In case you already didn’t know it, the latest census numbers confirm that Seattle has one of the lowest rates of households with children in the nation. Which is why, over on Slog today, I make the argument again for not just building a playground at the Seattle Center, but a Really Kick-Ass Playground.
Can’t Bring Yourself to Type the Word “Ass”?
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dude… thats what bellevue is for.
I wouldn’t bring kids up in Seattle either.
This correlates precisely with the Seattle having the highest rate of self-absorbed, Leftist Pinheaded KLOWNS in the nation.
Kid-less folks are clueless about sacrifice.
It’s all about pleasing themselves.
Bingo.
@1 – Can you imagine being an adult and having to answer the question about where you grew up and having to say Bellevue? Ewww! Even the Bellevue kids must say they grew up in Seattle. Nobody would admit to being from Bellevue. Redmond, or Edmonds, or Issaquah, yes, but Bellevue? Even Mount Vernon, in spite of Glenn Beck having ruined the name forever, would be better than having to say you grew up in Bellevue.
I feel very proud and privileged to have brought up my kids in Seattle.
The public schools they’ve attended have been very good, thank you very much and they’re decent kids with good values. The alternative public schools we liked took them to volunteer in places like food banks where they could get a special perspective on our society that they wouldn’t otherwise. Each plays a musical instrument and participates in sports.
My oldest is a particularly fanatic home towner – everything about Seattle: Seahawks, Mariners, UW, Huskies – go, go, go Seattle!
If anything makes Seattle less “family-friendly” I’d say it’s the weather. That tends to keep kids indoors and huddled around their video games and other sedentary pursuits rather than hanging out with their friends. But that applies to any Western WA town.
One other thing – the old housing stock. People just like to live in the newer places with bigger closets, updated kitchens and the latest family-friendly layouts. These exist in Seattle but they are much pricier. So that tends to keep newer families out in the burbs. The “double incomes no kids” tend to value the urban amenities in Seattle they like.
To each his own. As usual, all you right wing knee-jerk Seattle haters can stick your hatred you-know-where!
5. YLB spews:
Yeah, to do it without ever having a job and making your wife slave to support the family so you can post on HorsesAss.org.
I’ll bet you are “proud??”
Thank God for free and reduced lunches…and of course, a little free breakfast for the kiddo’s for so you had to do so little.
thats got to get fixed
6 – Exhibit 1 – the knee jerk hater. Thanks for playing.
7 – Exhibit 2 – the crypto-hater. Fixed how I wonder?
# 1: I haven’t checked the most recent numbers, but when I saw the democraphic breakdown of Bellevue based on the 2000 Census, only about 25% of the households in the city limits had family members under age 18 living with them.
@ YLB
I don’t know but at least i don’t want a Yuppie gentrified city of the very rich and a very poor service class.
you can have all the urban amenities, mass transit, and ethnic food you want but without middle class families making up the majority population its no where i would want to live.
Speaking of housing stock – I live in Seattle, in a 1904 house of very modest proportion.
We remodeled it about 8 years ago – had been a rental with LOTS of deferred maintenance. When we dug into the walls – not an ounce of rot anywhere. It’s a two story – balloon framed – that is, the wall studs go from the foundation to the roofline – they don’t make that lumber anymore. Similar the floor joists – 2×6 that are way stiffer than the modern 2x8s that are code. While the windows are NOT energy efficient, the old ones have that wavy old 100 year old glass that you just cannot replace.
Also, we walk to the grocery, restaurants, car mechanic, toy stores – I love not having to get into the car whenever an errand needs to be run.
I wouldn’t trade this solid old house for any ticky-tack out in the ‘burbs for anything.
Oh, and I have two kids learning how to get along in a city and seeing all of society, not just the folks Kemper Freeman allows into Bellevue Square.
The article in the Seattle Times is a bit flawed in that it compares the number of families with children in Seattle in 1960, compared with the number in the mid-1970’s, and today. It then assumes that most of these families were leaving due to a “flight to the suburbs”.
