|
|
|
|
Living in Seattle, by Jim Hunt “Seattle’s Neighborhoods, Activities, and Politics” - a highly subjective personal commentary for real estate buyers and others relocating to Seattle 2009
I really enjoyed visiting the great cities in the USA, and found favorites in Chicago, Portland OR, Phoenix, New Orleans, and many others. The one thing that has always remained constant was my reaction upon returning to Seattle. Every time I flew back here, I would look out the window of the airplane down at well known neighborhoods passing below, and smile to my favorite city in the world. There is no place quite like Seattle. If you are getting relocated to Seattle, or are thinking about living here, read on to see my individual experience and subjective viewpoint about various aspects of the Emerald city, from neighborhoods to politics. Part One - Seattle Place Names, and a little political insight as to their origins Seattle is named after Chief Seattle, also spelled Sealth, Seathle, Seathl, or See-ahth. Chief Seattle was a leader of the Suquamish and Duwamish Native American tribes of Washington. A highly respected leader among his people, he pursued a path of peaceful co-existence with European settlers, and formed a personal relationship with pioneer David "Doc" Maynard. There is a bar named after Doc Maynard in Pioneer Square in the old part of town. Check it our here: http://www.docmaynards.com – I don’t think old Doc Maynard could imagine what the future would bring! You will find many native American names ending in “mish” around here. Mish means “people”. I personally think that Sealth is easier to say, spell and remember than Seattle, and the people in West Seattle must agree, since they named a high school with that name. Like most towns, Seattle has a descriptive name attached to it. The Emerald city. There are no emeralds around here, unless you go to a jewelry store – it is very green however, both by having lots of evergreen vegetation and by lifestyle. When they named it the Emerald city, no one had even heard of “green” living, so it turned out to be very apt in the end – Seattle is a national leader in adopting alternative energy sources and recycling. Seattle wasn’t always known as the Emerald city, and King county (where Seattle is located) was not originally named for Martin Luther King. Both names have been tweaked by our leaders and promoters. Like any other city, names take on the relevance of their times. When I was kid, Seattle was known formally as the Queen city, and informally as Jet city. Seattle was the “Queen” of King county, of which it is the capitol so to speak. Jet city because of Boeing. Boeing has its own airport and flight museum just south of the city center. The legendary Boeing test pilot Tex Johnston performed a barrel roll of the 707 prototype over the Gold Cup hydroplane race-course in 1955. Check that out here: http://www.flightsim.com/main/feature/barrel/barrel.htm Seattle was more of a Jet city than a Queen city back then! So how did it become the Emerald city? The Seattle-King County Convention and Visitors Bureau held a name contest back in 1982 in a ridiculous bid to promote tourism. The winning entry was submitted by a California woman and her prize was a one-week stay in Seattle and a week in Acapulco – presumably to dry out after getting rained on for a week. The people of Seattle had no say in this. We still call it the Jet city, or the Queen city. Some call it the Rainy city. I’ve never heard a native Seattleite call it the rainy city. I guess we know that all too well and don’t need to remind ourselves of that! King county was formed out of territory within the then larger Thurston County on December 22, 1852, by the Oregon Territory legislature, and was named after Alabama resident William R. King, Vice President under President Franklin Pierce. The county just to the south of King county is named Pierce county – whaddaya know! Seattle was made the county seat on January 11, 1853. You will now find little reference to William King anywhere in King County web pages. He has been pretty much erased. The reason given for the name change was that he had slaves. (We had better change the name of Washington State if that is the driving motivation - George Washington had hundreds of slaves). I admire and respect Dr. King as do almost all of us Americans, and as a kid was inspired by his messages and mission. He was a truly great man, in the mold of others with similar missions such as Gandhi. I have no "racial" problem with Dr. King - so please don't misconstrue this commentary. But being a life-long native, I feel like our history is not respected by arbitrary actions such as this name change. It was just done – fait accompli. It is so heart wrenching - now poor, lonely Pierce county has lost it’s vice-president buddy King as a neighbor county. I am anxiously awaiting the name change of Pierce county to “Piercing County” since there are a lot of tattoo and piercing shops down there – that would make the name relevant