After reading the wise words of Kemper Freeman—benevolent dictator of Bellevue / savant of urban design—I decided it was high time for me to experience his auto-utopia first hand. Free parking! Ample wide streets! A pair of massive malls! Bellevue, per Kemper and reputation both, is everything Seattle is not.
My expectation, before the visit:
I arrived into Bellevue by way of highway 520 followed by interstate 405. (There is, to my knowledge, no way to enter Bellevue from outside aside from freeway. There are perhaps highway-like arterials by which one might accomplish this task; these violate the spirit of the place.) The 520 bridge and 405 were blissfully free of tolls—or any sort of use-tax. Just like god intended. I began to fear the taxocrats plan to change this. Traffic was stop and go from approximately the on ramp to well beyond the off ramp—with predictably obnoxious lane-usage and merging behaviors from drivers.
Eastsiders distinguish themselves by driving with less skill and courtesy than even Seattleites, embodying the principles of the modern conservative fully in their driving: I am the most important person here. Your needs are a waste, particularly when they conflict with mine. I will step on your neck (and the neck of any other thing living or dead) to get my needs met.
To enter Bellevue, I chose the 8th Street NE exit. This entire interchange is brand-spanking new—lavishly reconstructed with Federal and State tax dollars to a massive breadth of alabaster lanes in all direction. Three lanes exit to the West. With all this capacity for cars—name one three-lane exit in Seattle—you’d figure there would be no waiting. Nope. The lanes were packed with cars slowly creeping along, with a continual spatter of foolish and incompetently-executed lane changes, while waiting to be disgorged onto 8th St NE.
And then, we’re off. Slowly. Creeping. Down 8th St, I notice the vestigial sidewalk—clear of pedestrians. Walking in Bellevue—I imagine as I wasn’t bold enough to try—strikes me as a life-threatening activity. 8th St NE is six lanes of traffic, filled with drivers attending to most anything but driving. (One gentleman was enjoying his iPad while guiding his Audi down the street.) The curbs are high and defensive, scuffed with much tire residue. Coming off I-405, the buildings here don’t seem to have entrances, just gaping maws for underground parking structures—maws already filled with car emesis squeezing in and out of the street.
The closer one approaches the the pairing of Lincoln Square and Bellevue Square, the more city-like Bellevue appears. There are now recognizable storefronts—almost exclusively chains, but still distinguishable businesses. Left turn lanes (a seventh lane to the road) extend the length of these long blocks. I join the line waiting for the one onto Bellevue Way NE. Almost immediately, one is shuffled into the left lane (another left turn) to enter the Lincoln Square garage.
The garage is huge, with snaking lines of cars waiting to enter and exit. The overall experience of underground garage parking is a bit like being entombed. One drives in nauseating circles while breathing a miasma of carbon oxides, heavy metals and assorted exhaust products that are suspected of (or demonstrated to be) carcinogens. The lighting is cheap-office fluorescent. And, of course, one waits with your many fellow drivers all clamoring for the free parking. After parking in the depths, you wait for an elevator.
My overall impression of the Bellevue free parking experience: Parking (and driving) is free only if your time and (mental and physical) health are of no value. Traffic is bad in Seattle; traffic is Biblically bad on the Eastside. We could pay to make 405 a 24 lane triple-decker freeway and traffic on the Eastside would still be horrendous. It’s just too damn inefficient to move around this number of people by way of single occupancy cars. It’s horrible as an experience. And the pay-off is questionable. The shops at Bellevue Square and Lincoln Square are indistinguishable from any other similar mall—a parade of chains.
Yes, parking in Seattle costs money. And yes, the streets are narrow, the highway exits generally single lanes. If your number one goal, your major criteria for planning your day, is the cost of parking, the Eastside is for you. Whether parking is $2.50 an hour or $4.00 an hour, if this is your way of thinking, you aren’t destined for downtown Seattle in the first place.
What Seattle offers—as compensation for being a place where the needs of drivers are balanced with other considerations—are stores and restaurants that are quite a bit more interesting. You can have your Maggianos; I’ll stick with Machiavelli. If you don’t enjoy driving, can’t drive due to disability or just plain old recognize that you aren’t very good at driving, in Seattle one can always opt to bus, bike or walk instead. Bellevue is built for one plan—sitting in a car, in traffic, sucking on exhaust and becoming gradually more and more frustrated. I’ll pass.
Upon returning to Capitol Hill, I (nearly) kissed the ground of my neighborhood—where I can walk to a bank, grocery store, interesting non-chain bars and restaurants, movie theaters, live theater and a library. Downtown and the waterfront are a 15 minute bike ride away, with relatively safe routes back and forth. Kemper can have his vision if he lets me have mine.
