A “mossback”—a term that refers, colloquially, to someone
who’s been in the Northwest so long that moss has grown on his
back—is someone who believes things would be better if only we
could turn back the clock. To what point, exactly, is unclear, but the
nearest respectable time stamp appears to be
approximately 1970,
when Seattle was in an economic slump, no one thought of moving here,
and land values (and, therefore development) were at a standstill.
This is the worldview of Knute “Skip” Berger, a former editor at
Seattle Weekly (where, full disclosure, he was my boss for about
six months) and current columnist at Crosscut, a regional news website
created by and for other white men of Berger’s generation. Like many
well-to-do white men, Berger feels oppressed by “nanny statism,”
development, and change. Unlike most white men, he has a
platform—and, now, a book.
Pugetopolis—a collection of Berger’s columns and
commentary pieces for the Weekly, Seattle magazine,
Crosscut, and other publications—posits that Seattle is turning
into a nightmarish megacity. It’s become a sprawling megalopolis where
bungalows have fallen victim to megahouses and townhomes, nanny laws
have regulated fun out of existence, and the neighborhoods that made
Seattle worth living in have been destroyed by dense developments
populated by tradition-hating new residents who tax good working folks
out of existence even as they whiz past them on their recumbent
bicycles. Pugetopolis is full of references to “nanny liberals,”
“radical cyclists,” and “urban gentrifiers,” but it contains little
evidence that Berger has actually met these folks. And why would he?
They live in their “shoeboxes” in the sky, too stuck on themselves and
their fancy urban lifestyles to care about the lovely little burg
they’ve invaded and ruined.
Who is this book for, anyway? Newcomers and naysayers who stand to
learn a thing or two from someone who lived here when things were
really good? Surely not outsiders, who’ll undoubtedly be confused by
references to McNeil Island, Klondike, and Dan Evans? That seems
unlikely. So let’s assume it’s for fellow mossbacks—hoary
old-timers, self-defined or otherwise, who, like Berger, feel oppressed
by modernity.
How else to interpret Berger’s fear of “Pugetopolis”—a
fantastical future megacity, centered on Seattle, populated by
“affluent global transients” who live in “generic high rise[s] with
concierge service” and believe “that we can enhance the quality of life
without limiting growth and consumption”? These are chimeras, not
people. Berger’s hatred for them—he insists, “urban policy that
promotes dense development… is driving the cost of city living to
impossible heights”—borders on hysteria. His Pugetopolis bears
little resemblance to the Seattle most of us experience every day.
What’s frustrating about Berger’s philosophy is that it offers
complaints but no solutions. In many cases, he complains about a
development in one breath and grouses about its solution in the next.
For example, Berger decries sprawl in one essay, complaining, for
example, that “growth will continue to erode the very qualities we love
unless and until we find a different way of relating to—and
living in—this lane” and condemns laws that try to contain growth
in the next (decrying density, limits on development, and transit
proposals that make it possible to live in the city instead of the
sprawling suburbs). At times, this cognitive dissonance takes the form
of nearly incoherent, Zen-like koans—”You cannot grow your way
out of the consequences of growth,” he writes, which sounds clever but
makes little sense.
Let’s unpack Berger’s Pugetopolis complaint: Growth is bad,
and growth won’t fix it. The problem with that statement is that there
are different types of growth, including good growth (in the view of
this paper: dense, transit-oriented growth that makes it possible to
live in a way that doesn’t harm the climate) and bad (in Berger’s and
The Stranger‘s view: sprawl). Given that we can’t build a wall
around Seattle (or pass laws
saying that no one else can move
here), we’re going to grow. The pertinent question is how.
Berger has no answer for this, except that we can’t keep doing what
we’ve done or we’ll keep getting what we’ve got. This may be a truism,
but it isn’t a solution. Throw a solution at Berger—density, for
example, Mossback’s favorite bugaboo—and he’ll respond by giving
it a label like “vertical sprawl,” which sounds bad but means nothing.
(Building vertically is exactly the opposite of sprawl—unless
we’re going to start building roads in the sky.)
Similarly, throughout Pugetopolis, Berger criticizes the
“Manhattanization” of Seattle—a term that to you and me might
imply skyscrapers, cabs on demand, and decent pizza, but to Mossback
means transit, bridges, and street repairs. No reasonable person would
argue that bridges and urban renewal will turn Seattle into a city of
10 million people; it won’t, nor is that anyone’s goal. What Berger
opposes, it seems, are investments in infrastructure that make Seattle
an attractive place to live or visit. Don’t build it, he argues, and
they won’t come. Ironically, many of the icons around Seattle that
Berger most cherishes—the brick-paved charm of Pioneer Square,
the rundown stalls and weird underground warrens of Pike Place
Market—are models of and magnets for the kind of urban density
Berger despises.