again. This little observation of names may give you some insight as to the way things work around here. There are many more examples of our leadership “knowing what’s best for the people”. Maybe they do! If you move here, you should know that your voice may not be heard. But for the most part, nobody around here seems to care anyway. Political Aside In spite of all the coffee drinking that we are legendary for, Seattle is a fairly laid-back town. People are mostly polite, and are tolerant of any point of view, as long as it is not expressed too vehemently. If you are a liberal or progressive, you have just found your home. If you are a conservative, you have just found your home as long as you don’t talk about your point of view much. People here will accept a conservative whole-heartedly, and meet them with hugs and kisses. Conservatives are advised to stay away from political discussions. Conservatives should expect to be treated as a fellow liberal upfront. They should expect to be ripped to shreds by their new friends if they tell them they like Bush or Palin or have strong religious views. If they find some other conservatives, they should be sure to huddle quietly together for discussions of politics. That having been said, after the dust settles, conservatives will still have great friendships with passionate people (most). Along those lines, whatever you do, try not to honk your car horn at other drivers or pedestrians, unless it is to alert them to danger, or 30 seconds have gone by after the light turned green and they are still stopped. In those cases, honk politely – you know, “beep”, not “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANK!!!!!!” If you are from Chicago, New York, or any country where you immediately take your car in for repairs if the horn breaks, you will be suffering unbearably. You see, around here, honking at another driver is like giving them the finger, or shoving them in a crowd. The usual immediate reaction to unwarranted honking (impatience on your part) is to actually get the finger back, and a lot of pent up bile since we don’t get to honk around here just to vent frustration. Try installing a small interior horn that only you can hear inside your car, and honk and curse to your heart’s content. We will all get along then. Part Two - Why do residences in Seattle cost so much compared to other parts of the country? There are a lot of reasons. Enough that a list might be the best way to understand: 1. Geographic location: Seattle is located in between Puget Sound (a large salt water inlet reaching to the Pacific Ocean) and Lake Washington (a huge lake that is a remnant of the ice ages). There is a canal and various small bays and lakes that connect the two as well. Bill Gates or Paul Allen can take their luxury yachts from Lake Washington, pass under the Montlake Bridge, the University Bridge, the Freeway Bridge, go through Lake Union, back under the Fremont Bridge, the Ballard Bridge, go through the Locks (which lowers or raises the water level depending on the tides), and finally under a railway trestle, and arrive at Puget Sound, and then on to Hawaii. On the way they can look at Mt. Rainier, a 14,000 foot tall volcano, the Cascade mountain range, to the east, and the Olympic mountain range to the west. 2. Recreation (tied to location). You can get to three nice ski areas in 1 to 2 hours, same goes for hiking, snow-shoeing, tubing, sledding, and back-packing in the mountains. Seattle has more boats per capita than any other city in the country the last I heard. You can Kayak to work if you live in the right place. You can bike in special bike lanes all over the city. You can mountain bike in the mountains. You can watch Hydroplane races and an air show in the summer. You can swim, water-ski, and scuba dive in many locations. You can fish for everything from Salmon to squid. There are dog parks, skate parks, water parks, and mini-parks. There is Green Lake which is Seattle’s Central Park; here you can walk around it (2.8 miles) or roller blade, or bike, or run around it. You can play basketball at the courts there, swim at the pool there, and watch a play at the public theater. There are forested parks, and kid’s parks. You have rivers to raft, and mountains to climb. If you are in good shape, you can even climb Mt. St. Helens without special gear or a guide. I’ve only scratched the surface as far as recreational activities around here - I could go on all day – you get the picture. 3. University of Washington. Chances are, if you are relocating to the city of Seattle, you just might be getting a position connected with the UW. It is the city’s largest employer, and sits right on Lake Washington. Sure the football team stinks, but you can look at Lake Washington and a parade of boats from the stadium while they are getting beat. It has a cutting edge medical school and center as well. If you could put a dollar sign down on a map of Seattle showing the highest real estate prices, you would put it on the campus, and the concentric circles radiating from there get more and more affordable the further you got from the ‘U’. 