eclecticism

June 17th, 2005 |

Last month, the City of Seattle launched a program to bring free Wi-Fi access to several prominent areas around Seattle. The initial launch was in Columbia City and the University District, but other parks planned to go online include downtown’s Westlake, Victor Steinbrueck, Occidental, and Freeway parks.

Progress is obviously being made, as today on my way home for lunch I saw a work crew installing one of the Wi-Fi antennas on a lamppost on the 8th Avenue bridge over Freeway Park. Now I’m starting to wonder if my building just might end up with free Wi-Fi access provided by the City of Seattle. Here’s a look at the local layout:

Freeway Park Wi-Fi

Freeway Park is (roughly) outlined in red. The antenna I saw being installed is marked in yellow (I’m sure there must be more scattered around the park), and my apartment building is outlined in green. Now, I don’t know quite how much coverage beyond the borders of Freeway Park the antennas will provide, but just eyeballing it, I’d say that there’s at least a chance that my building might be covered.

Of course, the downside is that none of my computers are Wi-Fi enabled, so it wouldn’t do me any good. Still, I have a few friends with iBooks that occasionally stop by, so this might be a good thing for them.

“Now That I Have You” by Information Society from the album Hack (1990, 5:03).

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3 Responses to “Free Wi-Fi for my apartment?”

Jake of 8bitjoystick.com Says:
June 17th, 2005 at 1:25 pm

You lucky son of a beyotch. I get free wifi at my apartment because the people below me have no SSID or passwords enabled on their Wifi.

Kristin Says:
June 17th, 2005 at 7:25 pm

Do you know what the cross streets going through the park are? Is that Seneca along the Southern border? I had read about the WiFi earlier and was wondering if I could pick it up from where I live. I believe my apartment is pretty close and think I spot it in the lower left corner of that picture. It’s a little tough for me to tell from an overhead shot however.

Michael Hanscom Says:
June 17th, 2005 at 9:53 pm

Well, my building (the green one) is on the corner of 8th and Seneca, kitty-corner from the Town Hall (you can make out the dome on top of Town Hall pretty easily): Seneca’s the diagonal that starts towards the lower left of the shot; 8th is the street running through the park with the yellow mark halfway along. Here’s the street map for that area — I hope this helps!