Credit: Mark Kaufman

Ever since my days as the city’s public intern, I’ve been the go-to
guy for all tasks tedious, nauseating, and mundane. That’s why The
Stranger asked me to spend the entirety of opening day riding the
light rail. I did it for six hours. Most of what I saw on the train
were people’s legs, people’s arms, people’s screaming children, people
crowing “Smooth!” “Comfy!” “Convenient!” and Sound Transit employees
glaring at me as I tried to take notes. Parents were letting their
children roam freely, and one climbed on my head. Later, I saw a girl
simultaneously Twittering and Facebook-status-updating the journey on
her iPhone. “Aren’t you excited?” she asked. I smiled weakly and
nodded. But she did have a point: This thing is better than buses, it
gets places fast, and it takes you to locales you never knew existed.
For example:

• The enormous Franz bakery sign that you can see when
you get out at Sodo Station and walk around. I’d gotten out at the
stadium stop and walked around there, too, but all there was to look at
were warehouses, parked buses, parking lots, Safeco Field, Qwest Field,
graffiti, and traffic—all of it begged me to get back on the
train. Between stations, the automated-train-voice woman announced:
“The next station is Sodo.” Judging from her voice, she sounded
well-rested and generally ready to take on the day, like a perky
character in a poorly acted film. (The woman who narrates the opening
of San Francisco’s BART doors always sounds vaguely annoyed by
something out of her control, like a fly she can hear but can’t trap.
Her movie is a tragedy. I like it better.) Though not as depressing as
the stadium stop, the Sodo stop is an odd one, too. To your right you
can see the post-office central headquarters and an Arby’s. To your
left: Beacon Hill. I walked around a bit, noticing the generic
buildings that compose the guts of our city, the aforementioned
enormous Franz bakery sign (imposing, hunger-inducing), and the
terribly color-coordinated Tully’s headquarters.

• The train rises over Sodo, nearly hitting the Franz bakery
sign, and swoops over I-5 before jetting into a tunnel, which is where
the Beacon Hill Station is: underground. After taking the elevator up
(it’s fast!), you can walk around and see one of the few remaining
Red Apple Markets, adjacent to a Latino cultural arts center and
kitty-corner from a hair salon. My memories of Red Apple involve the
one that used to be near Oak Tree Cinemas, where a man once stole my
mom’s Honda Odyssey. For this reason, Red Apple conjures up conflicting
feelings: hunger for delicious produce on one hand, fear of carjacking
on the other.

• The University of Washington Consolidated Laundry
Operations depot—I’m guessing they clean lab coats, athletic
apparel, and Mark Emmert’s dirty bed sheets—is near a Firestone
tire store, both of which are under the Mount Baker Station. Across the
street is Franklin High School. You’ll probably want to get out here
and walk around because Franklin High School looks improbably beautiful
from the station. But be warned: The entire area is pedestrian-hostile.
Cars zoom by, and there are few crosswalks. If you don’t want to buy a
tire, check out the jocks at Franklin High, or sit in a noisy Starbucks
in the center of a large intersection, Mount Baker has nothing for
you.

• A store that sells only car-related books. I spotted
it while walking down Rainier Avenue South, near the Columbia City
Station. Inside, you’ll find people who need to reprogram their car’s
air-conditioning. When light rail’s completely finished, I wonder if
we’ll need to worry about such things.

• A pho restaurant in a strip mall called King’s Center,
near the Othello station. There’s no empty table, so the owner squeezes
me in at a table where a 10-year-old girl is playing a game on her cell
phone. We stare at each other briefly. There’s a Vietnamese couple
sitting next to us and a group of rowdy teenagers sitting next to them.
I order a whole bunch of things I don’t usually order at pho
restaurants (chicken, something, vermicelli, this other thing), and
it’s delicious. As I walk back to the train, I pass an Ethiopian church
and a refugee center. I wonder, briefly, if anyone there knows the
Ethiopian man I used to tutor at Seattle Central. I think he lives near
Othello. I miss him.

• South of the Othello and Rainier Beach stations (abandoned
buildings, a furniture-rental store, enormous power lines, piles of
dirt, a high school), the train flies through trees, over the Metro bus
headquarters and the city’s muddiest river, before gliding along next
to I-5. We are nearing the mothership: the Tukwila International Blvd
Station. Entertainment in Tukwila runs the gamut from cashing checks at
Moneytree to watching freeway traffic. I wander into an Indian
grocery store called Bollywood Videos & Groceries, which smells
like Clorox. I briefly consider buying The Rhythms of Punjab on
DVD (Indian version of Backstreet Boys). The store’s owner, sensing I
might not be in her shop for nonironic purposes, is appropriately
hostile.

