By Morf Morford, Tacoma Daily Index
O, Tacoma
Tacoma is the kind of place where you can pick any category – from corrupt police and politicians to clumsy and/or stupid criminals, crazy drivers and eccentric locals or even entire eras – where lunacy, individual eccentricities and cluelessness seem to bear fruit and take shape that seems unique to our area.
Tacoma’s history is dense with characters and situations that defy common sense.
From entrepreneurs to hucksters to drifters passing through, even a brief glance at Tacoma’s history shows a landscape rife with (by normal standards) ordinary people doing extra-ordinary things.
They may be good, bad, even terrible, but you can always count on a peculiar Tacoma-flavored spin on clumsiness, misunderstanding, and general malfeasance that might erupt anywhere and any time.
Some blame it on the water, or the woods or the weather. But maybe it doesn’t matter where it comes from – it seems unavoidable and inescapable. Perhaps one day a forensic urban psychologist will analyze and make sense of it all.
But until that day, most of us just live here, anticipating that next unexpected unique T-town encounter.
Here are just a few scenes from the summer of 2023 in Tacoma…
Only in Tacoma
In the middle of June, in downtown Tacoma, outside a well-known restaurant, a mother handed her car keys and young child to perfect strangers and never came back. 911 was called and police arrived. Eventually. Hours later in fact. You can see a profile of the story here.
The child was taken care of by the discomfited people who had planned a routine dinner out, and was taken in by CPS at about 11pm.
But as many of us know first hand, a routine evening out in Tacoma rarely is routine.
The mother later summed it up – “It’s a really long story.”
And yes, it probably is. But it’s also an archetypal Tacoma story…
Armed home invasion in Tacoma
Six people forced their way into a home in Tacoma, held the occupants at gunpoint, stole items, then left. This local story hit the national media. You can see the video here.
Asleep at the wheel
A man was found by police in the Gig Harbor Target parking lot sound asleep in his Ford F-150, which had no license plate. The truck was filled with packaged merchandise, including over a dozen boxes of packaged Pokémon cards.
After being awakened and told that he was under arrest, he started the truck and took off with two flat tires and evaded arrest, for the moment. The truck was not stolen. The registered owner of the vehicle matched the description of the suspect – who has multiple outstanding warrants. Read more here.
Tacoma in the international news
Former Doctor Who star John Barrowman was escorted from a restaurant in Tacoma just moments after arriving. And not just any restaurant – it was the McMenamins Elks.
McMenamins generally bills itself as welcoming if not an advocate of progressive inclusion and gender identities. But that’s not how John Barrowman (or his 1.4 million Instagram followers) will see McMenamins – or Tacoma – in the future.
As Barrowman posted to his Instagram followers – “So Tacoma… not a good recommendation. McMenamins… McNot.”
For better or worse, you just can’t buy publicity like that.
I’m sure the whole experience was somewhere between a clumsy encounter to a series of misunderstandings, but as we in Tacoma know all too well, Tacoma seems to bring out the worst in celebrities – or maybe celebrities bring out the worst in us – but either way, Tacoma seems to confirm, even burnish, its reputation with each new event like this.
The Bieb does Tacoma
Some of us remember way back in 2012, when Justin Bieber, as a publicity stunt, claimed that his laptop – with an exclusive soon-to-be-released music video – was stolen from the Tacoma Dome. The whole story (here’s one link) generated a lot of national, if not global, publicity – most of it at Tacoma’s expense.
It might be a truism in show business that there is no such thing as bad publicity.
I’m not sure if that principle holds true for cities.
And Tacoma makes the national, if not international news, when it comes to health
We might be known as T-town to some, but maybe TB-town might be more accurate.
Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the most common illnesses in the world. There are around 10 million new cases every year. TB is highly contagious, sometimes fatal, and at early stages, easily treated.
In Tacoma, as you might expect, we had a slightly different approach to a disease that has threatened the world for centuries.
A woman with an active case refused treatment and went out in public, took the bus and went to a local casino – among other things. She avoided treatment – and a series of warnings from the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department.
She was finally taken onto custody and later released – with a monitoring device. And still refused treatment.
For details on local responses to TB, look here.
We’re number one – in gas prices
California and Hawaii have been noted for the highest gas prices in the entire country for decades – but not in late June of 2023. Washington has achieved a status no state wants; the highest gas prices across the nation. For a little perspective, Washington state’s average gas price is nearly $2 a gallon above that of America’s cheapest state for fuel – that would be Mississippi, where gas prices average $3.01 a gallon.
