A chance encounter with a statue on Broadway in Seattle set me off on a Jimi Hendrix experience, exploring Seattle's memories of the rock star guitarist who lived his troubled childhood in Seattle's Central District.
When I searched for information on its history (commissioned from sculptor Daryl Smith by a music industry exec who owns Elvis's first guitar and Hendrix's last) I discovered that the city is rich in Hendrix memorials.
One of the most unlikely has to be the bust in the library of Garfield High School, the school Hendrix dropped out from before enlisting in the army. Ironically, his only failing grades were in music. When the bust was given to the school by the Hendrix family in the mid-1980s, there was criticism because of Hendrix's drug issues.
But the biggest memorial is Jimi Hendrix Park, in the Central District, a 2.5-acre space with a wave sculpture of Jimi, a performance space, a butterfly garden and a guitar-shaped system of paths. And it, too, has been marked by controversy.
The city created the park in 2006, with a plan to design, construct and dedicate by 2011, but the park's design wasn't finalized until 2013, with many conflicts over the plan. It finally opened in 2017.
Part of the controversy has been connected with the neighboring building, the former Colman School, which houses the Northwest African-American Museum, which has been at the center of a long-running conflict between its well-funded and connected board and community activists who have a claim to ownership of the building.
The park also saw new controversy this spring and summer when an activist group planted a community garden on part of the park's land to provide food for families impacted by pandemic and homelessness, and to make a visible protest over how decisions are made for public land. A week or so before my visit, the community garden was removed.
At Jimi Hendrix Park, even the utility boxes take on a 60s psychedelic vibe...
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