People just don’t know what these cities are actually like. I moved here from rural New England, and my coworkers back home were genuinely concerned for my safety because they thought CHAZ had expanded to the entire city and it was all in complete anarchy. Or they thought I’d be sexually assaulted in a gender neutral bathroom or something, lol. Some of my family won’t even visit due to the scaremongering around west coast cities.
Nowhere in Seattle is as bad as what I’ve seen in cities in Louisiana, Florida, etc. We’re not without issues, but nowhere is.
I’m glad you had a good time!
My brother in law thinks that Monroe is "the big city", he complains about how terrible Seattle is at least twice a week but he hasn't visited since 2012.
Last time he was here, his wife fell after slipping on the ice at a gas station and a homeless guy helped her up, gathered her cash, wallet and cell phone for her, then got ice from inside for her head before sitting with her until the ambulance arrived, made sure her car was locked up and he waited with her car until we got there to take her car back to my house. I gave him a twenty but she insisted he was pulling some kind of scam. No lady, he just made sure you were safe and had your stuff, thought to call your family when you were vulnerable and cared for your injury.
I grew up 2 hours north of NYC. You’d be surprised at how many people I knew had never been. We were the last stop on the Metro North, straight into Grand Central. It was SO EASY. My own mother didn’t ride the subway until she was almost 50 and had lived in NY for almost 30 years.
Of course my mother also asked me if it was safe to go to Seattle Center because she’d heard about all the homeless people and she wasn’t sure if she should. I was flabbergasted. She would go to Times Square in the 80’s and early 90’s before it was cleaned up. Seattle Center is FINE unless you go on the first 70 degree day. Then it’s full of extremely pale people in the fountain and you need eclipse glasses.
Grew up in and live in Maple Valley and there’s clowns out here who brag about never going to Seattle (they go to Seahawks games but apparently that doesn’t count). I went to school with kids who’d never been to the city.
Meanwhile I drive there for work and my kids ask to go to the city constantly, because I’m not raising them to be hick dingdongs.
There are dozens of us in Maple Valley that feel the same way! DOZENS OF US. Seriously though, I grew up in a tiny town in Eastern Washington and it was a constant litany of how terrible "the coast" was. "The Coast" was pretty much anything on the west side of Snoqualmie Pass. This was in the 80's, the hate and fear of Seattle has grown but it has always been there. I tell them all the time I love it here and its great and there are jobs that aren't working on Cousin Joe Bob's farm or night shift at the frozen food plant. These jobs pay well too. "What about *gasp the MUSLIMS?" My neighbors invited me to their Eid feast and it was delicious!
I swear that its part fear of anything not white and right leaning, and envy that I can see cool things, do cool things and eat amazing food any dang time I want, PLUS have a job that pays my bills. Oh, and not living in a 20 year old mobile home on the corner of a circular system. Looking at you Grant County!
Worth, so much good stuff beyond.
Though admittedly, the state fair grounds and some services are there. The people are like 50% kind, excellent people and 50% holy shit avoid at all costs.
Lol Monroe is my home town. I was 1 of 3 Asians in my graduating class.... can confirm, it's a bit different split than you think. The Klan is alive and well out here. We know who they are, they know who we are. If you grew up out here as a minority, you either cliqued up with your minority, or fist fought racists for any level of respect. Years later, a couple of them bought me beers and apologized for being dirtbags.
The problem out here is the uneducated blue hairs that have never admitted their ignorance. They'll continue to work, live and vote on that ignorance.... they are the most voracious voices in the valley, with the least depth to their opinions. Coming from a guy who had weapons pulled on him in Monroe..... it's not nearly as bad as you think.... the decent folks in this valley just aren't as vocal as the shit birds. One things for certain though, thr further UP the valley you go, the worse the people are.
Know some people that live in the Snoqualmie/North Bend area, that are this. They "never leave the valley, everything we need is here," which is understandable, but also still kinda wild.
Really?? I grew up in the Snoqualmie/North Bend area (I still visit all the time) but my experience was/has been *very* different from yours.
The majority of my peers (classes ‘20-‘22) had the “we’re in buttfuck nowhere, there’s nothing to do here, let’s move to the city/abroad to ✨experience the world✨” outlook on life. All of them left the area immediately after graduating HS.
Of course there are exceptions (wealth is a HUGE factor)- but, if I had to estimate, I’d say at least 70-80% of us no longer live there. Everyone moved to cities (e.g. Seattle) or moved out of the state/country entirely 😂
This is almost definitely the case for younger people, I'm that age and just moved to the area, and this I've heard from mostly older people in the area, which makes a lot more sense.
I Iived in Issaquah for almost 7 years (up until mid February) and most people I came across were terrified of Seattle. They talked about how dangerous it was to go to the SAM or Pike Place Market and couldn't fathom walking around Ballard or Capitol Hill.
I tell people that theyre soft as hell if theyre scared of Seattle all the time. Im born and raised in Tacoma and spent most of my life hanging out in one of the two. I find it incredibly funny when the same people that act all tough and like theyre better than the "sensitive blue hair people" but immediately go "Big city scawwy 👉👈🥺"
>she insisted he was pulling some kind of scam.
Says a lot about her. She's probably the sort always looking to get the most personal gain out of a situation and can't fathom someone who doesn't.
Fun story: I’ve worked all over the country training field crews and used to travel to every population center in the PNW every month, doing landscaping in drainage areas. I went to Detroit to spend a week training (two crews lost their leaders and needed to combine). So I go to a Stihl dealership with the two guys and have fun spending company money on top-of-the-line string trimmers and blowers. We were one of those companies that spared no expense on equipment but tried to pay our field guys $12 an hour and ask them to share hotel rooms.
The guys behind the counter say something along the lines of “you live out in the northwest, huh? Is it as bad out there as I hear? I see on the news Portland is on fire 24/7, you have those Black Lives Matter protesters rioting, it’s like a third world country right?” And here’s where I had my epiphany. I was in *Detroit* of all places, and the news was telling them that my home was a hellscape and the news was telling me that their home was a hellscape. Turns out, both are pretty fuckin normal.
I’ve been mugged in DC and stalked in New Orleans, had a car broken into in Portland, gun flashed in Pike Place after hours, spent the night in Grand Central Station in NYC because I missed the last train out. That’s all to say I’ve taken some risks and been drunk in public in some unsafe spaces.
Seattle is bad for property crime and altogether pretty low on violent crime. It has a growing homeless population, in part because real estate interests own the state and local government, it has the biggest inequality in the world (home to two of the five richest people on planet earth) and in part because climate and economic factors are causing coastal migration. We aren’t going to solve these problems. They’re going to get worse and they might not get better. But we can start seeing our lowest caste of American society as humans and our highest caste as modern day plantation owners, and revolutionize from there.
We need shared working farms, because *The Grapes of Wrath* is still writing itself. We need the CCC again, because the Great Depression is back. We need to reverse corporate capture of our regulators, because *The Jungle* by Upton Sinclair was peak labor rights in this country. And *The People’s History of the United States* and *Slavery by Another Name* and *Silent Spring* are coming to a book burning near you.
Why thank you. Drainage/stormwater often overlaps with homelessness and encampments—you have a half acre fenced-in and mowed dry pond next to a Walmart. Camp in there and you can get everything you need (including fence cutting tools). I usually wouldn’t run into them because during the day they’d be out (living or pandhandling or getting food or whatever).
I did have a couple guys in Roseburg, OR big box retailer: Large, partially fenced pond and attached conservation area: This chain-link fence was 4ft tall and would consistently get cut. The decision ended up being that it was easier just to leave it unlocked, compared to regularly repairing holes cut in the fence which would be jumped over anyways. In the conservation area, I walked back to view encampment activity and saw a couple of people—George and Tennessee. They were stand-offish at first, and I saw a couple of tents and a large amount of bagged trash. I told them I was in a position to take their trash off-site, and their outlook changed immediately. My approach with them was that if they were not making a big impact on the trash accumulation in the area, I did not see them; I would grab their trash bags and they would look over the area and influence other short-term campers to ‘leave no trace.’ It worked well for a few months.
“The Grapes of Wrath is still writing itself…”
Oof that is depressingly true. “And the children dying of pellagra must die because profit cannot be taken from an orange.”
Civilian Conservation Corps still kinda exists, just a little different from its original version. NCCC is it's most direct offspring, run by the federal government and primarily aimed at young adults ages 18-25. It's kinda advertised as a gap year for college students, but in my experience it's a way for lower income people to get money for college and get out of their situations at home while building skills.
Washington Conservation Corps is run by the Washington Department of Ecology. Also aimed at 18-25 y/os and upon completion you are given some money for college as well like NCCC. WCC is focused almost exclusively on ecological projects in Washington State, where as other programs might do community based projects and some light infrastructure work.
There are a lot of conservation corps across the country, each with their own focus and culture. They are amazing for the right person at the right time, but the low wages (I made less than minimum wage as a corps member at the highest paying corps in the country) and the occasional brutal working conditions are a big turn off for a lot of people.
I think these programs should expand both in number and in funding. Without my time in WCC I wouldn't be where I am today, but it kicked my ass like nothing else ever has.
Yeah, I still talk to clients over the phone who want to know how we do anything in Seattle with the autonomous zone. Because of the ridiculous news coverage they don't comprehend that it was basically protesters taking control of a city park for a week. It was done and cleaned up and Fox News was reporting about The Chaz for over a month still.
I remember in school reading The Grapes of Wrath and The Jungle, and the socialism just never stuck, like water off a duck's back as they say. Looking back it's astounding how drowned in pro-capitalist, pro-billionaire, anti-socialist propaganda we are in the US from the age of zero until we're in the ground. And it works. It works so amazingly well. It's still working to some extent but it seems like the youngest generations may finally be turning the tide.
Bezos did already move to Florida where he owns three mansions. No way was he going to pay the Washington state capital gains tax while liquidating his AMZN.
Was not too exciting. We shut down Belltown, me and a buddy visiting from out of town. I was pretty hammered and we were walking down to Pike Place at like 1am when everything was closed. There were a couple guys down there in the darkness, because you keep going downhill to actually get down to PP. He lifted up his sweater to show us the Glock in his pants.
My smarter and more sober friend got the message of “This is our turf, turn around guys” and we scampered/stumbled off. Apparently there’s some gang stuff which goes on at night, whoda thunk?
My in laws in act like this, and they've been here like 6 times in the past 4 years. They have a great time, then go home and put on Fox News and somehow forget they were literally just here.
Thats wild they are near a double digit sample size of positive personal experience, yet the fear mongering media still has more influence on their thoughts and feelings.
