I don't shop downtown anymore.
The guy that does my hair operates down there, and I'm still planning to see him - during daylight hours - but for the most part, I'm done. There are some splendid restaurants down there, but I can find adequate substitutes elsewhere. If I must, I can catch a weekend lunch.
From stupid-high sales tax to miserable parking, from increasing street crime to de-policing and from prices inflated by a nanny-style city government eager to seize on the latest expensive PC trend - I'm done.
The reality is there are less expensive and less painful choices at lower risk of encountering frisky street criminals - we call them "suburban malls" where parking is plentiful and free, prices are lower and the amount of hassle about what kind of bag you can have and how much the city will insist you be charged for the privilege of a bag to carry your merchandise in are simply non-problems.
For the same reason I do my grocery shopping in White Center, I'm moving my shopping for other items to suburbia with only the occasional trip for exotica into downtown (the annual gathering of the Christmas Gag Gifts at Pike Place Market, for instance).
Seattle appears eager to follow Detroit into the pit - I'm not eager to go along for the ride, or to fund it any more than I can avoid.
Hey, this is identical to the reason I moved out of Moscow on the Colorado (Austin, Texas). Fortunately my home was worth considerably more than I owed on it and the resulting cash infusion allowed me to buy another house and pay off all my bills. And like you, I can get my grocerys bagged, pay lower taxes, not be plagued with "bicycle lanes" and nose to tail traffic 24/7/365. I can watch the deer feed in my front yard with my nightvision camera and I live in the city. I had to change countys because that government had eclipsed the city of Austin in taxing the hell out of you.
ReplyDeleteWe moved away from tyhe Bay to the Hills for precisely the same reason. Over taxed and under-represented, and just plain resented by the illegals and thuglife bozos. Welcome to Free America!
ReplyDeleteCome to South King County! We have cookies!
ReplyDeleteI have to say that almost everything I miss about living in a city was actually tied to fun with friends there. Very little of what I miss can't be duplicated with friends elsewhere (or delivered by Amazon.)
ReplyDelete...I still go into Nashville for the zoo, for the Russian import store, and every now and then for the farmer's market. That's about it.
Have fun!
I lived in Seattle from 2000 to late 2006. A year & change in Green Lake, and the rest in Ballard.
ReplyDeleteI hated going downtown, even then, for most of the reasons you enumerate. And it does seem to have gotten worse. Even my fairly "progressive" in-laws have noticed, and are not pleased.
There was a lot I liked about the area, even being from SF originally. I still have many friends there. Now that I-594 has become law, I wouldn't live there again.
Wait a second, you're worried about street crime in downtown and you're switching that out for White Center? When I lived over there the only constant was the sirens and lights responding to the altogether too-frequent shootings.
ReplyDeleteLiving in *Skyway* is safer than WC and West Seattle. My wife has lived here for 15 years here and the only problem was a cheap bicycle getting taken from the driveway one day when I left the gate open.
I sort of figure that anything North of Centrallia on I5 is not worth the trouble, I've friend in Oly, but they have a vacation home close to me so there is no need to go there, I've a couple of friends in Green Lake, they'd rather come to the beach than put up with me visiting and being on edge the whole time i'm at their home. 's a pity, seattle was fun 40 years ago.
ReplyDeleteI just found this blog by accident by Googling.
ReplyDeleteYou’re a trip. We don’t have unlimited downtown parking because our real estate is expensive, and in a free market, developers choose not to build any more than they need to. In my cap hill neighborhood, developers don’t build ANY parking because they make more money building apartments.
Are you advocating for socialist free market intervention, like at your suburban shopping center, where the government specifies a minimum number of parking spaces?
The frank reality is that the cost of accommodating people like you to come and occasionally spend small amounts of money in our city is far greater than the economic value of trying to become a drive-in entertainment center for suburbanites. Please self-select yourself out.
Unlike Detroit, there are tens of thousands of people who are moving in every year, who are eager to to pay a premium for a progressive city of educated people.
Vote with your $$ and if enough folks do that, it WILL get their attention
ReplyDeleteIsn't it special how progressives always feel so grandly Progressive about themselves? It's a kind of marvelous myopia.
ReplyDelete