Comments

1

Private kitchens are still very much doable even in micro apartments. I remember living years ago in an apartment with what was called a pullman kitchen. The pullman kitchen was simply one wall of the apartment that was made up of the appliances, the stove, sink, refrigerator and the cabinets; everything was compacted along one wall. These days with newer appliances things could even be more compact. The sink, of corse, with a small refer/freezer combo of 10 cubic feet, a two burner stovetop and a microwave. That is all anyone really needs; a common area could be provided for full sized ovens for baking and roasting. The problem with the completely common kitchen is scheduling of who gets to use it and when and of corse that age old problem of who cleans it up.

2

So Charles doesn't cook, but rather has somebody else do it for him. Only someone who doesn't ever cook would argue strongly against having a kitchen.

For the record, cooking is preparing food from scratch, using fresh ingredents. It's NOT reheating processed or prepared food from a supermarket or takeout from a restaurant.

Next he'll be lecturing us that do cook that we should be doing it on a hot stone over an open wood fire.

As if these mini-apartments even exist or would ever attract renters anywhere in the US outside the overcrowded cores of just a couple of big cities.

No matter how long he's been here, Charles remains clueless about most of the US.

3

@2: I enjoy kitchens, don't get me wrong, and would have concerns with sharing my cooking space with several people of dubious sanitation practices and so on, but if you jumped any higher with that leap of logic you made you'd qualify for the Olympics. Because it takes a lot to go from 'hey, maybe we should have shared kitchens instead of one kitchen per unit' to 'clearly, what the writer means is that we do takeout only and never ever cook and we should cook over fires like savages.'

Next you'll be arguing that a spilled bag of ice on the ground is a sign of encroaching glaciers, and a sunny day in Seattle means that it's clearly August and you were in a coma for six months.

4

And how are families supposed to live in tiny apodments with no kitchens? Oh right they aren't. This type of living is for the single worker bee only. And I'm so sure that sharing a kitchen brings out the best in high wage making, tiny space living people. Who cleans?

I never imagined I would see the day when having a kitchen and a toilet INSIDE your own apartment (that costs more than $1000/mo) would be a luxury in this country. People living like this are out of their minds. And tearing down every single family home or older apartment building with larger apartments to put up endless numbers of boxes of tiny apodments with no private kitchens (do they have private bathrooms?) means Seattle is only interested in catering to the people who work work work work for Amazon and any other company that demands their entire life and all of their attention and if you want anything else out life you have to move out of the city to get it. It's absolutely ridiculous.

If people want to live in housing with shared kitchens and bathrooms, they already exist ~ coops, communes, houses shared with roommates, all sorts of co-habitating options exist. I looked at a room once in a huge house on Capitol Hill. While it seemed like so many things about it were a good idea, ultimately I couldn't imagine living like that. A friend of mine lived like that in a co-op at Brown University in the '90s. Everybody took turns cooking and cleaning and everybody's idea of what constituted cooking and cleaning was quite different (and these were all Ivy League kids, mostly all of them the valedictorian of their school). People I know in SF live like that to this day and I've got to say who wants 10 roommates when you're in your 50s? Really.

5

If low income people stopped eating out and cooked at home they would save a lot of money.

6

@4 In the modern world, children are an expensive luxury. Most people can't really afford them.

7

We welcome Charles to Seattle as our ‘public intelllectual.’ However, the curse of memory means that this particularly looney idea must be quickly killed. Seattle used to have loads of apartments with shared kitchens, or in some cases, no kitchens for people like Charles who just order everything delivered or for takeout. However, the nice folks in those apartments, despite warnings, took to putting a toaster in the room, then a coffee maker, then maybe a small countertop oven. Then a sandwich grill, a portable heater to take the chill off, a microwave, and a light to see what was being cooked. After a series of many fatal apartment fires, and recognizing the impossibility of policing every single apartment to see if people were cooking, and whether they were using extension cords or power blocks, the city began phasing out such apartments due to the hazards to occupants and others. A review of local newspapers from the 1960s on will provide many articles about this problem. Even in buildings with shared kitchens, residents don’t always want to see other residents, don’t want to make toast in their bathrobes while others glare at them, and most important, can’t cook in a kitchen occupied by someone else when everyone is making breakfast, lunch, or dinner at the same time. It is fine when a building is only 3-4 units, but not when a buildiing is dozens or even hundred of units. Charles idea has been tried, and regrettably it has, shall we say, fatal flaws.