Berger is equally off-base when he takes on those who choose to live
without a car—the “brave new bionauts,” he calls them. Or, more
to the point, “moochers,” because people who go carless sometimes take
rides with other people, a practice more commonly known as
“carpooling.” But going car-free, in Berger’s view, isn’t just
selfish—it’s misery, because living in a city means being able to
drive all over, including to other neighborhoods. That’s a predictable
perspective from someone who opposes density, but it will be unfamiliar
to anyone who lives, shops, goes to the gym, and works within a
walkable or bikeable radius.
Berger’s writing is clever and often funny, and when he sticks to
subjects on which mossbacks and non-mossbacks alike can generally
agree—for example, the issue of gay marriage, of which he writes,
“the civil benefits [of marriage] are valuable enough that denying them
to same-sex couples is a form of discrimination that has no rational
justification”—he’s pellucid and a joy to read. (He’s also often
genuinely funny—as when he writes that “Cosmopolis, near
Aberdeen, was named by people who reckoned it might one day be the
center of everything. Its 2006 population: 1,679.”) But when he
veers into social commentary—criticizing Seattle as a “nanny
state” for encouraging recycling, for example—he sounds less like
a civic treasure than a scolding elderly relative.
Fundamentally, calling oneself a mossback is an excuse to say
“no”—no to growth, obviously, but also no to environmental
solutions, no to transit, no to innovations that might make life easier
and more enjoyable, no to laws that help us all live
together more
happily and effectively in an increasingly crowded and complicated
world. (One Mossback column, not reproduced in Pugetopolis, was
actually called “The Joy of ‘No'”; in it, Berger wrote “saying no… is
a vital part of how we do things.”) Critiques like Berger’s
embrace a past that is lost. And they’re a luxury enjoyed only by
people, like Berger, who won’t be around long enough to see the
long-term consequences of the policies they espouse. 
Knute Berger reads Thurs Jan 15, Elliott Bay Book Company, 7:30
pm, and Wed Jan 21, University Book Store, 7 pm. Both readings are
free.
Wow, thoughtful comments on the Slog in more than one-digit quantities.
Yes, Doug, LA blows, but so does almost all the rest of this Protestant-Corporate, colonized continent where for the most part real interaction has been replaced by electronic media and natural movement through the real world supplanted by the channel-surfing-through-space experience behind the wheel. OK, enough old news. What was hoped for was something better.
It still shocks the hell out of me, as someone who fell in love with the Seattle of the early 80s, that some of the people with the loudest affection for a cheaper, less traffic-congested, cleaner, friendlier, more honest/blue collar/pick-your-meaning town with orcas and salmon and woods within a short drive are the very ones who have successfully abetted the destruction of those qualities by opposing mass transit (monorail) and lobbying for freeways (viaduct) and in favor of more suburbanizing stadia with huge parking lots on the public dime. ‘Let me drive – get outta my way’ – that is Knute’s cri-de-coeur.
What there was once in Seattle – and don’t tell me I’m just a complaining old fogey at 41 because WHERE are the young people anymore? they can’t afford to live in Seattle – was a situation where people taking time to explore and expand the world through art and creative living and political activism had time aside from making a living for those things, where a future that would turn away from the ruinous course of the last fifty years (roads, parking lots, unwalkable strip mall streets, poisonous runoff, smog, banal suburbia) seemed not only possible, but lined up and ready to bloom. In fact, what turned out to actually happen was that Seattle’s power-brokers would behave (under the cover of their Ds) in an even more ignorant manner than their counterparts in the rest of the country, and ignore the will of a progressive electorate, building their public stadia by fiat, harassing the monorail agency until it went up in flames of self-preservation panic, ignoring the rejection of a tunnel replacement for the viaduct.
So, the people who once gave a shit are long worn-out. (Has anyone but big lobbying organizations and highway-loving ‘business interests’ sponsored a city initiative since the monorail died? Remember how many there were every summer ten years ago?) And the new towers go up (yes, density!) expensive as all get-out and with giant garages (eesh), the astronomical rents mean that brilliant gay kid from Boise or the musician from Anchorage don’t show up to do their thing anymore, and the locals continue to go to the suburbs to raise their children.