But that ignores the fact that the comparisons aren’t valid. The baby boom created high birth rates everywhere. The baby boom peaked in 1957, and the bell-curve was just starting to decline by 1960. Every neighborhood had scores of children which filled the streets on summer evenings playing games, riding bikes, etc. But by the mid-1970’s over half the baby-boomers were over 18, with corresponding family-with-children rates dropping considerably.
Comparisons with the “suburbs” doesn’t work without making significant adjustments. Confined within the isthmus, Seattle was pretty much already built up, with little empty developable land for single-family housing. This alone was responsible for much of the population “bleed-over” to the suburbs, especially as the bridges over Lake Washington and the freeways (I-5, I-405) made commuting from longer distances more feasable.
Other purported reasons espoused by one pundit or another (schools, crime, etc.) may or may not have been motivating factors, I suspect that some of them are simply justifications given by the pundits whenever they find it convenient to engage in a little Seattle-bashing.
# 11: I’d replace the windows anyway, for fuel efficiency and noise reduction. Keep the old windows and use them (or just the glass) for interior accent pieces.
Heh. Now the question is who do you hate more? Those whose wealth you aspire to and won’t lift up the gate for your obnoxious ass or those poor slobs who eke out a living working crap jobs on the margins rather than face even more decrepit penury from where ever they hale.
Enjoy your burger and potatoes tonight hater. Such is the fate of those who fear. We’ve got a tasty repertoire of Indian, Italian and Mexican among other cuisines to choose from any time we’d like.
Hint: housing is pricier in certain urban centers because of little thing known as “market forces”. I thought right wingers were all for that – letting the market decide. If the middle income can still get housing in a place like New York it can only be because of government intervention. Who’d a thunk that a little “socialism” could make it a bit more desirable for a right winger to live in the city with middle income folks he claims to identify with.
8. YLB spews:
YOU are the one that told us you are Mr. Mom and haven’t had a job in over 5 years.
You seem a bit defensive about that.
Perhaps a guilt complex for being such a lazy slob?
@14
We did most all of them with the remodel – there’s just a big bay window in the front and one on the side with the old glass – so we’re mostly good ;)
10. goldy’s wife left him because he acts like a female spews:
DITTO!
I love living in a very rural area with neighbors who help each other at the drop of a hat, care for each other, worship together and enjoy with gratitude what God created every single day.
11. Liberal Scientist spews:
How much did your building permit cost for the remodel?
How were the Building Inspectors?
@15
Yup, nobody wants to go there – it’s too crowded!
(h/t Yogi Berra)
Darn you WordPress! When is WordPress ever going to support Chrome?
Self-righteous fool. Aside from the religious prism that you see everything through, that’s exactly what I have in my little neighborhood. Just the other day a group of us banded together to help pay another’s bills in the midst of a medical emergency.
There are good people everywhere – in fact, I believe most people are good. Some are misinformed, some are blinded by prejudice but teachable. I think only a very few are really sociopaths – striving for power, pulling up the ladder behind them, demonizing other – in a way it’s good that they’ve all gravitated to the Republican party – we at least know where they all are! ;)
Goldy–
Major crimes were up 7% in Seattle in 2009.
The three crimes most responsible for the overall increase in Major Crimes were robbery, aggravated assault and larceny/theft.
Now that’s family-friendly!
@25
No fool, that’s bad economic times. Poverty begets crime – poverty is a form of violence, and violence twists people.
I thought you were a Christian. Or do you just play one on TV?
I got to raise my three great kids in West Seattle…Highland Park Elementary, Denny Middle School, Chief Sealth High School…soccer, Pony League Baseball, Softball, SWAC Junior Football…it was/is a teriffic place to raise a family.
LS @ 26–
What are you babbling about.
The issue is making about making Seattle more family-friendly. Start with fighting crime.
Then generate revenue for Public safety asshole.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....98442.html
Assholes. Just ASSHOLES.
Nahhh…nobody needs unions. Management always looks out for workers.
@3 ROTFLMAO
Typical Republican wingnut idiot. Not just wrong, factually and statistically, but just ranting nut as well. THANKS! I always enjoy your “everyone I hate is commie fags that hate America” kind of posts! Always gives me a lift and reminds me how much better and smarter I am than the wingnuts in general.
