Campus Friday Afternoons and the Tom Sabbath

There is no One True Way by which I get myself from the heart of campus down to the waterfront. I always seem to take a different route. This allows me to see more and more of this fine campus and see very cool new things every time. I like the downhill, eastern edge of the main campus. It is a collection of small buildings, machine shops, utility buildings, storage facilities, and steam/electrical/whatever plants. These fascinating nooks and crannies eventually lead me to the Burke-Gilman trail, which I end up crossing at different points on my way to the water.

...in the meantime, however, I find the darndest things along my the way down to the waterfront. Trust me, I have seen a lot of darned things in my life... even socks. I've collected some of it. I have a penchant for finding, sometimes collecting, sometimes building, but mostly just admiring darned things.

I must say: this campus has a good collection of pretty damn darned stuff.

The south side of the IMA, I believe... between it and Husky Stadium.

This campus has no shortage of incredibly cool pipes and fittings all over its buildings, stairwells, hallways, sidewalks, and roads.

For real (film) photography, I tend to focus on black-and-white. Color gets in the way far too many times and I only like shooting color film if there is a limited color palatte or if there is deep saturation of color. Digital, snapshot photography is a different story. However, this shot made me wish I had color film.

The wild, untamed, and thoroughly underdeveloped waterfront of the University. It's refreshing to see much of it in this state.

I can't help but, for some reason, think of the way in which Fred Sanford would stretch out his arms in the middle of his junked out home and say to Lamont, "someday, son, all this will be yours!" The UW waterfront is just as cool as a junkyard filled with neat old stuff, however. Why, I've already established that it's got the darndest things.

Down on the Waterfront

[John Lee Hooker quote]

I've also maintained that a university cannot be a true world power unless it has a proper waterfront from which to launch naval conquest. When I moved up to Northwestern University from the land-locked nation of UIUC, I was happy to reside on the shores of Lake Michigan, my childhood Great Lake. Now that I'm at UW, I realize just how puny the naval operations center at Northwestern was.

The UW has sailboats, windsurfers, canoes, barges, crew boats, and complex of docks. Ah the potential for intellectual conquest!

The Canoe House off in the distance. Having been inside several times, I can only say that there is more than just canoes in the canoe house. I won't go so far as to admit it in public, but the Canoe House is where the UW houses its vast stores of an - unnamed - substance - made - from - people for export and trade with other universities bent on world domination.

But you didn't hear this from me...

Montlake Bridge

the Lake side of the bridge. Proceeding southward (to the left in the image) along the bridge leads one from the sprawling, elegant UW campus to the genteel Montlake neighborhood of Seattle.

Under the bridge

From here, one can look up through the steel superstructure of the bridge and up through the steel bridge deck. This allows one to grab voyeuristic, "upskirt" views of the undercarriages of vehicles passing over the bridge. The feeling can't be truly captured in a picture; it looks as if the vehicles are actually flying.

[SM PHOTOS: stuff painted on the walls of the Cut ]

Seaward side of the Montlake Bridge.

View eastward toward Union Bay, Lake Washington.

[SMPHOTOS: navigation sign, view toward un-railed path along Cut ]

A view of the "secret spot" -- look for the bench. To its left is the UW School of Fisheries' salmon return pond. To the right is the entrance to Portage Bay -- going seaward -- from the Montlake Cut.

[ map of Cut ]

Funky geometric action in the foreground.

The Magnuson Health Sciences optiplex -- the largest, most spread out, and incomprehensibly layed out building on the face of the planet -- looms in the background.

this place has more darned things than it knows what to do with

School of Oceanography

Speaking of the darndest things...

the grounds around the school's two buildings are usually littered with the Coolest Shit. It all looks like it has been tinkered and engineered by the school's shop itself, built specifically for certain experimental needs. This stuff puts Junkyard Wars and Monster Garage to shame. Unfortunately, they seem to have either done some housecleaning lately... or much of their stuff is out at sea. Still, though, it's never dissapointing to browse.

I rest my case!

I like looking at all of the neat experimental apparatus, bright-colored buoys, floating contraptions, submersible sampling equipment, and misc.stuff lying around the grounds.

"...the biggest balls of them all"

So in addition to having the previous waterfront from which to launch intellectual conquest, UW also possesses the hard core research interests of the School of Oceanography... which has it's own fearsome waterfront fortress.

At times, the RV Tommy Thompson is moored at the school's dock; however, it is almost always out at sea, privateering and engaging in the secretive international soylent green trade conducting high-powered experiments beneficial to all of humanity.

All images © Rev. Tom Dobrowolsky