Phinney

The Greenwood-Phinney Chamber of Commerce uses the tag line "Greenwood-Phinney Just a Little Off Center." The word I had come up with when walking this neighborhood was "zen."

Rain fell the entire time I walked through a small section of Phinney Ridge today but it was a perfect neighborhood to walk on a dismal day. My 3.9 mile walk took me along tidy streets with sidewalks and curbs where many of the parking strips were gardening works of art and the gardens and rockeries were small but amazing.

I walked all the streets from NW 70th to NW 75th from 3rd Avenue NW to Greenwood Avenue N.

This strip of Greenwood is commercial, housing churches (Woodland Park Presbyterian and Phinney Ridge Lutheran), restaurants, pubs, consignment stores, music stores, children's shops, a yarn store, a wig store, a bookstore (Santoro's), a massage therapy place, a video store, a game store, card/gift shops, a dentist office, a hardware store and a supermarket.

It was the combination of the upscale vegetarian restaurant, the massage therapy place, the Taoist Studies Institute, the independent bookstore and the young women walking young children combined with the well-tended gardens and peaceful streets that gave me a feeling of zen on this rainy day.

There was not a single 'for sale' sign in this area and residents apparently take pride in maintaining their homes and designing beautiful gardens and parking strips.

Most of the homes are small and are on small lots but many appear to have basements. There are a few large homes and lots of rockeries and retaining walls. Most homes are 5 to 10 feet above street level and almost all of them have small covered entries (not quite porches). The smaller bungalow-type homes were probably built in the 30's; the larger ones may have been built earlier.