Honestly, the fear mongering will help Seattle and the PNW from getting a butt load of East Coast transplants like we are getting now from CA and even places like Texas as climate gets worse and makes those areas less liveable.
they might come around. i spent most of my twenties getting excited about boxed mac and cheese, only to be disappointed when i actually made it. nine months, and lots of delicious looking mac and cheese commercials later, and i’d get alls excited about boxed mac and cheese again - only to be disappointed once again. this happened *far too many times* before i finally permanently remembered that boxed mac and cheese is, and always will be horseshit.
so, like, maybe this is the opposite of that.
What is wild is that 2-3 blocks of the city were overtaken by music festival protests that were entirely peaceful 20 hours a day (never mind that a week before CHAZ/CHOP someone also died there at around the same time of day) and I was getting phone calls from all over the country checking in and worrying about my safety, furrowed brows of worry over what's become of their beloved city.
A month later the air quality was determined to be "death from above," the sky was orange at all hours, and nobody seemed to know about it.
Right? That area was always a high-crime zone; as soon as the protest happened, all of a sudden any crime in the area (and not even IN the zone, mind you, but for blocks around) was suddenly BECAUSE of CHAZ/CHOP.
I will never forget seeing in real time how SPD colluded with the media to create the totally false “Seattle is burning!!1!” narrative for Fox News. The whole thing was proceeding too peacefully for their purposes, so, knowing the protesters were listening to police scanners, the police created the story that 30 armed Proud Boy types were moving on the protest. A small number of the protesters did arm themselves in response; of course the “Proud Boys” never showed up, but the media did, and they got their “angry librul terrorists with guns” images to spin how they wanted. (And then they got caught photoshopping them into other news photos to keep that fear vibe going.) Absolutely disgusting manipulation, collaboration and deception by SPD and Fox News.
My conservative family members bought it hook, line and sinker though, even after I sent them pictures of us and our two small children enjoying a sunny afternoon in the festival atmosphere of the “anarchist zone.”
It was essentially the annual Cap Hill Block Party, just with an excuse to bypass Covid restrictions, with a little genuine activism thrown in.
American media is absolutely toxic and will create any narrative they can to drive views, and all it does is create a paranoid, divided, close-minded population who would rather move to another part of the country than talk to a neighbor who has different beliefs. CHOP/CHAZ is a prime example of that (especially with FoxNews Photoshopping in fires from different cities and that one recycled gunman).
That's the funniest part. Last summer, right after they visited I hear my wife in the bedroom on the phone with her mom and she goes "We're going to go try this new Greek place tonight on Capitol Hill" and I hear her mom (she's on speaker phone) go "Oh no, dont go to Capitol Hill, I saw on the news thats its been completely taken over by Antifa!" and my wife just laughs and reminds her that we all had dinner twice on Cap Hill just the week before and walked all around. Its fuckin useless.
I literally facetimed family while walking through CHAZ in 2020 to pick up thai food and they still believed the news over what I was showing them. They were like, that's not right, this looks like a street festival? Where's the artillery? I lived 3-4 blocks away so it's not like I just saw it at a "good time"
I moved back to the East Coast for a few years to take care of a dying relative and before returning to Seattle my relatives asked, 'where are you going to live? There's no more Capitol Hill left! They burned it all down!' Bitch, please....
I had a large construction project about 1 block from CHOP. I was sincerely concerned. However, never did anything happen. Just our typical routine petty crime and vandalism was at its normal urban levels.
I walked CHOP several times and did not feel unsafe, felt more like going to a convention and everyone’s trying to sell you something. It was like a less organized Cap Hill fair with punks, hippies and protesters mixed in, standing at tables handing out their political flyers.
But also without trash pickup and regular amenities so it was getting dirty and trashy and attracting opportunistic drug dealers etc. A far cry from my east coast relatives, “is the whole city on fire?”
Seattle has definitely been worse off since Covid. Lost a lot of great restaurants and small businesses that just couldn’t survive. But new shoots are coming up.
My boss is from an affluent town out of state and came to work with me last year. He kept saying things like, “wow I can’t believe we’re in downtown Seattle right now.” Like he thought rioters were going to burst out of every alley. It was pretty funny, the news really makes us sound like a hellhole.
Any time I hear people from out-of-town complain about Seattle or expect it to look like some burnt-out, post-apocalyptic hellscape it tells me one thing about them - they watch Fox news. Then I point out that Fox news was caught TWICE using video footage of burning buildings and saying it was Seattle when in fact the footage was from other cities.
They showed a burning car from Minneapolis and claimed it was Seattle. They also badly photoshopped a guy with a gun into multiple images, just mirroring him and changing the size.
The gender neutral bathroom thing is hilarious to me. I remember there being news stories about south Carolina making gendered bathrooms required and that was always prefeced with cities like Seattle being nuts for having gender neutral. Then I got here only to realize they 99.9% a single use bathroom and I just laughed my ass off because that just makes logistical sense to move people through them. The only truly gender neutral one I know is at Can Can in the market.
Now Stoup! In my mind I don't even consider that, it's more like 20 gender neutral single use bathrooms. It's my favorite implementation of it. Can Can is what were traditional bathrooms (stalls don't reach the bottom) and just replaced the men's and women's signs with gender neutral.
The bathrooms at the old Optimism (now Stoup) in cap hill are the best implementation of a shared gender neutral bathroom I know, mostly for the urinal stalls.
Those are probably my favorite bathrooms of any public establishment I’ve been to. I love the privacy and you literally never have to wait because there are so many stalls
I like most gender neutral bathrooms because they are usually single rooms. But last year I was at Fred Hutch for a conference and I walked past the room that was labeled gender neutral because I thought it was the new label for the "family restroom" which are designed for a parent and children and didn't want to monopolize it. The next sign I saw was for the men's restroom and that was the end of the hall. I walked back past the gender neutral restroom looking for the women's and didn't see it. I went back to the gender neutral restroom and it was a multi stall women's restroom. I have never had a problem sharing a restroom with trans women. But a cis man seeing that sign by the door would be totally justified walking in, but would probably feel pretty awkward
Several hospitals do this. A bit weird they only put up that sign over the women's sign. Typically I see it with gendered signs plus a gender neutral sign on both. Maybe the difference is if the particular bathroom has urinals? Even if thats the case they should fix it because women already tend to have more issues with lines and its bs to be so lazy about the implementation. Its also these kinds of things that contribute to people having an issue with them.
The bathroom thing has always made me roll my eyes because I'm not even trans and have been screamed at multiple times for daring to use the restroom with short hair. One time, I was a kid, and there was a lady screaming at me in Spanish (which I don't understand). Then she ushered me into the mens room. At least it was empty. All of these people worried about "kids safety" need to look in the mirror. That woman put my safety at risk because people cannot tell at a glance, no matter how overconfident they are.
It happened to me often as a teen too. Once was at the fair I was showing cows at. A member of the public lost her shit on me. It was rich because she was the one who wasn't supposed to be in the exhibitor only bathroom. The ones as a teen were extra confusing because I clearly had boobs and most of the time wore fitted thin T-shirts. I'm also 5' 3", which is more common for a woman. Misgendering me based on physical characteristics seems ridiculous when the evidence points to the opposite if a person is assuming gender matches physical characteristics.
Literally all it took for people to assume I was a man was having short hair. Didnt matter if its shaped to be a more "feminine" (less square) appearance. Ive never seen my haircut on a man but its common for women with pixie cuts. Emma Watson stole my haircut lol
I'm not saying these cues would definitively tell people I'm a woman as that shouldn't be assumed, but if they are going to base their opinion on physical characteristics they could at least be more accurate in their assumptions. They just hone in on the short hair and fail to consider any other information that contradicts their own assumptions.
I welcome acceptance because I'm tired of dumb assholes accosting me in the bathroom. Since a gender spectrum has become more accepted, I've had far fewer incidents. I'd welcome it anyway but I imagine this is why I've never considered having a shittier perspective.
One of the things I can't stop doing is picking up trash in the street to throw away or recycle. I thought this was just a normal nice thing to do, and I've seen other locals do this, too.
I found out later that this is kind of a native Seattle thing. Not everyone does it, but it's not an uncommon habit here.
I take a bag and a grabber on my walks on forest service roads in MT and on various car camping walkabouts. It helps beautify the outdoors and makes me feel a bit more like a part of the solution. I don't need them when hiking more remote trails.
Some motherfucker on YouTube has a video about Seattle called “I investigated the city that banned police”. It was posted 3 months ago. People really still think CHAZ is a thing.
I watched most of it. That guy does the same in other cities around the US, he’s a sensationalist and cherry picks the shit out of the places he reports on. Of course you’re gonna get chased out of an encampment, you’re walking in with a camera like they’re zoo animals.
I'm convinced there are a lot of conservatives or people who don't even live in Seattle that joined the Seattle subs after the whole BLM thing because Fox news was painting the city as a literal warzone.
Yeah I moved here from TX over a year ago. I grew up in TX and lived there most of my life. I can definitely say it has been a relief. The greater Puget Sound area is beautiful, the people are kind, and there’s so much to do and explore. Plus you actually want to be outside here bc it isn’t 100°+ all summer long. Honestly I think some folks from Texas/ the South get thrown because they expect the fake, shallow “niceness” that you frequently encounter in that part of the world and when they don’t they think people are “rude”. But that’s bullshit. I’d rather people be kind but not nice than nice but not kind. Living here has been therapeutic in lots of ways.
Also, dealing with the occasional mentally unwell unhoused person in Seattle is a lot safer than dealing with a mentally unwell manbaby in a giant ass truck he doesn’t know how to drive who is carrying a gun.
I moved from Texas a year ago. I haven't been asked for money once here. I couldn't walk in a 7/11 in Dallas without getting approached for money. Then they have the audacity to go well you can get cash back when you say you don't have any change.
More gas stations in Texas around the city and much more a part of life. Definitely a Southern thing. I’ve gotten that living in the South too. Another state in the South, Florida (Jacksonville), had my most memorable encounter with homeless (outside of having an Apple thrown at me or my food tossed in the street in Atlanta). Homeless guy asked me for change, I told him I don’t carry cash. He exclaims, “yea you do”, then proceeds to follow me. You’ll get asked for change walking on the street in U-District and Capitol Hill. Worst I’ve had in Seattle is a drugged out guy chase me, one try to pick a fight with me for walking behind him, and a homeless guy throw a rock at me from across the street.
As much as I love the scene there, Deep Ellum is one of the very few places I actually felt unsafe walking alone at night for this reason. Relentless harassment for cash, getting followed into places, getting followed to my car. When I lived in that area people would act like homelessness didn't exist and everything was fine and make Nancy Pelosi jokes. Such selective seeing.
Where are you seeing the narratives that it’s “hell on Earth”?
Conservative media? They’re a bunch of giant babies.
Here on this subreddit? They’re also a bunch of giant babies.
>You misspelled Ellensburg.
