Dominic Holden has a link to this piece of shit article in The Seattle Times. Basically, someone moved Downtown recently after being the president of Seattle Pacific and living on campus for almost two decades. They then decided that Downtown is in decline. From what, I’m not really sure since they lived on a college campus down by the Ship Canal for 17 years. It’s overwrought and horrible.
I mean I moved downtown 6 years or so ago, and I had a bit of a culture shock too, but I’m always a bit surprised about things like this:
As my wife and I walk the streets from our new home, we spot the drug deals in the shadows of reeking alleys. We see the vacant eyes of the mentally disturbed, helpless folks dumped on our streets. We see the ravages of addiction sprawled on our sidewalks.
We navigate our way uncomfortably among teenagers who occupy Westlake Park, hanging out with their pit bulls, backpacks and skateboards, lately with their babies, freely smoking their now-legal marijuana. With utter dismay we read the stories of random violence.
I don’t care how Jesus-y SPU is, if you lived on a campus for over a decade and a half, you’re not allowed to be surprised by marijuana use somewhere. Seriously, what the fuck is he comparing it to? I mean I’ve lived in the suburbs and shock, there’s drug use and babies existed (?!) there too. People have troubles (and babies???) no matter where you go, sometimes.
But Downtown is great. I’m glad that I can pick up a Real Change as well as shop at Pike Place (although there are Real Change vendors in the suburbs, I’ve seen them with my own two eyes and everything). The crush of humanity — all sorts of humanity — is what makes cities great.
Westlake Park, to take his example, is a place where there’s too much drug dealing, I agree! But I’ve also taken a book or a paper and just read. There’s a playground where kids and parents are able to go, and it still manages to work even though sometimes people near by are smoking a joint. You can catch a bus, and usually not be hassled. Downtown doesn’t lose its vibrancy because there are all sorts of people there, that’s what makes it vibrant.
I don’t like it when I have to avoid making eye contact with someone suffering from violent mental illness. That does happen downtown from time to time, and there should be more official outreach for services and treatment for some of the clearly suffering people on the street in and around Westlake. Also, I try to keep moving and similarly not make eye contact with some of the loitering individuals in front of and around the McDonald’s. I’m feeling a bit more sympathetic to the point of view of the author Phillip Eaton and wouldn’t reference him with “piece of shit” or “sociopath” as I saw else wear. I think he has a point, even if he might be a little overly sensitive.
If only the voters had obeyed Seattle Times endorsements! Rob McKenna would be governor, Suzie Hutch would be county executive, I don’t know who would be mayor, but there would be no mentally ill, homeless, or skaterboarders in Westlake Park or anywhere else downtown! They would all be dead or in concentration camps.
It was not an article. It was a guest opinion piece. An ersatz journalistblogger should recognize the distinction.
Vibrancy can exist with all sorts of people who are not engaging in criminal activity. Go figger.
@ 2
Thats what Bloomberg did. Supposedly over 100,000 homeless folks pretty much vanished without a trace in NYC.
I highly recommend watching the recent Drugs Inc episode “wasted in Seattle”.
Not to deny the reality of homelessness or drug addiction, or crime – serious, serious problems that require serious policy arguments and effective solutions – but this pollyanna-ish “Oh noes!! There are poor people here” from a honcho who lived in subsidized housing on a bucolic Christian school in tony Queen Anne for 17 years and is now being all edgy and mod in downtown Seattle, as he says…
…is just a bit too much.
Where was his concern with these problems when they weren’t getting in his way walking to one of those “fabulous restaurants”.
The reek of rich white male privilege is overwhelming. He takes a posture typical of a right winger (I have no idea what his politics are)…that is, problems are only real when they affect ME!
It’s too bad it took moving to a condo downtown for Mr. Eaton to notice all that complains about. It’s been just a short bus ride away on the 13 all this time. I’m sure many of the students at SPU could have told him about the vicinity of 3rd & Pike, if he’d ever cared to wonder about it. His willful ignorance is just as annoying as the knee-jerk moralism of his proposed solutions. Maybe the first solution would be for privileged Christians like Eaton to pay attention to their troubled neighbors years before they complain of having to step over them to get to their fancy downtown condo.