8

“I recall recalling” is HS-level writing.

9

Boarding houses used to have shared bathrooms. Inns used to have shared beds. Private property only breeds envy! Do you really need your underwear to belong solely to you? Time share your children! Grab that dial of public/private ownership and play SimSociety. Dr Mudede sez: no refrigerator for you!

11

@6 and yet everywhere I look there are children and babies and pregnant women.

13

Does Charles have a kitchen in his house? Does he live in a house, or in a tiny apartment? Does he selfishly have off-spring?

14

There are so many valid arguments for cooking and eating at home, that I don't know where to begin my critique against this "news article". So I won't do that. Let's skip the beginning and go right to the end.

I've given thought to your argument and decided I really don't need a bathroom after all. What's your street address, Mudede? I'm coming over to your castle each time I want to take a dump. I'll show up at your place each time I need: a ride, to wash my clothes, to pop my pimples or use a computer. It just doesn't make sense to take all that upon myself does it?

16

Not all of us are so well-off that we can eat out three meals a day or so willing to live communally. Why not just advocate for dorms for the working poor? You get a bedroom (for now: we'll make those communal/require you to pay more for privacy later) and share the rest.

I get that private kitchens were once only for the rich: the "public house" was just that, a public space where you could entertain as at home, in a small space with food cooked on site, back when few urban residences had kitchens. And that made sense when stoves were wood-fired and water to be heated, etc. We have made some progress since.

Maybe it's time to rethink the urban kitchen with different appliances (do we need four burner stoves and home-sized refrierators?) so people can still opt for their own meals but not have to give up as much space.

Was this sponsored by the Seattle restaurant industry? The same geniuses who complain about raising wages while watching their employees rents go up and never making the connection? Not that I can afford to eat out so I'm not in a position to ask but maybe Charles can find time during one of his daily dining experiences to look into it.

17

If people want to live without a private kitchen that's great. If they don't but are forced to because of dismal economic conditions that's sad. It's disgusting to glorify poverty. When Billy boy Gates and Jeffy jerkoff Bezos share a kitchen and speak to its boundless glory, that's when I'll be a believer.

18

Mudede, the Ceausescu of the Pacific Northwest.

19

I live in a small 420 sqft condo and LOVE it. I've had big homes - what a hassle!

The biggest problem with small is the old men in suburbia fighting against it. I was told by a fat old man it is unsanitary! Exactly what do you mean? Of course, he was speechless.

20

Now that Mr. Vel-DuRay is retired, we have been considering perhaps selling Chez Vel-DuRay and buying a house (with a kitchen) someplace else, with me remaining in Seattle to serve out my remaining time with the utility. I've considered an apodment, and wouldn't have a problem with the small space, but I'd have to have a kitchen. My days of shared kitchens and all the nonsense that goes along with it are over, and there's no way I am going to dine out for every meal. It's expensive, and it's not healthy.

In the end, I'm sure we'll stay here until I can finally retire. It's cheaper than getting an apartment and almost as cheap as getting an apodment.

21

There is no debating shared accommodations increasing the likelihood of transmission of communicable disease.

None.

22

A polemic that can only be loved by the advertisers here, who stand to make more profits from scarcity of cooking space.

23

@12,

Every in-tact family on the fucking planet already utilize shared kitchens and bathrooms. The knowledge and basic common sense necessary to avoid contamination should have been taught to you in elementary school.

24

Charles has apparently received another transmission from Planet Derschang, which he's dutifully committed to print.

25

Private bedrooms and bathrooms are enormously inefficient, too.

Of course, we have known all of this for centuries now, and most contemporary societies have a subpopulation who live far closer to this efficient ideal: the military.

They sleep efficiently in tightly-packed bunks. They do not own or maintain any more clothing than necessary. They dine together efficiently in communal mess halls, on food prepared for all. They piss and shit efficiently in large communal latrines. There is no standing out, no buying your way out: every participant must eat and sleep and excrete in the optimal manner determined by the society's philosophical imperative. The individual is nothing, the group is everything.

This is the way to do it, this will be your way of life in the world Mudede demands.