PSST! Obama is a commie secret Muslim here to steal your guns! I heard it on Glen Beck, pass it on!
Ok, unlike spoiled greedy Republican children like Cynical, I shall now post on the actual POINT of the thread..LOL
Seattle is very family friendly right now. I think what you see as not family friendly is just the lack of a “central” super park. We have LOTS of parks, but they are much more spread around. We have swimming pools, trails, basketball courts, etc, but not in a common area. Chicago has a great waterfront park area, NY has Central Park, etc….Seattle has Discovery, Lincoln, Gasworks, the Arboretum, etc. I think it’s just spread out nature makes it feel less family friendly.
@28
I’m babbling about the causes of crime – poverty first among them. Fix poverty, you vastly improve crime.
Poverty is a form of violence, and exposing people to violence, especially children, fucks with their heads.
Ergo, if you want to do something about crime, beyond yelling “Don’t take my stuff!!”, then do something about poverty.
Also, my question pertains to the religion you wear so ostentatiously on your sleeve – Jesus had quite a bit to say about poverty (if I remember Catholic school very clearly) – so what are you doing about poverty in a systematic and Christian way?
(BTW, you play dumb very effectively)
Of course, even those in the suburbs will generally say they are from Seattle when traveling, especially overseas. But it’s more than just naming the nearest large city. It has more to do with the fact that this is a regional metropolitan area, not limited by incorporated city limits.
Most suburbanites come to Seattle several times a year, if not more often than that. They attend sporting events (Seahawk or Mariner games), cultural events (Nutcracker, the ballet, symphony, museums, or even a rock concert), waterfront, Children’s Museum, or even restaurants for special events. Many rely upon Seattle for their financial base – either they work in Seattle and commute, or they have branch offices there, or their primary client base or revenue source is within Seattle.
So as much as they might like to disparage Seattle, many suburbanites are quite happy it’s there, and they enjoy the benefits which come from having an urban, multi-cultural center with a good world-wide reputation.
…oops…30 belonged in the open thread.
Sorry.
@7 “thats got to get fixed”
Don’t worry the Republican Economy is fixing it.
@30 I’m sure workers can figure out they owe zero loyalty to a company that doesn’t even have the courtesy (or spine) to tell their employees in person they don’t have jobs anymore. For the rest of you working for Sanofi-Aventis, please feel free to look for a better offer elsewhere, and if you find one, you needn’t bother to give your S-A boss any notice. Just don’t show up.
I will take my 10 forested acres with 5000sf home and 2000 sf of man-shop in the outer burbs, tyvm…..you can keep the shit of the inner city to yourselves…
people raising their kids in seattle should be brought up on charges of child abuse.
Good grief.
Can everyone afford that? Is there even that much land? Typical compassion for a conservative. Everyone has to be just like him or it’s child abuse.
@39
Of course not – it’s absolutely non-sustainable, nor scalable to a significant number of the population.
As is pointed out above, the conservative Seattle-bashers are nonsensical – “suburbs” are defined by their local “urb” and utterly dependent on it.
Without the economic engine that is Seattle – Bellevue, Bothel, Issaquah, the “Plateau”, Sammamish and the monstrosity that is the “City” of Snoqualmie would be non-existent or little more than another Centralia or other rural single stoplight hamlet.
Forested? What kind of a right winger are you? All those trees should be put to “wise use”. They haven’t been monetized yet in any way?
I can imagine the self-loathing you must deal with having a home smaller than a raging liberal like Bill Gates.
MAN SHOP? Whatever could this mean?
Oh that awful Bill Gates Sr. Those awful parents of Paul Allen. Raising Bill Jr. and Paul in Seattle and sending them to Lakeside. We all saw how that turned out.
I mean look at Bill. That evil victim of child abuse has even convinced that other raging liberal Warren Buffet to squander his fortune saving lives in the third world. According to the right wing the developing world is only good for their oil, gold, diamonds, strategic elements, other assorted cheap commodities and of course a eager market for first world weapons for suppressing surly populations.
The self-loathing of right wingers is quite amusing to me.
