365 Wow Places:
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Wow Place #271: Seattle Underground Tour
I’m fascinated by “liminal spaces.”
A liminal space can be defined as a threshold. It’s a place of transition, a time of waiting and not knowing the future – a time when you’re on the precipice of something new but not quite there yet.
Hallways are an example of a liminal space, as are airports, train stations and even streets. Perhaps the ultimate liminal space is Platform 9 ¾ in the Harry Potter books, the hidden platform that secretly transports you from our muggle world to the world of wizardry…or at least, gets you on the way to Hogwarts.
I vividly recall my own experience with liminal space. It was the spring of 1985 and I was nearing college graduation. One of our school auditoriums that night was showing this new Bill Murray movie, The Razor’s Edge – an adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s great novel about a young man post WWI who forgoes a career in finance to travel around the world in search of “truth.” Sitting there in the theater, watching Murray’s character live in Paris, work in a coal mine, read the Upanishads, and eventually climb the heights of the Himalayas to pray in a monastery, I remember thinking, “I’m at a crossroads, too. Which way am I going to go – conventional career or the life of the searcher?”
Although liminal spaces tend to be places of mind and spirit – metaphorical experiences – thankfully there are a few, real-world places that also feel “liminal.” One such locations is Bill Speidel’s Seattle Underground Tour.
As the story goes, the early settlers of Seattle didn’t give much thought to city planning. Building their town at sea level, they seemed positively surprised when the city flooded during heavy rain. It all came to a crux in 1889 when, thanks to a preponderance of wooden buildings, a massive fire broke out, wiping out much of the downtown. In the aftermath, the city leaders decided to elevate the city streets by about 12 feet, essentially solving the flooding problem by building on top of the old town! The plan certainly worked—although it left behind a network of underground tunnels that became a seedy hangout for gamblers, sex worker and drug users. Today the tunnels are mostly abandoned – except for a few ghosts, perhaps – and you can visit this “secret space” on an organized tour like the ones organized by the Bill Speidel organization (and a few other rivals).
As you can imagine, the Seattle Underground is a cool and creepy place, replete with subterranean storefronts and sidewalks. In a way, it reminds me of the Catacombs in Paris or the Cu Chi Tunnels in Vietnam– claustrophobic, spooky, disheveled, and somehow forbidden. At the same time, it conjures up the liminal notion of a future waiting to come into fruition. The folks living and working here in the mid-19th century must have known that wooden houses on a flood zone was a transitional situation at best – it wasn’t sustainable. Things were bound to change, and soon.
That’s the feeling I get as I walk through the Seattle Underground. This now-forsaken city had its brief, ephemeral time in the sun but was never really built to last. It was waiting for a new, different, indefinable future, which it received with sudden, vehement vengeance.
What’s your liminal space?
(Liminal spaces are uncomfortable. Most of us want certainty in our lives. No one wants to live in a state of doubt and insecurity. But there’s also something thrilling about being in a liminal space, poised on the edge of a precipice. You might jump over the chasm, you might crash and burn, but things are definitely about to change – and if your current situation is less than ideal, change can definitely be a good thing. The key is to stay positive, to trust your resilience and survival skills, to take a deep breath, and take the leap.)
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