27

Thus, Chuckles has penned another "It's good for thee, but don't expect me" treatises. As tiresome as it is predictable. Served with the usual intellectual pretension.

Oh, and Charles, the words are spelled: "alleys," and "capital."

28

When I was young we called these dormitories it you were in your late teens and/or 20s, usually 2 to a room, communal bathrooms, cafeterias, scheduled meal times cafeterias staff to clean the common areas and cook the meals. Oh and of course a paid house mother to over see things. Generally they were attached to a school of some sort.

There were also rooms to rent boarding houses that if you were lucky run by the owner occupied and served one meal a day you could buy into. Shared bath and no kitchen privileges.

Or single room tenement houses/buildings with communal bathrooms on each floor if you were lucky hot water.

Why Charles feels romantic about these types of living accommodations I don't know but they have or had a purpose and can fill a short term need for the young.

29

I don't know how sanitary or unsanitary communal living is, but I remember well the petty arguments about dishes left in the sink, old stuff in the refrigerator, personal food that was eaten by someone else, and recipes that stink up the entire place. Not to mention spats about who needed to clean the bathroom.

No thank you.

30

Harry Dexter White was a Soviet asset who passed numerous secrets to the USSR so he would be quite familiar with the ways of rats. Leave it to Mudede to admire him.

32

This is satire, right?

33

A kitchen is the soul of a family. No wonder a marxist hates them.

34

@19 maybe he thought your place was unsanitary not because it was small, but because the walls were covered in bile spewed during your ageist, fatphobic rants.

35

My meta-analysis is "trolling."

Meanwhile, one outbreak of norovirus will have victims writhing in their fetal positions suddenly convinced that individual kitchens are OK after all. Maybe a little hep A, crypto, shigellosis, etc., for added excitement. Lawyers will be excited too. Is there something wrong with people cooking their own food and not being subject to weakest-link sanitation?

36

Oddly enough, more modern interpretations of the 1960s Mouse Utopia experiments indicate that moral decay wasn't caused by crowding, but by communal kitchens.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-mouse-utopias-1960s-led-grim-predictions-humans-180954423/

37

@ I thought you were talking about Disney at first. LOL
Or were you? :/

38

@8, yeah, that bit was particularly grating.

39

The single.mozt out of touch thing I've ever read in the Stranger. Good Lord this author's hubris is staggering. Learn to cook.

The ability to prepare food for yourself without offending your neighbor with your mess or your smells is not, absolutely NOT a luxury. Anyone paying $1000 a month or more should have a full kitchen.

What is wrong with you? Are we now passing off trolling as editorial now? Just like extending the middle finger to the young working class being exploited by these greedy developers? Ors this just awful satire?

Cooking your own meals isn't a luxury. Notnin one of the wealthiest and most xpenaive housing markets in North America. Shame on you, sir. You've made yourself a stooge to the man with this out of touch dreck.

40

@32, it's not satire, but it is written to get a rise. Everything Mudede writes is intended to get a rise.

Ghettos in the 1600s, Mudede, were not "early" ghettos. Read some history before you make a stupid remark like that, or just stick to the historical genres you know.

But then the whole damned post is stupid.

41

@40 Gotta agree. "But then the whole damned post is stupid." And I love me some Marx-spoutin' Charles!

Charles! Yes, a direct question! Have you gone soft on pets and needed to come up with a new troll that would slice broadly through all segments of readers?

42

Wow. I really do not know how to deal with this social media crap. Had no realization there is a comment thread.

I often respect his past commentary, but this is way off. Here's my email to him:

Losing it with losing kitchens...

Dear Charles,

You are losing it. I often appreciate your commentary and the depth of your background.

This one totally missed the mark. I can imagine a more thoughtful essay mentioning the Kommunalki of Lenin’s era and how ownership of communal property has since developed post Soviet, but here you are simply advocating for the profits of developers: neither equitable housing or ownership. "The developer would love to sell apartments...”, selling to whom? Who the fuck cares about a developer maximizing profit? Lenin already did the experiment. Give me a break.

I guess that private kitchen you’ve been living with has spoiled you. I’d say get back to your roots, but your online roots simply suggest privilege. Do you know how it is to live Kommunalki?

Stop commenting.

galaoxides

43

You have to keep in mind that Mudede has been wealthy (not by his own hand) and privileged his entire life, so he just assumes everyone can live as wastefully and expensively as he can.

