Just when you’re thinking that Seattle quirkiness is disappearing in our corporate digital takeover, there is the story of the rogue Rolf Neslund public sculpture in West Seattle.
Yes, that Rolf Neslund.
The one who 45 years ago, in 1978, was piloting a 550-foot freighter when he rammed it into the old West Seattle Bridge. That rendered the bridge inoperable and necessitated construction of a new span that everyone knew was needed, anyway.
A plaque on the sculpture states, “Patron Saint of the Broken Bridge.”
Neslund’s dismal fate continued. Two years later, in 1980, he was murdered by his wife in an astounding manner befitting one of the old “Saw” movies.
In this neighborhood, such displays of public artistic defiance are relished, at least by some. Most recently, back on March 10, we covered the story of the unpermitted palm tree along Alki Beach (it’s staying).
The Neslund sculpture incident happened in early June at a bike path along the West Seattle Bridge, just downhill from 22nd Avenue Southwest where Rose Feliciano has lived for 23 years.
On a daily basis she’d jog by the concrete, scowling mug of Neslund with his frame concrete glasses, sitting atop a 4-foot pedestal.
“I like it because, clearly, Rolf led a rough life,” she says. “It kinda exudes a rough life. A little tattered. A little worn.”
Feliciano sometimes put a hat on it, maybe bunny ears.
Then she saw that Rolf had toppled over, its wooden pedestal eaten away by termites.
Feliciano jumped into action.
With the help of a neighbor, she carted the head to her backyard. “It weighed about the same as my dog, and he’s 23 pounds,” she recalls. “I was worried about it getting vandalized, or stolen.”
Somebody had already somehow shoved the toppled sculpture some 10 feet. The sculpture, ugly as it might seem to some, might have had some value as a collector’s item.
It had first appeared on the side of the trail in September 2020. An email to the West Seattle Blog by the anonymous “Lars” credited the sculpture to nonexistent groups Delridge Maritime Historical Society and the Center For General Annoyance.
However, barely a week later, the blog reported, the sculpture disappeared, apparently stolen. “Uncle Loco,” commented in that story, “Poor Rolf. Even after 30 years he can’t rest in peace.”
But Lars or whoever created the concrete head then a month later replaced it with a new sculpture.
The plaque on the Neslund sculpture goes into detail about his history.
At 2:38 a.m. on June 11, 1978, Neslund was piloting a giant freighter carrying 20,000 tons of gypsum.
The ship rammed the old West Seattle Bridge and left one arm of the north drawbridge permanently stuck in the up position.
Neslund was 80 years old. An inquiry found him to be negligent. Neslund retired two weeks later.
With the help of powerful U.S. Sen. Warren Magnuson, Seattle got federal money that paid for a considerable chunk of the cost of a new span that was dedicated in 1984. For years, local politicians had been bickering about constructing a new bridge. Now they were forced to act.
There is something about a bridge connecting West Seattle to the rest of the city that brings the unexpected. The new one had its own bad luck from March 2020 until September 2022, when cracks were found in its support structure.
In case you need a refresher on Neslund’s ultimate fate, here’s HistoryLink’s summary:
“On August 8, 1980, Ruth Neslund shoots her 83-year-old husband, Rolf Neslund, twice in the head after a violent argument over his purloined retirement fund. With the assistance of her older brother, she disposes of the body by chopping it up with a butcher knife and an ax, incinerating the pieces in a burn-barrel and dumping the ashes in a pile of manure in back of their Lopez Island home.”
If your reaction is, “Whoa!” join the club.
Why honor Neslund with a sculpture?
West Seattle has a long history of grudgingly being part of Seattle proper. It was its own city until 1907.
Nine decades later, locals were once again talking about going their own way. March 16, 1995, The Seattle Times: “Way to secede may get easier for West Seattle — Senate passes bill to change rules.”
After the blog posted earlier this month about Rolf’s head toppling over, Feliciano ended up in contact with Mike Shaughnessy, a collector of vintage technology. Feliciano herself is a contract lobbyist in Olympia, working for groups of companies who don’t have their own full-time people doing that work.
Shaughnessy, a 30-year West Seattle resident, says he has in storage 2 million vacuum tubes, the kind used in old radios and amps. That’s for another story.
“I was always under the assumption everyone hated Rolf because he ruined the West Seattle Bridge,” Shaughnessy says. “Come to find out, he’s kind of an unsung hero. That’s why the statue was created.”
He brought on board John Bennett, owner of the Luna Park Café in West Seattle, as well as 25 historical Georgetown properties. He’s lived in the neighborhood for 49 years.
He says about the sculpture, “It’s fun and dumb, kind of quirky. It’s not the Fremont Troll, but it’s close.”
Both men are on the board of the Southwest Seattle Historical Society. That’s a real group, which isn’t involved with the Rolf sculpture.
It didn’t take long for Shaughnessy and Bennett to figure how to make a new pedestal on the cheap.
They found some 12 x 12-inch concrete pavers, and some bricks. They got some landscape construction adhesive to glue it all together. It took about two hours to gather the material and install it.
For this story, we considered contacting the city’s Department of Transportation, which has jurisdiction over the bike trail, about a comment on the unpermitted Rolf sculpture.
But that would have meant the bureaucracy could have kicked in about permits. Emails. Memos. And, you know, why?
In any case, Feliciano’s home, along with a chunk of her neighborhood, as well as that part of the trail are on the “preferred alternative” to be torn down to make way for another mammoth Sound Transit link extension.
So in at least that location, Rolf’s days are again numbered.
The plaque also includes a quote from the hero of the Kurt Vonnegut novel, “The Sirens of Titan.”
The quote: “I was the victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.”
Bennett calls the sculpture “guerrilla art.”
But pretty literate street art. West Seattle rolls on.