Comments

1
oh criminy Kreist, if you're lollygagging down nostalgia lane with Feit, may as well klink to Ari Spools Twitter feed, which foods like hot asphalt drool
2
1:17 - "Everybody can follow their own path here."

Buuuuuullllll shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.
3
@2 The streets of Seattle are literally paved with gold if you're willing to acquire the right skills. Ever notice the thousands of Asians that come here to work in IT/software? If you're determined to be a loser no one will stand in your way.
When I see Taco Bell workers protesting for an unrealistic wage outside of SCCC I wonder why they don't go inside and take courses?
4
@3 - Because they're working 50 hours a week at minimum wage to feed their families?
5
Thank God someone is here to pick up the Amazon-hate beat now that Constant is gone. You have to dig pretty deep to find some nefarious subtext in what is, as you admit, a decidedly innocuous corporate recruiting video.
6
@4 Ever heard of night classes? Online classes? Someone in that position has obviously made bad choices and they're reaping the consequences. They can fix it with some initiative. Or not.
7
"housing is not expensive, it's very reasonable here." seriously????
and for a recruiting film, not one word on amazon culture?
oh yeah that's right, b/c that would discourage you from wanting to work for them.
(i worked there in 2007).
8
@6: This whole 'bootstrap' philosophy is pure bullshit. Paying someone a minimum wage that will allow them to afford to live (meagerly) in the city in which they work is just and needed and just might help them move up in the world.
9
teckel,
times are certainly different, but emotions are timeless. i took my first computer class at SCCC 20 years ago with my dishwashing job savings and was petrified the whole semester. out of confusion and fright i didn't contribute anything to our final group project. my point being, i vow to be pointless. everybody has a point these days anyway. it's rude to point, so they say.
10
1:09, what kind of classes can you take at two different places? "Circus" classes? I've watched it 3 times.
11
@3 @6 Teckel you can fuck right the fuck off with that "EVERYONE SHOULD WORK IN TECH FIELD" mentality. WHO THE FUCK SERVES YOU NIGHT AND DAY? How the fuck are you gonna get a latte in your pristine fucking utopia? Who's pouring your beers? Who cooks your meals when you go out? LOSERS? That's right, the people that are being forced out of their standard of living by a fucking bubble that will soon pop and likely bring down yet another economy to its knees. Go fuck yourself.
12
@11

Charming. You kiss your mother with that foul mouth, Sport?

But yes, choices have consequences. It turns out if you put nothing into your means of making a living, your living will be at a low level.

As for tech work- a mechanic, a plumber or electrician, and many other skilled trades pay nicely if tech and college aren't someone's aptitude. But they're skills that must be learned and refined with on the job training.

And for what it's worth a good and personable service worker can do very well in tips, be they a barrista or waitstaff. A skilled chef can make a good living too. Know what I won't tip for though? A sullen kid condescending to make me a bad coffee or waiter/waittess with no sense of how to make a dining experience pleasant, that won't get a tip from me. And I won't return to a restaurant whose food is ruined by a chef thinking more about his acting career than my food.

But if you want to flip burgers or clean toilets and drive a Lexus to your Capitol Hill condo because of some bullshit lying notion of justice? Not happening, Sparky.
13
The avalanche has already begun; it is too late for the pebbles to vote.
14
Ha ha ha ha ha! "Housing is great. Is not very expensive. Is very reasonable." Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Hoo boy.
15
@12:

LOOK, THERE! EVIL PURE AND SIMPLE!
16
@11 I don't remember saying everyone should work in high tech but I do say everyone should be trying to improve them self. I don't buy lattes or drink beer but I do know those are jobs for a 25yo. I really do get it. You're an eternal victim. A victim of whitey, the rich, the Koch bothers or anyone who can stay sober or out of jail. I also know any Democrats running for office are eternally grateful that half the nation is just like you.
17
"Everyone runs! Everyone does Crossfit!" Yeah, even our quadriplegics! And all our homeless! It's a fucking miracle is what it is, really. It's because of all the healing sunshine people from other cities bring to us in in their blessed assholes. It kind of pools here, mixing around in our gene pool, healing all the sick and lame so everyone can jog and get ripped.
18
So musicians and artists are to forever remain nomadic in their search for some place to work and be close enough to a multitude of scenes to not need a car in order to perform. it's not about flipping burgers to own a lexus, most people I know out here can barely make rent in the shitty houses and apartments built in the 1940s with bad plumbing that run upward of a grand for a 450 sq/ft studio. Being born and raised rich must really have some fantastic fucking benefits that not many of us would ever know. Including a complete fucking apathy for people who actually have to WORK to make it someplace.
19
Also @16 "whitey"? your racism is showing.
20
@19 a pinhead columnist for slog wrote yesterday how white people were one one of the few things that scared her. Those are sentiments of twits like you and her not me.
BTW "art" is not a career. Get a job and some dignity.
21
Teckel, go back to Indiana or wherever you're from, but first take your myopic, ignorant, privileged point of view and fuck yourself.
22
@18 You should really pull your head out of your ass. This has nothing to do with forcing artists and musicians to be nomadic, and no one should really care if they have to commute.

