The Munson Motel’s unassuming courtyard, surrounded by squat
bungalows that rent for $50 per night, sits just on the edge of East
Marginal Way South in Georgetown. In 2006, this was the scene of a
brutal stabbing. As has been widely reported, two women—one 23,
the other 31—rented a room with a man to smoke crack. At one
point, the 23-year-old woman disappeared into a bathroom with the man
and then came out naked, bleeding, and screaming after he’d stabbed her
multiple times. The 31-year-old woman was also stabbed in the chest.
Police arrested the man, half-naked and covered in blood, in the motel
parking lot. “We heard her screams all through the night,” remembers
Roger Lloyd, who lives around the corner from the Munson.
These days, the neighborhood isn’t any safer. Neighbors complain
that the illegal activity in Georgetown has only been intensifying
lately. “Having been here for over nine years, things are more active
than they’ve been in quite a while,” Georgetown resident Sacha Davis
wrote in an e-mail to other neighbors in late June. “The issue is the
motels and who they rent to.” Davis and her neighbors point to the
Munson Motel, Airlane Motel, Aero Motel, and La Hacienda
Motel—all of them on or near East Marginal Way South—as the
source of problems in the neighborhood.
The other night, I decided to check out the motels for myself, which
is how I ended up at the Munson’s front desk. A man is sitting behind a
thick glass window with a metal tray at the bottom, like a bank teller.
Under city law, hotel and motel guests are required to show government
ID at check-in. To test how closely Georgetown motels are following the
rules, I tell him I don’t have ID. For a moment it seems like he might
let me in without it, but as I pull cash out of my wallet, he gets
visibly nervous and asks if I can show ID. After some back-and-forth, I
leave.
Next stop is the Airlane Motel, right next door. It’s a large white
boarding house with green trim and peeling paint. In 2002, a man in a
plain suit walked into the Airlane with a prostitute on his arm. The
man paid to check in, and the Airlane manager told the prostitute he’d
provide her with a free room if she brought more business by the motel.
Unfortunately for the owner, the man and the woman were undercover cops
posing as a prostitute and a john. Police also performed stings at the
Aero, Munson, and Airlane motels. However, neighbors say police haven’t
given the motels nearly as much attention in recent years.
At Airlane’s front entrance is a small bespectacled man, also
sitting behind grimy Plexiglas. I ask for a room, and again, I’m asked
for ID. I tell him I don’t have mine with me and lay a small wad of
bills on the counter. I offer to show a credit card with my name on it.
Eyeing the wad of bills, he asks if I have anything other than a credit
card. No, I say, handing him the credit card. The man looks at the
bills, looks at me, dials someone on the phone, hangs up, exasperatedly
runs his hand through his gray hair, slips two forms through a slot in
the window, and hands over a room key.
Up in the room, the chairs, curtains, and sheets have cigarette
burns on them. The sheets have dark spots on them (possibly dried
blood), and in the drawer someone has written in green marker: “For the
next person who get this room you gonna have bad 4 crack headz.” In the
hallway, the man from the front desk firmly tells a young woman,
“You’ve got to go. I don’t want a problem.”
Looking out the window of the room at about 9:30 p.m., I see a
dark-colored Buick pull up next to the corner of Myrtle Street and
Flora Avenue South. As the driver puts his hazard lights on, a woman in
tight pants and heels slinks out of a shadowy alley across the street.
She bends over next to the passenger-side window, talks to the man in
the car for a moment, gets in, and they drive away.
Later, I find a Seattle police officer parked behind the motel. I
ask him whether neighbors are right about problems in the area. He
nods, seeming annoyed by such an obvious question. Although these
motels all have prominently posted signs prohibiting drugs,
prostitutes, or weapons, the officer says that problems are still
present—and equally distributed—among the motels around
East Marginal Way South.
