Clock Tower Presides Over Park Activities
Suppose you had taken time out from your rich, full weekend schedule and decided to celebrate Riverfront Park’s 20th anniversary Sunday afternoon by maintaining a vigil at the base of the Clock Tower.
Your goal? To see, starting at noon, how long it would be before someone walked up and touched the buff-colored edifice.
Here’s some of what you would have seen and heard.
Bike riders, roller skaters and walkers on the paved path between the Clock Tower and the nearby Spokane River almost all took casual note of what remains of the 1902 Great Northern Railway passenger depot. Many, especially those wearing shades, looked up.
Early Sunday afternoon, the Clock Tower pointed to a mostly sunny sky.
Gulls shrieked. Music drifted over from the carrousel.
The park was busy. And at least a few passers-by stopped and momentarily stared at the Spokane icon. But nobody went up and touched it.
OK, it’s not like that’s some big thrill. Not surprisingly, the stone base and brickwork both feel rough on your fingertips.
Still, there are those of us who almost always make a point of touching it - when hitting it with a snowball is out of the question, that is. Maybe it’s like scoring a point in some childhood game. Or perhaps it’s just a way of silently making a connection.
No matter. Nobody seemed to feel that particular urge Sunday.
Maybe there was just too much commotion. After a bit, recorded pre-concert music blared from a portable stage set up just west of the tower. And at 12:30, a spirited Gay Pride March moved south on the nearby elevated lanes of Washington Street. “We’re here! We’re queer!”
“Two, four, six, eight, di-vers-i-ty is great.”
Chris Fairchild and his wolf-husky mix, Mitra, walked up and stared through a padlocked security fence at the wooden door leading inside the tower. But they didn’t touch it.
Then this kid with a skateboard pretty much ensured that nobody would go near the tower.
Wearing a green “People Suck” T-shirt and sporting what looked like bottle-job blond hair, he seemed about 12. And he might make a list of “America’s Most Annoying.”
Loudly flailing and flopping about at the base of the Clock Tower, he repeatedly demonstrated that he couldn’t do the skateboard tricks he was attempting. Still, he continued grinding his board into the concrete steps that partly encircle the tower’s base, letting loose with foulmouthed tirades to protest his failures.
Finally, he petulantly stomped on one end of his board and it flipped up and hit him in the mouth.
Suddenly the vigil had been worthwhile.