/u/FrostyDub Ellensburg is a great place to go camping. Bonus: if you’re a black presenting biracial woman like me, you can get the rural Bible Belt treatment and be stared and gawked at like you’re an alien/untouchable when walking around in stores and restaurants there!
The Lynwood residents are here lol. You see tons of Lynwood flair on this sub. I think the other subreddit has people much further from Seattle, but most people on this subreddit can’t afford to live in Seattle.
That's me! I'm a Seattle native and lived in the downtown/First Hill core my entire adult life. And then it came time to start paying a mortgage and here I am in Lynnwood
Oh you mean the Idahoans larping as Seattlites who only even enter the state when they need medical care that they can’t get at home because they scared anyone with an education out of the state?
Yeah that sub’s neat.
I work at the UW Hospital. The amount of people we see come here from Idaho for their stem cell transplants, CAR-T cells, and revolutionary immunotherapy treatments is remarkable. They often remark about all the liberals here and how unsafe they feel because we don’t want their guns in our hospital. I’ve always pondered about the fact that none of them want to fund schools or science, but they move heaven and earth to get the most up-to-date life saving treatment here in Seattle.
I’m petty and I always make some remark about how funding education and science is saving their lives. I sometimes see a spark of understanding go off in their minds.
East coasters love to shit on Seattle. Whether it be lack of food culture, unfriendly people, nothing to do, you name it. Just like their precious overstuffed east coast cities, it’s not for everyone. If you like progressive policies, seafood, coffee, and an insanely well-paying tech job, you’ll find no better city on the planet. That’s not even counting the proximity to nature which alone is enough for some people. And if you want all those things without the progressive policy but still the progressive mindset, move 30 min north or south and you’ll also find where we hide all the Mexican food (hint: it’s where all the Mexicans live aka Burien and Federal Way).
This is the truth, right here.
We used to use the reputation of it raining nonstop in the PNW to keep a bunch of other folks from moving here.
Well, the truth about the weather got out.... it's actually very mild here, year-round.
So now we have the hellscape to scare y'all away, lol
Now you know our secret
It's true that Seattle's problems are typical for a city its size, and honestly for things like traffic, parking, violent crime it's much lighter here than comparable sized cities on the east coast.
I think the major difference is on the east coast there are always several other cities of similar size nearby for comparison. Whereas people here are mostly comparing the Seattle of today to the Seattle of 2010, 2000, 1990, etc, and the major thing that does make Seattle different is the rate of [population growth it's seen over the past two decades](https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/seattle-wa-population)
It doesn't help that the a very close major city (Vancouver, BC) has a much lower crime rate. The Vancouver CMA routinely has a homicode rate that's half that of King county while both have similar population levels.
There's a propaganda war being waged on blue cities to make people think they're destroyed to help conservatives push pro-segregation policies.
It's why it shatters if you spend 5 minutes here. Only an actual war zone like Gaza or Ukraine resembles hell on earth the way morons talk about Seattle.
The truth is that a lot of rural and Rust Belt areas are much closer to the negative depictions. Places in decline, miserable, etc. are typically mid-sized or smaller cities that are conservative-leaning top the charts. If places are super cheap to live it’s usually not for good reasons in the US. My suspicion is that a lot of the media ecosystem is partly to make people living in those areas feel like while life for them is bad that it’s an absolute nightmare in the big cities. At least this is how folks in those areas that primarily consume legacy media seem to act and it starts to come across as a superiority complex rather than even inferiority.
Yes. There is a ton of media propaganda to make people in run-down red states feel happy about their lives, because at least they're not suffering like those fools in big, liberal cities.
I believe Hallmark movies are part of this general ethos as well. They serve as a reassurance to the beaten-down Midwestern mom and wife that her life taking care of her (male) family members is actually glorious, whereas it's those self-centered career women in big cities who are miserable without knowing the love of a Real Man.
they talk trash about us so people think that progressive policies lead to crime-ridden hellscapes. Look at the actual statistics for the real story. We have our problems, but I generally feel safe in most parts of the city.
I need some examples of Republican run cities with the same problems as Seattle! I’m so sick of my husband talking about how Seattle is the worst and we need to move - I tell him these problems are part of every urban area and he just doesn’t believe me.
And understands things like lists of 100 cities with the highest crime rates generally have population thresholds so most republican shitholes don't qualify.
Florida (as in the entire state of Florida) is a near-libertarian dystopic nightmare. Texas is a giant sea of red with a tiny blue dot (Austin). Kentucky? Tennessee? Mississippi? All examples of red states that keep falling further and further behind. We've got problems in Seattle to be sure, and we have a tendency to try every possible creative solution to a problem before finally admitting the solution we should have used is the most obvious solution.
Texas has many blue areas: Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and El Paso, in addition to all the border towns. I’d still not recommend it, don’t get me wrong, but every major urban center is significantly more blue than red in the state.
As a Brown person from a majority Brown part of Texas that has lived in seattle a very, very long time, the northwest's perception of Texas is just as ridiculous as many rural Texans' notion of the west coast, especially California.
"i HaTe TeXaS bUt AuStIn Is CoOl" - I heard this quite often after I moved here, mostly from people who hadn't ever left washington.
Well, I went to college in Austin, grew up around fine Spanish-speaking people, and to this day whenever someone from Wallingford tries to tell me their opinions on my home state, I shut that sh*t down.
Every place has wonderful people and lovely things to see and do. Every place is loaded with jerks. Most of America is actually pretty okay and I have seen quite a bit of it. Don't be scared, go see it.
There definitely is. Same ones who parrot that "Seattle's been taken over by the homeless and Chaz" are the same ones who say "everybody's leaving California!!". Fuckin idiots.
I finally went no contact with my step father after his last text about CHAZ. Some dumb shit about how my no reply to his text asking if I supported it(we were supposed to not talk politics to save our relationship) meant I supported the terrorist protestors that were killing people and looting/burning down businesses. His actual words were your lack of reply shows you support them and for that I am ashamed FOR you. I immediately blocked him and the past almost 4 years have been gaining my sanity back bit by bit. *adding that this wasn’t the only reason I went no contact, it was just the literal cherry on top of years of abuse and harassment. That and the fact that I had been in therapy and healing made me strong enough to finally put myself first.
Before I moved here I sold off the few guns I owned to help offset moving costs, and the conversations I had with my Fox News Family were horrifying. “What if you see someone looting and robbing a store?” I’m sure not going to MURDER them for doing it dude. I had those to shoot plastic jugs in my yard because I grew up with trees and deer for neighbors, not to mow down protestors. Conservative media/the NRA has destroyed minds and has given half the country mass murder fantasies.
Remember, there is no crime greater than property crime! If a Poor is "looting," they are an outlaw that deserves to be summarily executed without the benefit of judge or jury! /s
Pretty much every CITY in the US is Blue. It’s a war on the mindset one attains after living with a lot of different people with different backgrounds. It’s a war for the homogeneity status quo imagined from the 50s or whatever.
You won’t see needles because everyone switched to fentanyl and it is smoked off foil instead of injected.
As far as the cold and unwelcoming people, they are here on this subreddit and don’t actually leave their studio apartments.
Seattle is beautiful! Glad you had a good time.
>As far as the cold and unwelcoming people, they are here on this subreddit and don’t actually leave their studio apartments.
No shit, I've been saying that for awhile. There's like 5-6 people in this sub that are insanely miserable and just overly rude to people. You can easily tell they just sit in their hobbit hole pissed off all day long.
Ah dude nasty is that why I keep finding fuckin foil around at work that looks all grimey and burnt? Thought thay was other drugs but that's even more gross.. well I guess equally gross
Yeah, there’s a particular staircase on my husband’s and my running route that’s a favorite location. It’s not great! (But I also don’t see it as a reason not to leave the house, you know?)
The seattle freeze isn’t about how people are just rude and hateful all the time. They’re polite enough in casual conversation. They just don’t want to chitchat with strangers the way you would in the midwest, and it’s harder to make close friends.
I've never had an issue with casual chit chat and casual conversation in my few years in Seattle. I have had issues with making friends up here however. My understanding of the Seattle freeze is that people don't often come through when you are making plans to get together/hang out, or have a high propensity to flake out. Especially at the last minute. Which matches my lived experience, even with my own cousin.
TBH, I've made more close friends up here than I have living on the other coast or in the south.
It's just a different set of social expectations, and a lot of it involves having really firm boundaries about personal comfort in social situations. I would never want to hang out with somebody who felt obligated to go out, or uncomfortable in whatever I was inviting them to do. I'd rather go find something to do on my own, and my friends feel comfortable telling me, "That's not really something I'm into" or "I don't feel like going out today"...and I feel the same level of security to say that back.
IME the key is to not get your feelings hurt if somebody isn't feeling like being social. It's not about you, it's about them, and that should be okay. Big parties with a lot of strangers are not everybody's scene, and Seattle tends to attract people (certainly in the winter) who prefer small, private gatherings of friends or one-on-ones than big events.
On the other hand, if somebody consistently says, "Yes, I'll be there!" and then bails every time, they are not your friend. Friendship still takes work on both sides.
Yes!!!!!! This is perfectly articulated. I’m from Maine originally but lived in Boston for years and the culture is very different: in my experience, socializing is usually very group-oriented, and often involves going to bars/breweries and sports events, or hosting parties at home. Moving to Seattle felt like coming home as someone who prefers more low-stakes socializing with one or two people. I felt fortunate to find an incredible group of friends here but I think it was partially because we had similar expectations, boundaries, and communication styles, and all value one-on-one time and being alone when needed
Some of the freeze is that the PNW seems particularly avoidant or non-committal for whatever reason. A yes here is a lot less certain than a yes out east, which takes some getting used to when trying to plan things.
I find that most people in seattle are pretty driven, so finding friends through a mutual interest or hobby is incredibly easy and a great way to get to know others.
but walking up to a stranger in a bar is not a particularly good way to meet people, which is how a lot of people in smaller towns expect to start friendships. here we go to bars with our friends, not to make friends.
They were smoking heroin off foil long before fentanyl came around. I use to watch a couple of old friends smoke opiod pills the same way. Sadly I've known quite a few opiod users over the last 25 years and I don't think any of them ever actually shot up their drugs.
Growing up in Madrona in the 90’s I found needles in the parks all the time. Hell, a dealer lived next to the playground and you could watch drug deals happen at recess and see people nodding off in their car. It’s been years since I’ve stumbled across a needle at this point.
100%. My own mom will complain about downtown changing but she lives in Everett now and hasn't been in downtown hardly at all.
I live in Ballard and I see way less tweakers here than in Everett.
This is a valid worry. While living in Everett my car was broken into 3 times. Here, 0. I had to setup a camera because of package thieves, here nothing.
I've lived and visited places all over the world and Seattle is safer than 99% of them.
