The Wallingford subject here is historical – quite.

This, I’ll wager, is the first time the Gasworks were used for playful purposes and musical performance.  Although we were more impetuous then, it was not a guerilla invasion of the industrial ruins, for Richard Haag, the architect who proposed, planned, and carried the conversion of gas factory to wind swept park through much political and physical turmoil was complicit.  He allowed it.

Richard graciously opened the gates to friends (chorus members) and the band Butterfat, which had migrated to Seattle from Wyoming some months earlier.

Butterfat appears in three scenes of …

(Wallyhood is honored to welcome Paul Dorpat, author, observer, prankster and Wallingford’s official unofficial historian, as an occasional contributor. In addition to his regular column for the Seattle Times, he writes his own Seattle history blog at http://pauldorpat.com/.)

Here is a candid record of one of the saddest moments in Wallyhood’s Pop History. It was, as far as I know, unannounced.  They just did it!

The photograph was taken by itinerant Frank Shaw from the top of the nearly new “Toxic Knoll” or “Sundial Stack” in Gasworks Park on Feb. 3, 1978.  It’s sad part is the dismantling of the …