The lack of problems keeps focus on the little things

By CONSTANCE SOMMER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER

Lake Forest Park avoids excitement as assiduously as a gent in a tuxedo sidesteps puddles.

Here, "sin" means the old folks' game of bingo at the local Elks lodge, a pastime the city halted because it violated municipal anti-gambling laws.

Scandal looks like the writing test scores at Brookside Elementary, where fourth-graders dipped three points last year to bring them only 25 points above the state average.

Angst is a rift in the garden club, irrevocably divided between those who like to garden and those who prefer flower arranging.

A hilly city at the north end of Lake Washington, Lake Forest Park is -- let's be blunt about this -- rather boring. But nobody moves here for the thrills. And residents say they couldn't be happier with what they've got: a small, friendly pocket of a place where the schools are good, the homes are quietly well-maintained and the roads are as peaceful as the drip-drip of the water off the town's ubiquitous trees on a rainy day.

Some wonder if they haven't found suburban paradise.

"The same kids that you live next door to are the kids you play on the soccer team with and the ones you go to school with," says Aimee Nelson, a mother of three and a former Green Lake resident.

After a year and a half here, Nelson runs into people she knows almost every time she goes to the local shopping center. She can greet her neighbors by name and, better yet, they can greet her children. "You always know somebody's going to watch out for your kids," she says.

The central gathering spot in town is the Lake Forest Park Towne Centre, a glorified strip mall that, despite a supermarket, a popular bread bakery, the library and a smattering of other stores and businesses, remains a bit too quiet for its own good, locals say.

They hope that will change later this year, when Ron Sher, the developer who renovated the now-wildly successful Crossroads Shopping Center in Bellevue, opens his newest retail venture called Third Place Books. The store will feature books, food and entertainment, all rolled into one spot.