Comments

1

I can relate. The difference between DC and Seattle in this particular case is that the latter has been a big ("real") city for a much shorter period of time (maybe two, three decades at most, as opposed to two centuries for DC). It's not so much a matter of sheer numbers as it is a self-identity, and Seattle historically has imagined itself as a collection of small towns (e.g., Ballard for Scandinavians, Capitol Hill for Catholics, the CD for Blacks, etc.). While this concept no longer holds in the minds of most residents, it means that Seattle still has a large remnant population of long-timers who have never really adopted the urban mindset. For them the sort of garden-variety aggravations that residents of DC, NYC, Philly etc. take for granted as part of everyday big-city life just hit differently. Learn to roll with that and you'll be OK.

2

He's right. Seattle-is-Dyyyyyyyyying! is a very popular theme for local news for a reason.

I think Seattle has a lot of misanthropes.

3

@1 CKathes - very well said!

As to "I, Anonymous", I can't speak of that website, but if I,A thinks that the legitimate concerns about crime are just some car break-ins, then they really don't have a clue what's going on here.

And it's not just Seattle, but across the nation, there's been an upswing in aggressive, out-in-the-open crime. There's a general feeling of no consequences and there's no one to stop them. There's a growing subset of the populace that feel liberated to commit crime (just like Republicans feel liberated to destroy our democracy).

It's easy to say about ANY place in the US - "well, at least it isn't the 1800's "Wild West", or "at least it isn't early 20th century mobsters." I mean, we've got it easy compared to the days of businesses getting shook down Soprano's style. Getting everyone to just accept that we're going to be subjected to random violence and property crime is not the goal we should be striving for.

4

@2 Hey! I think Seattle is dying for a different reason: too many people moving here and driving up rents and costs. Tacoma seems like a better place to be now.

6

I tend to agree w the anonymous person. People really do act like this city is the final frontier for humanity and that there is no place else for them to go. We are sort of the strainer at the bottom of the sink for pretentious assholes who refused (or were refused by) everywhere else. I'm not exempt by any means. But it is sadly part of the culture.

That said, I'm a hopeless romantic and don't think it has to always be this way. We need creative, optimistic leaders who are interested in a real future for this region that makes sense for the climate/ecology/locals and newbies, the poor, the working, and everyone else. Keep being optimistic and kind, Anonymous. The stick in the ass of this town has to rot eventually.

7

@1 CKathes, "For them the sort of garden-variety aggravations that residents of DC, NYC, Philly etc. take for granted as part of everyday big-city life just hit differently."

As if on cue:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/22/politics/mary-gay-scanlon-carjacked/index.html

8

@3: "Getting everyone to just accept that we're going to be subjected to random violence and property crime is not the goal we should be striving for."

Bingo.

@5: "The homeless camps everywhere, the streets with potholes so big that you will fall into them if you are riding your bike, the wanton stealing from stores, human feces and needles on the streets, the graffiti, the traffic, the price of housing, horrible skinny townhouses that are all stairs, and people just being grumpy assholes are what is new and not improved."

All of that, and then the Stranger telling us to just get used to the crime, filth, and then to re-zone the entire city to get "horrible skinny townhouses that are all stairs," seriously telling us such expensive and ugly houses can help to solve a homeless problem, a problem which actually results from untreated substance abuse disorders and mental illnesses.

9

Ok which Stranger staffer wrote this…anonymously.

11

@5 & 8 If you think these things are new then you either didn't live here before or you lived a really sheltered life. I grew up in the suburbs, but I spent a lot of time in Seattle with my grandparents until my mid 20's. I transferred buses by the McDonalds at 3rd and Pine to get to my grandparents during all of the 80's - and that corner wasn't any better back then. I worked on both Capital Hill and Pioneer Square in the 90's and saw plenty of homeless people and addicts. I had one aunt who was a heroin addict in Seattle in the 70's and another who was using crack in the late 80's - there were plenty of drugs in Seattle even back then. There was also plenty of theft - every store downtown had big metal grates over the doors that were pulled down at night to prevent people from breaking in. First Ave and Pike Place Market were scary places after dark that you drove through with your windows up and your doors locked. Yes, housing costs more now (but it costs more in most of the US now too - including Midwestern College Town USA where I live now.) The biggest difference between then and now is the income gap. There was plenty of poverty and disfunction in Seattle in the 70's, 80's, and 90's, but there wasn't the contrasting uberwealth tech class that you have now.

12

Ok. Here we go, an out of state person, used to high crimes saying locals should get used to it. This is why Texans are wary of Californians. If you come to Seattle for its low crime and scenery, think why that is, and maybe because policies are different from where came from. Now everyone wants to align to a party whether Democrats or Republicans. Aligning with local issues is fare better and more effective, but requires thinking and not following points from your party.

13

@11:

"...but there wasn't the contrasting uberwealth tech class that you have now."

Tech-sector wealth in Seattle predates that term by most of a century. Bill Boeing started his airplane company in 1916, and by the early 1920s, the payroll was already a major source of funds for the entire city. Generations grew up thinking of easy, high-paying jobs there as a birthright, and then Microsoft continued the trend. As a result, Washington State has imported engineers (myself included) for that entire time. The difference now is a dysfunctional political establishment, led by CM Sawant, which regards capitalism itself as inherently, irredeemably evil, and eagerly blames Amazon for problems it did not create.

"@5 & 8 If you think these things are new then you either didn't live here before or you lived a really sheltered life."

I moved to Seattle in 1991, living briefly with a friend in Belltown (we dined at The Crocodile on the day it opened). She was born at UW Med' Center, and told me of the bad old days of the 1970s and 1980s, when a woman would not walk alone west of 4th Avenue in daylight. I reported a car break-in shortly after moving here, and I would later have my apartment ransacked, and a couple of bicycles stolen from time to time. (I grew up in Brooklyn, so none of this bothered me.)

I would spend the next 30 years in Seattle, 25 of them in Belltown, Capitol Hill, and the West Seattle Junction. Seattle has always had a rough side, bequeathing to the world the term, "Skid Row". Yes, there were always panhandlers and drug users in Pioneer Square, half of the Seattle Music Scene folks died with needles in their arms, and the downtown public library branch has long doubled as a homeless center. What changed was the mass influx of hard-core opiate addicts and mentally ill, many created by the greed of Purdue Pharma, and then callously abandoned by our country's shamefully-inadequate social safety net. Now entire parks and public spaces in Seattle have been appropriated for private use, much of it illegal, theft and assault are commonplace, and visiting the downtown public library reminded me of the time drug dealers chased my teenaged self from Bryant Park in Manhattan. The aforementioned political establishment and the Stranger have completely accepted all of this, mislabeling as "compassionate" the abandonment of human beings to rot in parks. Maybe the severe beating that establishment took in November will change things; the election of a Republican in Seattle shows just how utterly desperate voters have become.

Now I live in another liberal haven, but here Substance Use Disorder is recognized as a top driver of homelessness, when a local encampment produced multiple crimes, it was swiftly cleared (with all but a few residents accepting offers of shelter), and no one here regards tolerating mass death on the streets as "compassionate." Maybe Seattle will someday learn all of this as well, but I have moved on.


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