He steals and appropriates the "black American working class" narrative since it suits him, but nothing could be farther than the truth.

Second, as a Marxist, he is duty bound to try to destroy important and supportive social units such as the family, and attempt to make people wholly dependent on a strong man/entity, such as a government. Praising eating out of the home for every meal and denigrating cooking for oneself fits into this destructive mindset perfectly.

Noting enrages a Marxist more than a person who is self sufficient and does not need to depend on the party strongmen or daddy government.

45

I like Charles' writing, but this article is rubbish. I suppose he would have us all live in dormitories.

46

Common kitchen? No problem. Just don't mind me while I prepare my durian fruit, kimchi and Limburger cheese sandwiches.

47

1) They're dorm rooms
2) They're overpriced
3) My private kitchen doesn't need to die. But anyone who disagrees is welcome to take a tour of it with me... and by that I mean, I'd go Hannibal with a nice sautee, marinade and fryup. Because although my kitchen doesn't need to die.... whistles

48

Per the KING-5 report on this same story: "Seattle's average apartment size is now 711 square feet, according to RentCafe. That number may seem small, but it's actually up 4 percent since 2008 when the average square footage was 683."

As far as apartments without private kitchens being a huge fire hazard, color me skeptical. If lack of one's own private kitchen was the problem, wouldn't the city have banned renting spare rooms to roomates?

I say: bring on the small apartments. They're yet another housing option for people to choose. If you want your own kitchen, then buy or rent a place with your own kitchen. But don't remove the option to rent a place with no kitchen from others, who may prefer a micro-apartment with a bathroom but no kitchen to a room in a shared house with neither private bathroom nor private kitchen. Or to a hellish commute from outer suburbia.

49

Provocative, CM. Small apartments with small, full kitchens for me.

51

I live in 150 sq ft. I have a stove that is 70 years old, sometimes I cook on my small wood stove. I cook real food and hardly ever buy packaged anything and most of what I make in my tiny kitchen is good because I like to cook and others around me like it too. But the main reason I live in my small space is because it is me, a complete reflection of who I am. I am single but would never lecture others on the way they live as a family or in a communal way which I have experienced.
There, I have been Trolled and bated, bit the hook and justified my private space, where I cook, mix drinks, socialize and have alone time in my kitchen and surrounding space making up my 150 sq ft. Would I want more? Sure, I have had more but this experiment in small has made me efficient and aware of my ecological footprint without being preachy about it. It is my personal awareness of how much I need but even though I live small, a big part of my living is my private space and my kitchen warmed by a wood stove and with bread baking in my 70 year old stove.

52

I knew a guy in college who was a Marxist. He was always giving me shit for being a feminist. He believed there was no need for feminism. Turns out he was an obscenely wealthy, white, heterosexual male (with a major trust fund). Of course the rich can be Marxists who want everyone to live without because they've never had to! I will never forget that guy. He teaches at a university in Vancouver, B.C. now and is married with two boys. I wonder if he is raising them to be privileged little Marxists, too, and if he lectures his wife on the non-necessity of feminism.

53

Also is anyone is interested Netfliix's Maniac series has a great take on the living/working arrangement, with a corporation where people sign lifetime contracts to perform work and in exchange they receive a cot to sleep on (the rooms are set up with as many cot/bunk beds to a room as possible) and three meals a day (which they eat on their cots). I can't remember the program/corporation and I can't easily find it on the internet. Anyway, it's not worth watching just for that detail, but this article definitely made me think of it.

54

@51

If your wood-burning stove is 70 years old, then it isn't an efficient one, and it's not EPA-certified. Carbon-neutral it may be (if you are certain your wood supply is sustainably sourced) but non-polluting it most certainly isn't; burning wood for heat or cooking is a major source of the kind of particulate pollution that causes human and wildlife health problems, in addition to other sorts of environmental damage.

The Puget Sound Clean Air Agency has a lot so say about old wood-burning stoves:

https://www.pscleanair.org/325/Burning-Basics

You could cut your pollution by almost 90% by switching to an EPA-certified pellet stove:

https://www.pscleanair.org/DocumentCenter/View/2433/Heating-Choice-Comparison-Chart---Annual-Emissions-PDF?bidId=

...or, of course, you could just stick with the romance and relative carbon neutrality of the old antique. You'd be in good company, I think-- there are a lot of good people these days who are looking for a simpler and more authentic life and are willing to pay a bit of a price for it (in dollar terms or otherwise) and a lot of good people whose environmental awareness begins and ends with "carbon footprint."