4. High Profile Employers: Microsoft, Boeing, Paccar, Starbucks, Amazon.com, Costco, Nintendo, Nordstrom’s, Weyerhaeuser. Other company’s have large branches here; Google, Real Networks, Adobe, T-Mobile, and many more. There are plenty of dotcoms and tech companies as well. 5. Pacific Rim trade. Seattle has a huge port, and is a north American hub for pan-Asian trade and immigration. Container ships come in, and rail cars go out. Seattle is a very Asian-friendly city with a nice “China Town” (which street signs call it, but most residents use the more PC “International District”.) 6. Medical Centers. Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research, UW, Children’s, Swedish, Virginia Mason, Harborview, and many more. Seattle is a cutting edge medical research city. 7. Diverse and interesting neighborhoods. (more detail later) 8. “Green” focus. If you care about the environment and climate change, you might feel pretty good about living in Seattle. On garbage collection day, you don’t drag a big can out to the street. You get a 20 gallon mini can for trash, a huge rolling bin for recyclables (paper, plastic, metal, and glass), and a 30 gallon or larger can or bin for yard waste, kitchen scraps, and anything bio-degradable. You spend time sorting through your refuse, but you can feel good about not just dumping everything in a land-fill or the ocean. If you have your own compost heap, you can opt out of the yard-waste bin and save some money. Your combined water/sewer/garbage bill will be around $175 - $260 bi-monthly. If you water your lawn in the summer, they tack on a summer rate, and charge you big time. This is a little ironic for a “green city”, and you will notice about 80% of the city lawns are dead and brown in the summer. It’s a bit unfair, because your sewer rate is determined by your water usage, and doesn’t factor in summer watering other than a small percentage. So you water your lawn, pay for the water, and get charged a corresponding rate for sewage, even though none of it went down the drain. (private rant – thanks for listening) I could go on for pages outlining the environmental focus of Seattle. 9. The weather. It’s not as bad as it’s made out to be for the most part. You get one or two weeks of below freezing weather in the winter. It may not even snow some winters, or you might get one or two weeks of off and on snow. Once in a great while there is a pretty good snow storm with a couple feet – but that is not the norm. It gets above 90 maybe 5 to 10 days a year. Everyone whines and moans about it. If you are from Houston, you will laugh out loud. Sure, it rains often – but rarely very heavy. Just off and on showers and mist. You probably WILL get tired of slate-gray skies in the winter. Usually in the summer it is pretty dry, with plenty of sunny days and not too hot. Once in a while there is a big wind storm with 100 mph winds. No tornados, no hurricanes, no ice storms, no big thunder storms. Oh yeah, we do get earthquakes… 10. Nowhere to grow. Remember those lakes, mountains, and salt water? They hem the city in on all sides. You can’t sprawl up a mountain or over a lake. And they are areas that need environmental protection if they are going to stay the way they are. So in addition to geographic constraints, there are a plethora of land use restrictions that aim to reduce sprawl and protect the environment. No one in Ft. Worth is going to worry about misplacing a few billion fire-ants in order to build some more houses on some flat dry land. Around here, every oddball critter that walks, flies, swims, crawls, or slithers has an advocacy group to protect it. I mean that in a good way. It is too exquisitely beautiful here to trash it for future generations. Take all of these factors together, and compare them to Detroit, Wichita, or Ft. Worth, and you will see why prices are so high. People coming here from those kinds of towns are shocked and dismayed to see what they can buy on the proceeds of their sale “back home”. –A one bedroom condo or co-op. To be continued.......... Please feel free to contact me with your feedback - I will post it to the bottom of this blog (if it is clean - criticism welcome).
 
|
Introduction:
I have lived in Northeast Seattle all of my life – now 57 years. My God! I
don’t feel that old. I am a real estate agent, and before that my career was in
sales and marketing, mainly of consumer lawn and garden products. I sold
products ranging from garden seeds to tools, with steer manure and Roundup
thrown in for good measure. If you’ve used it in your garden, I’ve sold it, or
something like it. In that capacity I’ve traveled all over the USA, and have
visited most of the major cities in this country – as long as they had a lawn
and garden products distributor, or a convention or trade show promoting the
same. I mention that so that you know I write of Seattle in the context of
having seen the rest of the country.