City Feb 23, 2023 at 3:34 pm

The City Is Moving Toward a Full-Blown Revival

Seattle is not dying. It's dancing at Vermillion Art Gallery. Charles Mudede

Comments

1

"And I believe this positive energy has CHOP as its source."

I know this is a dumb question to ask in response to a Mudede post, but did Charles offer any support for this theory? Also, Charles has long predicted the imminent collapse of Seattle's housing market. Did he change his mind?

3

“…2013 (the year the Great Recession ended in this city,…”

From 1Q 2010 to 1Q 2020, Seattle’s unemployment rate declined from 10% to 3%. It was forty (!) consecutive quarters of economic growth, marked by low inflation, rising minimum wages, rising salaries, and huge numbers of jobs added. Seattle did not take five years to recover from the Great Recession; the recovery was well underway within a year and a half.

@1: It seems the young Black men who died violently in the CHOP have now been officially erased, their deaths thrown down the Memory Hole. Otherwise, Charles would here be celebrating the violent deaths of young Black men.

4

@2 Interesting. The 'ol "Seattle is dying" narrative. So. Compared to where?

2021 Seattle Downtown Business Association report card

Residential Population
67% increase since 2010 / 2021 estimate: 98,627

Total Number of Jobs
47% increase since 2010 / 2021 estimate: 323,158

Of course the fall out from the pandemic and the massive increase in commercial rents is still having and impact. But either commiserate with other US cities or in some cases much much better.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/seattle-fared-better-than-expected-in-the-pandemic-economy/

Seattle is one of the safest cities in the US. Seattle is not even in the top 75 US cities for high crime rates. In fact it rates 77th out of 100 for homicide rates. Seattle has lower homicide rate (3.74 per 100K) than good 'ol republican Anchorage AK (9.12 per 100K) or good 'ol republican Dallas TX (12.48 per 100K). Even good old Republican Red State Fort Worth Texas with it's good 'ol republican mayor and good 'ol Republican city council has a murder rate 2X that of eeeevil liberal Seattle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate

Seattle poverty rate is only 11% compared with, oh, say good old Republican Houston Texas at a whopping 19.4%

Seattle's unemployment rate is almost in the middle at about 3.5-3.9% depending how you want to calculate it. Comparisons there are tricky because the Red State cities don't really track it adequately and reporting tends to lag by a couple of years.

Anyway. Seattle is ranked #2 out of 10 most livable US cities. But, due to rents, #8 out of least affordable cities.

So. I'm not sure how you think Seattle needs to run itself since it's fairing better than most other US cities by any metric you want to measure it by. Except affordability. Which is what is really kicking cities. Good old greed and unregulated market economics. That's your enemy. But keep screeching about the powerless and the homeless. Eventually if you keep letting the billionaires set your rules and feed your moral panics you'll be among them.

None of this skin off my balls. I'm no longer living in Seattle for the majority of my year. Elect what ever MAGA dipshit you want.

But since I spend about 60% of my time living in other cities and other nations I can tell you right now your hysteria is just you being manipulated. Because honestly you don't know how good you got (or had) it.

5

No city is at its best when only rich people live, work, and play there. Best years my ass. I didn't even live there in the best years, but when I did live there I paid $650/mo for rent for FOUR YEARS for a beautiful, large studio (that really could be considered a one bedroom given the size of the walk in closet), saw tons of shows for reasonable prices, enjoyed (and could afford) my life, even when underemployed and in some cases unemployed.

7

@4: I appreciate you’re smart enough to avoid what Charles wrote, obediently kick the “Seattle is Dying” straw man, and then let fly with a set of statistics. But your numbers don’t tell the whole story. Quality of life is a lot of little things, and a homeless population wandering around, committing petty thefts and assaults so as to leave needles on your doorstep, detracts from that quality of life. As @6 notes, when a colony of criminals is a “community,” whose passage is mourned here, and the actual community upon whom those criminals preyed are a bunch of NIBMY GOP-lite whiners who should just STFU and buy new catalytic converters already, the city has lost much of what gave it life.

10

Well. By all means please continue to every single day multiple times per day to obsessively whine, lament and screech how terrible Seattle is (in some non-measurable way and magically compared and to no other city) in an outlet you also whine, lament and screech how terrible it is.

It certainly reflects well on your mental health.

11

@10: That’s rich, coming from someone who has been banned multiple times for his chronic, frequent, and unrepentant verbal abuses of his fellow commenters.