55

2 words: filthy pigs. And a LOT of people are filthy pigs. Few things are grosser than living with people who don't clean up after themselves and that is why the idea of sharing a kitchen and/or bathroom with several strangers is so sickening to me. I will never support the idea of sharing space with people who create filth and leave it to me to clean it up.

56

@52

If you can handle a long, depressing book these days (and I know I can't) then have a look at Doris Lessing's "The Golden Notebook." You'd find it unpleasantly familiar, I think.

Second wave radical feminism was in large part a response to patriarchy inside the radical left at the time. Free Love was neither free nor love, according to the contemporary feminist critique, and it's hard to find fault with that analysis.

Those women were some of the first groups to break the near-monopoly that Marxist/Leninist philosophy and organizational structure held on the left (or its radical wing, at least) and they invented a lot of the non-hierarchical organizational approaches that have since been adopted by present-day anarchists.

57

@56 Thanks for the comment and no I cannot take a long, depressing book right now. I'm hanging on by a very thin and very worn thread.

58

@55 I am right there with you!

59

Oh great, this is so bad that even Teddy climbed out of the spider hole on a weekend to comment.

60

@11: People do things all the time which aren't aligned with their economic reality.

61

Fun fact/non-sequiter: Seattle once had the highest percentage of electric stoves of any city on the country. It probably still does, but no one is keeping track anymore.

On a somewhat more relevant note, the average Seattleite is using less electricity than he/she/they did fifty years ago. Most of that has to do with better insulation and improvements in energy efficiency, particularly for appliances and lighting.

62

Finally! Charles Mudede, you've written something I think is whack. yup, i usually wildly agree with you but PLEASE stop marching us into rat ghettos that will be bad for our mental health. I cook lots and waste VERY LITTLE. I also do it in a tiny (too tiny) space, powered by I'll stick to my own eco-way of preparing food (ya know, the way MOST OF THE WORLD DOES!!!). Ugh. Mon dieu, you're reaching on this one, Charles. PS- there was a time when the kitchen was the sanctuary of the the home, before both parents (in two-parent households) were commanded by marketers and brutal capitalism to work all day. It was a very special place where socializing, camaraderie and food prep/eating happened in a communal albeit more nuclear-family-like manner. We need more of that, not less. I do not want or need the community to become my hearth and family, thanks.

63

Finally! Charles Mudede, you've written something I think is whack. yup, I usually wildly agree with you but PLEASE stop marching us into rat ghettos that will be bad for our mental health. I cook lots and waste VERY LITTLE. I also do it in a tiny (too tiny) space, powered by hydro-power. I'll stick to my own eco-way of preparing food (ya know, the way MOST OF THE WORLD DOES!!!). Ugh. Mon dieu, you're reaching on this one, Charles. PS- there was a time when the kitchen was the sanctuary of the the home, before both parents (in two-parent households) were commanded by marketers and brutal capitalism to work outside the home all day. The kitchen was a very special place where socializing, camaraderie and food prep/eating happened in a communal -albeit more nuclear-family-like- manner. We need more of that, not less. I do not want or need the community to become my hearth and family, thanks.

64

Counting only apartments built 2008-2011, during the economic downturn makes for a really weird and biased dataset. And I need to eat cheap and healthy, which requires a kitchen. Let's not forget the very ancient, universal symbolism of hearth as center of home. I don't need a bazillion square feet, but it's the 21st century and I insist on my own kitchen and bath, for sanitary reasons if nothing else.

65

@61

I know it's not polite to speak of this at your present employer, but a large chunk of that long-term shift in Seattle's electricity use is due to the drop in the price of natural gas relative to oil, and consequent switch (particularly in new construction/renovation) from oil+electric+electric to gas+gas+gas for heat+hot water+cooking.

The high-tech lightbulbs are all well and good, but the lion's share of home energy use is in heating and cooling, and most of the rest is in the large appliances that regulate temperature (hot water heater, clothes dryer, fridge, dishwasher, oven/range) -- not lighting or small appliances.

