Photo by sean dean
SELF ELF. Tacoma Self Storage, located on South Holgate Street downtown, purposefully darkens the four-foot ‘S’ out of its title during December in order to be festive for the holiday season
Tacoma sure seems like an unlikely choice for the location of the North Pole’s storage unit. Canada, Russia, Greenland and Alaska all seem more logical for their proximity to the holiday epicenter, as well as similar landscape and frigid temperature. However, Tacoma’s Elf Storage sign blazes on through the night this December, as if to say “Hey Santa – keep your little ones warm and dry here.”
What started out as an accidental switch-off of the lighted “S” by a flock of local pigeons has now become a tradition for the downtown self-storage business, highly visible to all drivers by along Interstate 405 and Highway 509.
The accidental pigeon switch-off of the four-foot fluorescent letter happened for the first time in August 2007. The following December, one of the storage facility’s owners decided to switch it off on purpose to be festive for the holiday season.
This year, they have done it again.
“It was just hilarious that it’s come about,” said Elf Storage Manager Shelia Danielsen.
And in the second-year of turning self-storage into elf storage, Danielsen said it is no longer false advertising.
“We have a bunch of elves in the office…. They’re all over the place.”
The elves Danielson is referring are the fruits of the yearlong effort by employee Jo Seward, who took the new Elf Storage tradition to the next level by creating a miniature elf-inhabited winter village for the building.
Tacoma Elf Storage is located at 2602 S. Holgate Street.