But enough about how you didn’t address the substance of the comments here. What do you think of Charles’ assertion that CHOP revitalized the city? Were the violent deaths of young Black men ok, so long as Charles once again gets to go name-dropping the artists he’s seen? Do tell.

12

Could CHOP have gone any worse? The teen who died, lawsuits, leadership scandals, exodus of the police force and the political undoing of far left Seattle politics. I’ve been to better carnivals.

13

Charles is a privledged provocateur, writing this from Columbia City. For whatever reason, Columbia City is one of the neighborhoods where the homeless junkies are not allowed to destroy the peace and security in their bubble. Different rules apply in different parts of the city. In this case the shit flows uphill from Columbia City to Little Saigon and Capitol Hill. I guess this is “equity”.

14

@7 Eloquently put. Thank you.

16

@9, @12: And let’s not forget this piece of transparent idiocy, published as violent death after violent death struck in the CHOP:

“In my role as Public Safety Chair, I can no longer stay silent and I call on the Executive and CHOP leaders to act urgently.”

(https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2020/06/30/44008034/we-must-end-the-conditions-in-chop-that-are-leading-to-violence-and-death)

That was my CM at the time, Lisa Herbold, begging for “CHOP leaders” to ensure safety, when she was CHAIR OF THE COUNCIL’S PUBLIC SAFETY COMMITTEE. (Subpoena power? WTF is that?)

That performance alone justifies her departure.

17

Much talk, no action.

Harrell thinks he works for the suburbs, but we in Seattle are the voters and the ones who pay the taxes, and we are not servants of Downtown, but Free!

19

@17: “…but we in Seattle are the voters…”

Bruce Harrell 58.56 %
M. Lorena González 41.15 %

20

Please. Seattle's real golden age was before Windows 95. Its second golden age was 98-2014 when Amazon announced it was locating in the city and prices of everything doubled, and ended the city. Since 2000 every major artist building in Pioneer Square has been 'renovated' evicting all the tenants. You can talk a bunch of smack just because Seattle has SOME culture left, but this city is a shadow of what it was, and always will be, because it's too expensive, and anyone creative with a brain wanting REAL space with a REAL SUPPORTIVE group of wealthy patrons without poles up their rears has already left or is planning to, and that means not just Seattle but the USA, which is a violent, art-hating, opinion-overwrought dump split between country psychopaths and urban clowns. It's the best superpower, but that's about it.

23

@22 most of the candidates who have declared for seats are unqualified or batshit crazy so right now it seems more probable Nelson will find herself alone. On top of that Mosqueda is going to take her brand of progressive to the county level so we’ll start seeing some of the policies that have impacted Seattle start to spread to the rest of KC. Hopeful some more serious challengers emerge or we could easily take several steps backwards.

25

@23: No one should discount the danger inherent to the potential of years more failed policies being inflicted upon a city which has already suffered enough, but I’m inclined to keep hope with what @24 noted. I’ll add that if CM Mosqueda gets her requested transfer to County, she’ll be one of many voices there; that situation would be far from the full-out lunatics-running-the-asylum show Seattle has endured. With her gone as well, Seattle’s voters would have the opportunity to wipe clean their slate of failed CMs, and move on.

Charles and the Stranger could help out here. As we see in this headline post, they’re going to continue baldly rewriting history, but doing it so soon after events happened runs the risk of discrediting their effort, while reminding everyone of just how bad things have been.

27

@24/25 I appreciate both of your optimism for the coming cycle. I really do hope it plays out that way. I’d love nothing more than less activism and more administration in city government.

@25 don’t underestimate Mosqueda on the KCC. She would already have a Morales type ally in Zahilay and the council leans progressive. She could easily influence a number of them to pass some of her onerous Seattle type policies like the soda tax. Someone of substance needs to run against her.

29

CHOP is such a litmus test for the "far-left" and the pearl clutching right.

The the far-left it was a moment of glorious freedom. To the pearl-clutching right is was anarchy. To the rest of us it was something that formed in response to two cataclysmic events (the murder of George Floyd and the Pandemic) that went on for way too long. A cooling-off period of a few days, with some art and performance is one thing, but that was just stupid.

I'm glad that Seattle is starting to re-awaken, but I wouldn't give the CHOP much credit. Indeed, I think it played right into the hands of the pearl-clutches.

30

@29: “I'm glad that Seattle is starting to re-awaken, but I wouldn't give the CHOP much credit.”

The waning pandemic accounts for much of the re-awakening. As for the CHOP getting any credit, that seems to be just Charles and the other writers here refusing to admit they lost over the CHOP, they lost over defund, and thus they lost the November 2021 elections. They keep trying to ignore that last part, insist it’s still June 2020, and the City Council should therefore answer to activists, not voters.