“I don’t have a car because I’m soooo urban/eco-friendly/thrifty Seattlite and I never go to the suburbs anyway,”
Is Stranger Hipster code for:
“Hey, can you give me a ride to Costco in Everett/my weekly probation office check-in in Tukwila/my methadone clinic in Shoreline/my babydaddy’s house in Olympia?”
@53 Bellevue drivers are much more oblivious to pedestrians (and why should they be? There are none.)
Can there be a feature where comments that use the word “hipster” are automatically hidden?
I really like that you included those of us that “just plain old recognize that [we] aren’t very good at driving.”
These kinds of articles on the Stranger crack me up. I knew what it was gonna be like before even reading it. Funny to me how much hate/fear the hipster crowd has for the Eastside, yet there’s no fear of the South End & North End where they’ll get eaten alive. At least you can take a bus out here without the 1 in 5 chance of getting mugged or harassed by a meth-head or having to smell the funk/poop of the homeless person behind you. Yeah, dealing with Eastside soccer Moms in SUV’s & Hummers and all the douches & 1,000,000 people from Asia working for Microsoft & the other companies on the Eastside isn’t easy. But it’s not as if dealing with angry Queen Anne’ers & Wallingford dorks fighting through traffic in their Subaru wagons to get enough hiking time in for the day are any better.
Bottom line is, what works for a dense city like Seattle won’t work for every area of every town within 15-20 miles of it. Living in some areas of the Eastside without a car sucks, yet not as bad as trying to do the same in cities like Kent, Federal Way, Auburn, etc… I probably would be shooting people up or addicted to something too if I lived in those cities without a car & had to live by the transit schedule, especially during the later hours. Same for the North End & farther East. Come to think of it, I don’t really see what’s so special about living in Queen Anne or Ravenna or Greenlake either, with or without a car. Seem like totally over-rated sh*tholes to me, but I didn’t grow up there so who knows. Places like Beth’s Cafe & the Wallingford drag aren’t THAT special dudes.
Face it, you can’t have Fremont’s & Wallingford’s & Cap Hill’s in all or even a few of those cities. Too many people want more space, bigger cars, bigger & newer houses & condos & apartments, drive-ways, flat land, drive-thru’s, malls, & Seattle ran out of all that for an affordable price a long time ago. The bus & any other transit service wouldn’t come close to paying for itself as a result, way more than for the City. Plus a generic movie theater & mall & park are all the entertainment Eastsiders & the typical Suburban family asks for. That’s why everyone, including me, still heads into the City for something worthwhile to do. You guys really don’t want to start losing that to the other areas, because you’ll just turn into another Detroit. Or Lake City.
You guys also need to stop adding bike lanes at the expense of regular roads. You think all those tourists from Canada & Eastern WA & farther East are coming over here to get on a bike?! No, they’re heading down I-5 & 90 in their 4×4’s & SUV’s.
So it is revealed by article tone: the french intern and Jonathan Golob are one in the same!
Bellevue does have one little slice of awesome: buried power lines.
Let’s not forget that the worst drivers are actually in Seattle (I’ve seen far more stupid shit in Seattle than I have on the Eastside).
Also, that the most rush hour traffic congestion comes from the people who live in Seattle, and work in the Eastside. Who’s the polluters? It’s more likely Seattleites than Eastsiders.
@56- The point is that what works in Seattle WILL work in other areas if they build rational (dense) communities instead of being designed for car sprawl. Bellevue is a new city (mostly) and it has been planned as a sprawl, which means it will always have stupidly bad traffic and inhospitable streets.
A friend of mine works in Bellevue part of the time, and I used to work on the Eastside, before the commute got so bad by car.
A lot of what makes it so inefficient is the lack of proper zoning regulations, actually. I remember working on the slough and eating lunch with the geese, or on the Kirkland docks with the ducks.
Judging the entire Eastside by the four-block radius around Bellevue Square is like judging the entire city of Seattle by the Pacific Place/Nordstrom/Westlake Center area.
Although the latter does have a useless toy train.
@61 *cough* Denny Way *cough*
Denny Way has hills.
Eventually, when SLU is revitalized in the mid 2015 period and at capacity, the toy train will actually make sense tho.
@43:
Brilliant comment.
Nice job Cressona and Martin Duke on Seattle Transit Blog as well. I will also note that outside of 98118, Seattle is lily white, especially 98102–North Capitol Hill. Bellevue is increasingly diverse. I love their park system. Crossroads is a multicultural gem. I am a happy Seattle resident, but Bellevue is younger and will mature.