A ccording to Larry—the man working the front desk at the
Airlane (he wouldn’t give a last name)—motel owners can’t be held
responsible for problems in the area. “If they’re not here, they’re
going to be somewhere else,” he says. “It’s the nature of the
clientele”—whom Larry describes as “drug dealers, hookers,
run-of-the-mill lowlifes.” Larry adds that the Airlane will be closing
up shop sometime “soon.”
In the last two years, the police have cracked down on problem
motels in North Seattle, checking to make sure each guest is properly
ID’d and passing on major health violations to the state Department of
Health to get businesses shut down. But for whatever reason, SPD hasn’t
taken up the same tactics in Georgetown.
Seattle Police Department spokesman Sean Whitcomb says police are
aware of “a lot of the concerns… focused around East Marginal Way
South motels.” But he says most of the calls that police get about
activity in the area are for “lower-priority calls like loitering and
suspicious circumstances, not in-progress violence.” In May, police met
with several motel owners to discuss community concerns. However,
Whitcomb was “not aware” of any police actions directed at motels
similar to those directed at motels along Aurora Avenue.
According to city council member Tim Burgess, the reason police may
not be actively pursuing Georgetown motels is because the city’s
current system for dealing with problem properties “doesn’t work” and
“police are very reluctant to use it.” Burgess is currently working on
legislation that would make it easier for police to build criminal
cases against problem-motel owners.
Relief can’t come soon enough for Georgetown residents, who believe
their industrial neighborhood—bordered by I-5, the polluted
Duwamish River, Boeing Field, and railroad tracks—has become
largely forgotten in the South Precinct, where officers are already
struggling to deal with gang-related issues. Last month, gang
detectives were dispatched to a shooting at the La Hacienda Motel after
an argument between two men inside a room escalated into a
shooting.
Neighbors say that street prostitution and open drug dealing have
become all too common in Georgetown. (Although The Stranger endorses the legalization and regulation of sex work, street
prostitution is another matter. People involved in street prostitution
are often addicted to drugs or forced to work out of fear of violent,
controlling pimps.) Sitting inside the Coliman restaurant—next to
the Munson Motel and not far from John’s Deli Market (with its sign
advertising “groceries, cigarettes, knives, and adult
movies”)—Kathy Nyland and six of her neighbors exasperatedly
share horror stories about living next door to Georgetown’s motels.
“I’ve seen many a blowjob in front of our kitchen window,” says Nyland.
Her partner, Georgetown Community Council chair Holly Krejci, recalls
coming home to find two people sleeping on her lawn. She refers to the
couple as “yard art.”
Kelly Welker tells her neighbors about the time she watched a white
van pull up near her house and a man push three half-naked women out
onto the street. Julie Johnson and Roger Lloyd relate a story about
watching police chase and Taser someone in their backyard. The whole
room cracks up when Nyland recalls a May 13 meeting with motel owners
where, Nyland says, one hotel manager assured her that they “don’t take
in the really bad prostitutes and the drug dealers.”
“It isn’t acceptable in any neighborhood,” Welker says. “We
shouldn’t tolerate it [just] because we’re industrial and gritty.”
so this is why you weren’t at slog happy, mr. spaghetti-lee!
yes, Georgetown has some problems, but things are way better then a few years ago. that has been the result of many people keeping an eye out, and staying in touch informally, and less about that same couple of people that end up in the media.
Crime is the least problem Georgetown has right now.
As I understand it, Georgetown has the worst air quality in the state and the highest per capita cases of asthma.
I love g-town but love my lungs more…
When your readership is in decline, write a story on seedy motels. It works for the television stations during ratings week:
Alexa Trend/Rank: #15,338: Down 229 ranks over the last three months.
Compete Rank: #7,400 with 270,197 U.S. visitors per month
Quantcast Rank: #5,876
Gosh, it’s almost like there’s a reason that digs are so cheap down there. Who’d have thought it?
Well, at least Georgetown hasn’t been cursed by the gentrification that has afflicted other formerly run-down and violent neighborhoods like Columbia City. Aren’t street hookers and yard sleepers part of the charm?