Yes, LA is mired in planned suckiness. In 1928 they voted under pressure of developers to widen the streets (WAY pre-freeway) instead of building fast transit, so instead of development concentrating, it got spread far and wide. But people get now that it’s a mess: they’re not planning to replace any aging freeways with ones that will carry more capacity, or building tunnels without diamond lanes, or believing that the mistakes of the past should be repeated in the future. THAT is an improvement, and its existence makes the spiritual quality of the city in the present moment one of hope. All over LA people are discovering the place they live that has been so long ignored by its citizens from their cars. You can get around, fast, on the bus and subway (if you don’t spread your life out ridiculously).
And you know what else? It’s sunny. Here’s where I partially accept the curmudgeonly ‘we like the rain, you didn’t grow up with it, you can’t take it’ accusations of the classic mossback (except I DID grow up with it). Nine months of overcast makes you depressed, (too) inward-looking, and unfriendly: essentially psycho. That was once a cheap price to pay for living in a vibrant, affordable city that gave so much reason for hope. But without it, why pay so much to remain? I’m sure that plenty of people are happy I’m gone. Enjoy your stay.
Wow, I’m so old I can remember when nobody had ever used the term ‘mossback’.
And, A at the top of the thread- the Bellevue you’re living in destroyed the Bellevue I lived in.
But lay off Emmet Watson, folks- it was a joke. Sheesh.
Yes, it’s painful that 90% of us can’t afford to live anywhere close to downtown anymore. But it’s supergood that I can come into town and try to score some great bud, and Hempfest gets bigger every year.
You gotta keep your priorities straight.
sorry, but every person who supported or still holds a candle for the monorail is a fucking idiot. the monorail was a stupid idea. i’d say that’s the best thing the people of seattle have done for the city in the 20 years i’ve been here.
Huh. I wonder what the crotchety old farts back in the 70s were saying about Seattle’s Good Olde Days in the 30s and 40s.
Twas ever thus, I suppose. Every generation has some old man bitching about the kids these days.
Of course; the real “irony” regarding Berger complaining abt how Seattle has turned out, is that The Seattle Weekly (way back in the day, the early-mid ’80s) was THE mouthpiece for promoting gentrification and Seattle’s “world-classness”. And now, it’s turned out not so pretty, now that Berger generation has been passed on by their kids.
It is ironic, I swear, I know you all were still in “pull ups” or diapers, then, but it’s still ironic — if you were here and could read.
I’m no fan of Skip “When-I-Was-Your-Age” Berger, who is so boring and tired that people wouldn’t even pick up his column when it was in a free newspaper on the floor of the bus. But this review tells me more about Erica C. Barnett than it does about Berger’s book. So, Erica, when Berger writes something you agree with, he’s “pellucid and a joy to read.” And as soon as he says something you don’t agree with, he’s a “scolding elderly relative?”
Mossbacks and their ilk = people haters. Intolerant little sh*ts who wet themselves when confronted with anything new. 50 years ago it would have been blacks moving into Seattle they would have been fighting against. 100 years ago they were down attacking the Chinese.
Ignore the bigots. They’ll eventually move away.
Totally agree, Erica. Berger is not just anti-density, he’s anti-growth.
But he doesn’t get that people will come here no matter how much he bitches and the influx of people need to live somewhere.
He also doesn’t get that prices in the urban areas are high BECAUSE people like him work to block density.
Berger is a faux-progressive. He wants everything to stay the way it never was. How tedious. Berger and his conservative pals pretend to be lefty and thoughtful. Instead they are conservative and closed-minded. No vision. No goals. Just lame. They seem to get a platform not because they have something insightful to say, but because they keep giving each other jobs. Yawn.
Ballard Man is right. The Seattle Berger pines for is the all-white Seattle, the Seattle with no unsightly taco trucks or steamy-windowed pho joints or Ethiopian restaurants.
It’s funny hearing some of the young old-timers hearkening back to the good old days of the 80s and 90s, because the destruction of the Good Old Seattle I knew was already largely done by then. Change is forever, and comes in waves.
Berger’s dream, ironically, IS Los Angeles, though he is too stupid to know it. Ugly condos and four-paks in Seattle neighborhoods specifically protect rural areas. If you keep Seattle stuck in 1970, you drive the population ever outwards. Seattle hasn’t actually changed all that much from 1970, compared to places like Marysville and Puyallup. THAT’S where the horror is, not in town.
Bellevue in the 70s was actually a great place to live. Of course it was designed to be driven in, but as a kid, you could walk it or ride your bike. We also took the bus. The Bellevue Theatre was a great repertory movie houses that showed all sorts of European art flicks with semi-naked women; didn’t have to go to Seattle for that. My dad worked in Seattle and would call every day at 5:00 to say he was on the way home, and there he was, 20 minutes later (every day). The best thing about Bellevue was that, as a suburb, there were lots of interesting, devious things happening in the basements of every house. From this came music (members of Mudhoney and a lot of other bands) and a lot of interesting people. I tend to think there’s a little bit of early-70s Bellevue in Seattle, and the city is better for it.
