Golf is great.

So long as you don't mind all those nitrates and phosphates and weed killers pouring into the watershed and killing off salmon and people.

Real golf means thatch. Grasses, not mowed. Filled with flowers. Like you find in Scotland.

Native grasses and native flowers. Maybe if it was located on a bison range, which would make it way more exciting. Now, that's Zen.

As a lifelong liberal who despises golf, I find the idea of closing the public courses in favor of "affordable housing" to be among the very dumbest ideas I have heard come out of Seattle's homeless advocate "Community". It's dumb on so many levels, but mostly in the smug, condescending myth that it's just an old white person sport. Spend a few hours at Jefferson, as Our Dear Katie did, and you'll see how wrong-headed that idea is. But even if it wasn't wrong, why would be discriminate in recreation based on race and gender?

With that said, if you want to talk about seizing Broadmoor or Sand Point, give me a call.....

It is illegal to convert the golf courses to housing. You could change them to dog parks. But not housing. But hey, we are already suing and losing over an illegal income tax, illegal restrictions on mom & pop landlords preventing them from making sure their tenant is a criminal and the ridiculous Showbox fight that will do more to prevent any future landlord from leasing to a cool new venue than to ever save that dilapidated 100 year old 2 story building in the heart of downtown. So why not?

I tried golf once with the grandparents way back when and hated it. I somehow whiffed more than I hit the ball.

Fuck that game.

The Brits and the Irish seem to have quite the affinity for it, however.

All the same, I don’t see how this is different than visiting parks and/or camping.

You have to possess the means to get there, a small fee is to be paid, and the experience is far more enjoyable with the requisite equipment.

I know the answer is “proximity to services”, but but at some point you simply must wish they had introduced tweakers, stoners, and junkies to the WOW universe.

My late dad used to advocate (long before we were embroiled in economic, housing and environmental crises) for converting cemeteries to golf courses. Which always seemed reasonable to me, even as I'm a non-golfer. Maybe you guys could eliminate the middleman and just convert a bunch of cemeteries to affordable housing, which would have the obvious huge benefit of having said housing likely be haunted, which would also rule.

I believe the golf courses MUST be preserved.

Why? Because with the rate of building in Seattle (and now allowed in back yards as well) and King County, a handful of parks and the golf courses will be the ONLY green spaces left in the entire western third of the County.

@2 seizing private property is fun! Should we seize your property and give it away too?

@ 8: Oh, simmer down, you twat...

SirWalterRaleigh, The difference between Maison Vel-DuRay and Broadmoor/Sand Point is that my home is occupied by productive, tax-paying members of society. Broadmoor also has private homes, but they are occupied by the parasites and leeches of society - the wealthy. Sandpoint is pure excess, as it doesn't even house the parasitical rich - it's just their playground.

And did I suggest that we "give it away" after seizure? Of course not (Even thought it is your era, you really should try to not be so Elizabethan in your thinking). The land could be repurposed to serve people, not exclude people.

You want awe-inspiring urban planning?

I’m taking a straight shot to John Wayne Airport.

From there, I can walk to my hotel, but I’ll be getting a car to go wander about - haven’t been there in over 13 years.

I will, however, be walking from my hotel to the courthouse.

Converting golf courses into housing for the homeless was part of George Carlin's comedy routine decades ago. Clearly he was way ahead of his time.

What a nice read from the stranger. Indeed, what she described is public golf during the week and in the mornings. Seniors. If you come in the evening you see the working folks and their kids. No-country climbs folks but people enjoying the game and meeting other people. Should we have golf over baseball or soccer? I do not know and this is another discussion to be had. But the answer to should we have golf over housing is a clear yes. We should have any type of park space over housing. We will get so much housing that at some point, probably soon, we all will wonder why this has happened. Hopefully, the parks will still be there to go to an enjoy some non-housing for once in a while.

Golf is fun - humans innately enjoy accurately throwing things - be it with their hands (baseball, football, basketball), their feet (soccer), or with an implement (golf). The other things humans enjoy for recreation is moving is utilizing their muscles to the utmost extent - sprinting, ultra-marathons, high/long jumping, wrestling, boxing.

They're all hunting-related behaviors. Just the same way kittens and puppies play-fight with each other, even a simple game of horse represents ancient man acquiring the necessary skills for survival. I guess I just have to admit to believe in evolutionary psychology, which makes it obvious why being a good athlete is an attracting factor.

Part of golf's declining popularity is that people are so time-strapped that they can't afford to spend five hours playing a full 18-hole round. However, they might be willing to spend two or three hours playing 9 holes. This is corroborated by the fact that the 9-hole course at Interbay is the only Seattle course to experience a slight increase in usage.

So, rather than closing all the courses completely down, we should consider converting one or two of them to 9 holes. This would free up some land for housing or parks, while still maintaining some access to golf for those who still want to play. I'd still keep at least one course at 18-holes, probably Jefferson Park due to its central location and relatively diverse clientele.

FYI if you think golf is exclusive here, the east coast is worse. One of my first impressions of Seattle was that I had never seen so many public golf courses. Unheard of in the upstate NY area I had come from.