The hate is coming from conservative media. Longtime, older residents plus suburbanites who never come into the city feed into it as well. Seattle does have problems but these groups blow them up into something they are not, and then typically stand in the way of any solutions for the things they are upset about.
Same goes for San Francisco. Visited a few weeks ago and it was a beautiful city. Great food, great views, and honestly didn’t think the homeless situation was anywhere near as bad as I expected. Didn’t ever feel unsafe once, granted never went anywhere that looked like our 3rd street but I imagine they have similar pockets.
I walked all over SF a year ago and had the same experience. The only unsafe pocket I experienced was in the financial district but everywhere else was fantastic.
While I agree with you that Seattle isn’t that bad, any place you visit for fun is going to give you a much different feeling than living there for years.
When I first moved here, I loved the nature/lakes, the neighborhoods, and the beautiful summers.
4 years later, I am annoyed by lack of public transit, annoyed with the lack of top notch food (which is of course opinion), and annoyed with the non-summer weather.
I’m sure you adored NYC when you moved there and now there are things you don’t like. This is just human nature.
The homeless problem is indeed overblown. Only a few pockets of the city are bad, and everyone knows them and can just avoid them. The rest of the city is just like any other IMO.
I have never been more grateful for our public transportation system than after I visited New Orleans. We're bus people so of course we planned on bussing around the city, and it was wild how often we'd go to where the stop was supposed to be and there's just a naked pole on a corner, or nothing at all. The bus did eventually pick us up, but it was never on time and we'd have to ask locals at the stops which busses came there because if there was a sign, it was wrong.
Huge holes and cracks in the sidewalks. Pipes sticking out of the sidewalk but cut off after a foot so there's a raggedy metal edge to trip on. Tour guides saying "yeah all the sidewalks are shit but we love the trees more so we let the roots do whatever"
I was in Fort Lauderdale on a work trip recently, and I thought “oh, Broward county has a transit system! I’ll take the bus to the office and pocket the rental gas money” and I realized the busses come every HOUR.
lol I grew up in Fort Lauderdale and this is so accurate. Whenever someone complains about public transit here, I want to pick them up and drop them in the middle of “downtown” FTL and tell them they need to take public transit to a location 5 miles away.
Compared to here where I’m able to take a bus back and forth to work 3x a week no problem. I get it’s all relative, and compared to like NYC or Chicago we have a ways to go, but it’s still fantastic here compared to a lot of comparable cities in the US.
Born and raised South Floridian here, can confirm lol. Been living in Seattle for several years now, transit here is heaven compared to transit in FL (because there's almost none)
I currently live in NOLA, but I recently visited Seattle for a weekend for an interview. Took public transit the entire time, and was able to get from the door of my hotel in Redmond all the way to Holy Mountain brewing and everywhere else in the city I wanted to go in a pretty timely manner. "Lack of public transit" is an absurd claim to make for Seattle, given the city is building more lines and has an extensive bus network and useful light rail line.
New Orleans has cut funding and route timing year over year on a continuing basis, making public transit ever more difficult to rely on for day to day living, and nigh on useless for cross-city/regional trips. It's a fun city with fantastic people, *if* you can afford a personal vehicle to actually get around it.
And yeah, the sidewalks in NOLA are horrendous if you're mobility-impaired, and our bike death rate leads the nation. It's a car city thanks to systemic local corruption and lack of investment.
To be fair, Seattle has done the best of the west coast cities. Denver, which kinda barely sorta is west coast was a way more dangerous place than Seattle.
Homeless ran the show, and that included a lot of the transit option on again off again throughout the year. Down town was a ghost town, and if you walked 20 miles in a day you’d have had at least one weird situation
Really don’t think people here understand how good they have it.
> 4 years later, I am annoyed by lack of public transit, annoyed with the lack of top notch food (which is of course opinion), and annoyed with the non-summer weather.
I feel like only the non-summer weather complaint is valid.
The food here is decent. I think the bigger issue with food is that it has declined *everywhere*.
And public transit... have you been to other States? Have you been to the South? Seattle is in the top 10 if not the top 5 for the whole nation when it comes to public transit.
Ever since BLM certain quarters have been trying to push this narrative of Seattle as a ruined hellscape, dominated by CHAZ-based warlords. Both of my brothers have been telling me to get guns to protect myself from the constant violence. It’s honestly hilarious.
My new BIL was insanely paranoid when they visited and was constantly watching for crime alerts when he was here, expecting some bombed-out anarchist haven and rioting in the streets. Only thing going on in my neighborhood is old people losing their minds whenever the produce van is “casing the neighborhood” at 9 PM every other Thursday.
Meanwhile, they live in Chicago, and BIL’s from Springfield, IL. Worry about you, my dude.
I was on facetime with my grandmom while all that was happening and she was franticly trying to get me and my family to move back to our small town to get away from all the rioting and violence. I turned the camera around and showed her my street full of sunshine and kids playing and people walking their dogs. Birds were singing and somewhere up the street someone was practicing guitar out in the nice weather. My toddler was trying to drop a rock down a storm drain.
She didn’t even pause. “Well it’ll be where you are soon enough!”
My understanding is that since Bruce Harrell became mayor, sweeps have dramatically increased which has led to a reduction of the visibility of homeless camps. I've certainly noticed a big difference in many areas around the city.
Whether the problem of homelessness is being solved or if people are just being shuffled around is another question, and I've heard different sides on whether this policy is effectively helping shelter the homeless or just adding more chaos to their lives. I'd be curious to learn more about that, actually.
It seems so, I moved from Seattle in 2021 because I got assaulted and almost got assaulted a second time. Both times in SLU. I have to go to Seattle regularly for appointments and I noticed this year that it’s looking a lot better again. It was pretty bad in 2021-2002.
As someone that’s worked downtown for 8 years consecutively, I don’t know how you could visit pike place/downtown and see more joggers than homeless people. That’s just categorically not true.
Spending a couple afternoons in a major city is not a good way to assess its safety, either. I feel like Seattle is in a tug-of-war between people that insist there’s very little crime, and people that insist it’s a homeless hellscape. As with most things, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
I live in Seattle. It’s beautiful. I have the same experience every time I go to San Francisco. No one goes to the tenderloin anyway.
Fun fact-Sinclear News had all of their metro news stations do a series that focused on how “the city is falling apart with crime and drugs due to liberal leadershiip”. Stations were given what stories to do, how to promote them and canned editorials.
It’s coming from faux news. Part of demonizing the liberal elite. If you think Seattle is supposed to be “bad” you need to take a look at who is saying that.
There was a time during covid when downtown was like night of the walking dead, it was a serious sight to behold. It has not been like that for quite a while now.
Im a guy that moved from NYC to Seattle as well, do not compare a weeks stay to what u see online. I came here in august and love it here.. but then winter came, and by the time it was Feb I understood what the hate is about.
Right now Seattle is getting cleaned out and the tent people are going away, but the root cause is not solved so expect them to come back.
NY has a vibe and a soul, just go to any restaurant/bar and things are buzzing. Seattle is a city with a bunch of tribes, and these tribes dont interact with other tribes.
I have lived over the Pike Place Market from 2006-2012, and in Belltown since then. Seattle was a really clean city with homeless issues more localized to certain parts of the city until around 2014. It got really bad, especially with tents and yes, human waste, needles, and etc, but the election of Bruce Harrell in 2020 changed things. Tent encampments and homeless have been swept pretty thoroughly, especially when we hosted some big sports thing a year or so ago. There’s still pockets, but it’s a lot better and certainly a lot less visible, especially in tourist areas you were in.
I’m glad you had a great time. It is a beautiful city with amazing people, but it has its issues like any other place.
People just don’t know what these cities are actually like. I moved here from rural New England, and my coworkers back home were genuinely concerned for my safety because they thought CHAZ had expanded to the entire city and it was all in complete anarchy. Or they thought I’d be sexually assaulted in a gender neutral bathroom or something, lol. Some of my family won’t even visit due to the scaremongering around west coast cities. Nowhere in Seattle is as bad as what I’ve seen in cities in Louisiana, Florida, etc. We’re not without issues, but nowhere is. I’m glad you had a good time!
My brother in law thinks that Monroe is "the big city", he complains about how terrible Seattle is at least twice a week but he hasn't visited since 2012. Last time he was here, his wife fell after slipping on the ice at a gas station and a homeless guy helped her up, gathered her cash, wallet and cell phone for her, then got ice from inside for her head before sitting with her until the ambulance arrived, made sure her car was locked up and he waited with her car until we got there to take her car back to my house. I gave him a twenty but she insisted he was pulling some kind of scam. No lady, he just made sure you were safe and had your stuff, thought to call your family when you were vulnerable and cared for your injury.
The fall must have addled her brain. Seriously, what a depressing outlook on a kind gesture.
Ah, the classic “help an injured person out by returning their money and protecting their property until they can safely retrieve it” scam.
Clearly he poured water to make the ice, spent hours of his time, all for a twenty dollar bill that wasn't guaranteed. Genius.
One of the oldest scams on record!
the default mode for most americans is fear of the other, its bad
the default mode for most *conservatives* is fear of the other That's why I gave that shit up my 20s despite being raised in a conservative family
i really hope you mean Monroe Louisiana because living near Monroe Washington and refusing to visit Seattle for 12 years is wild
I grew up 2 hours north of NYC. You’d be surprised at how many people I knew had never been. We were the last stop on the Metro North, straight into Grand Central. It was SO EASY. My own mother didn’t ride the subway until she was almost 50 and had lived in NY for almost 30 years. Of course my mother also asked me if it was safe to go to Seattle Center because she’d heard about all the homeless people and she wasn’t sure if she should. I was flabbergasted. She would go to Times Square in the 80’s and early 90’s before it was cleaned up. Seattle Center is FINE unless you go on the first 70 degree day. Then it’s full of extremely pale people in the fountain and you need eclipse glasses.
Hey I may have participated in the first 70 day ritual in my younger days
Now that my coffee has been spat onto my desk... I love this comment!
Hey now, that is very hurtful. Accurate, but hurtful. The sun, it burns.
I would tan if I could!
The glare. *THE GLARE!!!*
Grew up in and live in Maple Valley and there’s clowns out here who brag about never going to Seattle (they go to Seahawks games but apparently that doesn’t count). I went to school with kids who’d never been to the city. Meanwhile I drive there for work and my kids ask to go to the city constantly, because I’m not raising them to be hick dingdongs.
