City Aug 9, 2019 at 7:57 pm

Buckle up. This is a dramatic ride.

Comments

1

Interesting article! I have to admit I was initially extremely confused by the numbering system wherein #4 is #1 and #10 is #2 and #8 is #3. But I do like #7! Which is the new #1.

2

Killer Whale was killer
that's what they look like
just before they chomp
your boat in half.

The 'winner' is nice.
(Is there any way to combine the two?
and maybe toss in Chief Seattle?)
(He could be riding it like
slim pickens rode that Nuke)

3

It's for the best, the orca flag would just make us all sad a few years from now when the resident orcas are all dead.

4

Kyle's flag is pretty awesome!

Way better than Cascadia, and better than Denver, Chicago, Colorado, or Arizona.

I was thinking a horizontal tricolor with blue at the top, green in the center and blue at the bottom to signify Seattle between Lake Washington and Puget Sound, but I couldn't think of an emblem to signify the city.

The way Kyle uses the white swipe to tie together Rainier and Puget Sound, really works. The fins and the star fill in the gaps.

This is a great flag. Let's fly it!

5

Ha, this was insane and a fun read. A few years ago (20-ish, I'd assume) Major League Baseball selected players for their annual All-Star Game via votes cast by fans attending games. There were stacks of old school punch card ballots available at turnstiles and folks were expected to take a single ballot and punch the holes next to the names of their chosen players at each position. Idiotically brilliant fans of the Oakland A's decided to game the system though and so took entire reams of punchable ballots, brought them home, then used nail guns to cast several thousand votes for all of the A's players at once in a few seconds. The league caught on once a bunch of no name bench players were far outnumbering the league's legitimate superstars by a wide margin and so invalidated the results. Must've been fun though.

6

Yeah, this went about as poorly as should be expected. The orca would have been a great sports team logo, but it may be harder to sell if there is existing merchandise before the sale. Honestly any possible option was a looser because being forced to remember your city has a flag is like being forced to remember you have a tongue. Yes, right there in your mouth. No, don't TOUCH it, you can certainly feel that it's there if you just think about it, a sullen lump mostly surrounded by teeth. It moves a little when you swallow.

You're welcome. You deserved nothing more

I look forward to district 4 electing a city council rep on much the same basis. Yard signs and money still beat having an actual platform.

7

Still like the NW pointer on green.

8

Christ, what an asshole.

9

Don’t blame me. I voted for the sky anus.

10

Bravo. You saved democracy. The best part of this intriguing article was my first look at Kyle’s wonderful flag at the end.

11

People in my part of Seattle are sticking with #3. The rest of you apostates can roast in a hell of my own creation.

12

Hah! I voted for #7. I feel vindicated now.

At first, I couldn't even tell the "orca" one was supposed to be an orca. I could see a sort of creepy looking mouth full of teeth, but wasn't sure if it was supposed to be a spider or a crab or some sort of alien??? I was baffled. Once people started calling it an orca flag, I could see it then, but it still looked like a weird creepy orca to me. I could get behind a different orca design, but not that one.

13

"Fly this puppy from a pole . . ." I dunno. She looks like she could easily be a Czech, a Swede, etc.

14

Damn, I was rooting for Sky Anus.

15

For what it's worth, (asymptotically zero), the net nerd term for hacking an online vote is: "to freep" or "freeping" ( https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=freep ) this from all the false voting seen associated with the far-right web site: the FRee-REPublic(.com)

16

I still say the original flag is the best, it just needs the center seal simplified or removed and it's good to go.

The orca design isn't a good flag but it's great on anything else. I'd happily wear it on a cap, tshirt or oversized belt buckle.

The NW arrow design could become the Unionist alternative to the separatist "Doug Fir" Cascadia flag.

17

You know what, this turned out weird, but not that weird. Jeff's flag is actually pretty great. My Orca flag made a lot of people happy and they had a lot of fun sharing it around.

I don't think I would have ever submitted it under my real name, and while I'm sorry to anyone that felt bamboozled, the reality is I don't think it would have existed were it not for the option of some bamboozling.

The biggest bummer here is the bot votes. I know how it looks that both of my designs got the most bot voted, but I would never partake in that. I think whoever did that was probably motivated by the same thing that lead people to make their own fan Twitter accounts and design their own fake merch. They just wanted go be part of the action. But in this case those actions totally fucked everyting up.

Until next time flag lovers!
-Chet Brad

18

Goof me once, Goof on you, Goof me twice, won't get Goofed again.

19

All flag #3 is is the logo from the city letterhead and motor pool cars flipped horizontally. It's the same Chief Seattle as on the existing flag, only without the wings.

Personally, I like #7. It's sort of Star Trekky

20

Well this sure turned out even more stupidly than expected. Bravo!

21

Why am I not surprised that when the Stranger did not get the results they wanted, they simply disqualified all the readers preferred choices, until the staff's choice was the winner.

22

@21
YAWN!

23

Even though that artist was cheating by putting in 2 entries, and some people hacked the voting, I still liked the stupid orca one best.

24

Maybe if The Stranger avoided saying things such as "[THIS IS] THE ONLY THING PEOPLE ARE TALKING ABOUT" (when in fact only The Stranger is talking about it), things like this wouldn't happen.

25

@21 -- Apparently you didn't read the article, because the winner was not the Stranger's staff's preferred choice. They wanted the orca flag.

26

It seems a shame to disqualify the two most popular designs. Why not have a revote with Instant Runoff Voting run by DIFFERENT PEOPLE who can monitor that the votes are LEGIT? For instance:

https://www.opavote.com

27

hello flag day


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