Tag: diary

  • Wapato with Trapito: small-dog gate, the mixed yard, new trees on Sheridan

    We try to hit a park every day with Trapito. Stephanie and I, small dog, some version of the same loop. Wapato is the one we keep coming back to because the yard is not one yard. It is three.

    Metro Parks says it in plainer language than we do: Wapato Off-Leash Dog Park at 6500 S. Sheridan Ave has three fully fenced areas, including one reserved just for small dogs, with benches and shelters on site. Official list: Off-leash dog parks. Hours and passes live on our Metro Parks desk.

    What we actually use is the split we love. Small-dog gate when Trapito needs a quieter room. Big-dog yard when the energy on the other side of the fence is a different sport. Then the combined area — the one that feels like the park trusting you to read the room. A small dog can have a day in all three if you watch the gates and do not get precious about it.

    Leash on the way in and out. That is not a vibe. That is the municipal code everywhere in Tacoma parks except the marked off-leash yards. License and shots too — pet license desk. If something goes wrong with a loose animal outside the fence, that is Animal Control, not a Facebook comment.

    Up by the road we have been watching the edge change. New trees. Sidewalk work. It is not a mystery project. Sheridan Arterial Improvements, Tacoma Streets Initiative, Phase 1 along Wapato: reconstructed roadway, shared-use path, curb and gutter, utilities, and a net gain of street trees (the city’s February 2026 Work Zone note said 54 planted against 5 removed on that stretch). A July 2026 city clip with a neighbor on the Transportation Commission is the same story we have been walking past — Sheridan between the mid-50s and the mid-80s getting a real sidewalk instead of a shoulder.

    The lake loop is still the rest of the park. Trapito does not need the whole 80 acres. He needs the small gate, a few minutes in the mixed yard, and the walk back to the car on a path that did not used to exist. South end of town context: South Tacoma Way desk · Lincoln desk.

    Which desk if you only have a problem: Which desk do I open?

  • Tacoma Rising is good for the city

    Tacoma Rising is good for the city

    I like Tacoma Rising. That is the whole reason this is here. They are good for the city in a way that is easy to name and hard to fake: they keep putting people in the same room and then asking those people to do something with the room.

    Students and mentors at the Tacoma Rising Challenge focused on Pacific Avenue in downtown Tacoma.
    Tacoma Rising Challenge, 2026. Credit: Tacoma Rising.

    Reid Fetters started it in 2021 after moving here, when the pandemic hangover still made in-person feel optional. The early version was social posts and a handful of people who wanted Tacoma to work. By 2023 the shape was three verbs — promote, connect, support — and monthly tours of places that were actually opening or changing. UrbanWork used one of those rooms to fill desks. Tacoma Centre used one before the public doors. That is not branding. That is occupancy.

    The motto on the site is “Let’s Complement, not Compete.” Fine as a slogan. Better as a practice if you watch what they schedule. The 2026 Challenge put fifty students and forty mentors on Pacific Avenue for a day — the corridor that is supposed to connect UW Tacoma to downtown and often does not. Seven colleges. Real maps. One winner. Fetters said the quiet part out loud: there are seven schools in this area and the city has to keep the students. That is the Port-and-campus problem written as a Saturday.

    In February they ran The Pitch and handed Sign and Celebrate a $10,000 check. In July they put high-school and college kids on an eight-week accelerator whose product is not a slide deck. The product is the South Sound Showdown, a chili cook-off at the Rhodes Center on September 19 — restaurants, beer garden, live music, and a scholarship pot if the sponsors show up. Soft opening was August 27. If you cook under a commercial license and want in, the address they published is stayconnected@tacomarising.com.

    They also do the easier calendar items: golf at Allenmore, March Madness networking, tours of Lumora and whiskey rooms and the Port. Those are how a city’s operators find each other. The harder items are the ones that treat students as founders instead of audience. That is the part I want on this site.

    This is not a paid placement and I have not been in every room they have opened. I am saying they are doing the connective work downtown keeps asking someone else to do. If you run a shop on Pacific, teach at UWT, or still have a Thursday free, their calendar is at tacomarising.com. September 19 is the next date with a kitchen attached.

    Useful links

  • The DADU Thursday that already happened

    The DADU Thursday that already happened

    This one sat. Theory Real Estate mailed on August 10: come walk a duplex DADU in the Proctor District on Thursday the 13th, 4 to 6, they’ll talk planning, permits, condominiumization, construction, the numbers they wish they’d had the first time. RSVP at theoryRE.com/DADU.

