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Happy PARK(ing) Day!

You’ve waited an entire year, and it’s finally here! Today is PARK(ing) Day, the annual event when people around the world temporarily convert on-street parking spaces into pop-up parks for a few hours. PARK(ing) Day began in 2005 and raises awareness about the importance of a sustainable, livable, and healthy city.

Between 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. today, Seattle will have 50 new parks, each offering a fun and unique way for people to experience a parking space. The pop-up parks include creative furniture, board games and lawn bowling, art installations, trees and landscaping, books and pianos, and much, much more.

You’ll find PARK(ing) Day parks from Lake City to Rainier Beach and from Ballard to West Seattle. There are also groups of parks in South Lake Union, Capitol Hill, and downtown Seattle.

And, because we love PARK(ing) Day as much as you do, we’ll be hosting two pop-up parks of our own today! One park will be on King St, between 5th Ave and 6th Ave (pictured below), and the other will be on Madison St, at Boren Ave. Come by our International District location to hang out, design your own street with Legos, get creative with Build-It disks, and learn more about what SDOT is doing to keep you safe and activate our streets. If that’s not enough to tempt you, we’ve got plenty of free swag (see the awesome superhero capes?), so come hang out with us!

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An interactive map of all the parks—along with a short description of what’s happening in each one—is available on the PARK(ing) Day website. Follow us on Twitter today for regular updates on PARK(ing) Day activities, and use #seaparkingday in your own tweets so we can see where you’ve been, too.

And while we’re talking about parks in parking spaces, we are excited to announce that a new parklet at Molly Moons in Wallingford will open this weekend! Feel free to stop by and enjoy the new space—and some ice cream—on Sunday between 3:00 and 5:00 p.m. Parklets are an outgrowth of PARK(ing) Day, and the Molly Moons parklet is part of SDOT’s Pilot Parklet Program.