Fresh fish, and a coat of paint, bring neighborhood together

The fish of the future is floating on asphalt where South 49th Street crosses Fawcett Avenue.

The sea creature is Tacomans’ freshest effort to build community, calm traffic and pretty up the city in unexpected ways.

Last Saturday, some 50 people – kids, neighbors and members of Sustainable Tacoma-Pierce – painted in all the spaces between the crosswalks.

“The idea is to create a more pedestrian-friendly landscape without a lot of expense,” said ringleader Carolyn Hartt.

That’s how they sold the idea to city officials, got the permit and met the requirements to do it right. She assured them that painting pavement has worked well elsewhere. Sustainable Tacoma-Pierce lifted the idea from Portland.

It also has worked here. Last year neighbors painted the same intersection with a design inspired by a ceramic tile. You can see traces of it in the fish’s scales.

Plus, it was lawful, organized and free to the city. The neighbors followed all the rules, notified all the agencies whose vehicles use the intersection, rented the approved barriers, gathered the supplies and settled on a design approved by all. Sustainable Tacoma-Pierce paid the $500 that covered everything from barricade rental to pigment.

Hartt, 47, is a member of the group, which supports the idea of “permaculture” and will offer a course on it from September through February. (For more information, go to its website: sustainabletacomapierce.net.)

It’s also big on building a strong sense of place and working in small ways to make outsized impacts. Neighbors Daniel Fritsch, 55, Terri Clay, 49, and Mark Bostwick, 55, have been doing the same thing informally.

Fritsch has lived in his corner house for 29 years and sees pride of place growing all around him.

Drive – or better, walk – the neighborhood west of Stewart Middle School, and you’ll see arbors and gazebos, planting strips with flowers and veggies, a corn field in a front yard. This week you’d have seen people on ladders, making the best of painting season. Even the school has a hillside of raised bed gardens filled with spinach, beets, kale, lettuce, beans, peas and pumpkins.

And now their street has a fresh fish.

Hartt, Clay and Fritsch pulled up chairs on his lawn – it’s that kind of neighborhood – and road-tested the mural.

“People slow down for it,” Fritsch said. “I don’t think they slow for traffic circles.”

A car slowed.

“It’s working,” said Hartt.

Saturday, it worked in entirely different ways, Clay said. It was paint day, when all the prep work paid off.

Weeks earlier, she’d noticed an embossed fish on Hartt’s wall. Together they visited all the neighbors asking if they liked it for the street design – and if they’d help paint. The yes was unanimous on both points.

They planned colors, and Hartt picked up special pigments in Seattle.

“The paint mixture is a big deal,” Clay said.

“The recipe includes concrete, lime, salt, water and pigment,” Hartt said.

You don’t want to try mixing it on your own, they agreed. It’s best to have someone on site who knows how to transfer the pattern to the street, how to get the colors right, and that they are best applied with small brooms.

“Not working,” said Fritsch as a young man blew through the intersection.

They figure that once people drive the fish, they’ll want an image for their neighborhood.

Maybe a songbird. Maybe a mandala or a maze or a totem. Maybe a school mascot.

Whatever the pattern, having a consultant willing to help would be a good idea.

“Working,” Clay said as a city truck slowed.

They were still glowing from the work party. It was a lawn chair and potluck day, sunny with a chance of ice cream trucks. Kids put hand prints on the edges. A vendor gave free treats to kids short on cash.

Clay is relatively new to the area, and at first thought the move might have been a mistake.

The tile, and now the fish, have shown her the wisdom of it.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677
kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com
blog.thenewstribune.com/street