66

@ 51
I did not say my wood burning stove is 70 years old. I said my stove for cooking is. But I can see from the way I worded my post that it could sound confusing.
So my old cooking stove I reclaimed and reconditioned and is simple and efficient.
My wood burning stove is an extremely efficient small cast iron wood stove made in the UK. and conforms to all regulations here in Canada. In fact it surpasses them. I also use it to heat water for showers and washing dishes since it is a source of heat.

67

@55 Right on. Exactly. Charles Mudede is on another planet on this one.

68

robotslave dear, what you say is true in the traditional single-family housing market (assuming there is natural gas available in the area, which is not always the case - especially in the south end), but standalone single-family homes are fewer and fewer in the SCL service area. When they are built, they are mostly just replacement housing for existing parcels (many of which previously had gas heat, where available).

When you get into townhomes, and apartment buildings, electric heat is still the norm - particularly with the advances in heat pump technology, which gives the homeowner/renter zonal heating and cooling (and is sometimes incentivized).

Some of the higher end townhome developments have gas heating, but what I have mostly seen in my decade plus of residential customer construction, is electric everything for lower end stuff and electric heat/hot water with a gas stove (with sometimes a gas fireplace) in the higher priced stuff.

The city's energy code (which, somewhat surprisingly, has very little to do with SCL) is heavily slanted towards electric/renewable energy, and discourages gas space or water heating - and expect that to increase in the future.

69

It's no surprise that apartments here would be smaller than in NY. The kind of people living in apartments here are different. Most of Seattle is still single-family housing, and the comparatively well-off and many families live in SF homes. Apartments are disproportionately occupied by young people, singles and the poor, groups who tend to want/need (or can only afford) smaller spaces. This is true of most of the West Coast. In New York, most people live in apartments, including the rich and those with big families. That is bound to push up the average apartment size. Also, for Charles' edification, every single one of the NY apartments I have been in, including some at about 400 sf, had full kitchens that fit just fine. Small appliances, sure, but they all had stoves, fridges, and sinks.

70

@66

Ah, OK. In that case, you'd only cut your particulate pollution by 70% if you switched to a pellet stove. They're not as aesthetically appealing, and you don't get all the romance of splitting and stacking and carrying wood, but they do rather noticeably cut pollution.

An old gas range/oven, even refurbished, is going to be much less efficient than a modern one, particularly if it uses pilot lights (almost certain for a unit made in the mid-1940s). This would be true for an electric unit as well-- older ovens just weren't insulated nearly as well as they are today. But again, a new stove just isn't going to have the aesthetic appeal or romance of a restored vintage Wedgewood or OKeefe & Merrit or AGA or what have you, and probably won't last as long, either.

71

@7 The article's writer was never a public intellectual, much less an intellectual. He would not be very happy without a private kitchen, either, and/or unless a woman were cooking regular meals for him. He is a study in sublimated rage and confusion. There's something good about everyone, though, and I'm sure he has his positive points. His current job does not allow those points to shine.

72

@68

In the end every home will be all-electric, there's no way around it, so I can hardly fault the city for prioritizing it. For the time being, though, this is still a place deeply and stubbornly attached to its standalone single-family homes, even in the face of all the new multi-unit construction, and despite every effort to move things along and ease a grumpy populace into a more urban lifestyle and outlook.

73

@4 & 64, you nailed it. I am so disgusted with Charles Mudede right now. Maybe, he's working for the rich developers now?!

74

Maybe what Mr. Mudede is doing with this article is providing a sample of what life in the future under the full control of the Socialist Alternative Party will be like. A total end to individuality and any sort of private life. No more living on your own, no more traveling on your own, everything mass transit. In fact the individual would no longer exist; young people would live in a barracks type environment, kitchens wouldn't be necessary, people would eat in cafeterias. That's the whole idea of mass urbanization.

75

The other thing is that I don't even see why this is even an issue. Micro kitchens are everywhere, and that's without having to resort to buying any ultra-kawaii Japanese kitchen appliances. This isn't any more of an extravagance than a closet. Although ... I suppose only capitalists need closets. E.g. https://housely.com/micro-kitchen/

76

The problem with the combination of shared kitchen + total strangers is that total strangers will eat your food and not replace it or take responsibility for doing it. You can't ever rely on cooking a meal and coming home and opening the fridge or freezer and finding it still there. (Sometimes coworkers, family, housemates, and people you do know will do this too, but in my experience it hasn't been as common.)

