Nobyembre 30, 2025

"On July 10, Mattheis Johnson hopped a bus on a warm summer night to see a pop-up punk rock show at Seattle’s Gas Works Park, a hulking collection of steel towers, tanks and pipes..."

"... that has become one of the world’s most widely emulated examples of postindustrial landscape design. His parents felt nervous every time their 15-year-old son asserted his independence, but they also knew he needed adventures.... [A]s the concert wound down, Mattheis tried climbing the park towers....  He lost his footing, fell 50 feet and died at a nearby hospital...."

From "After Teen’s Death, a Seattle Icon Confronts a New Label, Nuisance/For years, architects and design experts have resisted safety changes at Seattle’s Gas Works Park, but after a teenager died there this summer, his parents want it declared a public nuisance" (NYT).
Ipinaskil ni Ann Althouse sa 3:49 PM
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37 komento:

Quaestor ayon kay ...

"...his parents want it declared a public nuisance."
I have a better, more effective proposal, declare the "architects and design experts" public nuisances... public enemies is more to the point.

11/30/25, 3:56 PM
Quaestor ayon kay ...

Just what have the design experts done for Western civilization since the mid-sixties -- for as opposed to to? They stupidly declare our time "the post-industrial age", as if any of them could survive in a post-industrial age. Don't look now, Dadaists, Foucault cultist, and design experts, a post-post-modern age is dawning.

11/30/25, 4:05 PM
Achilles ayon kay ...

LOL.

Just another grifting lawyer lurking somewhere in the bushes here.

11/30/25, 4:05 PM
Quaestor ayon kay ...

Mattheis Johnson? Is that a NYT typo or the kid's lawful name? What did the parents intend by not using Matthias, trying to force a Germanic pronunciation?

11/30/25, 4:11 PM
mesquito ayon kay ...

I regularly hike on trails where if I lose my footing I’ll fall to my certain death. Usually land owned by the US Government. He probably needed needed adventures but 15 year old Mattheis (sic) needed adult supervisio.

11/30/25, 4:24 PM
Mason G ayon kay ...

When we were kids, we'd climb stuff that wasn't intended to be climbed. Nobody died, but then again, none of us fell. I don't know how you stop this sort of thing from happening unless you tear down everything tall enough to be dangerous.

11/30/25, 4:24 PM
Ann Althouse ayon kay ...

People climb trees and sometimes fall. They climb all sorts of walls and cliffs. Do we tear down everything that if climbed could lead to a deadly fall? There is danger in setting out to make everything safe. There are risks (and thrills) and the parents, we're told, *knew* he needed adventures. Knew, not believed. The Times presented it as a fact that a boy needs adventure.

11/30/25, 4:31 PM
ALP ayon kay ...

I was in the landscape architecture program at the University of Washington. Richard Haig, the designer of this particular site, is treated with God-like reverence. Personally, I didn't care for him myself and think the fawning over Gasworks is a bit much.

11/30/25, 4:35 PM
Yancey Ward ayon kay ...

My friends and I climbed trees all the time growing up and on pretty much all of them a fall could have been a death sentence.

11/30/25, 4:45 PM
Jim at ayon kay ...

Maybe if his parents hadn't raised an idiot, there wouldn't be a need to call an historic icon - like Gasworks Park - a nuisance.

11/30/25, 4:54 PM
Marcus Bressler ayon kay ...

The most dangerous thing I ever attempted to climb was the social ladder.

11/30/25, 5:14 PM
Quaestor ayon kay ...

"Knew, not believed. The Times presented it as a fact that a boy needs adventure."

Distinguishing wants and needs, the bugbear that foils every Utopia.

11/30/25, 5:16 PM
Charlie Currie ayon kay ...

When I was a kid, my neighbor climbed a small tree in the front yard of another neighbor. Some how on her way down, her foot got caught in the fork of two limbs. She hung upside down for a moment before her foot came out of her shoe. She fell, maybe two feet, to the ground. Broke her arm. The last time I checked, the tree is still there.

11/30/25, 5:16 PM
Charlie Currie ayon kay ...

If you climb something that is not meant to be climbed - which is just about everything - and it doesn't belong to you - technically, you're trespassing. If you enter someone else's' property without their permission, you're trespassing. Nothing is a public nuisance to people who are respectful of other peoples property. I understand the saying today is, FAFO. The young man got to the FO part.