31

I dunno about most of the crap that cm goes on about, but I will agree it has been really fun again lately. I'm not as much of a pessimist as @20, but folks that turn up do seem a little more vanilla than 6 or 7 years ago. A new golden era it is not, but to cm's credit the atmosphere has been feeling good and I've been enjoying it.

32

"The price range of the majority of those who lived in Seattle in 2010 (the household income was then $60,200) was completely ignored by developers.

And the government failed to
address this glaring market failure."

housing went from Usonian
to mega-bucks' holdings
and part-time vacancies
without the Consent of
we the people. that
they did so legally
is little Comfort
to those Priced
Out and likely
for-ever.

@20 -- Well
Said Antinet.

35

@34: “Oh, for the love of God.”

Didn’t you read Charles’ post? Here, try again, with his key point:

“…has CHOP as its source.”

Murder and mayhem, overflowing garbage, open-air markets in drugs and stolen goods — yep, that was CHOP, all right. It’s now city-wide — thanks, in no small part, to Charles and the Stranger. Well done, guys.

36

What @12 said.
When I see multi- generational family minority candidates who are business owners (Hollingsworth. Woo) that gives me hope for more attention paid to neighborhoods and less virtue signaling.

37

My error
Should be what @22 said.

38

Charles Mudede is having fun and so can you. Before you know it, you’ll be hearing how fun it was to go out before all the crowds showed up. It is that time, a new and fresh time. If the Sinclair devotees stay home, under their blankets, that’s their choice

39

@38: That’s actually the point of most of these comments. Charles has unearned money and privilege with which to enjoy these early good times. So long as he engages in the proper, victim-blaming virtue-signaling (as usual, witlessly approved by @32), he can go party party party, whilst many other persons must work hard to fix the enormous damage done to Seattle — damage done by the policies Charles and the Stranger recommended.

Charles and the Stranger here very clearly send a message to the rest of Seattle: he and his employer will take absolutely no responsibility of any kind whatsoever for their having turned Seattle into a filthy wasteland. You’re going to clean it up, they’re going to party whilst you work hard to clean it up, and then they’re going to take all of the credit for your hard work. Now shut up, and mix Charles another drink.

40

@39 Charles Mudede is a great guide to exploring many of the root causes for homelessness, alienation, disparity, inequality and power structures that perpetuate these problems. Let’s stipulate that the people most enraged with Charles Mudede are the people least interested in addressing root causes of social turmoil.

41

@40: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
GASP
WHOOO…
Ok, that was a good one!
Sniff…

Seriously now, let’s recall a failed attempt to explain Seattle’s housing-affordability crisis, by the crack team of failed Mayoral candidate Carey Moon and failed economic writer Charles Mudede. After relating the real reason for Seattle’s housing-affordability crisis: tens of thousands of recent arrivals, each with a well-paying local tech’ job, they groundlessly dismiss this, and instead blame — wait for it! — Sinister Asians:

“Hot money has been flowing out of China and into Vancouver since the 1990s, as several conditions made that the easiest place for wealthy Chinese people to purchase real assets to stabilize their portfolios.”

[…]

“This flow of Chinese money is looking for the next housing market, and it appears that Seattle and California cities are emerging targets.”

(https://www.thestranger.com/architecture/2017/04/20/24442014/hot-money-and-seattles-growing-housing-crisis-part-one)

Moon went on to lose by a double-digit margin to Jenny Durkan, and Charles went on to continue his incredibly long tenure writing for the Stranger — one which might yet see him as the Last Man Standing.

Let’s conclude that the people most enamored with Charles Mudede are the people least qualified in addressing root causes of social turmoil.

42

hmmmm. tensor

your 'parody' of
Col. Hans Landa
was a little TOO
picture-perfect

you've been
Practicing.

43

@41, 42:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zj23pMdQBZ8&ab_channel=MultimediaBot

44

@9, @12: Charles and the Stranger continue to tell us, in no uncertain terms, that they will not learn any lessons from CHOP, defund, homelessness, or anything else. Their only takeaway says Seattle’s voters must STFU and vote the way the Stranger tells them to vote. Anything else is dissent, and as CM Sawant has made very clear for almost a decade now, dissent is treason.

If the violent deaths of Black men, who were executed with impunity, during what was supposed to be a BLM event (!), doesn’t convince anyone that CHOP was an unmitigated disaster, then nothing will. Claiming this murderous disaster has put the good-time party life back into town ranks as nothing short of an obscenity toward those Black men who died.


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