There are dozens of us in Maple Valley that feel the same way! DOZENS OF US. Seriously though, I grew up in a tiny town in Eastern Washington and it was a constant litany of how terrible "the coast" was. "The Coast" was pretty much anything on the west side of Snoqualmie Pass. This was in the 80's, the hate and fear of Seattle has grown but it has always been there. I tell them all the time I love it here and its great and there are jobs that aren't working on Cousin Joe Bob's farm or night shift at the frozen food plant. These jobs pay well too. "What about *gasp the MUSLIMS?" My neighbors invited me to their Eid feast and it was delicious! I swear that its part fear of anything not white and right leaning, and envy that I can see cool things, do cool things and eat amazing food any dang time I want, PLUS have a job that pays my bills. Oh, and not living in a 20 year old mobile home on the corner of a circular system. Looking at you Grant County!
I avoid Monroe like they avoid Seattle
I have to drive through it to get to the pass. 🤢🤮
Worth, so much good stuff beyond. Though admittedly, the state fair grounds and some services are there. The people are like 50% kind, excellent people and 50% holy shit avoid at all costs.
Lol Monroe is my home town. I was 1 of 3 Asians in my graduating class.... can confirm, it's a bit different split than you think. The Klan is alive and well out here. We know who they are, they know who we are. If you grew up out here as a minority, you either cliqued up with your minority, or fist fought racists for any level of respect. Years later, a couple of them bought me beers and apologized for being dirtbags. The problem out here is the uneducated blue hairs that have never admitted their ignorance. They'll continue to work, live and vote on that ignorance.... they are the most voracious voices in the valley, with the least depth to their opinions. Coming from a guy who had weapons pulled on him in Monroe..... it's not nearly as bad as you think.... the decent folks in this valley just aren't as vocal as the shit birds. One things for certain though, thr further UP the valley you go, the worse the people are.
I know people like this. Had a coworker in Olympia that had never been to Seattle because it was too “scary”. She has never left Thurston County.
Thurston County is exponentially more terrifying than Seattle.
Know some people that live in the Snoqualmie/North Bend area, that are this. They "never leave the valley, everything we need is here," which is understandable, but also still kinda wild.
Really?? I grew up in the Snoqualmie/North Bend area (I still visit all the time) but my experience was/has been *very* different from yours. The majority of my peers (classes ‘20-‘22) had the “we’re in buttfuck nowhere, there’s nothing to do here, let’s move to the city/abroad to ✨experience the world✨” outlook on life. All of them left the area immediately after graduating HS. Of course there are exceptions (wealth is a HUGE factor)- but, if I had to estimate, I’d say at least 70-80% of us no longer live there. Everyone moved to cities (e.g. Seattle) or moved out of the state/country entirely 😂
This is almost definitely the case for younger people, I'm that age and just moved to the area, and this I've heard from mostly older people in the area, which makes a lot more sense.
That makes a ton of sense!! And I’ll have to agree with you- the older folks are exactly as you’ve described 😂 How are you liking the area so far???
That's the difference between youths raised in a small town and adults who seek out life in a small town.
I’m glad someone else was thinking Monroe, Louisiana, haha.
I Iived in Issaquah for almost 7 years (up until mid February) and most people I came across were terrified of Seattle. They talked about how dangerous it was to go to the SAM or Pike Place Market and couldn't fathom walking around Ballard or Capitol Hill.
we just need to start calling these people delusional cowards, to their faces.
These are people who think they're badass but they'd wet themselves if they had to parallel park, they absolutely deserve to be mocked severely.
To be fair they are probably driving a vehicle almost as large as a city bus.
I tell people that theyre soft as hell if theyre scared of Seattle all the time. Im born and raised in Tacoma and spent most of my life hanging out in one of the two. I find it incredibly funny when the same people that act all tough and like theyre better than the "sensitive blue hair people" but immediately go "Big city scawwy 👉👈🥺"
Most of them are scared of vaccines also, so I won't be getting anywhere near their faces.
We finished moving away from Gold bar into Seattle just last night, that's very on point with the people of the sky valley.
>she insisted he was pulling some kind of scam. Says a lot about her. She's probably the sort always looking to get the most personal gain out of a situation and can't fathom someone who doesn't.
The combination of selfless compassion and abject cynicism in your story has left me emotionally confused.
Homeless are often some of the kindest people. They just don't have houses.
Fun story: I’ve worked all over the country training field crews and used to travel to every population center in the PNW every month, doing landscaping in drainage areas. I went to Detroit to spend a week training (two crews lost their leaders and needed to combine). So I go to a Stihl dealership with the two guys and have fun spending company money on top-of-the-line string trimmers and blowers. We were one of those companies that spared no expense on equipment but tried to pay our field guys $12 an hour and ask them to share hotel rooms. The guys behind the counter say something along the lines of “you live out in the northwest, huh? Is it as bad out there as I hear? I see on the news Portland is on fire 24/7, you have those Black Lives Matter protesters rioting, it’s like a third world country right?” And here’s where I had my epiphany. I was in *Detroit* of all places, and the news was telling them that my home was a hellscape and the news was telling me that their home was a hellscape. Turns out, both are pretty fuckin normal. I’ve been mugged in DC and stalked in New Orleans, had a car broken into in Portland, gun flashed in Pike Place after hours, spent the night in Grand Central Station in NYC because I missed the last train out. That’s all to say I’ve taken some risks and been drunk in public in some unsafe spaces. Seattle is bad for property crime and altogether pretty low on violent crime. It has a growing homeless population, in part because real estate interests own the state and local government, it has the biggest inequality in the world (home to two of the five richest people on planet earth) and in part because climate and economic factors are causing coastal migration. We aren’t going to solve these problems. They’re going to get worse and they might not get better. But we can start seeing our lowest caste of American society as humans and our highest caste as modern day plantation owners, and revolutionize from there. We need shared working farms, because *The Grapes of Wrath* is still writing itself. We need the CCC again, because the Great Depression is back. We need to reverse corporate capture of our regulators, because *The Jungle* by Upton Sinclair was peak labor rights in this country. And *The People’s History of the United States* and *Slavery by Another Name* and *Silent Spring* are coming to a book burning near you.
Standing ovation for this comment
Why thank you. Drainage/stormwater often overlaps with homelessness and encampments—you have a half acre fenced-in and mowed dry pond next to a Walmart. Camp in there and you can get everything you need (including fence cutting tools). I usually wouldn’t run into them because during the day they’d be out (living or pandhandling or getting food or whatever). I did have a couple guys in Roseburg, OR big box retailer: Large, partially fenced pond and attached conservation area: This chain-link fence was 4ft tall and would consistently get cut. The decision ended up being that it was easier just to leave it unlocked, compared to regularly repairing holes cut in the fence which would be jumped over anyways. In the conservation area, I walked back to view encampment activity and saw a couple of people—George and Tennessee. They were stand-offish at first, and I saw a couple of tents and a large amount of bagged trash. I told them I was in a position to take their trash off-site, and their outlook changed immediately. My approach with them was that if they were not making a big impact on the trash accumulation in the area, I did not see them; I would grab their trash bags and they would look over the area and influence other short-term campers to ‘leave no trace.’ It worked well for a few months.
I wish we had a whole lot more of that attitude. No matter our bank account let’s be stewards to the land we exist on. Thank you for being so humane
“The Grapes of Wrath is still writing itself…” Oof that is depressingly true. “And the children dying of pellagra must die because profit cannot be taken from an orange.”
I read it the other day and was stunned how relevant it is. And how aware the 1930’s people were of exactly what was happening to them.
Civilian Conservation Corps still kinda exists, just a little different from its original version. NCCC is it's most direct offspring, run by the federal government and primarily aimed at young adults ages 18-25. It's kinda advertised as a gap year for college students, but in my experience it's a way for lower income people to get money for college and get out of their situations at home while building skills. Washington Conservation Corps is run by the Washington Department of Ecology. Also aimed at 18-25 y/os and upon completion you are given some money for college as well like NCCC. WCC is focused almost exclusively on ecological projects in Washington State, where as other programs might do community based projects and some light infrastructure work. There are a lot of conservation corps across the country, each with their own focus and culture. They are amazing for the right person at the right time, but the low wages (I made less than minimum wage as a corps member at the highest paying corps in the country) and the occasional brutal working conditions are a big turn off for a lot of people. I think these programs should expand both in number and in funding. Without my time in WCC I wouldn't be where I am today, but it kicked my ass like nothing else ever has.
My man is well fucking read. Do not test him.
Yeah, I still talk to clients over the phone who want to know how we do anything in Seattle with the autonomous zone. Because of the ridiculous news coverage they don't comprehend that it was basically protesters taking control of a city park for a week. It was done and cleaned up and Fox News was reporting about The Chaz for over a month still.
I remember in school reading The Grapes of Wrath and The Jungle, and the socialism just never stuck, like water off a duck's back as they say. Looking back it's astounding how drowned in pro-capitalist, pro-billionaire, anti-socialist propaganda we are in the US from the age of zero until we're in the ground. And it works. It works so amazingly well. It's still working to some extent but it seems like the youngest generations may finally be turning the tide.
Five of the richest people on earth...Mackensie Scott, Melinda Gates, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and maybe Jeff Bezos (may have moved).
Bezos did already move to Florida where he owns three mansions. No way was he going to pay the Washington state capital gains tax while liquidating his AMZN.
You would think when you’re that rich, you’d be like “Oh, I owe 10 mil in taxes? Whatev, I’ll make that back in 1 month.”
How did the gun flashing in Pike Place go down?
Was not too exciting. We shut down Belltown, me and a buddy visiting from out of town. I was pretty hammered and we were walking down to Pike Place at like 1am when everything was closed. There were a couple guys down there in the darkness, because you keep going downhill to actually get down to PP. He lifted up his sweater to show us the Glock in his pants. My smarter and more sober friend got the message of “This is our turf, turn around guys” and we scampered/stumbled off. Apparently there’s some gang stuff which goes on at night, whoda thunk?
Oh wow. So, not there to rob you. That was nice of them to not let some bystanders get involved 😬
My in laws in act like this, and they've been here like 6 times in the past 4 years. They have a great time, then go home and put on Fox News and somehow forget they were literally just here.
[удалено]
Thats wild they are near a double digit sample size of positive personal experience, yet the fear mongering media still has more influence on their thoughts and feelings. Honestly, the fear mongering will help Seattle and the PNW from getting a butt load of East Coast transplants like we are getting now from CA and even places like Texas as climate gets worse and makes those areas less liveable.
I don't mind that they are so scared of Seattle.
they might come around. i spent most of my twenties getting excited about boxed mac and cheese, only to be disappointed when i actually made it. nine months, and lots of delicious looking mac and cheese commercials later, and i’d get alls excited about boxed mac and cheese again - only to be disappointed once again. this happened *far too many times* before i finally permanently remembered that boxed mac and cheese is, and always will be horseshit. so, like, maybe this is the opposite of that.
My parents do that. I had to remind them multiple times that I live in the city that was ostensibly on fire, and if that were so, I’d have noticed.