    Theory Real Estate flyer for a duplex DADU open house in Tacoma’s Proctor District.
    Theory Real Estate flyer from the August 10 email. The open house was August 13 in Proctor.

    Today is August 29. That Thursday is gone. I am not going to pretend we made it. The site is a diary. The honest line is that the invite lived in Outlook while other Thursdays got the calendar block.

    What is left is still Tacoma. A detached accessory dwelling unit is the city’s current answer to the same lot doing more work — backyard cottage, duplex in the side yard, a second set of keys on a parcel that used to hold one house. Theory says they built and sold the first DADU in Tacoma and then started another pair in Proctor: two roughly 1,000-square-foot homes, tandem garage under, one-bed on the main, two-bed up. That is not a brochure sentence. That is a street you can drive.

    The city already published the boring, useful layer. Pre-approved DADU plan options live on TacomaPermits. R-1 and R-2 lots can take them. Rear setbacks got cut to ten feet in 2025. The long clock is permits and Tacoma Public Utilities, not the framing crew. We already have the institutional pages for that machine: planning and permitting, and the wider 2026 housing market note.

    Theory is a South Tacoma shop — 5413 South Tacoma Way — doing investor meetups, bus tours, a property-management arm they call Love My Space. The email also plugged an investor pool party that already happened in Puyallup and free kids’ meals at Radnor’s on Wednesdays. Fine. Not the reason to write.

    The reason is the same as the zine night. Tacoma keeps handing you a Thursday and asking if you will actually stand in the room. One Thursday was pinball on 6th. One Thursday was a backyard duplex in Proctor and the math of adding a dwelling without buying another lot. We put the mixer on the calendar. We let this one expire. That is the entry.

    If another DADU walk happens, the move is the same as Triple Knock: date on the calendar first, then show up. Until then the live documents are the city tip sheet and whoever is pouring concrete in Proctor this month.

    Not a paid placement. The flyer is theirs. The missed Thursday is ours.

    Useful links

  • Thursday at Triple Knock: putting the zine mixer on the calendar

    Thursday at Triple Knock: putting the zine mixer on the calendar

    This one started as an email. Tacoma Loyal’s September dispatch landed, Odessa signed it XO, and the sentence that stuck was simple: they’re celebrating September cover artist Matthew Cheramy and the people who keep Underground Sound in print on Thursday, September 10, at The Triple Knock.

    I already wrote the practical version — where the zine lives, who prints it, how the ads work — over on the Underground Sound page. That piece can sit in the hub like a useful note. This one is the other half. This is the night we actually marked.

    Tacoma Loyal flyer for the Underground Sound zine mixer at The Triple Knock on 6th Avenue.
    Tacoma Loyal’s mixer flyer from the September dispatch.

    The mixer is 6:30 p.m. at The Triple Knock, 2713 6th Ave. Pinball hall, full bar, late hours, the kind of 6th Avenue room that exists so you have somewhere to go after the galleries close and before anyone starts talking about parking enforcement. They keep a couple dozen machines in rotation. They stay open until 2. They do not need a speech from me about pinball.

    What they needed, on our side of the house, was a calendar block that would survive the week. So the event is on Google and Outlook: 6:30 to 9, Stefani invited, and a line in the notes that is not optional — make sure Trapito has a babysitter. If the night happens, it happens because that line gets done first. The zine people can pour a drink. We still have a dog.

    I like this kind of Tacoma more than I like the official kind. Museum District is real and we write about it. UPS sits on the same avenue and we write about that too. But the city I actually live in is the one that still prints a monthly on paper, drops two thousand copies at two hundred counters, and then asks you to show up at a pinball bar on a Thursday because the cover artist sold work at Art on the Ave and Porchfest and somebody should say so out loud.

    Odessa and James are obsessed with getting the issue out. That sentence was in the email and it did not feel like marketing. Getting a print object across the South Sound every month is a stubborn, analog job. The mixer is how they close the loop — not a ticketed launch, not a panel, just the people who made the thing standing in the same room as the people who picked it up at Hob Nob or House of Records or The Brotherhood and forgot it in the car until now.

    I am not going to recap the 253 VIP card or the ad rates again. That is already on the other page. The only extra thing worth carrying here is the merch note: a Cheramy piece is going on a tee, maybe a tank, maybe a hoodie, and they already put Wrecking Ball Records and The Swiss on recent drops. If you want to leave with something besides a score on a machine, that is the stack.

    Thursday the 10th. 6:30. 2713 6th. Babysitter first. Then we go be in Tacoma on purpose.

    Not a paid placement. The flyer below is theirs.

    If you want the useful version