The Seattle bar Hooverville is named after Hooverville the
shantytown that stood on the same ground during the Great
Depression. Back then, every city in these great United States had its own Hooverville, full of people who, under normal economic
circumstances, were housed and employed and unhungry.
Normal is relative. One night last week—and presumably every
night since and for many nights before—within a mile of
Hooverville, just south and westward, people bedded down in run-down
campers under part of the West Seattle Bridge, a community in the
shadows with grit sifting down on it. Along East Marginal Way,
which was devoid of traffic, a number of men drank coffee and talked
outside a harborside homeless shelter for those over the age of 50. By
the railroad tracks, a hobo ate an old-looking roll in the gloaming,
offering advice about the freight train blocking access to the rest of
the city. The train would roll forward slowly for a moment, then stop,
go slowly in reverse, repeat. Best to go around, he recommended.
Another hobo slowly walked by in the trackside gravel, incompetently
juggling four juggling pins.
Inside Hooverville the bar, the lights were bright and the peanuts
were free; free-peanut-eaters reveled in throwing shells over their
shoulders onto the floor. The place—on a stretch of First Avenue
South that’s not home to much except the Showbox Sodo across the
street—was pretty much packed. An ’80s compilation played, and
one tableful of people kept getting up to dance. There is no dance
floor at Hooverville. The female barkeep with fuchsia hair danced
for a minute, too, then was lifted into the air by a coworker. The
lifter-upper whacked another bartender on the behind with a cutting
board, then turned down the lights. “Now everyone looks much better!”
he said with a thousand-watt smile. Pitchers of Rainier cost $10.
Hooverville the bar is only a couple years old, but its quasi-divey,
hodgepodge décor makes it look like it’s been around a long
time. The patrons are imported as well. On part of one wall, chalk
graffiti is allowed; someone’s chalked “POCO WINE BAR.” In the women’s
room on a stall door, an advertisement for Blue Moon beer has been
scrawled, “Republicans own, run + inheirit this company!” (The
erroneous extra “i” in inherit is a squeezed-in afterthought.)
Out in the world last week, John McCain was being criticized for
saying that “the fundamentals of our economy are still strong,” with
all the world pointing out that Herbert Hoover said nearly the same
thing on Black Thursday in 1929. On the way back toward downtown
Seattle from the bar Hooverville, a group of homeless people slept
under a viaduct overhang directly along First Avenue South, in plain
sight if you chose to look. 