@ 6 – what is charming about feeling unsafe in your own home?
Where the hell is Georgetown?
On the north side of the Potomac from Washington D.C.
Time to move to Allentown!!
If anybody’s unhappy or nervous about living in Georgetown, I’d be happy to “trade down” with them.
So there are hookers there – COOL! It’s a FEATURE! I could use the occasional after-hours blowjob and a chance to help out a working girl who clearly could use the money and the help.
None of the events cited in the article even qualify, in my view, as being even remotely “dangerous”. If you’re worried about youyr place getting broken into, get a loud (but harmless) dog.
Better yet – make friends with some of the local “working girls” and slip them a few bucks to keep an eye on your place when you’re not there.
You’ll appreciate someone keeping a watchful eye on the goings-on in the neighborhood (which is the best way to keep a neighborhood safe).
They’ll appreciate the financial assistance. Even more so, they’ll appreciate the chance to have a good relationship with someone who lives in the neighborhood and who understands that the working girls are just trying to survive, instead of being hounded by people who insist on sticking their noses into other peoples’ business, and into other peoples’ sex lives.
Are you kiddding – this is not news.
I have friends who com to town twice a month, and they ALWAYS stay in the area, cheap, cheap , cheap – and ten minutes from the hill or downtown.
The sleep and shower, all goes well. Why pay 250.00 a night?
OH, a whore, oh, a whore. Sounds like the WESTIN or ALEXIS bar.
Pathetic piece, who cares.
Stanger needs an editor.
To those mocking the neighbors for not wanting hookers and drug deals in front of their homes…… We’re talking about families, regular people trying to raise children in a safe place. Think about your upbringing, and I’m willing to bet it didn’t include blow jobs and crack pipes out your bedroom window. And if it did, well, we’re all quite sorry. But really, let’s get serious… kids should be able to ride their bikes on the sidewalk without swerving to avoid used condoms.
Thanks to the Stranger for writing this. The police don’t seem to want to be involved, so attempting to embarass the hotel managers/owners seems like the only thing left to do!!
I enjoy the occasional blow-job at Georgetown. Please don’t try and change the “flavor” of another classic Seattle neighborhood or yuppify another sexual free zone. Besides, it’s quite interracial and diverse- more than I can say about, say, Queen Anne Hill or Wallingford.
To “NEIGHBOR OF GEORGETOWN”:
RE: “To those mocking the neighbors for not wanting hookers and drug deals in front of their homes…… We’re talking about families, regular people trying to raise children in a safe place.”
Excuse me but I have to ask: How many people have ever been killed, maimed or seriously injured from accidentally coming across a hooker giving a guy a blowjob?
I am not merely being sarcastic here. As difficult as it may be for some to grasp, prostitutes ARE REGULAR PEOPLE, too. And whether you happen to like it or not, they’re a part of your community, too.
People have an extremely ignorant and superficial habit of lumping “working girls” into one of two categories:
CATEGORY ‘A’: The “vile, depraved, thievin’, disease-spreading home-wrecker”,
or:
CATEGORY ‘B’: The “Fallen Angel With A Heart of Gold” (See: “Pretty Woman”)
In reality, the vast majority of hookers do not fall into either one of these fabricated and silly categories.
Many of them suffered extensive and horrifying physical, emotional and sexual abuse at the hands of so-called “loved ones” who were supposed to protect and care for them.
Many of them still try to numb their pain through alcohol or drugs, or suffer from chemical dependencies.
Many of them also have children of their own whom they are trying to raise.
They are no different from anyone else — they have their share of personal problems that they’re trying to work through. The only difference is that the natures of their problems are more glaringly obvious, more difficult and complex, and more in need of long-term assistance.
They don’t seek to cause problems, for you or for anyone else. Instead, they are simply trying to survive, in the only way that they can, with the only skills they have available to sell.
In fact, the only real difference between you and them is, you probably have a much more extensive (and better-paying, and more “legal”) set of skills that you bring to the marketplace in exchange for the income you require to survive and feed yourself and your family.