11/30/25, 5:25 PM
Aggie ayon kay ...

I grew up near a white pine forest, and they are great for climbing. You have to be careful, because in a dense forest the lower limbs are all dead wood. But the pitch you get on your hands helps your grip. And up at the top, woo boy, those things really flex in the breeze. Many exciting times, high pucker factor, no real close calls. But the potential was there, and therefore, so was the thrill.

11/30/25, 5:42 PM
Aggie ayon kay ...

"...After Mattheis’s death, the third since 2012, the city set aside more than $1.5 million to remove many of the ladders, catwalks and pipes that climbers use. ..."

A million and a half ??? Are you kidding? That's maybe a couple of days work with 2 welders and a small crane, to remove every single ladder, stair, and walkway.

I'd be asking what happens to the money, if the work doesn't happen. And, where is the budget, let's see it , pronto.

11/30/25, 5:46 PM
Mary Beth ayon kay ...

Did he lose his footing because of his own carelessness (beyond that of climbing in the first place) or because of a defect in the structure? Was he under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol?

I appreciate parents wanting their child to have adventures, but that needs to be coupled with something more than just saying, "make good choices". And perhaps they did try to teach him better, but he was at the age where friends suggesting something stupid has more influence than what your parents taught you. Sometimes I think about the dumb stuff I did as a teen and am amazed I survived.

His death is sad, but it's not the fault of the gasworks structure.

11/30/25, 5:48 PM
bagoh20 ayon kay ...

Having a pair of 3-year-olds running around my house on a regular basis lately has naturally got me thinking about what they could hurt themselves with, I discovered that it's endless, and impossible to make a home safe, and that the average home is a death trap.
Of course firearms are always locked up, but the kitchen alone is an arsenal of death devices. Dozens of knives at the ready, deadly chemicals, which for some reason are customarily stored right at toddler level, as well as medications, icepicks, and even things like pencils and glassware that have terrible potential. That said, we all grew up with those dangers, and few of us ever made a serious mistake with them, and I really can't explain why not. I never played carelessly with a butcher knife, or ingested any of the variety of things that could have sent me to the emergency room, despite the fact that I did endless very dangerous things outside that my adult mind can't imagine letting a kid do today.
Even the firearms in my childhood home were simply put in the closet with the ammo, which was normal for my friends homes too and nobody ever pulled them out or used them without permission, even my most insane friends. It's some kind of miracle of the past or of a culture lost.

11/30/25, 5:49 PM
bagoh20 ayon kay ...

There are no stories written about the crazy stunts that didn't end in disaster, which are certainly the majority from my experience.

11/30/25, 5:54 PM
Achilles ayon kay ...

The Gas Works Park is awesome by the way. It is a truly original park and a fun place to take the family.

11/30/25, 5:56 PM
typingtalker ayon kay ...

Childhood is a dangerous time -- especially for bicycle riders.

MS Copilot:
More than 220,000 children under 19 are treated in U.S. emergency departments for bicycle-related injuries each year.
Common injuries include scrapes, bruises, cuts, broken bones, and head injuries.
In 2020, there were 102 fatal bicycling injuries among children ages 0–19.

Surviving childhood is a pre requisite for getting a driver's license ...

11/30/25, 6:10 PM
Dave Begley ayon kay ...

The parents want money.

11/30/25, 6:26 PM
J Scott ayon kay ...

So they took a ruin, framed it, signed their names, and called it art?

11/30/25, 6:28 PM
Dave Begley ayon kay ...

Ann Althouse, "Do we tear down everything that if climbed could lead to a deadly fall?"

One of the primary values of today's Left is safety.

11/30/25, 6:28 PM
Mason G ayon kay ...

"A million and a half ??? Are you kidding? That's maybe a couple of days work with 2 welders and a small crane, to remove every single ladder, stair, and walkway."

Demolition is, in a way, reverse construction. Rodney Dangerfield explains costs here.

11/30/25, 6:51 PM
tommyesq ayon kay ...

The Gas Works Park is awesome by the way. It is a truly original park and a fun place to take the family.

Achilles, I have never been there. Is the structure itself publicly accessible, such that the kid could have legitimately been up high enough to fall and die? That would seem to make a difference.

11/30/25, 6:56 PM
Mason G ayon kay ...

"Is the structure itself publicly accessible..."