Do you think Dr. Zaius would mind if the next property owner uphill from him, clear cut their land and put a 50,000 unit factory hog farm on their 5 acres and a ripe feces pond right next to his property line?
@42
Dr. Zaius likely imagines that he will be in the secure perimeter of the Highlands or Medina or Jackson Hole or Careyes or some other highly fortified perimeter enveloping the outposts of the plutocracy when all the rest of the landscape is put to “wise use” and consists of hog ponds and mine tailings and clear cuts and tent cities when the conservative utopia is finally realized.
I seriously doubt they’ll let him in.
It would almost be worth it just to see the Teahaddists realize what dupes they are.
@4
I have a brother in law who’s from Bellevue and he got the fuck out of there as soon as he was old enough. In fact no one from his immediate family from parents to siblings still live there.
I like this idea – a lot.
One possible model: Dennis the Menace Playground near Monterey: http://tinyurl.com/2dbylcb
@43
wrong again liberal pretend scientist…I dont care for the richie rich communities…to each their own, I just prefer a little bit of solitude and privacy where I live….and the kids think its a wilderness playland…
and it will be decades, if ever, before developments hits my area…just as we planned.
have fun with the drunks, drug dealers, and shootings in that inner city paradise known as Belltown….great place to raise kids ya know.
maybe they can go play on the sidewalk…
I found this weird because I live in a part of Seattle where there’s little crime, everyone has a home and garden, the local public schools are good, we have parks and shops all in walkable distance. It’s called Queen Anne, and it’s simply lovely!
“Poverty begets crime”
Really? I spent a month in Calcutta once upon a time, nicest people in world. I felt safre walking anywhere in that city than I would in the Rainier Valley after dark.
“three crimes most responsible for the overall increase in Major Crimes were robbery, aggravated assault and larceny/theft.”
Well, that happens only in certain ‘neighborhoods’. Queen Anne, Magnolia, Phinney Ridge, Wallingford, Fremont, even parts of Ballard now! are all very safe and family friendly!
“t the causes of crime – poverty first among them”
Really? Walk through any ‘ghetto’ in Asia and you won’t have a worry in the world. Go down to Second and Pine any evening and it’s like Lagos when the power fails. Seems to me in America, crime begets poverty.
Didn’t you hear? The ‘culture of poverty’ is back. I read that in the New York Times last month.
Wow, I want to play in that rainbow net thing or whatever it is. Looks like kid heaven.
Then ylb must live north of 520. Didn’t a recent UW study claim Seattle skuuls south of 520 sucked? Remember the diatribe on this blog ylb?
Getting back to the Seattle family friendliness… Puddy thought you Seattle leftists agreed with those environmentalist whack-jobs who think people pollute the earth so why have kids?
Oh really? So you think the poor rural flyover areas are beset with crime? Or is it a mental thing where those known to jockstrap liberals take the easy way out?
Now Puddy understands a father who may have to steal a loaf of bread or other foodstuffs to feed his kids, but not someone who steals another’s home electronics etc for the thrill of it.
Puddy went to some poor areas of Beijing and wasn’t beset with any violence. People had their hands out and Puddy gave them some Yuans. Again it’s a mental thing, where those who jockstrap liberals in Seattle tend to lean towards violence as a means to an end.
Another of ylb’s silly generalizations. Puddy has placed the same thinking leftists on this blog and ylb always forgets their commentary! Somehow Bernie Madoff and J. Allen Stanford come to mind!
Seattle leftists on this blog were cheering the Seattle leftist migration to those burbs in 2008 because they felt Ditzy Darcy Moonbat would have a better chance of beating Dave Reichert Lib Scientist!
Go back and review the leftist commentary in 2008. Or you could ask the HA databaze keepa ylb for a jumpstart on those links!
Why should we spend money on a “kick ass” playground when there isn’t any kids to play on it? How about an adult playground with a nice pool area and swim up bar? Or a movie theater that serves appetizers & drinks? Or a great big twister game…. now you’re talking playground! Even people with kids need to get away once in a while.
Oh I’m sorry fool! I forgot the one essential thing that idiot right wingers like you think the developing world is good for:
CHEAP LABOR!
Can’t leave that one out!