Stumbled across this below - wow I had no idea. (Disclaimer: I have never been to Seattle although it is on my "short list" of places to visit.) Is this story exaggerated?
https://komonews.com/news/local/komo...I12Zcu9JrFWV3A
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Stumbled across this below - wow I had no idea. (Disclaimer: I have never been to Seattle although it is on my "short list" of places to visit.) Is this story exaggerated?
https://komonews.com/news/local/komo...I12Zcu9JrFWV3A
If it is I blame Nirvana.
...and Starbucks
I left 10 years ago because it was not longer the city in which I was born & raised.
My perspective is one of a native who lived there 40+ years so maybe I'm more cynical than others who are younger residents but I would have to say that the city has changed an IMO not for the better. I'm afraid the Seattle of my youth is and will be no more.
My family immigrated to Seattle in the 1930s. I've got great pictures of my Grandfather riding his horses down Greenwood Avenue. He and his brothers had a car park garage in downtown Seattle where freeway park now stands. I have so many great memories of growing up there, riding my horse on the beach at Carkeek Park, going to the Bite of Seattle and Hydro races at Greenlake, being able to drive from north Seattle to downtown in 20mins, not having to lock your doors and walking to school or the corner drug store, the local park with my bothers & friends without a worry (or riding our bikes everywhere).
I suppose it different everywhere now, not just a Seattle issue. After all, it's not 1970 anymore.
https://www.city-journal.org/seattle...f7aMF6RVDXmEiI
Follow the money
The "homeless service industry" has been monetized
The homeless(ness) problem in Seattle is huge.
Seattle is not dying.
It's absolutely changing too fast to keep up properly or healthily.. housing, transport, schools etc.
It has always been a boom town though. And nearly always poorly governed.
(only been here 20 years - this week in fact - so others will have far more perspective on it)
Place is totally dead.
Best to just head to Portland.
i know you don’t want change
but nothing is ever what it used to be
grab the rope, hoist yourself up
and drift like ants, in hole’s water
Aren't you getting the Sockeye's in 2020?
There can only be one Kraken and she's ours.
Shhh....
Dammit.
That's funny.
When we moved here there was book a (like I said it was a while back) we relied on somewhat - A Guide to Seattle Newcomers - almost like a Frommer's travel guide but aimed at living in the city rather than being there on vacation.
Most of it consisted of bemoaning how Microsoft and Starbucks had already ruined it... Early editions no doubt said the same about the Gold Rush, Logging, Boeing.....
When I go back to London these days I see a similar amount "Dying" I certainly don't feel at home in my home town now... I do wonder how I'd have felt about those changes if I'd stayed.
Classy.. same youtuber is also hosting a documentary entitled "Waffen SS they fought for Europe".
before the edit anyway.... original was this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j6mxshAhJtw
Good people on both sides argument?
Where your Nazi friend's film was taken has been like a middle eastern neighborhood for decades. Where I'm from in London had been a neighborhod of Caribbean immigrants for even longer... there are areas of london that are Jewish there were ones that were Huguenot French. People from all over the world have always lived there.in large numbers. The recent changes in that regard I notice most are more Europeans in London.Quote:
Give us your take on what has changed in London why doncha
Vast amounts of new construction particularly the skyscrapers in the city center mean the character of the city has changed massively, that really gets my equilibrium off whack... does even when I see a modern London skyline in a movie. It's even busier, more crowded than it was, Big new infrastructure projects... a new bridge across the Thames right where my office view was.
The problems pointed out in it are not unique to Seattle.
London also has a similar homelessness issue.. caused by similar things as here and causing similar problems.
The urban decay and general lawlessness that is tolerated is pretty shocking, and that's from someone who grew up with plenty of gunfire in Chicago. There's an attitude as if it's a badge of honor of a 'real city' to have junkies and petty crime or something. Property crime rate here is ridiculously high compared to other US cities. Just got another email about needles on the school playground today.
I step over needles to get in my car every day. Junkies like to use the corner of my parking garage. The bright orange caps make them easy to see luckily.
Many of the homeless are a result of the opiate crisis so the entities responsible there need to step up.
We have the same problem in Bellingham.
I would like to see them get very tough on crime as well as anti loitering and camping in parks/on sidewalks and illegally parked RV shitholes while at the same time beefing up the options for drug treatment, mental health treatment, housing programs, etc.
People either get with a program and stop being a nuisance or they go to jail.
Our jail is full, though. People laugh at the police here because they know they arent going to jail unless the do something big.
The millennial hipster “homeless” annoy the shit out of me though.
Holding the signs asking for weed money smoking cigarettes and using a cell phone. God Bless.
NYC did that in the late 70's. Tough on crime, lock them up. No more junkies at Grand Central for me to trip over. Worked for a while. Now the jails are still full and few were helped. Did more damage than the benefit. Money is always the answer or the excuse. I see a connection in someone worth $100 billion not paying any state income tax and the dead baby that was found in the tent camp 15. miles from his "house". You just can't collect enough in "sin taxes" to make it work at some level.
Makes sense to me. Begging is hard work.
MAGA tough?Quote:
Quote Originally Posted by mtngirl79
I would like to see them get very tough on crime
People either get with a program and stop being a nuisance or they go to jail.
I found this very interesting and amazing, and not surprising.
I lived on the streets during the mid to late 90's in Eugene OR (I was doing the ascetic mystic thing, and renounced worldiness). Back then I saw cops as the big mean dog people would sic on you if they didn't like the way you looked (even if you did nothing to deserve it). It was understood that this would happen if you made a nuisance of yourself, and pushed on the comfort zones of normal people. Even the hard core drunks who drank Cisco, knew enough to stumble from one out-of-sight spot to another, and not stay there very long, or the cops would come.
This situation baffles me, a rich city where prosecutors are releasing violent offenders, and dealers of hard drugs, it doesn't track with my experience. However, it is not surprising that a city that allows people to hold three grams of hard drugs without threat of arrest, and allow junkies to use the drugs in plain sight, would have all the problems described.
<Anecdote1>
I worked at my dad's business during summers as a teenager. Going home after work took us through Portland's skid road area. I can still remember driving through there one day when Dad hollered "pull over right now". He jumped out and told me to wait. He went over to a really scruffy-assed stumbling bum and started talking to him. They conversed for a while, Dad reached into his wallet and gave him some $$$, they shook hands and he came back. When I asked "who the hell was that?" he said "that's Einer Bay. I worked in the woods with him 20 years ago. He was one hell of a hook tender (lead man on a logging crew) until his wife ran off with another guy. He got into the bottle and never came back. Sad fuckin' situation".
</anecdote1>
<Anecdote2>
My daughter was a nurse in the Arizona penal system for several years. In her experience most of the inmates are mentally ill, and were homeless before their current stay in the joint. It becomes a revolving door - they self-medicate, make a bad decision, get locked up, can't get a job or a place to live afterward because they are mentally ill ex-cons, so they make another bad choice and end up back in the joint. Rinse and repeat
</anecdote2>
My point - too many people see homelessness and addiction as a moral failure. IMV it's a societal failure - too many homeless are self medicating their mental illness (such as vets with PTSD), or made a bad decision from which they couldn't recover, or a fast-changing economy and the skyrocketing cost of housing across the Pacific time zone forced them into camping out. You can't export the problem. We spend more on military shit than the rest of the world combined, but we can't seem to find the will or resources to get these folks off the streets.