Criscitello's fixation with North Face jackets is kind of ironic considering REI's flagship store was in the center of Capitol Hill from 1962 to 1994.

Criscitello's fixation with the displacement of long time (gay, artists, hipsters, etc) residents by "brogrammers" and tech workers is kind of ironic considering just a few decades ago the gays, artists, hipsters, etc, were busily displacing the black families and blue collar types from Capitol Hill. And before them, Native Americans were being displaced by the newcomers.

John, you are not a special special unicorn. Because you belong to a certain cultural subgroup that you prefer does not mean that your cultural subgroup deserves special status. You are no more entitled to Capitol Hill than the black families you displaced, or the tech types who are displacing you.

John Criscitello's sense of entitement and superiority is just repugnant and screechingly hypocritical.

p.s. I've lived on Cap Hill since 1999 for what it's worth. Many before me, many after. I'm not special either.

@1:

Yeah, but REI left the Hill a good 15 years before the bro's began to show up en masse. And I gather Criscitello has observed North Face to be the preferred jacket/puffy-vest brand of Eastside Bro's,

@2:

We've been over this before - the minority, lower- and middle-class residents of the Hill weren't displaced by gays, artists and hipsters; we were all living pretty much side-by-side, for roughly two decades (say from the early '70's on) precisely because of the affordability of housing in the area. Sure, things started changing in the post-WTO years, which coincides with when you arrived, but that wasn't because of the creative-types taking over, that was because of all the downtown office construction and the proximity of Capitol Hill to all the new jobs that filled those shiny new buildings. Maybe you're mistaking those people for the people who were here before them; that would make sense, since apparently you were part of that same wave of immigration.

I'm not sure how he equates those awful puffy jackets with "bro-ness" but what ever, it works.

MORE DICKS PLEASE!

Judging from his art, Criscitello is just the gay flavor of bro culture.

@4 I reject your assertion that blue collar and minority families were not being displaced prior to 2000. I've talked to some of the older minority families that live(ed) on my block, including my neighbor who was born and lived on the same block for 70 years. She told me that neighborhood was almost entirely black when she was young. And it sure as shit wasn't in 1999 when I got here.

I just think it's far too simple and self-congratulatory to divide "our" cohort (or since you've carved me out as arriving too late, "your" cohort) as being innocent and good, and only the new arrivals as being apropriating, displacing assholes.

The new people *are* appropriating and displacing. But so were you and I.

Is it true that this guy has lived on the hill for three years? Cause if that's true that is tragically fucking hilarious.

Penises. How provocative. That'll show em!!!

@4 not really true as it's the style the gay community brought to the hill that made it desirable in the first place. so in reality the gay community is responsible for the displacement of themselves and everyone else. :p

poor north face puffy vest
jew du jour of capitol hill fascion

(yes, intentional spelling:
left wing fascist as right wing
when you don't use both wings
to give your thoughts flight
beyond easy targets

Can everyone please discuss how avant-garde John Criscitello is because he really needs to hear people say it.

puffy jacket for the shaft, human head for the dick head. art is fun.

@4: gays and artists may not have directly displaced anyone, but they certainly were the catalyst, as they always are in "bad" neighborhoods. They clean it up, make it trendy and before you know it the vanilla masses swarm in and displace the traditional residents along with the gays and artists. Next: see Detroit.

@14 Exactly! The trendsetters who made the scene are long gone, making new scenes in new places. All the assholes left behind screaming GENTRIFICATION at the top of their lungs are poseurs and followers who have contributed nothing to the neighborhoood. Fuck em. And a special fuck you to (cough, cough) newcomers that think they have some right to pass judgment on newcomers that are different from them. Newsflash! you are a gentrifier even if you have a beard and tattoos.

This is so, so, so sadly bad and dumb.

@15

The trend-setters aren't all gone; the ones who opened bars and restaurants and built other businesses are still there, and are richer than the new arrivals. But they're cool rich people who buy ad space in The Stranger, so they're totally different from those damned young people walking around these days like they own the place.

To me, Capitol Hill's "decline" began in the 90's, when Sunset Magazine ran an article on the "fresh and funky" new Pike/Pine corridor in Seattle.

@18

Bah, you newcomers don't know a damn thing about this town.

Broadway Hill hasn't been the same since those gold-grubbing papist Irish came in, with their foul language, their open drunkenness, and the illegal bareknuckle boxing in their squalid taverns.

@19 Hah. I am a descendant of an Irish Capitol Hill family. I no longer live in WA, but I can't imagine the culture (whatever that is) on the Hill will ever stagnate.

If you dont like the guy, fine, but the work is legitimate and the gathering of community Criscitello is able to stir seems to speak beyond whatever tacky reservations people have. I hope he keeps working.