Cemeteries are what we need to get rid of! We spend our whole lives working so we can legally take up space somewhere..only to take up space after death. Its absurd. We are so much more mobile - when people died in the same town they were born it might have made sense to bury mom and dad nearby so you could visit the graves. My SO's parent's are buried nearby - do we live here the rest of our lives so we can visit their grave? We should do away with the whole cemetery/burial thing period.

Convert the sand traps to junkie hobo camps. Then see if you can whack your way out in less than one stroke.

@19

Welcome to Seattle, new arrival!

We've effectively had a moratorium on building new cemeteries (or expanding old ones) in place since the 1940s. Not coincidentally, this region leads the country in cremations, at something like 75-80%.

You probably drove in, but you'll definitely notice the difference the next time you fly out to LaGuardia and back.

@21 there's something about burial that is perhaps buried too deeply in western psyche to eliminate in the next 100 years or maybe 500 or maybe 1000. who knows.

But yeah, cemeteries in Queens are sitting on many BILLIONS of dollars worth of land.

Katie,
You have the history of Jeff. Park golf course wrong.
It was a small course and a park for the neighborhood and the Japanese communities’ preferred holiday picnic spot until WWII, when the park was taken over by the military. The park was never returned to the neighborhood. The whole property was given to golfers, expanding the golf course to its current size (unsure of date for this, but I think it was in the 50s)
Beacon Hill needs a park. It does not need a golf course.

Jefferson Park was always an 18 hole course, Ignatz Mouse, since its opening in 1915. They might have added the 9 hole later.

And perhaps yo haven't visited Jefferson Park in the last ten years or so, but there is now a very expansive non-golf portion of the park, with an enlarged community center. This was accomplished by lidding the SPU reservoirs on the west side of Beacon Avenue. Hence, Beacon Hill hosts one of the best parks in the city.

Burial actually makes sense, as future generations have a point of reference for photos or tales.

Here lies your great grandfather, and all.

I’m a proponent of planting a tree atop a corpse as a point of reference, albeit some jiggering of the law and land ownership(or a secret spot and a hearse) would be required.

Explaining the gigantic fucking bag of bone ash I still refer to as “him” and placed in my office instead of my bedroom, however..

I’m inclined to end up throwing it away, but I guess it qualifies as fertilizer all the same.

Can we just move on to representative trinkets or something? Find out who manufactures the toys in Happy Meals, pick a design, gender them(not sorry), and set up shop at crematories, morgues, and hospitals.

Willing to bet a church or religion is/was ahead of me on this.

From the incinerator to the farm™

Err..

Forest Service?

Dear Ms. Vel-DuRay,
Thank you for the corrections. I don’t really consider the lidded portion, part of Jefferson park proper, but you are correct. I just want more for Freakin’ Beacon. My research showed that there was a large section of the now golf area that was for parks. When I worked in the ID, the old timers would grumble that the military took the park as it was used mostly by Japanese Americans and gave it to the golfers.
I’ll have to find the book where I read that it was a 9 hole course (and airfield if I recall?) but until then, I will defer to you.
Regards,
Ignatius

@3 - I really really wanted to make sure that I only rented to criminals, but the City law against using criminal records prevented me from doing so.

OK, I fixed the problem. First, we compost everyone. Presto, no more land needed for cemeteries. Then, we use the compost to fertilize golf courses. Voila! No more runoff pollution from synthetic fertilizers. Everyone happy?

@28 take ashes, turn into either a gemstone (have set in a piece of jewelry) or integrate into a piece of glass. Lots of ways to use a loved one's ashes to create either a small or larger memorial to serve as focal point for a personal shrine. I would imagine a ceramic glaze could be created as well. Like many other things we've gotten used to having but might have to give up (plastics, oil, etc...) staking out a plot of land for eternity has got to go.

I get what you are saying in terms of having a spot on earth to say "here lies..." but doesn't that tie a person to one place? Do you turn down a good job opportunity out of state/out of the US/across the continent because it will get in the way of visits to the grave? My guess would be no.

@21 thank you for your snidely-delivered piece of information. However, I would not quit your day job for a job reading minds/guessing how long people have been in the area, as that career would be very short lived.

I live next to Jackson Park, which if it didn't have 27 holes of golf course would be one of the most outstanding parks in the city. It should never be turned into housing; for years I have advocated that it be turned back into a park. Your article made me think again about how Seattle's public golf courses serve a diverse citizenry. I would be willing to modify my stance to allow golfing to continue if Jackson Park could also somehow serve as a park. On alternate days? Mornings?

Ignatz Mouse, As I understand it, where the nine hole course is was once picnic grounds owned by the Parks department. They were were popular with both Asian and Italian groups. When WWII started, the military leased the land for some sort of recreational facility. At the end of the war, it was returned to the Parks Department, and then at some point made into a course, but some of it may have been sold to the VA, and some sold to SPS for Asa Mercer Junior High (or whatever they are calling it these days)

I could be wrong - believe it or not, I want yet born - but that’s what I have read.