Now lets apply this logic to another place with equally insane housing costs. I work relatively close to Medina, and because i can't afford to live there i need to commute. Is that a huge outrage that i can't live there? Will you start protesting in the streets until affordable housing is on the waterfront?

I hope the answer is yes. I could use a shorter commute.
23
I read your rant, Sean, and wanted to be offended by the video. But it's really pretty innocuous, subtext and all.
24
@16: you don't buy lattes or drink beer?

THEN GET THE FUCK OFF SLOG.
25
@18

I don't generally equate "fucking" with apathy. Sorry that this isn't the case for you.

As for the rest, a person choosing a career in the arts must know how difficult to make a living it is at their vocation. I'd suggest that this is happy circumstance. Those with genuine talent and drive will usually make it. Those with genuine love of their art perform as amateurs and accept the costs of that choice. And the rest will submit their efforts for publicly supported garbage like the waterfront sculpture garden.

Rich? Hardly. But my parents did teach us the value of work. Unlike any liberal ever.
26
He's so right about the new eCONomy running on "anxiety, shame, and dread." I'm hearing that companies are getting 100 to 300 applicants for every job that actually pays a livable wage, so the odds of even getting a job that pays enough to support yourself are almost into winning lotto numbers territory.
27
Teckel you have finally revealed your true worth as a human.
"Art is not a career". This is exactly why Capitol Hill, aka "cap hill" aka "party mountain" aka Amazons new housing development, fucking despises people like you. See, humans still exist out here. Your borg kind is not welcome here, you heartless fucking scum.
28
and jesus fucking christ you idiots with your terms who the FUCK said I was a liberal OR a democrat? So quick to label things. fuckouttahere with that bullshit.
29
teckel,
@20, thanks!. i missed that yesterday.
"a pinhead columnist for slog wrote yesterday how white people were one one of the few things that scared her."
which retard wrote that? ha ha ha ha
30
You call that a corporate video? Step aside and watch how the pros do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZXeFPpP…
31
Seattleblues is so hilariously clueless in his ideological bubble that he should be a test subject in a brain lab somewhere.
32
Although I'm originally from Seattle, I live in SF now. The *average* rent for a *1-bedroom* apartment in SF is more than $3,100/month. The average for Seattle is less than half of that. So, while Seattle's rents may be higher than other comparable cities, to me, it honestly seems cheap. So it's totally legit if someone moves from NYC or SF to Seattle and thinks it's affordable there.
33
Trolls be trolling.
34
Also, when did economic conservatives decide that economic diversification is a bad thing? I can't think of a single decent economist on the right or left that believes that the labor pool in a city should be forcibly homogenized. It's gotten to their point where their knee-jerk need to defend the status quo actually contradicts their free market ideology. Yes, the losers who do all the other kinds of jobs a livable city requires should leave and everyone should be well-off technologists. That makes perfect sense, if you're socially retarded.
35
@26

What someone who never acquired the skills to work outside McDonalds "hears" about applicant pools for better paying jobs? Well! That changes everything!

I and have been carrying a year waiting list for my services. My sister is an architect, two brothers work in white collar professions, and another sister in agricultural services in Eastern Washington. They all do all right financially. And none has been out of work for more than a week or two in a couple of decades.

When the economy suffered in 09 construction was hit hard. But all the skilled guys I know with work ethics stayed busy throughout it.

Know who didn't? The clock watchers, agitators, and the whiners. The jobsite lawyers worrying about whether they had enough breaktime more than whether a job got done. When warm bodies were needed they had work at good pay, but once things got tight they didn't. See what I'm getting at, kiddo?
36
@34

Hard to see your point through the straw men.