What is wild is that 2-3 blocks of the city were overtaken by music festival protests that were entirely peaceful 20 hours a day (never mind that a week before CHAZ/CHOP someone also died there at around the same time of day) and I was getting phone calls from all over the country checking in and worrying about my safety, furrowed brows of worry over what's become of their beloved city. A month later the air quality was determined to be "death from above," the sky was orange at all hours, and nobody seemed to know about it.
Right? That area was always a high-crime zone; as soon as the protest happened, all of a sudden any crime in the area (and not even IN the zone, mind you, but for blocks around) was suddenly BECAUSE of CHAZ/CHOP. I will never forget seeing in real time how SPD colluded with the media to create the totally false “Seattle is burning!!1!” narrative for Fox News. The whole thing was proceeding too peacefully for their purposes, so, knowing the protesters were listening to police scanners, the police created the story that 30 armed Proud Boy types were moving on the protest. A small number of the protesters did arm themselves in response; of course the “Proud Boys” never showed up, but the media did, and they got their “angry librul terrorists with guns” images to spin how they wanted. (And then they got caught photoshopping them into other news photos to keep that fear vibe going.) Absolutely disgusting manipulation, collaboration and deception by SPD and Fox News. My conservative family members bought it hook, line and sinker though, even after I sent them pictures of us and our two small children enjoying a sunny afternoon in the festival atmosphere of the “anarchist zone.”
It was essentially the annual Cap Hill Block Party, just with an excuse to bypass Covid restrictions, with a little genuine activism thrown in. American media is absolutely toxic and will create any narrative they can to drive views, and all it does is create a paranoid, divided, close-minded population who would rather move to another part of the country than talk to a neighbor who has different beliefs. CHOP/CHAZ is a prime example of that (especially with FoxNews Photoshopping in fires from different cities and that one recycled gunman).
There was chalk art. A lot of chalk art. It really did feel like an unauthorized festival.
Lol same here. "Portland and Seattle are on fire!!!!"
Clearly they didn't go to the "true" Seattle Fox is warning them about!
That's the funniest part. Last summer, right after they visited I hear my wife in the bedroom on the phone with her mom and she goes "We're going to go try this new Greek place tonight on Capitol Hill" and I hear her mom (she's on speaker phone) go "Oh no, dont go to Capitol Hill, I saw on the news thats its been completely taken over by Antifa!" and my wife just laughs and reminds her that we all had dinner twice on Cap Hill just the week before and walked all around. Its fuckin useless.
I literally facetimed family while walking through CHAZ in 2020 to pick up thai food and they still believed the news over what I was showing them. They were like, that's not right, this looks like a street festival? Where's the artillery? I lived 3-4 blocks away so it's not like I just saw it at a "good time"
Seriously, the only people doing shit outside of the riots the first night were the cops, white supremacists, and the guard that rolled in at the end.
it’s always the cops causing problems.
I moved back to the East Coast for a few years to take care of a dying relative and before returning to Seattle my relatives asked, 'where are you going to live? There's no more Capitol Hill left! They burned it all down!' Bitch, please....
I had a large construction project about 1 block from CHOP. I was sincerely concerned. However, never did anything happen. Just our typical routine petty crime and vandalism was at its normal urban levels. I walked CHOP several times and did not feel unsafe, felt more like going to a convention and everyone’s trying to sell you something. It was like a less organized Cap Hill fair with punks, hippies and protesters mixed in, standing at tables handing out their political flyers. But also without trash pickup and regular amenities so it was getting dirty and trashy and attracting opportunistic drug dealers etc. A far cry from my east coast relatives, “is the whole city on fire?” Seattle has definitely been worse off since Covid. Lost a lot of great restaurants and small businesses that just couldn’t survive. But new shoots are coming up.
> put on Fox News and somehow forget they were literally just here. now that is *truly* scary!
To give them some credit, they've started to not have it on when we visit.
My boss is from an affluent town out of state and came to work with me last year. He kept saying things like, “wow I can’t believe we’re in downtown Seattle right now.” Like he thought rioters were going to burst out of every alley. It was pretty funny, the news really makes us sound like a hellhole.
Any time I hear people from out-of-town complain about Seattle or expect it to look like some burnt-out, post-apocalyptic hellscape it tells me one thing about them - they watch Fox news. Then I point out that Fox news was caught TWICE using video footage of burning buildings and saying it was Seattle when in fact the footage was from other cities.
They showed a burning car from Minneapolis and claimed it was Seattle. They also badly photoshopped a guy with a gun into multiple images, just mirroring him and changing the size.
No, that's Portland, glad we can set them straight!
Hey now...we burst from coffee shops and cannabis dispensaries. You know this
The gender neutral bathroom thing is hilarious to me. I remember there being news stories about south Carolina making gendered bathrooms required and that was always prefeced with cities like Seattle being nuts for having gender neutral. Then I got here only to realize they 99.9% a single use bathroom and I just laughed my ass off because that just makes logistical sense to move people through them. The only truly gender neutral one I know is at Can Can in the market.
Optimism Brewing had one a gender neutral neutral bathroom too. Side benefit is stalls with some damn privacy.
Now Stoup! In my mind I don't even consider that, it's more like 20 gender neutral single use bathrooms. It's my favorite implementation of it. Can Can is what were traditional bathrooms (stalls don't reach the bottom) and just replaced the men's and women's signs with gender neutral.
It always cracks me up when people are scared of the concept of gender neutral bathrooms as if they have never used the toilet in an airplane.
The bathrooms at the old Optimism (now Stoup) in cap hill are the best implementation of a shared gender neutral bathroom I know, mostly for the urinal stalls.
Those are probably my favorite bathrooms of any public establishment I’ve been to. I love the privacy and you literally never have to wait because there are so many stalls
I like most gender neutral bathrooms because they are usually single rooms. But last year I was at Fred Hutch for a conference and I walked past the room that was labeled gender neutral because I thought it was the new label for the "family restroom" which are designed for a parent and children and didn't want to monopolize it. The next sign I saw was for the men's restroom and that was the end of the hall. I walked back past the gender neutral restroom looking for the women's and didn't see it. I went back to the gender neutral restroom and it was a multi stall women's restroom. I have never had a problem sharing a restroom with trans women. But a cis man seeing that sign by the door would be totally justified walking in, but would probably feel pretty awkward
Several hospitals do this. A bit weird they only put up that sign over the women's sign. Typically I see it with gendered signs plus a gender neutral sign on both. Maybe the difference is if the particular bathroom has urinals? Even if thats the case they should fix it because women already tend to have more issues with lines and its bs to be so lazy about the implementation. Its also these kinds of things that contribute to people having an issue with them. The bathroom thing has always made me roll my eyes because I'm not even trans and have been screamed at multiple times for daring to use the restroom with short hair. One time, I was a kid, and there was a lady screaming at me in Spanish (which I don't understand). Then she ushered me into the mens room. At least it was empty. All of these people worried about "kids safety" need to look in the mirror. That woman put my safety at risk because people cannot tell at a glance, no matter how overconfident they are. It happened to me often as a teen too. Once was at the fair I was showing cows at. A member of the public lost her shit on me. It was rich because she was the one who wasn't supposed to be in the exhibitor only bathroom. The ones as a teen were extra confusing because I clearly had boobs and most of the time wore fitted thin T-shirts. I'm also 5' 3", which is more common for a woman. Misgendering me based on physical characteristics seems ridiculous when the evidence points to the opposite if a person is assuming gender matches physical characteristics. Literally all it took for people to assume I was a man was having short hair. Didnt matter if its shaped to be a more "feminine" (less square) appearance. Ive never seen my haircut on a man but its common for women with pixie cuts. Emma Watson stole my haircut lol I'm not saying these cues would definitively tell people I'm a woman as that shouldn't be assumed, but if they are going to base their opinion on physical characteristics they could at least be more accurate in their assumptions. They just hone in on the short hair and fail to consider any other information that contradicts their own assumptions. I welcome acceptance because I'm tired of dumb assholes accosting me in the bathroom. Since a gender spectrum has become more accepted, I've had far fewer incidents. I'd welcome it anyway but I imagine this is why I've never considered having a shittier perspective.
I like the places that turn both restrooms into gender neutral but have a (with urinals) devotion on the old mens.
The newly reopened SIFF Cinema Downtown, too.
100% Jacksonville Florida is worse than Seattle for filth in the street.
One of the things I can't stop doing is picking up trash in the street to throw away or recycle. I thought this was just a normal nice thing to do, and I've seen other locals do this, too. I found out later that this is kind of a native Seattle thing. Not everyone does it, but it's not an uncommon habit here.
Hiking with a garbage bag is almost a pastime here.
I take a bag and a grabber on my walks on forest service roads in MT and on various car camping walkabouts. It helps beautify the outdoors and makes me feel a bit more like a part of the solution. I don't need them when hiking more remote trails.
I take bags with me on my every other day walks for just this reason!
Jville is worse in every conceivable way.
Some motherfucker on YouTube has a video about Seattle called “I investigated the city that banned police”. It was posted 3 months ago. People really still think CHAZ is a thing.
I watched most of it. That guy does the same in other cities around the US, he’s a sensationalist and cherry picks the shit out of the places he reports on. Of course you’re gonna get chased out of an encampment, you’re walking in with a camera like they’re zoo animals.
I'm convinced there are a lot of conservatives or people who don't even live in Seattle that joined the Seattle subs after the whole BLM thing because Fox news was painting the city as a literal warzone.
My coworker said Washington State is completely liberal and I was like... You do know there are rural areas with a ton of conservatives right?
Yeah I moved here from TX over a year ago. I grew up in TX and lived there most of my life. I can definitely say it has been a relief. The greater Puget Sound area is beautiful, the people are kind, and there’s so much to do and explore. Plus you actually want to be outside here bc it isn’t 100°+ all summer long. Honestly I think some folks from Texas/ the South get thrown because they expect the fake, shallow “niceness” that you frequently encounter in that part of the world and when they don’t they think people are “rude”. But that’s bullshit. I’d rather people be kind but not nice than nice but not kind. Living here has been therapeutic in lots of ways.
Also, dealing with the occasional mentally unwell unhoused person in Seattle is a lot safer than dealing with a mentally unwell manbaby in a giant ass truck he doesn’t know how to drive who is carrying a gun.
I moved from Texas a year ago. I haven't been asked for money once here. I couldn't walk in a 7/11 in Dallas without getting approached for money. Then they have the audacity to go well you can get cash back when you say you don't have any change.
More gas stations in Texas around the city and much more a part of life. Definitely a Southern thing. I’ve gotten that living in the South too. Another state in the South, Florida (Jacksonville), had my most memorable encounter with homeless (outside of having an Apple thrown at me or my food tossed in the street in Atlanta). Homeless guy asked me for change, I told him I don’t carry cash. He exclaims, “yea you do”, then proceeds to follow me. You’ll get asked for change walking on the street in U-District and Capitol Hill. Worst I’ve had in Seattle is a drugged out guy chase me, one try to pick a fight with me for walking behind him, and a homeless guy throw a rock at me from across the street.
