Evergreen Shores, Washington isn’t your typical upper-crust exurb (Wikipedia, 2015). Along the shoreline of Black Lake you’ll find a few gated McMansions, but by and large this is a working-class neighborhood.
Despite amenities such as a boat launch and an adjoining nature preserve, homes tend to sell for less than in the nearby suburb of Olympia.
If folks moved out here for status, would the neighborhood’s signs have had peeling paint for a number of years? (They were repainted a new months after this photo feature was completed.)
This neighborhood’s primary niche in the real estate market appears to be starter homes for young families that seek to distance themselves from the suburban lights of Olympia.
Evergreen Shores is surprisingly isolated for being only seven miles away. It’s only accessible by a fairly dangerous two-lane country road. There’s no bike lane and no bus service. So once kids come home from school, they likely won’t be able to go to the mall or catch a movie.
So what do they do? For a number of years some of them hung out on a little-used side street near the neighborhood’s club house. Although this street was clearly intended for development, that has yet to happen for more than a half-dozen parcels (perhaps because the soil wasn’t amenable to septic systems).
There’s not much reason to venture down this road . . . unless you want to dump some trash. Or park your car at night and make out.
Around July 4 the most isolated part of this street has long been a staging ground for fire works. The rest of the year some kids amused themselves by drawing graffiti.
It started out with a cheery innocence, such as with “Hoorah” and “Oh-Hi.”
As time went on, the usual references to sex, drugs and music started to show up. At one point, renditions of genitalia were particularly popular.
Three summers ago the number of new entries was unusually small, which suggested that the cohort was growing out of this pastime. The graffiti also became more hard edged.
By the spring of 2015 virtually all of the graffiti shown above had faded away and no new material had been added.
One can still find a remnant of the graffiti on a nearby tree, which was spray painted, “Stoner.”
The most prominent graffiti of all had been added to a sign at the entrance to the Evergreen Shores neighborhood. However, that sign was subsequently repainted and no new graffiti has shown up.
Apparently the above generation of graffiti artists has moved onto other pastimes as has they have become adults.
UPDATE:
A few months after the last of these photographs were taken, the neighborhood repainted its signs. Graffiti no more.
RE:SOURCES
- Wikipedia; 2015. “Commuter town.” Accessed June 5.
PHOTOGRAPHY:
- Author’s photo gallery: “Exurban graffiti”
Be the first to comment