Somehow suburbanites seize the microphone about cities which I find totally wild. The comment sections of the Seattle Times or Facebook news postings you’ll see a lot of “Thank God I left Seattle and never looked back” as though lurking about these forums isn’t some huge tell. It does not surprise me to learn that most of us love it here. Why else would we put up with the rain and high cost of living? It’s wonderful.

The people who hate Seattle are the people who are bitter because they sold their parents' house in Ballard for $125k in 1990 and see what it's worth now.

I miss the '90s.

Seattle is in much better shape than 4 years ago - guessing we’re still 4-8 years away from undoing the full damage from the pandemic (but progress is progress)

"At least that’s what he told our pollsters. He’s done a lot of polls and gives different answers each time."

Related without any recognition respondents may be pranking the Stranger's polls. (That's doubleplus impossible, due to the Stranger being far more clever and perceptive than any pranksters could ever possibly be. Just ask the Stranger!)

@3: "I miss the '90s."

Me too! Sadly, the fundamental enabling resource for both ends of the legendary "Seattle in the '90s," was plentiful cheap spaces for practicing music or developing software. That resource has long since disappeared, and likely won't return to Seattle in our lifetimes.

@4: Get ready for more damage if Wilson wins. Expect parks and other shared public spaces regressing to favelas, salads of chronic hopeless human misery, their inhabitants shuttering yet more nearby businesses via constant predation. The pandemic was merely the coup de grace after years of Homelessness Crisis.

@1: "... as though lurking about these forums isn’t some huge tell."

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. In my own case, checking in here provides me with a never-ending game of "heads we win, tails you lose." Either Seattle's voters choose responsible adults, and the city continues to recover (as @4 noted), or Seattle's voters choose yet more Children of the Stranger (apocalyptic urban horror at its finest!) In the former case, I can hope Seattle will regain some of its former glory, to remind us of legendarily great times, like Seattle in the '90s. In the latter case, I can revel in the good fortune I earned, simply by leaving years ago.