• On the train back to Westlake Center, I sit next to a more
diverse group of people than I ever see in my regular life: an
African-American couple from Rainier Beach, two Vietnamese women from
Othello, a lesbian couple from Capitol Hill, and a Somali family from
Beacon Hill. Most of them are talking to each other. Just like in a
real city. recommended

22 replies on “Oh, the Places We’ll Go”

  3. ” I sit next to a more diverse group of people than I ever see in my regular life: an African-American couple from Rainier Beach, two Vietnamese women from Othello, a lesbian couple from Capitol Hill, and a Somali family from Beacon Hill.”

    Yep. Ballard.

  4. I’m a little pissed off that I didn’t get to see the magical land of beat-up old trucks and trashy houses alluded to in the first article. All I saw between the last Seattle stop and Tukwila Int’l Blvd was a marginally awesome Buddhist temple complex and some underwhelming apartment buildings.

    Where’s my hidden redneck Shangri-La, Stranger staffers? I want my extra 25 cents and five-minute wait in Tukwila back.

  6. Sorry dawg,
    There is nothing diverse about lesbians on capital hill, or somali’s in Beacon hill, or blacks in Rainier Beach. Call me back when you see a mixed-race gay couple from Northgate, then we’re on to something.

  9. Pondering automobile air-conditioning and “wonder[ing] if we’ll need to worry about such things” makes one wonder if the writer has ever visited, say, New York, Chicago, Washington DC, London, Berlin, Paris, Tokyo, and a bunch of other cities that actually have “completely finished” (or nearly so) rail-based transport. Those places are still full of cars, in spite of a lot of effort put into discouraging their ownership and use. We’ll be worrying about car repairs and similar such things for a long time to come, given how long it’s already taken for the light-rail line Seattle now (finally) has, limitations and all.

  10. @9

    Two ways to counter your idiotic point:

    1) We all wonder about shit we know probably won’t happen. How many times have people wondered about losing 20lbs or screwing the math teacher without letting logic get in the way?

    2) A lot of those cities in Europe also don’t allow cars in the city center. Walking, biking, and transit are the only ways to get around in the city centers (centres?). With completed light rail lines, that’s completely plausible in Seattle, though unlikely.

  11. How did the dear author miss the gem that is Trudy’s Bar just a block from the station? The beer was cold the whiskey poured generously.

  12. Sweet Jesus on Wheatbread! Is this what I think it is? A Stranger article that doesn’t:
    A) Give head to the Stranger
    B) Point out how everything involved in said article sucks except for the article itself
    C) Wish everyone on the Eastside were dead

    Dear Lord, what fresh hell are we in for just so that we may enjoy one article without Lindy West wishing someone dead or Charles Mudede talking about how cool he is? Truly, this is like some rare, precious gemstone or baby, to be protected with all our collective might. And good on you, Blum, for a fantastic article about Light Rail.

  15. @13: Why read the slog if you’re only going to do what The Stranger tells you? I have every right to bitch about The Stranger, and in return my readership garners advertising dollars which keeps The Stranger in production. Sure, I could just sit back, saying “Yep, that certainly is right, Stranger,” contributing nothing. But I’m going to call a spade a spade on this one. Don’t deny that what I’m saying is the truth, if a little bit flavored. Look through The Stranger, I only speak in truths, general or otherwise.

  17. The existence of light rail will expand most people’s universe.

    If you’re a car driver, maybe not so much.

    But for all the rest of us, it leads you to places you’ve never been to before.

    When I started using the light rail in Vancouver BC – two years after it started operating, which is strange as I lived two blocks from a station – I started going to places I’d never been on whims. Just get off at a different station and look around – especially if I saw something interesting while whizzing past above it.

  18. I have a few words regarding the light rail.

    DO NOT CARE.

    Bamn.

    I don’t care about the light rail….I’m waiting ‘Till the day that I can zip around the sky like our main man….Mr. Bionic Commando.

    When I have a grappling hook for and arm…with a cool as FUCK extending tube thingy….THEN we’ll talk……….

  19. “…sensing I might not be in her shop for nonironic purposes…” is one of the most awkward sentence construction I have ever encountered. And I have worked as a writing tutor/TA. Tip for the future: try to avoid double-negatives.

  21. “When light rail’s completely finished, I wonder if we’ll need to worry about such things.”

    This is a perfect example of the entitlement mentality which is ruining this country, why should anyone have to pay for transportation when the government can subsidize it for you?

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