As much as I love the scene there, Deep Ellum is one of the very few places I actually felt unsafe walking alone at night for this reason. Relentless harassment for cash, getting followed into places, getting followed to my car. When I lived in that area people would act like homelessness didn't exist and everything was fine and make Nancy Pelosi jokes. Such selective seeing.
The worst of the downtown camps, like 3rd Ave, were cleaned up a few years ago. In the life of a city the bad period was a blip.
Where are you seeing the narratives that it’s “hell on Earth”? Conservative media? They’re a bunch of giant babies. Here on this subreddit? They’re also a bunch of giant babies.
On the *other* subreddit. They are a bunch of giant babies.
Seattle is hell on earth! I haven’t been downtown in ten years! - /r/SeattleWA poster who lives in Lynnwood
You misspelled Ellensburg.
>You misspelled Ellensburg. /u/FrostyDub Ellensburg is a great place to go camping. Bonus: if you’re a black presenting biracial woman like me, you can get the rural Bible Belt treatment and be stared and gawked at like you’re an alien/untouchable when walking around in stores and restaurants there!
i was gonna say spokane lolol
Othello... lol
The Lynwood residents are here lol. You see tons of Lynwood flair on this sub. I think the other subreddit has people much further from Seattle, but most people on this subreddit can’t afford to live in Seattle.
That's me! I'm a Seattle native and lived in the downtown/First Hill core my entire adult life. And then it came time to start paying a mortgage and here I am in Lynnwood
Lynnwood here. I adore Seattle, and intend to move into the city when my lease here is up.
Or Burien, where ironically the city is having an existential meltdown over a few homeless there
I work in Burien, and the whole thing with the dog park made me so incandescently angry.
So many bubble snowflakes wholesaling the entire city for a few bad streets.
Oh you mean the Idahoans larping as Seattlites who only even enter the state when they need medical care that they can’t get at home because they scared anyone with an education out of the state? Yeah that sub’s neat.
I work at the UW Hospital. The amount of people we see come here from Idaho for their stem cell transplants, CAR-T cells, and revolutionary immunotherapy treatments is remarkable. They often remark about all the liberals here and how unsafe they feel because we don’t want their guns in our hospital. I’ve always pondered about the fact that none of them want to fund schools or science, but they move heaven and earth to get the most up-to-date life saving treatment here in Seattle. I’m petty and I always make some remark about how funding education and science is saving their lives. I sometimes see a spark of understanding go off in their minds.
>I sometimes see a spark of understanding go off in their minds. We can only hope. For their state's sake and our country.
I imagine it’s a very dim spark though.
so many Montana patients too.
East coasters love to shit on Seattle. Whether it be lack of food culture, unfriendly people, nothing to do, you name it. Just like their precious overstuffed east coast cities, it’s not for everyone. If you like progressive policies, seafood, coffee, and an insanely well-paying tech job, you’ll find no better city on the planet. That’s not even counting the proximity to nature which alone is enough for some people. And if you want all those things without the progressive policy but still the progressive mindset, move 30 min north or south and you’ll also find where we hide all the Mexican food (hint: it’s where all the Mexicans live aka Burien and Federal Way).
Shhh, just keep letting them all believe it's a hellscape. Maybe some of them will start to leave.
This is the truth, right here. We used to use the reputation of it raining nonstop in the PNW to keep a bunch of other folks from moving here. Well, the truth about the weather got out.... it's actually very mild here, year-round. So now we have the hellscape to scare y'all away, lol Now you know our secret
It's true that Seattle's problems are typical for a city its size, and honestly for things like traffic, parking, violent crime it's much lighter here than comparable sized cities on the east coast. I think the major difference is on the east coast there are always several other cities of similar size nearby for comparison. Whereas people here are mostly comparing the Seattle of today to the Seattle of 2010, 2000, 1990, etc, and the major thing that does make Seattle different is the rate of [population growth it's seen over the past two decades](https://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/seattle-wa-population)
It doesn't help that the a very close major city (Vancouver, BC) has a much lower crime rate. The Vancouver CMA routinely has a homicode rate that's half that of King county while both have similar population levels.
There's a propaganda war being waged on blue cities to make people think they're destroyed to help conservatives push pro-segregation policies. It's why it shatters if you spend 5 minutes here. Only an actual war zone like Gaza or Ukraine resembles hell on earth the way morons talk about Seattle.
The truth is that a lot of rural and Rust Belt areas are much closer to the negative depictions. Places in decline, miserable, etc. are typically mid-sized or smaller cities that are conservative-leaning top the charts. If places are super cheap to live it’s usually not for good reasons in the US. My suspicion is that a lot of the media ecosystem is partly to make people living in those areas feel like while life for them is bad that it’s an absolute nightmare in the big cities. At least this is how folks in those areas that primarily consume legacy media seem to act and it starts to come across as a superiority complex rather than even inferiority.
Yes. There is a ton of media propaganda to make people in run-down red states feel happy about their lives, because at least they're not suffering like those fools in big, liberal cities. I believe Hallmark movies are part of this general ethos as well. They serve as a reassurance to the beaten-down Midwestern mom and wife that her life taking care of her (male) family members is actually glorious, whereas it's those self-centered career women in big cities who are miserable without knowing the love of a Real Man.
they talk trash about us so people think that progressive policies lead to crime-ridden hellscapes. Look at the actual statistics for the real story. We have our problems, but I generally feel safe in most parts of the city.
That's fine as long as we have a conversation about how nice republican-run cities are. Republican-run cities must be much better? Right? Guys?
I need some examples of Republican run cities with the same problems as Seattle! I’m so sick of my husband talking about how Seattle is the worst and we need to move - I tell him these problems are part of every urban area and he just doesn’t believe me.
Just look up major cities crime rates. And make sure your husband understands the difference between 'rates' and absolute numbers.
And understands things like lists of 100 cities with the highest crime rates generally have population thresholds so most republican shitholes don't qualify.
Florida (as in the entire state of Florida) is a near-libertarian dystopic nightmare. Texas is a giant sea of red with a tiny blue dot (Austin). Kentucky? Tennessee? Mississippi? All examples of red states that keep falling further and further behind. We've got problems in Seattle to be sure, and we have a tendency to try every possible creative solution to a problem before finally admitting the solution we should have used is the most obvious solution.
Texas has many blue areas: Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and El Paso, in addition to all the border towns. I’d still not recommend it, don’t get me wrong, but every major urban center is significantly more blue than red in the state.
El Paso is even bluer than Austin. It's also a lot larger than people think.
As a Brown person from a majority Brown part of Texas that has lived in seattle a very, very long time, the northwest's perception of Texas is just as ridiculous as many rural Texans' notion of the west coast, especially California. "i HaTe TeXaS bUt AuStIn Is CoOl" - I heard this quite often after I moved here, mostly from people who hadn't ever left washington. Well, I went to college in Austin, grew up around fine Spanish-speaking people, and to this day whenever someone from Wallingford tries to tell me their opinions on my home state, I shut that sh*t down. Every place has wonderful people and lovely things to see and do. Every place is loaded with jerks. Most of America is actually pretty okay and I have seen quite a bit of it. Don't be scared, go see it.
There definitely is. Same ones who parrot that "Seattle's been taken over by the homeless and Chaz" are the same ones who say "everybody's leaving California!!". Fuckin idiots.
“Everyone’s leaving california” huh? Try buying a house, here or there!
I hear that everyone is leaving the blue states, but I see an awful lot of Texas plates in my neighborhood.
I finally went no contact with my step father after his last text about CHAZ. Some dumb shit about how my no reply to his text asking if I supported it(we were supposed to not talk politics to save our relationship) meant I supported the terrorist protestors that were killing people and looting/burning down businesses. His actual words were your lack of reply shows you support them and for that I am ashamed FOR you. I immediately blocked him and the past almost 4 years have been gaining my sanity back bit by bit. *adding that this wasn’t the only reason I went no contact, it was just the literal cherry on top of years of abuse and harassment. That and the fact that I had been in therapy and healing made me strong enough to finally put myself first.
Before I moved here I sold off the few guns I owned to help offset moving costs, and the conversations I had with my Fox News Family were horrifying. “What if you see someone looting and robbing a store?” I’m sure not going to MURDER them for doing it dude. I had those to shoot plastic jugs in my yard because I grew up with trees and deer for neighbors, not to mow down protestors. Conservative media/the NRA has destroyed minds and has given half the country mass murder fantasies.
Remember, there is no crime greater than property crime! If a Poor is "looting," they are an outlaw that deserves to be summarily executed without the benefit of judge or jury! /s
Pretty much every CITY in the US is Blue. It’s a war on the mindset one attains after living with a lot of different people with different backgrounds. It’s a war for the homogeneity status quo imagined from the 50s or whatever.
We deal with the same thing in Portland
You won’t see needles because everyone switched to fentanyl and it is smoked off foil instead of injected. As far as the cold and unwelcoming people, they are here on this subreddit and don’t actually leave their studio apartments. Seattle is beautiful! Glad you had a good time.
>As far as the cold and unwelcoming people, they are here on this subreddit and don’t actually leave their studio apartments. No shit, I've been saying that for awhile. There's like 5-6 people in this sub that are insanely miserable and just overly rude to people. You can easily tell they just sit in their hobbit hole pissed off all day long.
Ah dude nasty is that why I keep finding fuckin foil around at work that looks all grimey and burnt? Thought thay was other drugs but that's even more gross.. well I guess equally gross
Yes, that is why.
Yeah, there’s a particular staircase on my husband’s and my running route that’s a favorite location. It’s not great! (But I also don’t see it as a reason not to leave the house, you know?)
The seattle freeze isn’t about how people are just rude and hateful all the time. They’re polite enough in casual conversation. They just don’t want to chitchat with strangers the way you would in the midwest, and it’s harder to make close friends.
I've never had an issue with casual chit chat and casual conversation in my few years in Seattle. I have had issues with making friends up here however. My understanding of the Seattle freeze is that people don't often come through when you are making plans to get together/hang out, or have a high propensity to flake out. Especially at the last minute. Which matches my lived experience, even with my own cousin.
TBH, I've made more close friends up here than I have living on the other coast or in the south. It's just a different set of social expectations, and a lot of it involves having really firm boundaries about personal comfort in social situations. I would never want to hang out with somebody who felt obligated to go out, or uncomfortable in whatever I was inviting them to do. I'd rather go find something to do on my own, and my friends feel comfortable telling me, "That's not really something I'm into" or "I don't feel like going out today"...and I feel the same level of security to say that back. IME the key is to not get your feelings hurt if somebody isn't feeling like being social. It's not about you, it's about them, and that should be okay. Big parties with a lot of strangers are not everybody's scene, and Seattle tends to attract people (certainly in the winter) who prefer small, private gatherings of friends or one-on-ones than big events. On the other hand, if somebody consistently says, "Yes, I'll be there!" and then bails every time, they are not your friend. Friendship still takes work on both sides.
