"... Bellevue barely deserves to be called a city. It’s still just a glorified shopping mall."

Welcome to our brave new world: Gilded gated cities, featuring Sports Stars and Media Personalities, Billionaires, multi-Millionaires (the average Bellevue upscale homeowner) and wannabees; closed to all Riff Raff and the hoi polloi with their diseases and addictions, tar paper shacks/REI tent slums and dirt.

"The day after my Pike/Pine fuck off [/INAPPROPRIATE TOUCHING>] encounter... "

Shouldda told him you were from Bellevue.

Oh, and if you're thinking Reperations, sure why the Hell not?

trumpfy gets his second term, instead of the 400-year prison term he so richly deserves, concentration camp's be everywhere. Hey, maybe we'll all meet there!

If you're not on trumpfy's special shitole list, you're not really trying.

There's no excuse for being bedraggled.

Yeah... FDR was a real rat bastard between his fondness for concentration camps and turning away Jews fleeing the Holocaust. The Democrat party should be on the hook for reparations for his racist policies.

So you approach this (presumably) homeless person... whom you characterize as "bedraggled" who is walking in the street.
So he sees you, who is presumably neither bearded nor bedraggled, approach him and make an entreaty for his welfare, an expression of concern, a human gesture.
To which he responds with a corresponding gesture, a universally recognized non-verbal recognition of common humanity.
To which you scold him?
You, from your position of relative power, privilege, entitlement, what the fuck, have the nerve to lecture him on etiquette?
I'd say that was a well-deserved Fuck You.

Agree, kallipugos@7. Having to ask before patting someone on the back. Rest of the article wasn’t worth reading after that.

@5
"Democratic". Why do you hate the English language?

Nothing about Bellevue redlining and excluding minorities from buying houses up until the 70s?

Bellevue is a scary place. I've seen the Zombie Mall Walkers, swinging their arms, kicking anyone or anything that gets too close, droning over & over "Gotta get to The Mall, to The Mall, to The Mall...!"

The best part is where you describe your fear and disgust at having a homeless person dare to touch you after you told him to get out of the street.

I don't think the author has been anywhere in Bellevue besides the mall. Not to the methadone clinic on 140th or to the Men's shelter. We have our far share of problems here too but find ways to help instead of taxing businesses and employers out of our city. Welcome Amazon!

Since I moved to Bellevue I haven't had my car broken into once. I don't have to pay for parking anywhere. There are parks and trails and not a single tent to be seen. The rent is cheaper and so are the prices at the grocery. I can be in Seattle in 20 minutes if I want to be.

Bellevue is awesome.

@kallipigos -- "You, from your position of relative power, privilege, entitlement, what the fuck, have the nerve to lecture him on etiquette?"

I know -- had the author merely declared himself a resident of Bellevue, our inappropriate toucher/fucker offer might have understood, and perhaps experienced a pang of compassion for young Scruggory but, being a Seattelite, who knows.

Is dragging your bed the same as being bedraggled?

Why exactly does Bellevue have a "fair share" of the homeless problem in Seattle, as compared to other Washington cities like Bellingham or Richland or Ellensberg? Is Bellevue dropping homeless people off in downtown Seattle?

As someone who isn't from the PNW originally, I'm so sick of the Seattle vs. Eastside and general judgement about where people are from or currently live. The intellectual and demographic snobbery is obnoxious. It seems no matter where you choose to hang your hat, there is a PNW "native" who has something judgemental and negative to say about it.

This piece is not likely to land the stranger any Pulitzers. Looks like the writer drove to Bellevue Square with their mind and probably much of the story already set. Never bothered checking statistics, mingle with the crowd two blocks away from the mall, or tell us about the ever-growing minorities high school students population in the district.

Also ignored was the light rail about to connect Seattle, Bellevue and Redmond in three years or so. Such scrutiny could have enhanced the justified despise of Kemper Freeman. According to a former city official he made sure the train never reaches Bellevue Square, terrified of south end shoppers about to “ruin my mall.”

[ ] @20 and @22, and the rest of the law and order crowd. You’re immature and you lie to yourselves to produce a distorted worldview. Seattle is driving toward a brighter, more humane future and people like you are in the middle of the street dragging your useless ideology behind. Honestly, the conclusion of your ideology is mass arrests, with people living their lives behind fences, until you decide on a final ... This is literally the same garbage ideology that the Freeman family used to make a fortune at the expense of honest, hardworking, Japanese farmers. Bellevue needs to be better and I am optimistic that it will, but it may require some pushing and I am glad to see that push.

@25 Not that you'll be doing any pushing yourself from your armchair. The best society is a loosely-coupled one, with tolerance and understanding for the less fortunate and a helping hand when needed.

But, if you won't take the help and try to clean yourself up, get out of town and don't come back.

Wow, what a myopic, inaccurate bunch of crap. This piece was written by a typical "Bellevue isn't blue enough" Seattleite...

What a rubbish piece and no, I don't live in Bellevue.

Lol the old you aren't sucking as much as we are, get on our level kind of argument. Fuck I am sick of the prog loonies in this city.

I'm 1,000% with @kallipugos and @LavaGirl ....my thoughts exactly. This author deserved the "fuck you" AND I quit reading from that point. Not worth my time or consideration, the source itself is flawed, and a prime example of what's truly wrong in our society from the core. Yuck.

@7 nails it. Author seems fond of putting his sterility on display. First the waterfront silos, now this. Move yourself to a gated community already Greg.

Could Bellevue do more after benefiting from funding excellent schools and services? Sure. However per capita charitable giving is high there. I don't understand the wide brush the author is using to paint here, are Bellevue Asians anti-Asian?

I work in hospitality in Bellevue and have received training in human trafficking and sexual coercion within city limits. As of my last training, Bellevue had no dedicated task force for human trafficking and are relying on service workers to be the front line against modern slavery. Meanwhile, there have been some large sting operations exposing prostitution rings, which are largely successful in Bellevue because of 1) its affluence 2) its high volume of imported tech workers with no friends and too much disposable income 3) Bellevue's self-perception as this "clean" utopia.

Seattle has the same problem, of course, but the city has a task force to deal with it, and the problem is not swept under the rug—which makes Bellevue very appealing to traffickers and pimps.

Also lol @ the sheer amount of anti-human contempt in this comment thread, christ, you evil monsters. just admit you wouldn't care if the unhoused and mentally ill died in a ditch you just-world-fallacy-believing geysers of fecal residue.

@36
Because progressives believe in lifting everyone up to the highest possible state of misery.

Last weekend at Pike and Harvard, I politely suggested to a bedraggled bearded guy dragging a sleeping bag that he might be safer walking on the sidewalk than in the street. He mumbled something and gave me an unsolicited pat on the back. I told him he should ask permission before touching people. “Fuck off,” he responded and went back to walking uphill in the middle of Pike Street on a Saturday at noon.

somehow the fact that this whole interaction was unexpected to the author is not surprising

@35 I am friends with sex workers. I think sex work should be a legal, protected form of employment.

Sex trafficking is sex work through coercion. When we talk about sex trafficking in Bellevue, we are talking about people who are often brought there against their will. They are not safely or comfortably housed. Their bodies are sold to strangers with little to no consideration of the sex worker's feelings. They are isolated, often by differences in language or fear of legal ramifications.

I'm an advocate for legalized sex work specifically to minimize instances of human trafficking.

@36 Re: poopy sidewalks: I guess the dog crap that smears bellevue's sidewalks doesn't count as feces, weird.