Article by: Kevin Walthall | Bremerton Sun Columnist
London’s Trafalgar Square. Paris’ Champs-Elysées. Barcelona's La Ramblas. Istanbul's Istiklal. Saint Peter's Square. Pike Place. Since the Agora of ancient Athens, great cities have had great gathering places — and Bremerton is about to have one, too.
The designs released by Rice, Fergus, Miller this month are downright thrilling.Quincy Square is a proposed public space honoring the local/global/intergalactic/transdimensional music legend with Bremerton roots. “Square” is something of a misnomer, as the brilliance of the space is that it adapts to serve so many different functions. Technically, Quincy Square will be a stretch of Fourth Street between Washington and Pacific, a relatively unused one-lane, one-way street which will be raised to sidewalk grade for a flat, flush surface from storefront to storefront, and surrounded with street trees, food truck hookups, benches, interactive musical sculptures, a busker (street musician) platform, and other features. For special events, the street can be closed from Pacific to the parking garage access points to create a flat mall of festival space, specially adapted for summer outdoor concerts. On a daily basisit will be a multi-modal thoroughfare marked by fine-grained retail and a variety of activity. It provides reasons to come, reasons to stay, and a compartmentalized design that offers different types of use within different zones (performance stage, picnic tables, public piano, etc.).
If you watch the 2018 Grammy-award winning documentary "Quincy" (Netflix), you will hear Quincy Jones tell the story of how he came from humble roots- born on the southside of Chicago, to a mother who, although brilliant (a graduate in the 1920s from Boston University), suffered from mental illness, and exposed to gang life at an early age- his hand once nailed to a fence as a six year old boy.
As Quincy (‘Q’) tells an enrapt Ice Tea:
"If you remember where you come from you will always know where you are going." The Jones family moved to Bremerton in the 1940s, where, as Quincy always tells the story, "I discovered my life's passion, music".As an 11-year old “Q” tells how he broke into the Bremerton Armory ("we were Baby Gangsters", he noted, in his interview with Steven Colbert). After he and his cohorts devoured all the lemon meringue pie in the cafeteria, he came upon a piano in one of the offices. And when he touched the keys Q said- "every cell in my body and every drop of blood told me this is what I would be doing for the rest of my life".
Blink and you'll miss them—limited tickets available for WFT Live Concerts & Events (discounted / on a first-come bases). Take this opportunity and live—fast, fun and 'swinging on a star' (Cosby said that). Shoot us your email with the subject line: Sign me up for the "Swing on a Star" 2025 Season
Sign up for our VIP Members Program and be the first to know what WTF/ROXY live shows are coming to town—long before our neighbors do! Click here to learn more
