Cobain Memorial the Most Popular Celebrity Landmark in Washington

Kurt Cobain Memorial Park is Washington's "favorite celebrity pilgrimage site," according to a new poll conducted by the website Tarotoo.

Tarotoo's methodology is explained in a press release. The site "quizzed 3,000 Americans to determine the ultimate (deceased) celebrity landmarks to visit. They were therefore able to establish a definitive ranking of these revered landmarks."

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The most revered landmark is Graceland, Elvis Presley's white-pillared, manicured mansion in Tennessee, followed by the Lincoln Home in downstate Illinois. This snug, folksy, impeccably restored little house once belonged to Abraham Lincoln and his family.

#3 in the Tarotoo poll is the Cobain memorial.

In 1994, at age 27, the Nirvana frontman succumbed to suicidal impulses. (Unfortunately it was a long time coming. For years Cobain had been careening helplessly toward a mental breakdown.) For more than a decade afterward, there was no large-scale Cobain memorial in Aberdeen, the moribund logging town where he grew up.

That changed in 2011, when Kurt Cobain Memorial Park was dedicated on the banks of the Wishkah River. This formerly desolate patch of river frontage is significant because Cobain constantly loitered there as a teen.

(According to his self-mythology, Cobain lived for a time under the nearby Young Street Bridge; this has been disputed by many locals who knew him.)

New York Times travel writer Dave Seminara describes the park thusly: it features "a guitar sculpture, a likeness of Cobain with the lyrics to 'Something in the Way,' a headstone with some amusing Cobain quotes...a Kurt Cobain 'air guitar' sculpture and a collage of Nirvana-related graffiti under the [Young Street Bridge] itself."