People living in Georgetown and don’t know how to tell the kids about condoms, don’t pick it up – tell mom and we will get it with a stick and throw it away.
Horrible, hardly. Young boys will get off on the story about hard cocks and pussy at an early age, as well.
If that is the issue, you all sound silly.
Now if the problem is guns, I feel differently.
Isn’t it possible to have compassion for prostitutes but not want to live near a spot where they ply their trade?
@17 But that begs the question who was there first the prostitutes or the douchebag who does not want to live next to them? If the squeamish person moved into the neighborhood knowing what kind of place it is then they should STFU because the new what they were getting into. If all this unsettling stuff moved into the neighborhood after this person was there, then it also begs the question – why did you let it happen? People just like to sit behind their computers and pass judgement on others….Oh wait that is me, sorry!
I wonder if it ever occurred to home-purchasers who are new to Georgetown, to ever ask themselves or their real estate agent exactly WHY homes in Georgetown were “so much more affordably priced” ?!?!
I honestly don’t know if the incidences of prostitution occurring in Georgetown were or are a relatively “new” phenomenon, or if they’ve only recently started occurring because up in North Seattle, the Aurora Avenue Merchants Association (the folks who REALLY run the police department in the North End) chased the working girls out of the North End and into SODo and Georgetown.
I can’t help but be reminded, though, of a similar situation that occurred a number of years ago. Some guy wrote a snarky letter to the Times or the P-I, complaining about the “deplorable” conditions in Belltown — where he had just moved in. (I don’t know if he was buying or renting).
He complained about “the police and aid-unit sirens going off 40 times a day due to police activity or emergencies”, the “used, soiled condoms and discarded drug syringes”, the “shock and horror” of being approached and solicited by prostitutes, etc. Yada Yada Yada.
I wrote to the newspaper and commented in a polite and regretful but extremely sarcastic tone, and asked if by any chance it had ever occurred to the fellow to check out the conditions in the neighborhood he wished to inhabit BEFORE he signed the lease agreement or the Purchase & Sale Agreement – you know, things like strolling around the neighborhood at different times of the day to get a feel for the area, talking to people who already lived there, inquiring about crime statistics at the local police station. Things like that. Basic research, in other words.
In my letter, I assured the fellow that I was not accusing him of “lying”, nor did I even remotely question or doubt the accuracy of his statements. In fact, I believed him completely.
What I had a PROBLEM with, though, was the notion that all of Belltown had somehow been involved in some kind of “vast, massive, sinister conspiracy” to “conceal its true, sleazy nature” from him until AFTER he’d signed the lease papers or the Purchase & Sale Agreement.
Call me crazy, call me callous – Hell, call me TONITE! – but I just can’t help but feel that a little thoughtful research could POSSIBLY, JUST POSSIBLY have saved him a lot of trouble down the road.
If the guy had bought into the area hoping to “gentrify” it and benefit from a big run-up in property values, he might have had to wait a while — Belltown has a long history as a tough and gritty area, and the original crusty inhabitants didn’t exactly welcome the Yuppie influx with open arms.
Of course, if he was a renter, then there was a simple solution – MOVE.
“Last month, gang detectives were dispatched to a shooting at the La Hacienda Motel after an argument between two men inside a room escalated into a shooting.”
fucking hack.
so by 18 and 19’s logic, we should just let all the crime continue on where ever it happens so long as it was already happening there? Sure, let’s just allow a murder or two since there was once a murder there. What’s the harm in that?
To “Posted by YouLiveThereIfYoureOKwithIt”:
Read the preceding comments, DumbAss. Nobody’s saying violent criminals shouldn’t be arrested or prosecuted.
Prostitution, on the other hand, is a NON-VIOLENT act.
Say that again: NON-VIOLENT.
As in, no one is harmed by the act of two people voluntarily agreeing to exchange sexual services for money.