It’s sad when a man bearing a tattoo of the seal of the city of Seattle has to post internet comments explaining to the residents how terrible the city is. Unfortunately, Grant is right. After moving back here from New York I find this place to be a kind of horrible purgatory that forever misses the mark. Standing in line at Whole Foods I watched a man berating the clerk because the donation lunches you could buy to support local schools were packaged in a wooden box. Seattlites are so willfully misguided that they either don’t know or won’t acknowledge what the real issues even are. What about the fact that people here are proud to be politically correct and offended by the slightest slur, but that the black people in this city are essentially segregated to the CD/South Seattle? What about a city government who seems to simultaneously be incapable of coming to an agreement over a viaduct in imminent danger of falling down but is willing to sell the city out to any developer willing to contribute the maximum campaign contribution (not sure what it is anymore but it used to be 600 bucks, consider how pathetically little money that is). What about a city that has been talking about public transportation since the 80s but still has yet to implement it in any kind of reasonable fashion? I’m with Grant: fuck this place.
Berger is a dinosaur and living in a confused world where nothing that happens makes sense. When you deny density for as long as Seattle did, you create a backlog of demand for urban housing. But the housing you then get is rushed to meet this backlogged demand. Entire neighborhoods disappear or change completely because they are building in 2 or 3 years what should have grown organically over 20 or 30 years. Seattle neighborhoods have fought density and change for decades.
This is the city that voted down transit repeatedly in the 90s, only to approve a crappy, half-baked line from downtown to the airport after it was too late. Oh yeah, and they actually FUNDED that vote only YEARS later.
People complain that “perfectly good small houses” are being demolished. Reality check – in an URBAN center, land prices will outstrip the “tiny, quaint” structures appreciation and render housing of that size and scope moot UNLESS a community sees the writing on the wall and embraces organic, slow growth EARLY.
Seattle didn’t do that, and now you have a bunch of small, quaint homes that sit on dirt that is worth more than double the house. That is the very definition of economically unsustainable. Where we don’t have these, we have rushed, packed development without the infrastructure to support it.
These are all the hallmarks of a city that has, like Berger, denied and fended off inevitability to its own detriment.
Bellevue is a pretty horrid city, but I imagine a just few decades ago it wasn’t a bad little town.
SadLittleOrangeThing: Have you ever been to another city? I’ve lived in several, and Seattle still out-greens them by 10 to 1. I first drove into Seattle four years ago in the spring time, and was mindblown by how green the city looked. Ever see Chicago?
Eric @ 3 – I think you are being a bit rough on old Emmett Watson. He was an institution – and a bit more progressive than you give him credit for.
Check out this overview:
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/2277…
Those mobs of tourists bring cash and buy things in your boutiques and DIY stores. They fill up restaurants and hotels and they go to shows. They wish they lived here and they might even be back some day. All that happens while you complain.
Folks, its a city. People want what it has, and in these tougher economic times, we will have more of what people want — a reasonbly still thriving economy, hopefully — which in turn will bring more people here, more of the brightest and best from around the country who are looking for what here has to offer — a fresh start and a chance to work for a decent wage in a part of the country with breathtaking natural beauty as well as all kinds of nifty perks. Coffee joke.
So cry about it Knute, and all the other first and second generation folks. Seattle’s on the world map, and it won’t be leaving anytime soon.
I’ve lived here 18 years now since getting off the plane on a visit, looking around and saying “wow. This place is really something.”
Some of us never lose that, even though the clog on I-5 is bad, even though the mayor is an idiot, even though theres asshats on bikes who run you down in crosswalks then laugh about it cause they are young and full of adrenaline and too dumb to realize one day they will be the guy walking and lookin around at 20 yrs ago and thinking holy mother of hell, why does this place suck so bad now, it used to be GREAT WHEN I WAS YOUNG.
Oh those bad white men. Go hang out on at 3rd and Pine at night so you can experience all the wonderful joys of divershitty. 37,460 white women raped by black men in only one year ought to make you feel better about yourself… especially when you compare that to less than ten black women raped by white men that same year (2005).
Go hang out at 3rd and Pine at night so you can experience all the wonderful benefits of divershitty if you hate whites so much, who knows, you will probably get raped too! So multicultural!
If Knute had his way Seattle would be just like Detroit and Pittsburgh: DEAD CITIES!