South-End Scenes

By Susan Davis, Executive Director, Rainier Chamber of Commerce and Rainier Chamber Foundation

Think back to the glorious warm and sunny day this past Sunday: the warmth in the air, the extra bounce in your step, the smiles on faces as you passed them by on the street, because you too were out soaking up some vitamin D from the bright orb of happiness in the sky!  Meanwhile, 20 groups of Rainier Valley neighbors, business owners and friends were also out enjoying themselves for the 2011 Bridge to Beach All Valley Makeover.

It was an event organizer’s dream: perrrfect weather, enthusiastic participants and amazing organizers! As one of the organizers who has done this iteration of a clean up for the third year in a row, I must pause here to say that I am indeed the luckiest person in the Valley since I was able to work with the dream team of organizers: Yun Pitre and Ed Pottharst from the Department of Neighborhoods, Sarah Valenta of HomeSight, and our newest organizing team member: Nhi Tran of the Seattle Neighborhood Group. They were all fabulous. I would suggest that if you ever have a chance to work with any of them, that you grab it, but let’s just keep this as our little secret, since I selfishly want to make sure I have them on my team for all future community projects!

Enthusiastic teams organized to do graffiti paint out, litter pick up, gardening, weeding, even overgrown moss removal from steps, staples removal from neglected kiosks and a surprise find of illegally dumped televisions near Kubota Gardens!

People poured into the Rainier Chamber office beginning at 9 am on Sunday morning ready to go! We fortified them with fruit, energy bars and coffee or soda and reminded them to send us before and after photos and videos. With some, we recorded short interviews with them about what they were planning to do. The youngest participant was two years old, and the oldest? Well, we didn’t ask her age but she sure seemed strong enough to take on whatever challenges the traffic circles of the Valley presented to her!

Some of the organizers went to visit the sites and others stayed behind to weed around the Rainier Chamber/Rainier House building. The highlight of the day was when we greeted the team members upon their return to hear their stories of transformation. Ugly, dirty and overgrown turned into beautiful, clean and trimmed up. The glow on their faces while they told us their stories of transformation makes all the months of planning worth it! Each story is a precious gem of happiness and triumph: We did it! We saw and we conquered the mess so we could all live a bit better.

To honor our clean team heroes, please: don’t litter, refrain from defacing someone else’s private property, and trim back your garden.  You could even adopt a traffic circle and tend to it.

By Monday evening, we had either visited all the sites first hand or saw the photo/video documentation of the ‘befores’ and ‘afters’ so we could see the progress.  Judges met on Wednesday for the difficult task of deciding which teams would win this year’s awards of ice cream from Full Tilt.  It was not easy for them to decide, but here is the list that they came up with:

• Most Artistic Paint Out – Rainier Ninja Squad
• Best Down in the Dirt weeding/planting – Genesee Meet Up
• Greenest Thumb – Patrick Mann & Pepsi
• Clean Slate Garbage Pickup – DOC Crew
• Best Traffic Circle Beautification – Dunlap Neighbors
• Junior Conservationists – Girl Scout Troop 8
• Best Community Spirit – Salon Adidez/Edmonds Street Businesses
• Largest Volunteer Turnout – RV Youth Alliance Beautification
• Most Enthusiastic Group – MLK BA
• Most Innovative Project – Sound Steps

Many, many thanks to all of the people who participated in the Bridge to Beach All Valley May Day Makeover! Your goodwill makes all of our lives better!

Click here to view the 2011 Bridge to Beach photos on SNG Southeast Seattle’s Facebook Page.

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