Our Fair City.

Last week we took a few hours to explore the oldest neighborhood in our city. It was fun to play tourist and stand around in the middle of the road taking pictures and getting in the way of the cubicle crowd.

We started at the Smith Tower, finished in 1919 it was the tallest building outside of New York City for almost 50 years. Since it was built after the Great Seattle Fire very little wood was used, not a popular option in lumber rich Puget Sound. We headed up the last manually operated elevator system on the west coast ( driven on this date by one very excited 6 year old boy) and stepped out onto the 35th floor Chinese Observatory. Wow. What a view it was.
That is the Colman Dock ferry terminal, ferries arriving from Bremerton and Vashon Island.


After leaving the observatory we took a detour to see the yarn covered trees and the Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Occidental Park. Sadly Seattle has a lot of names to memorialize.
Since it was getting to be hungry time we headed around the corner to Salumi ( go ahead, be jealous, very, very jealous.) While waiting in line on the sidewalk for our turn at the tiny crowded and very delicious counter we talked with people and handed out picnic dating advice to a man who claimed to be a dancer and a lawyer.....hmmm.....but yet could not decide on a wine to go with his Salumi picnic. We took our sandwiches over the the Waterfall Garden, the birthplace of the men and women in brown. UPS. It's a tiny miraculous oasis in the middle of one of the cities dirtiest neighborhoods.





After lunch we took a walk up to my old stomping grounds to check out the Walrus' high atop the Arctic Building ( now the Arctic Club Hotel.) It has long been one of my favourite city landmarks and I am so glad the someone came along to spiff it up and make it relevant. We even snuck a peek inside at the northern lights dome room. Spectacular!


We left Pioneer Square and headed up to George's for some inspired polish snacking! yum~.

Anyone who knows Seattle knows that Pioneer Square and it's environs are the former ( some say current ) Skid Road. Where homeless people and poor people outnumber office workers in the day time and where drunken partiers from the city suburbs outnumber resident artists in the night time. Gritty is as gritty does. Pioneer Square has plenty of grit. It has plenty of people who are in/out of drug addictions, poverty, the criminal justice system. People that most of us choose to ignore. Panhandlers, addicts, the newly paroled all mingle with tourists, locals, office workers, artists and sports fans. City Hall bumps up against the major league sports stadiums. It is not often pretty.

Once when I was working as a house manager/bouncer for a local dance company I had a run in with two of our local homeless men. Every night I would walk past them carrying the cash from the box office heading to the night drop. Every night one of the men would whistle from his seated position on the sidewalk and the other would yell "hey honey, got a smoke?" Every. Night. I was young and more than a little nervous carrying money around and one I night I turned on my heel and said, " Hey. My name is not Honey and no, I don't have a smoke." The next night, and every night afterward I was greeted with a whistle and, " 'night Lady, have a good rest." As irritating as they were they really only wanted to be recognized, not ignored. I try to remember that when someone asks me for money or cigarettes or booze. I don't often have any of those things to give away, but I do acknowledge the request. It takes nothing away from me to make eye contact and say, "sorry, no."

Like all cities with a moderate climate Seattle has it's share of homeless in all neighborhoods. But this part of the city has a high concentration of chronically homeless. People who we have decided to throw away. In the age of ever shrinking safety nets ( both government and private) the population is rapidly expanding. There is no where else to go. Sure, some people choose homelessness, some fall into it via addiction, illness or abuse and some just make a whole lot of bad decisions. But they are all people and they all deserve to be recognized. I wanted my boys to see Pioneer Square to see the roots of their city, to not be afraid of the hype.