Kurt Cobain Memorial Bridge

The City Council of Aberdeen, Washington, once home to grunge music legend Kurt Cobain, rejected a recommendation to rename the Young Street Bridge after the late Nirvana singer. Mr. Cobain spent part of his misspent youth loitering under that span across the Wishkah River. Some local citizens saw the bridge naming proposal as glorification of the musician’s drug abuse and suicide. “Is this the legacy we want to leave to our children?” asked Pastor Don Eden.

There could be more appropriate memorial symbols than the current structure, officially known as the North Aberdeen Bridge. Our suggested monument design (above) is based on the Victorian tree-stump grave marker, symbolizing a life cut off in its prime.

The small town (population 16,896) already has other monuments to the late singer: a statue in the park and a cautionary anti-drug plaque. After his passing, Mr. Cobain’s bandmates named a recording in his honor, From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah, and the Aberdeen Council did agree to name a strip of those banks in his honor.

Related:

“Kurt Cobain’s Hometown Rejects Plan for Memorial Bridge,” Matthew Perpetua, Rolling Stone

Tree-stump tombstones : a field guide to rustic funerary art in Indiana, Susanne S. Ridlen (1999) Kokomo, IN : Old Richardville Publications LC F528 .R53 1999

Short link: http://wp.me/p6sb6-aLC

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Comments are welcome if they are on-topic, substantive, concise, and not boring or obscene. Comments may be edited for clarity and length.

Tags: Aberdeen, Aberdeen WA, Aberdeen Washington, bridge, Cobain, Gray's Harbor, Gray's Harbor Co., Gray's Harbor County, grunge, grunge music, Kurt Cobain, memorial, music, Nirvana, North Aberdeen Bridge, Wishkah, Wishkah River, Young Street Bridge

This entry was posted on July 31, 2011 at 11:24 pm and is filed under Engineering, music, rock music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Kurt Cobain Memorial Bridge”

Brandt Hardin Says:
August 1, 2011 at 7:23 pm
I believe it would have been a fitting memorial for a legendary musician who tragically left us too soon. Kurt’s music changed my life and I drew up a self portrait of him in memoriam on the anniversary of his death recently on my artist’s blog at http://dregstudiosart.blogspot.com/2011/04/in-memoriam-kurt-cobain-and-lane-staley.html

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