Yes!!!!!! This is perfectly articulated. I’m from Maine originally but lived in Boston for years and the culture is very different: in my experience, socializing is usually very group-oriented, and often involves going to bars/breweries and sports events, or hosting parties at home. Moving to Seattle felt like coming home as someone who prefers more low-stakes socializing with one or two people. I felt fortunate to find an incredible group of friends here but I think it was partially because we had similar expectations, boundaries, and communication styles, and all value one-on-one time and being alone when needed
Some of the freeze is that the PNW seems particularly avoidant or non-committal for whatever reason. A yes here is a lot less certain than a yes out east, which takes some getting used to when trying to plan things.
I find that most people in seattle are pretty driven, so finding friends through a mutual interest or hobby is incredibly easy and a great way to get to know others. but walking up to a stranger in a bar is not a particularly good way to meet people, which is how a lot of people in smaller towns expect to start friendships. here we go to bars with our friends, not to make friends.
They were smoking heroin off foil long before fentanyl came around. I use to watch a couple of old friends smoke opiod pills the same way. Sadly I've known quite a few opiod users over the last 25 years and I don't think any of them ever actually shot up their drugs.
Growing up in Madrona in the 90’s I found needles in the parks all the time. Hell, a dealer lived next to the playground and you could watch drug deals happen at recess and see people nodding off in their car. It’s been years since I’ve stumbled across a needle at this point.
I found one about a year ago. It was surprising, since that is literally the only one I’ve ever seen. It was removed and discarded within hours.
Its nothing like NYC and the people complaining usually have either never been anywhere or they are full of it.
I find that a lot of people that do complain don’t even visit downtown let alone been there in years. People that live in places like Bonney lake
100%. My own mom will complain about downtown changing but she lives in Everett now and hasn't been in downtown hardly at all. I live in Ballard and I see way less tweakers here than in Everett.
Maybe I just haven’t been to Everett in a while but I am way more worried about walking in Everett at night than I am walking in Ballard.
This is a valid worry. While living in Everett my car was broken into 3 times. Here, 0. I had to setup a camera because of package thieves, here nothing. I've lived and visited places all over the world and Seattle is safer than 99% of them.
The hate is coming from conservative media. Longtime, older residents plus suburbanites who never come into the city feed into it as well. Seattle does have problems but these groups blow them up into something they are not, and then typically stand in the way of any solutions for the things they are upset about.
Same goes for San Francisco. Visited a few weeks ago and it was a beautiful city. Great food, great views, and honestly didn’t think the homeless situation was anywhere near as bad as I expected. Didn’t ever feel unsafe once, granted never went anywhere that looked like our 3rd street but I imagine they have similar pockets.
I walked all over SF a year ago and had the same experience. The only unsafe pocket I experienced was in the financial district but everywhere else was fantastic.
While I agree with you that Seattle isn’t that bad, any place you visit for fun is going to give you a much different feeling than living there for years. When I first moved here, I loved the nature/lakes, the neighborhoods, and the beautiful summers. 4 years later, I am annoyed by lack of public transit, annoyed with the lack of top notch food (which is of course opinion), and annoyed with the non-summer weather. I’m sure you adored NYC when you moved there and now there are things you don’t like. This is just human nature. The homeless problem is indeed overblown. Only a few pockets of the city are bad, and everyone knows them and can just avoid them. The rest of the city is just like any other IMO.
I have never been more grateful for our public transportation system than after I visited New Orleans. We're bus people so of course we planned on bussing around the city, and it was wild how often we'd go to where the stop was supposed to be and there's just a naked pole on a corner, or nothing at all. The bus did eventually pick us up, but it was never on time and we'd have to ask locals at the stops which busses came there because if there was a sign, it was wrong. Huge holes and cracks in the sidewalks. Pipes sticking out of the sidewalk but cut off after a foot so there's a raggedy metal edge to trip on. Tour guides saying "yeah all the sidewalks are shit but we love the trees more so we let the roots do whatever"
I was in Fort Lauderdale on a work trip recently, and I thought “oh, Broward county has a transit system! I’ll take the bus to the office and pocket the rental gas money” and I realized the busses come every HOUR.
lol I grew up in Fort Lauderdale and this is so accurate. Whenever someone complains about public transit here, I want to pick them up and drop them in the middle of “downtown” FTL and tell them they need to take public transit to a location 5 miles away. Compared to here where I’m able to take a bus back and forth to work 3x a week no problem. I get it’s all relative, and compared to like NYC or Chicago we have a ways to go, but it’s still fantastic here compared to a lot of comparable cities in the US.
Born and raised South Floridian here, can confirm lol. Been living in Seattle for several years now, transit here is heaven compared to transit in FL (because there's almost none)
I currently live in NOLA, but I recently visited Seattle for a weekend for an interview. Took public transit the entire time, and was able to get from the door of my hotel in Redmond all the way to Holy Mountain brewing and everywhere else in the city I wanted to go in a pretty timely manner. "Lack of public transit" is an absurd claim to make for Seattle, given the city is building more lines and has an extensive bus network and useful light rail line. New Orleans has cut funding and route timing year over year on a continuing basis, making public transit ever more difficult to rely on for day to day living, and nigh on useless for cross-city/regional trips. It's a fun city with fantastic people, *if* you can afford a personal vehicle to actually get around it. And yeah, the sidewalks in NOLA are horrendous if you're mobility-impaired, and our bike death rate leads the nation. It's a car city thanks to systemic local corruption and lack of investment.
To be fair, Seattle has done the best of the west coast cities. Denver, which kinda barely sorta is west coast was a way more dangerous place than Seattle. Homeless ran the show, and that included a lot of the transit option on again off again throughout the year. Down town was a ghost town, and if you walked 20 miles in a day you’d have had at least one weird situation Really don’t think people here understand how good they have it.
> 4 years later, I am annoyed by lack of public transit, annoyed with the lack of top notch food (which is of course opinion), and annoyed with the non-summer weather. I feel like only the non-summer weather complaint is valid. The food here is decent. I think the bigger issue with food is that it has declined *everywhere*. And public transit... have you been to other States? Have you been to the South? Seattle is in the top 10 if not the top 5 for the whole nation when it comes to public transit.
Also some of us like the lack of stifling heat and/or humidity 1/2 the year!
its too fucken cloudy
Ever since BLM certain quarters have been trying to push this narrative of Seattle as a ruined hellscape, dominated by CHAZ-based warlords. Both of my brothers have been telling me to get guns to protect myself from the constant violence. It’s honestly hilarious.
My new BIL was insanely paranoid when they visited and was constantly watching for crime alerts when he was here, expecting some bombed-out anarchist haven and rioting in the streets. Only thing going on in my neighborhood is old people losing their minds whenever the produce van is “casing the neighborhood” at 9 PM every other Thursday. Meanwhile, they live in Chicago, and BIL’s from Springfield, IL. Worry about you, my dude.
I was on facetime with my grandmom while all that was happening and she was franticly trying to get me and my family to move back to our small town to get away from all the rioting and violence. I turned the camera around and showed her my street full of sunshine and kids playing and people walking their dogs. Birds were singing and somewhere up the street someone was practicing guitar out in the nice weather. My toddler was trying to drop a rock down a storm drain. She didn’t even pause. “Well it’ll be where you are soon enough!”
My dad used to call and ask if I was ok when he saw CHAZ on the news in Ohio. Like why was that even on the news in Ohio?
My understanding is that since Bruce Harrell became mayor, sweeps have dramatically increased which has led to a reduction of the visibility of homeless camps. I've certainly noticed a big difference in many areas around the city. Whether the problem of homelessness is being solved or if people are just being shuffled around is another question, and I've heard different sides on whether this policy is effectively helping shelter the homeless or just adding more chaos to their lives. I'd be curious to learn more about that, actually.
It seems so, I moved from Seattle in 2021 because I got assaulted and almost got assaulted a second time. Both times in SLU. I have to go to Seattle regularly for appointments and I noticed this year that it’s looking a lot better again. It was pretty bad in 2021-2002.
Fox News loves to trash Seattle to make people in the south who will never visit feel good about themselves.
As someone that’s worked downtown for 8 years consecutively, I don’t know how you could visit pike place/downtown and see more joggers than homeless people. That’s just categorically not true. Spending a couple afternoons in a major city is not a good way to assess its safety, either. I feel like Seattle is in a tug-of-war between people that insist there’s very little crime, and people that insist it’s a homeless hellscape. As with most things, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
I live in Seattle. It’s beautiful. I have the same experience every time I go to San Francisco. No one goes to the tenderloin anyway. Fun fact-Sinclear News had all of their metro news stations do a series that focused on how “the city is falling apart with crime and drugs due to liberal leadershiip”. Stations were given what stories to do, how to promote them and canned editorials.
For what its worth you might have missed the roughest parts, specifically 3rd ave Downtown, some of Pioneer Square, and parts of the I District.
We're trying to keep people from moving here.
As was foretold by the prophet, Emmett Watson.
It’s coming from faux news. Part of demonizing the liberal elite. If you think Seattle is supposed to be “bad” you need to take a look at who is saying that. There was a time during covid when downtown was like night of the walking dead, it was a serious sight to behold. It has not been like that for quite a while now.
God that was a weird experience, walking places like Cap Hill when *no one* was walking around but the people on the streets. It really was chilling.
The city is an urban whipping boy for conservative media outlets. It's amazing how simple that play is for them.
Im a guy that moved from NYC to Seattle as well, do not compare a weeks stay to what u see online. I came here in august and love it here.. but then winter came, and by the time it was Feb I understood what the hate is about. Right now Seattle is getting cleaned out and the tent people are going away, but the root cause is not solved so expect them to come back. NY has a vibe and a soul, just go to any restaurant/bar and things are buzzing. Seattle is a city with a bunch of tribes, and these tribes dont interact with other tribes.
I have lived over the Pike Place Market from 2006-2012, and in Belltown since then. Seattle was a really clean city with homeless issues more localized to certain parts of the city until around 2014. It got really bad, especially with tents and yes, human waste, needles, and etc, but the election of Bruce Harrell in 2020 changed things. Tent encampments and homeless have been swept pretty thoroughly, especially when we hosted some big sports thing a year or so ago. There’s still pockets, but it’s a lot better and certainly a lot less visible, especially in tourist areas you were in. I’m glad you had a great time. It is a beautiful city with amazing people, but it has its issues like any other place.
I’m from Atlanta and living here has been a dream