I believe it is pointless, tragic and ultimately counter-productive to criminalize and punish non-violent, peaceful exchanges of sexual services between consenting adults. It skews the crime statistics, it needlessly wastes taxpayer resources, and it ultimately harms women who are doing nothing more than trying to survive.
Tell that to the pimps and human traffickers scumbag!
http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattle911/arc…
Seattle police say officers this week arrested a man who is accused of being a pimp of two juvenile prostitutes.
Metro Transit officers stopped two juvenile prostitutes, ages 13 and 17, Tuesday night and learned who their pimp was.
Seattle officers searched for the man and found him in the 600 block of Blanchard Street.
They arrested him and booked him into jail for promoting prostitution of a minor and for a felony warrant.
Nobody is “defending” the sexual abuse and/or molestation or trafficking of children, you clueless drooling Moron.
If the cops were not so busily engaged in harassing and hassling GROWN, ADULT men and women who were VOLUNTARILY engaging in peaceful, nonviolent, mutually beneficial exchanges of money for sexual services, maybe they’d be able to spend more time focusing on helping JUVENILE prostitutes, who are UNDERAGE and therefore COULDN’T legally “consent” to sex IN ANY CASE even if prostitution were LEGALIZED, Dumb@ss.
No wonder you have to pay for sex, what sane person would put up with your rage issues?
The consenting adults exchanging money for sex where everyone is clean, healthy, drug free and happy is rare. The sex trade is a nasty dirty business and is prone to the kind of abuses mentioned in the post above.
The reality is that even legalized there will be a lot of human trafficking, abuse by pimps, kids involved, etc. Legalizing might make more of the safer less abusive prostitution available, but it will also make it easier to hide the real nasty stuff. If the Seattle Police can’t even be bothered to catch perps that are gift wrapped with evidence, how do you think they’re going to have time to police prostitution that is now whitewashed with the veneer of legality?
Watch the Frontline piece on human trafficking and see how you feel about this topic.
I don’t personally “have to” pay for sex. And I don’t have “rage issues”, either, thanks.
The consenting adults exchanging money for sex where everyone is clean, healthy, drug free and happy is not “rare” at all. It’s quite common in the Netherlands, in Germany, France, England, Japan, Australia in Canada. All of those countries (not surprisingly) have drastically lower crime rates than the United States. The decades of experience with legalized prostitution in these countries have decisively proven that treating peaceful, non-violent exchanges of money for sexual services as being a normal, routine and healthy activity has drastically reduced or eliminated the “need” or existence of pimps, made the sex trade healthier, less dangerous and more accepted, and has had few side effects.
In places where the sex trade is “a nasty dirty business and is prone to the kind of abuses mentioned in the post above”, the worst abuses tend to occur either in places where the sex trade is criminalized (i.e. the U.S.), or in Third World countries where the poverty rate and disparity in economic wealth versus First World industrialized countries is so great, and people so desperate, that families will literally sell their own daughters into sexual work in exchange for income.
Legalizing prostitution would result in LESS human trafficking, LESS abuse by pimps and FEWER kids involved. It would also free up law enforcement resources to concentrate on the more-egregious abuses of women and children, rather than throwing grown men and women exercising free will into jails and prisons.
Legality DOES make it okay, by the way.
The reality doesn’t bear out your thesis. In Japan the sex trade is lorded over by the Yakuza who import sex slaves from Russia, Vietnam, Korea, and the Philipines. The Germans get their former Eastern Bloc sex workers through human trafficking rings.
These are not third world countries but first world nations with rule of law and the resources to keep law and order, yet the crime in that business is rampant.
I don’t really have anything against legal prostitution in theory or on any moral grounds, it’s just that the reality involves a lot of human trafficking and a lot of misery for those involved. If there was a way to do it in reality, not fantasyland, where it truly was adults trading money for sex without all these other issues, then great…but unfortunately it’s not and it’s not going to be with legalization.
Well what do you expect when you name a street “East Marginal Way South”?
Change it to Greg Nickels Blvd. and things should turn around.