If you're on a budget or in a difficult financial situation, someone eating your food can mean that you just don't eat breakfast, lunch, or dinner that day (or even all three) which feels pretty awful.

Forget about leaving your cast iron pan in the common area... someone will inevitably use it without asking & then put it in the dishwasher, ruining it forever.

77

back east these were called sro's-single room occupancy buildings. they were the most wretched places you ever saw.

78

There already are small living spaces with no kitchen. They're called hotels...

79

escapefromchicago, we used to have SRO’s. Then this happened. https://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Ozark-Hotel-fire-unsolved-1971-Seattle-blaze-4401146.php

80

I'm having a little Poe's Law trouble here.

81

Another dumpster fire hot take from Charles Mudede. What a surprise.

Do you know what else humans shared when they shared kitchens? Pathogens. So instead of one household getting sick from bad food handling or foodborne illness, you had dozens of people getting sick. Socialism in action, surely!

Charles' take on economics are those of the sort of fellow who never got moved from 101 to 102. He made a gentlemanly skim of Smith, Marx and Keynes, but found the Austrian stuff "too boring" or "too problematic" to process, which leads us to articles like this.

82

@46 mmmm.... durian...

83

Shared kitchen space is a harbinger of over population.

84

Charles and his family live in a single occupancy home on Beacon Hill. I think that's all that needs to be said

85

re: @53 it wasn't Maniac that had "the worry free life" (sign a lifetime contract and you always have work and three hots and a cot) it was the film Sorry to Bother You.

86

robotslave, while what you say is true in the more affluent neighborhoods, there are vast swaths of residential neighborhoods that have been radically transformed in the last ten years or so: North Beacon Hill, lower Ballard, Lake City, Delridge, the Huling Tract in West Seattle, Licton Springs, Northgate, Lake City, Columbia City - all of them have had dozens of blocks of single-family homes demolished in favor of townhomes and apartment buildings. Established multi-family neighborhoods like First and Capitol Hills, Queen Anne and South Lake Union/Denny Regrade have seen explosive development.

People like to wring their hands over the single-family "problem", but take a look around. In ten years, Rainier Avenue from Jackson to MLK will be unrecognizable because of all the ongoing and planned development - Just as MLK south of Rainier is now, compared to fifteen years ago.

87

Shared kitchens = hostile arguments
Shared kitchens = post it notes
Shared kitchens = annoying smells
Shared kitchens = waiting for someone to move out of the way
Shared kitchens = drama

88

@1:

When we began leasing our current office space the kitchen area had this weird 1960's era combo unit with a two burner stove top, small oven, fridge, and sink all consolidated into a single cabinet roughly 48"Wx38"Hx34"d (estimating here). It was the smallest complete set-up I've ever seen aside from living on a boat.

Speaking of which: look at the galley of any small sailboat or heck even a VW camper: you get all the basics: stove top, oven, refer, and sink; all in a space smaller than a typical office desk. You're not going to be able to cook Thanksgiving dinner for 8, but for a single person all you would really need to do is add a microwave and you have a completely workable space, so it's not like this is a particularly new or novel idea.

89

That is a goddamned good looking classy kitchen in the title image. Reminds me a little of the aesthetic of the back dining room at local 360. Only thing is it appears all prep work must be done facing a white tile wall? A prep-focused island would make that room complete.

I didn't read the article, but I suspect Charles is advocating that everyone focus on making their kitchen awesome? Sounds like a plan!

90

12 So public bathrooms are also a bad idea? Public beaches, too, and while we are at it....

91

Cooking and eating are things everyone does everyday, so it only makes sense to centralize things rather than: every single human has one single stove and cooks one single meal in one single house.
We currently outsource and centralize so many common aspects of our lives that the objections to this suggestion ring totally hollow. Cowardly, really.

92

These horrible micro apartments remind me of the scene in Dr. Zhivago when Yuri returns from WWI to find his family home in Moscow over run and dilapidated and is scolded by comrade kaprugina: "There was living space for thirteen families in this one house!" Yuri responds: "Yes, yes, this is a better arrangement, comrades, more just."

