Well, you would be guessing wrong.
What you are looking at is the current state of part of the stunning skyline of beautiful downtown Seattle.
With a new addition. That round thing at the bottom of the picture, in the middle, is a 175 foot tall Ferris Wheel, stuck on the end of Pier 57. The Ferris Wheel's air-conditioned gondolas are currently being installed, with the Ferris Wheel open for spinning this coming 4th of July.
When I first read about this Seattle Ferris Wheel my reaction was the same that I had when I first read about Fort Worth's Cowtown Wakepark. That there is no way this is going to make a financial go of it.
Unlike the Cowtown Wakepark, the Seattle Ferris Wheel is a private operation, not part of any bizarro vision run amok.
I opined my opinion about the Seattle Ferris Wheel to a fellow Washington exile in Texas. That person opined that he thought this would be a very popular addition to the Seattle Waterfront.
Then I read the comments to the Ferris Wheel article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where a lot of people were opining that this Ferris Wheel is a good thing, with many anxious to ride it.
One guy commented that in addition to air-conditioning and heating the gondolas should also have windshield wipers.
I think my negative reaction to the idea that a Ferris Wheel would succeed on the Seattle Waterfront was caused by the way Texas has altered my perceptions.
Basically, I forgot what a tourist trap Seattle is these days. It's not a seldom visited outpost, like Fort Worth, where you don't see throngs of tourists or out of state license plates.
The last time I was in Seattle was Thursday, August 7, 2008. I spent most of the day in Pioneer Square. Then about 2 in the afternoon I walked to Westlake Center, and then through Pike Place Market to the Seattle Waterfront.
I was so used to the ghost town-like downtowns of Fort Worth and Dallas that I was sort of shocked at the amount of humanity on the streets of Seattle, with Pike Place and the Waterfront being a human traffic jam.
Five or Six cruise ships now use Seattle as their homebase. I suspect those boats account for some of the throngs of people.
If the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle ever comes to fruition I wonder if we will see throngs of tourists on the waterfront of Lake Granger, that being the ever shrinking pond that is a key part of the vision? Will there be a Ferris Wheel? Will a cruise ship take visitors on a cruise up the, likely to be infamous, un-needed flood diversion channel to nowhere?
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