Add my voice to that of Cressona and Martin Duke at the Seattle Transit Blog. This is an embarrassing piece, and a notable departure from the usual intelligence of Jonathan Golob’s writing.
@43 –
Love it or hate it – this pretty much describes most of the writing on SLOG.
@67 try looking at the 2010 census data. New day, new rules.
A lot of the people you think are white aren’t. A lot of people are multiracial, but list Caucasian first. Moreso on the Eastside, of course.
@43
Wow, you capture my sentiments perfectly. Brilliant writing, totally on point.
Will–you are so right. Seattle is very diverse. We eat pho and banh mi, we have to be multicultural…
I am a born-and-bred Seattleite, but live in Bellevue, not out of my own accord, but out of necessity. And yeah, the downtown area here is a little (if not a lot) much. But, I see people walking constantly – not to mention jogging. The goddamn joggers are out in force morning, noon and night (literally, and I say that with contempt because I have not their steely will). I am definitely below the poverty line, but I found an apartment here that I can afford (shocking, right?!). And, although it’s not Seattle, I have come to really enjoy living here. Because it really doesn’t suck as much as Seattle people like to say.
1. Parks. Lots of parks. Parks constantly filled with people. I have like 5 parks within walking distance, with an awesome biking/walking trail a few minutes way. And I’d guess that the majority of people here are either immigrants or children of immigrants who have worked their asses off to get here because going to a park afterschool is like watching a real-life manifestation of “We Are The World”.
2. Pockets of niceness and small business. I live near Main Street, which is, yes, geared towards a somewhat older (let’s say late 20s-50s) crowd than Capitol Hill, but I don’t think it has a single chain business on it for a solid five blocks (other than local chains, like the newly-opened Pagliacci’s or Cupcake Royale). It really doesn’t suck.
3. I have like 3 grocery stores within walking distance too, with everything else (yoga, Chinese bakery, pho, coffee shops, movie theaters, art museum, Taiwanese sandwiches, burrito shop, two farmers markets, a liquor store, a beer pong locale/cheap drinks, bowling, the library) in walking distance too. And to get to school (the UW), it takes me like 15 minutes driving or 20 minutes on the bus.
So, maybe Bellevue would suck less if everyone from Seattle would stop shitting on it when they’ve only been there once, a long time ago, on the horror that is 8th & Bellevue Way, looking at Bell & Lincoln Square from their car. I died inside when I first was told I had to move here, but a year later, I actually have come to really enjoy it, because seriously, it’s not that bad.
This author needs to remove his cabeza from his culo….seriously? Go figure that Bellevue – a city designed as a 1950s bedroom community of Seattle will not have the pedestrian, transit, or biking infrastructure that Seattle constructed for the most part before 1930!!! Take a look at more modern Seattle developments and there’s little difference between the two. Pacific Place is downtown’s very own Bellevue Square. The author does not remember that both Pioneer Square and Pike Place Market, the two milestones of Seattle culture, came very close to seeing the wrecking ball. Seattle doesn’t have that much to pat its back on apart from the fact that maybe, possibly, there are more environmental non-profits and PhD-educated individuals who reside within its borders.
“try looking at the 2010 census data.”
Last census had Cap Hill as 75% white (census track 75), Bellevue 55% white (census track 23805).
Source: nytimes.com/census/2010/map
Of course, Sloggers don’t consider Bellevue to be ‘diverse’ because it’s mainly Asians and South Asians we’re talking about here, and since they work hard and have decent family values, they aren’t ‘real minorities’.
I recently spent two weeks on a working vacation in Washington. I spent the first week in a downtown Seattle hotel, and near the end of the week, I asked the hotel concierge for advice on where to stay if I wanted to walk out of a hotel and not have someone offer to sell me drugs, not see homeless people urinating in the street, and not have to deal with panhandlers, but still have something to do. He suggested Bellevue. That’s where I spent the 2nd week. And once I parked my car at the hotel, it stayed there…I was able to walk everywhere I needed. And I wasn’t alone. There were plenty of walkers.
Sure, there are chain restaurants (and some are quite good), except for the restaurants that aren’t chains. Sure, there’s underground parking. But I thought that was supposed to be ecological… You know, build up instead of out?
I may relocate to Washington for work, and given a choice between Seattle and Bellevue, I’d choose Bellevue.
Did you notice at the end of the article, he said that he “(nearly) kissed the ground” on Capitol Hill? He didn’t actually kiss it, because a drug addict vomited on his kissing spot just before he got there. But I suppose he thinks that bit of dying humanity gives Capitol Hill character.