The personal life is dead in Seattle. Progressives have killed it.

93

Just stop, chuckles. You are more useless than a scratched non-stick frying pan.

94

@70

"Ah, OK. In that case, you'd only cut your particulate pollution by 70% if you switched to a pellet stove."

I never said I had a pellet stove. I said it is a UK made "WOOD STOVE"

the older gas cooking stove is as well built and well insulated and as I said refurbished which means updated to todays standards. It has lasted 70 years so I have no idea why you would think it is going to fail all of a sudden after a great restoration.You have never seen it and keep assuming too much.
Also I never mentioned anything about it using pilot lights, it doesn't.
Time to let it go. It is all good.

96

@94

I don't think you've understood the point about wood stoves. Even modern, efficient wood stoves pollute significantly more than pellet stoves. Go look at the links again.

And no, I don't believe you've added an extra inch of insulation and changed the engineering of the seals on that vintage gas stove... which I suggested would probably last LONGER than a new one, fwiw.

You are making tradeoffs, just like everyone else. You could be more environmentally friendly, if that were your primary goal, but only by giving up the aesthetics and romance of your current appliances.

I'm not demanding that you give up your aesthetic comforts. I'm telling you that your choices have consequences, just like everyone else's.

97

@92.... You are absolutely correct with the "Dr. Zhivago" reference. Before too long with the growing homeless population those with homes will be taking in roommates from among the homeless; the city council will be enforcing this. Shared bathrooms will be the order of the day also; you will be legally obliged to let someone use your bathroom if they ask. And, according to Strellnikov, the days of the bourgeoise private life will indeed be over.

98

I Love Charles’ invocation of a classic false dichotomy: either you pay for a large(r) apartment, or no kitchen for you!

I lived most of two decades on Capitol Hill (Pike-Pine, toward the downtown end) in an apartment which might have been all of 375 sq. ft. It had a large, walk-in closet (from two directions!) and a full kitchen; an 11’ ceiling meant plenty of shelf space in both closet and kitchen. Cooking meals in there saved me plenty of money in my early career days.

99

I can't tell whether Charles is remarkably arrogant or hopelessly naive. Does he think that there will be perfect harmony when it comes to who gets what sections of the fridge / freezer / cabinets? In his imagination are these shared kitchens made larger by developers to accommodate the use by multiple people who are not roommates? Has he never had a roommate with whom there was a dispute over cleaning, access to communal resources, care of pots and pans, etc? What happens when someone sets a hot pan on the countertop and scorches the formica, or chops something without a cutting board, then does not own up to the damage they cause?
Also, without space to store much food, that means multiple trips to the grocery store during the week. Even if the store is located conveniently near your place a short trip can easily eat up 30-45 minutes.
But none of this matters or occurs in Charles mind as long as a major reduction in quality of housing can be spun as a communal feature.

100

@99 It may be that Charles imagines efficiencies of scale in the shared cooking spaces of the future, perhaps with communal ovens (1), or refrigeration similar to co-lo's (2) of the tech boom era. It may be that he envisions an impending future of advanced logistics and just-in-time provisioning such that necessary food items simply appear as needed, with virtually no on-site storage.

Ultimately, I am not sure it matters that much, as the point of this piece appears to be more about contemplating privacy vs. community and the allocation of global resources when it comes to food. In short, this is more like someone asking us to contemplate that assured future when we'll all be communist vegans, not someone inflicting the commune on us now.

1 - https://food52.com/blog/17568-the-centuries-old-form-of-public-cooking-that-s-making-a-comeback
2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colocation_centre

101

@90 -so I can presume you're either in - or planning to move into - public housing?

"Whoa, man, let's not get carried away, here!"

102

Chuck apparently longs for the "communal kitchen" of his heritage. An old oil drum with a grate over it (perfect for roasting bush meat over a charcoal fire) with mud daub, corrugated tin, and cardboard paneled shanty shacks encircling it. It coordinates perfectly with the open sewer ditch, or "communal bathroom," that flows past it. He obviously longs for home... We should start a GoFundMe Page to send him home.

103

Charles you do realize that restaurants are a biproduct of capitalism right? (You know that thing you blame for everything wrong in the universe??)

104

Charles is to economics and journalism as Donald Trump is to statecraft.

105

@96
you assume too much!


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