Christmas Trees With Streetcars

On my way to Oakland Lake Park to walk around Fosdic Lake I stopped at Kroger to get this week's FW Weekly.

As soon as I stopped my vehicle, and opened the door, I was hit with a most un-Texan fragrance.

I was instantly transported back to Western Washington, where the forests of evergreens scent the air like Christmas trees.

The Christmas trees from Washington have arrived at Kroger. According to the label on one of the trees, "Another GEM from the Emerald Forest: Emerald Christmas Company."

Based in Bellevue.

I do not recollect ever seeing a Christmas Tree Farm in Bellevue. Bellevue is rather urbanized. Think of Bellevue as being to Seattle like Fort Worth is to Dallas.

Only upscale. Very upscale. With way less open space.

If Bellevue had not entered this current discussion, due to being mentioned on a label on a Christmas Tree, it likely would have been more appropo to say Tacoma is to Seattle like Fort Worth is to Dallas.

Only. Again. More upscale. Way more upscale.

Tacoma already has a streetcar, for instance. And Tacoma has a brand new convention center hotel that required no bribes to get built, sitting in an area of many museums, which the streetcar passes through, which Tacoma does not feel the need to label as Tacoma's "Cultural District."

Unlike Fort Worth.

Which has signs all over its downtown zone, pointing you out of downtown, to the "Cultural District."

Such rubes up in Tacoma, they just don't realize it is very sophisticated to call a part of your town your "Cultural District."

Speaking of Tacoma's streetcar. It actually serves a purpose. Tacoma has a transit center where buses, trains and streetcars come together. At the transit center there is a huge parking garage.  Free. You can park there and take the Sounder Train to Seattle. Or the streetcar to downtown Tacoma. Also free. Or hop a bus. Or go shopping in Freighthouse Square.

With Freighthouse Square being a successful version.

On steroids.

In little Tacoma.

Of what 3.5 times bigger, population-wise, Fort Worth's, Santa Fe Rail Market tried to be.

But which failed, miserably.

I sort of predicted the Santa Fe Rail Market failure. It was sort of like shooting fish in a barrel. And it was sort of a precursor to Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision Boondoggle. Another enterprise I predict will fail. For similar reasons. But on a much more massive scale, with costly ramifications.

Anyway, watch the below video, which I made in 2008, during my hellacious month-long stupid mistake of spending a long month in Tacoma, and you will see the Tacoma streetcar, coming at you, with Tacoma's convention center behind it. With lots of people on board. They are passing through Tacoma's "Cultural District." The building you will see the streetcar pass by is a museum. Then, in the video, you will walk across a Bridge of Glass and see another museum, shaped like a pointy cone. That would be the Museum of Glass.

In the video you will also see a small part of the Tacoma waterfront, yet one more thing Tacoma has in common with Fort Worth. Only Fort Worth's is not yet built, and will be smaller. And likely will float no boats and have no signature bridges, like the one you'll see in the below video...