I don't see anybody advocating economic homogeneity. Nor do I see anyone calling lower tier workers losers. Except you folks, that is.

But low skill low demand work does not pay well. This may shock you, cause stroke risk levels of outrage- it may even make you lose your faith in your fellow men. But it's simply an economic fact. And knowing this, a person can choose not to move beyond those jobs. They can get mad about it and block public streets and shout silly slogans.

Or they could learn a more high paying job so they didn't have to worry about what Burger King or the janitorial service pays.
37
All I know is that Seattle - once a luscious secret (hey motherfucker, don't tell anyone how nice the summers are....remember...it rains all the fucking time) - "cool"-ed itself out of a fine in-town flat for $850/mo.
38
It's typical of people who benefit from privilege and situation to think they've earned it. Someone with an amazing construction resume wouldn't be thriving in, say, Detroit, right now, despite their education or willingness to dig deep. Or lean in. Or whatever you call it.

It's just very fortunate that someone else's business took off and they have need of you.

A lot of the suggestions for education or internship aren't available, even to willing people. It's unlikely some redneck plumber would take on an Eritrean man as an apprentice. Even if he had experience. He's more likely to hire his neighbor's son.

So, people try, but they don't all have the advantage of an intact home or the benefit of the doubt that you good old boys have. You had a vast infrastructure growing up that they don't have.

The idea is to be grateful for what you had and who took care of you and not think it was something you did on your own by dint of your superiority. You had help.

39
Looks nice. I think I'll move here.
40
@35 @36 has so much initiative, he's self-parodizing.
41
@13. Good one.
43
@38

Detroit is an awful place to live, by all accounts. But here's the thing- If the place you live has no jobs, leave. Go where there ARE jobs. Sitting around moaning doesn't pay the rent, last I checked.

As for the skilled trades 2 generations of parents and guidance counselors telling kids college is the ONLY way to make a good living have changed them. Your neighbor's son wants to work in computers or really anything that doesn't involve getting dirty and blue collar shame. So Eastern Europe and Latin America and parts of Asia have contributed far more to them than American kids for at least 15 or 20 years. I will say African expats aren't well represented, but I don't see applicants from there myself. I can't speak to other manager or owner experiences. But in 15 years of construction diversity has not been a problem.
44
@18 Artists aren't required to take a vow of poverty; they're allowed to get full-time jobs and work on their art on the side. A standard 9-5 leaves you 4-5 hours a day and weekends on your art, and hell, it might end up being better art because you can do it for the pure artistry of it instead of worrying about economics. Hell, being outside of your head (and maybe mixing it up with some people who aren't exactly like you) for 8 hours might even fuel some creativity.
45
@25, 23, 26, 43:

LOOK, THERE! EVIL PURE AND SIMPLE!
46
Yes, choices have consequences... so do global economy tsunamis that have nothing to do with any choices *I*, or *you*, or Mr. & Ms. Underwater Mortgage ever made.

We live in an environment where some financier/rentier assholes with connections to Congress can change the rules, restrict capital, and destroy jobs & homes. Nothing any of us here could have done anything differently to stop those fucks, and yet... here we are, working at Taco Bell (or wherever minimum wage), despite having a degree.

Great.
47
You don't understand. Seattleblues thinks people born in Mexico should have chosen to have been born white and in the US. Now they're suffering the result of their poor choice.

@38 The idea of "simply moving to where the jobs are" isn't really that simple. It takes money to move. It takes money to stay in an apt/hotel while you look for a job. It's really not so easy to just say, "Well, the 8 Mile Taco Bell isn't hiring, I'll just move all the kids out to Seattle and see if the Belltown Taco Bell has any openings."

It's also not anything that you've ever had to do, and that's not a result of your being a genius or having made brilliant decisions. It's a result of your circumstances being easier. You THINK you've worked hard to become a foreman (or whatever you are) but you had all the help in the world. Supportive family, a culture that kept you out of trouble, told you you were valuable, and encouraged you.

You also lucked into a situation where there's lots of need for you. I find it hard to believe that Young Seattleblues would have easily hitchhiked out to Florida if there was nothing to build here in the safe fertile bosom of the motherland.

