New York By and By

Seattle started here. On 13 November 1851 the Denny Party came ashore off the schooner Exact, ten adults and twelve children. Charles Terry named his claim New York, which took some nerve for a handful of cabins on a rainy spit. Then somebody added Alki, Chinook Jargon for by and by. New York, eventually.

Eventually did not happen here. Within a couple of years most of them had crossed the bay to the deeper water at what is now Pioneer Square, and Alki was left as the beach the rest of the city drives to. The name is the only part of the ambition that stayed.

The view is the one that made the place famous. Due west across the Sound with the Olympics laid along the horizon, which is the best sunset line inside the city limits and not a close contest.

This is not the stretch people mean when they say Alki, though. The crowded part is north of here: volleyball nets, parked cars nose to tail, a queue at the ice cream window. Go south of that and the shoreline quiets right down. The people who live along it are in no hurry to advertise, and the two out on the overlook in this frame are about the going rate on a clear evening.

The tree is doing the rest of the work. Without it this is a nice sunset and nothing more; with it there is something in the frame that has stood on that spot long enough to have an opinion about it.