Clipped from the article:

"City leaders have spent decades trying to keep visitors off the park’s structures with man-made and natural barriers, but the climbers have kept coming.

Climbing on the towers was never allowed, and it never stopped, whether the goal was graffiti, social media content or just a great view.

The city has experimented with allowing blackberry brambles to grow dense around the structures; installing fences, mesh steel and barbed wire; and increasing the number of police patrols.

But the vegetation became a place for homeless people to hide, and visitors cut holes in the fences or found other ways in."

11/30/25, 7:03 PM
Wince ayon kay ...

A tall, permanent fence seems to form a perimeter around the "hulking collection of steel towers, tanks and pipes...that has become one of the world’s most widely emulated examples of postindustrial landscape design."

Moreover, attorneys for the parents likely resorted to "public nuisance" because the 15 year-old was too old to claim attractive nuisance to the open and obvious hazard presented by the structures.

11/30/25, 7:12 PM
Steve Austin Showed Up For Work. ayon kay ...

He climbed it because it was dangerous. Otherwise, he would not have climbed it.

11/30/25, 8:00 PM
bagoh20 ayon kay ...

They should just put up a sign that says : "Climbing this is racist."

11/30/25, 8:04 PM
Joe Bar ayon kay ...

We used to hitch rides on trains. One of my friends lost part of his foot. Remember high dives at swimming pools? Danger is not allowed anymore.

11/30/25, 8:21 PM
Kathryn51 ayon kay ...

his parents want it declared a public nuisance. Of course they do. This park has existed (n my home town) for over 50 years, but parents will ALWAYS try to pin the blame on others for whatever happens to their children.

Years ago, a child got off a school bus and ran in front of it - the bus driver didn't see her and she died. Parents ran down to Olympia demanding something = anything that would prevent that type of accident in the future. So now (or as far as I know), all school buses in the sate of Washington must include a device that supposedly prevents a child from running in front of the bus. I have yet to see a report or analysis that shows the device has saved a single life, but it's possible it exists.

11/30/25, 8:22 PM
James K ayon kay ...

Kids (boys, especially) are going to take risks. Parents need to help them learn to avoid the ones that might kill them, but it's a rite of passage. I remember as a teenager I was hiking with some friends in a state park in Kentucky. One of the trails had a big sign saying "Closed. Danger of falling rocks." Naturally we walked right past the sign and onto the trail. A few hundred yards in a guy was coming back towards us with his face bloodied. At that point I think we might have turned around.

11/30/25, 8:35 PM
Enigma ayon kay ...

I'm wondering when Nepal will declare Mt. Everest a Public Nuisance, take down the ladders, fire the Sherpas, and begin to drag down the hundreds of dead bodies that line its climbing trails?

Or, will they continue to accept massive payments for climbing permits and fees for airplanes to land nearby?

If you want to see more Stupid Human Falls, check out natural mountains. Start with the notorious Mt. Washington in New Hampshire with its 231 mph winds and severe changes in weather. Then consider the drive-up-death-falls of Crater Lake National Park and Yosemite National Park and Grand Canyon National Park. Finally, watch how curious tourists boil themselves in Yellowstone's hot springs and geysers.

Darwin Award winners! Cheers!

12/1/25, 5:54 AM
Balfegor ayon kay ...

If it were attracting ten year olds to go climbing, yes, that might be a public nuisance. But I think fifteen is old enough to be responsible for one's own judgment, tragic though the outcome in this case was. Children climb trees and hills too, and fall, and die.

12/1/25, 6:10 AM
Heartless Aztec ayon kay ...

We surfed hurricane swells on LSD back in the late 60's. No leash attached to the surfboard - hadn't been invented yet - and no help in sight anywhere. Just your stupid risk taking teenaged self and a few buddies out in maxing waves on acid. Can't believe I'm still alive. If we had passed away from drowning our parents would have been sorrowfull but they had 4 or five other kids to alleviate the loss of any particular one of us.

12/1/25, 7:10 AM
carrie ayon kay ...

My son, who lived in Peru for several years, says that Americans expect things to be “stupid proof”. He told me that after I stepped on a manhole cover in Peru and fell through it. He told me that Peruvians know that you should never step on a manhole cover because you might fall through it. And the same idea applies to the lack of railings, warnings, etc. in other countries where the danger is obvious so they don’t make things stupid proof.

12/1/25, 8:16 AM

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