I don't think you're evil, I just don't think you're able to relate to other people with compassion.
48
I see Teckel a/k/a @16 as a troll. But to all those who degrade those employed in and by the food service/artist/retail industry you are hypocrites! You complain about those who can't or won't work. then you degrade those that work in fields that you don't find respectable, tech or otherwise. It is the demand of consumers that continue the need of those food service businesses that employ those you don't seemingly respect. Therefore, there will always be a need for those workers. At least until the techies develop a way for machines or robots to do that work. The point being there will always be a demand and therefore a need for those who serve, clean or perform otherwise classified as demeaning occupations. It is shameful that some in our society degrade whole occupations and devalue those who chose to earn an honest living deserving of nothing more than pennies for earnings and blight for living conditions. So if you eat out, buy paintings/music, purchase retail or otherwise contribute to the demand of those businesses that employ low wage workers who ask for higher wages, you are contributing to the very issues you complain about. Doesn't that make you part of the problem?
49
Let's not forget that these jobs you are demeaning are often the ones that people work while they are getting degrees to get better jobs. Those schools are here, transit into the city is mostly stuck in traffic.
50
Seriously? This is a recruitment video for a company in Seattle that highlights some of the nice things about living in Seattle. I actually think it did a pretty good job - highlighted the natural resources, recreational activities, and distinct neighborhoods that many would find appealing but might not be aware of. Although that affordable housing line was so wrong it almost sounded like a joke that didn't go over.

Culture war... give me a break. And that malarkey about a prediction, not a depiction. Um, no. Most of the highlighted attributes have always or for a very long time been just the way they are. Also I'd be willing to bet that Amazon's workforce is significantly more diverse than the average Seattle corporation. In fact, when I think about my non-white friends in Seattle almost every one of them works or worked for Amazon (and no, I am not in tech and never worked there.) They are also some of the most interesting and motivated people I know; exactly the type of person any city on the planet would be ecstatic to attract.
51
@50, there's motivated workers, & then there are doormats willing to put up with an employer thinking their employees owe them their entire lives. I'm all for motivated people.

Which begs questions of why more of the people working for the big A aren't locals. My hunch is that anyone who's lived here for more than 10 years knows that Amazon is a shitty company to work for.
52
@24: That was the funniest post I've seen here in years. If I'd been shlupping beer at the moment, it would've been directly expelled through my nose in the fit of out-loud laughter that occurred. Thanks for that.
53
@11 - I would love to know how people can take night classes when some of them don't own cars and people like you are pushing them out of the city because you have to have the newest of everything and the nicest of everything. Because you "deserve" it. You "earned" it. (Or because your candy ass can't handle roughing it). Students can't afford to live near their campuses - all of which are already at capacity with dorms. And tuitions are spiking because the property values are increasing too dramatically. The average retails space on the hill is now 44.00 per sq. foot. That's ridiculous for this city! To think that earning more money or having 5 degrees makes you "better" than someone with less is redefining insanity. It's absolutely impossible to be better than anyone, if you yourself can't grasp the concept of humility or empathy. For most humans, those are natural instincts but you seem to be a special case. I don't understand why the fuck you live in a city if you're not at all interested in community. Let me guess, money. Because that's where you put your value. How sad. Not to mention boring and predictable.
54
@53 It's impossible to be better than anyone else?
So the folks on the hill who went to school for years so they could clean my teeth and fix my old filling are no better than a guy banging on bucket drums at 1:00 AM? Got it.
55
@54, like I said in my post @49, we're also talking about people who are working their way up to jobs that you deem worthy of being your neighbor. Do you really think the cost of living goes down because you're in school. We have a public university and several community colleges here.
As @53 noted, getting into town where the better schools are is impractical for many who live outside the city.
Finally, I moved here from the suburbs 22 years ago to be among people like the bucket drummer you like to knock.
56
Diverse culture, where? Since when? Unless privilege and snobbish indifference is culture, there ain't much. After 25 years, i can't get out of here fast enough.
57
@54 - Better? No. Arguably making a greater contribution (to you, in any case). You are welcome to place whatever value judgments you like on that; we all tend to our preferences as we will. But value doesn't exist in nature; only quantity does. Personally, I value, in principle, a world with both dentists and bucket-drummers. Objectively, they're all so many organisms, no more "valuable" than a mushroom or a virus, soon to be part of the same decaying mulch that will swallow us all, only to belch out more life in the endless, vulgar cycle of fluid metamorphosis.

As for you, Seattleblues, I'm not sure where you get the impression that "genuine talent and drive" are the deciding factors with regards to artistic success; I can only assume you've never been trapped in front of an episode of Two-and-a-Half Men. Sometimes having the savvy to predict, or the good fortune to land upon, the zeitgeist is the real determining factor.

Most innovation will happen where people who "genuinely love their art-form" (or at least its possibilities). Now, I'm not too concerned with whether they (we) drive Lexuses or have yards. Yes, we accept the costs of that life. Is there not a place on the continuum, though, between a single busker making ends meet at McDonald's driving a Lexus to a condo and that same busker living on public assistance because her job doesn't even pay for a studio or apodment within an hour's commute on transit of either the subsistence job or the market for her artistic output?

Mind you, my wife and I escaped low-wage desk work a few years ago (a little longer for her), because we were lucky enough to find something we enjoyed doing, saw higher purpose in doing (since we don't have the noetic binky of your anthropomorphic deity to give meaning to life's essential absurdity), and could integrate (somewhat awkwardly, but that's true of any subsistence work available to the artist) with our artistic lives. But we were able to do that because, for at least some portion of our two decades in Seattle, you could plug away at a more frugal version of the bohemian lifestyle and pay off debts, develop skills, attend massage school (her) and certify as a personal trainer (me), and eventually cobble together a reasonably independent existence wherein the struggle to maintain a large enough client base to deal with fluctuations due to the market or to artistic pursuits (ours or theirs; most of my clients are artists, also) is at least surmountable.

We couldn't do this in the current market; even the medium-low-level admin work we were both doing for years (at a bankruptcy trustee's office, an insurance firm, a massage school, and a non-profit arts organization; I can't imagine it's too important to the thesis which of us did what) was losing it's buying traction to rising costs faster and harder than the merit raises (we were both, by all accounts, excellent employees) were coming. And now, my client base relies on profitable subsistence work to be able to afford my services. So far, there's enough that people can fold in and out as they find that the combination of windfall and the sacrifice of other luxuries as a matter of priority enables them to do so. If things keep moving in their current direction, though, I'm not sure how sustainable that'll be.

Whether controlling cost, controlling wage, or building more, better, faster, more frequent transit (or, most likely, some combo of the above) is the answer, I don't know. But it seems to me that neighborhoods where services are provided would want to preserve local flavor and neighborhood loyalty by being accessible, financially, to service providers. Economic diversity serves everyone, I would think.
58
I don't know why everyone seems to think that all new Amazon employees are imported from some strange far-away land.

Most Amazon new hires are fresh UW grads - usually the children of Washingtonians. They're not moving in from out-of-state, they're moving out of dorms and their parents basements!

My best friend works for Amazon and lives in SLU. Before that, he delivered pizza on Capitol Hill for 10 years... so he's probably been in the Stranger offices. He went through Seattle Central and UW-T on student loans.

This is the man that is "changing" Seattle? A guy from the CD who got a college education?
59
Teckel - having a real hard time quantifying why everyone thinks he's a douchebag. Cute though, trying to label people as more valuable than others because of their profession... because you can't be bothered to get to know people 'beneath' you. Yet, those people....for all they're supposed lack-of-worth ... somehow are far more respected then you will ever be because you're simply a douche. Nobody wants you here but your employer. How sad.
60
@58, you know why everyone thinks that Amazon employees aren't from here? Because data has shown that there are lots of people moving here from out of state. Yeah, we know there's locals at Amazon, and that the big A is not the only employer drawing people here.
Amazon is a shitty company. That alone makes them deserving of the blame.
61
"housing is reasonable here"? um, really?
62
@10 I'm guessing circus is correct since there are, indeed, two places in Seattle to take aerial and other acrobatic and circus classes.
63
Here's how I succeeded in the tech industry: farmaccident.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/wa…
64
I'd be much more pleased if this article was written less cryptically (sorry "poetically"). Is Sean just sad that he didn't get to write a Burroughs-esque novel? Why can't we just take on the REAL issues? Soaring rents are deterring and forcing out Seattle's musicians, visual artists, writers, chefs, etc. Couple that with all of the textbook brainiacs and particle-board frap builders and Sally Clark cardboard-cutout political corpses and what made culture here SEATTLE / PNW-culture is being watered down, forced out and overtaken by Techie and trust-fund hipster dufus pre-fab pseudo-intellectual "culture". Just write that. This video is a non story that's nothing remarkable (apart from the beauty of our region that it captures).

Please wait...

and remember to be decent to everyone
all of the time.

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