I wish i still drank sometimes.
Drunken Fist, Sober Beavers.Nothings tears out the social aspect of one's life quicker than not having an excuse to meet everyone at the local dunk-and-plunck. I used to love going to Katie's in San Jose, or Bernard's on Seneca here in Seattle.
I still talk to as many people as i can stand, though. Since i stopped driving things became simpler, and mulching my phone this winter caused a serindipetous ceasation of casual irritation. Now i find my self in a place where i wonder why the fuck i still live in a city with people. American people.
Good lord, America, look at yourself. How droll. How boring, how cheap and unsophisticated yet overpriced. How sexless and vague, how fixated on your apparent roguishness while jumping at shadows.
How broken.
Frodzjette KL has started a PNAC opposing the new viaduct.
My kitten is down with Mayor Nickles, sigh.This is why my little campaign fails to get anything more than the occasional wavering "oooo, i don't know; the Red Staters/Democrats will take over". Every person i've cornered on the idea of a direct democracy is frightened, scared of thier peers.
You don't trust yourselves, and with good reason. You would rather continue to let the aristocracy rule you like feudal barons than face up to owning your country's decisions. You look up to them, as if they are not only smarter than you but actually people of vision and compassion as well. Not one US politition i see today has anything like a vision. None of them want to make things more democratic, egalitarian, or even livable.
Let me predict the next Presidential tally for you.None. Not your precious Nader, or Clinton, or Clark, or Obama, or Gingrich, or Robertson, or anybody else. They don't even have the courage to fake a vision, because they don't need to. You allow them to rule, since it's better than the "other guy", even though it's plainly obvious that they're the same. Yale is Yale is Yale is not your Alma Mater, right?
Elevate Me.
click to D/L PromoInfoPetition PDF - "Common Sense"
code:So i'm going to get local for a little bit. I'm going to try to draw the picture for you of the microcosmic, the community unit that forms the building blocks of aquiescence and greed that America is built out of. This is applicable to any "market economy democratic state", which i know you like to think you live in. You don't; you live in an oligopoly cleptocracy. You're probably in the US, Britain, India, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, New Zealand or Austrailia and thus this is true. Get used to it. (If you're not, would you like a houseguest?)
If it wasn't for the railroad and Ma Bell balancing out the industrial-military we'd all be in the sugar mines already. It's a tenuous ballance though, since the other two could be imminant domained in times of war.
The Seattle skyline obscures one of the Emerald city's many gifts to the Northwest, the exposed flank of First Hill known as Yestler Terrace. Yestler Terrace is a low-income project, built sprawl style like reservation housing. Little pink ticky-tacky. This is a 100-fold improvement on the projects that used to line the street in the early days, when logs would use it as a final slide down to the timber yards and port in what is now Pioneer Square.
This was Skid Row. Never has a more obiquitous term come from the disgusting propensity of the rich to hold the working class hostage to rape the land denied them. The Company Store as municipality, this was Seattle. Like Mattewan. Like...
...we could go on for a while there.
Then, the city burned down. Go figure.
The vicious "visionary" city engineer who decided to level a massive fucking hill that was already occupied certainly didn't have any vested interests in the project, it's outcome, or line his pockets with graft from contracting the project.
Time passes. A new cabal follows the interceeding Selig years, which yeilded the Columbia Tower and King Dome.
We'll do the stadium arena dance later. Let's flash to now, when the pressing concern is the two tiers of traffic running the length of Western Street on downtowns waterfront. The Viaduct was retrofitted in 1998-9, and immediatlely tested by an earthquake which proved my theory about rehabilition of masonry: No matter how much you splint and bandaid a concrete or massonry structure it will NOT reknit like bone.
Makes sense, since it's not.
So now it's a Cypress commuter-press waiting to happen, waiting for that next good snap along the rift that tore the hole known as Puget Sound in the planets crust. It stalks drivers and tourists with 6 lanes of cracked concrete and rusting steel, waiting for the right day. To replace it, the interveining 7 years have seen Safco Field built, which is delightfully paradoxical but limited in scope for an inter-urban thruway.
Mayor Greg Nickles wants a tunnel, while
Gov. Christine Gregoire wants the Sonics to have thier new stadium. She also favors a new viaduct, since state matching funds will be used being as it's a state highway arterial, connecting 99 and 405 through downtown.
We were asked our advisory ballotted opinions, and we said build a monorail and no more stadiums. So they wasted a bunch more money studying that Simpsons episode with the monorail, then mysterious breakdowns happened on the existing monorail, which had run as an elevated rail from downtown to the Center since the World's Fair.
It was interesting that no one said anything as the project died in '05. It's still pulling money from the tax levies as i type. Be sure they won't be used for the viaduct or stadium in Renton, on Boeing land.
Why does Mr Mayor want a tunnel?
Greg's Plan to Nickle and Dime Seattle
It's called Denny Triangle now.I'm sure he has
his reasons.
My fave local tag, in lieu of the planned
RealMedia video from the Seattle Channel.Labels: development, Seattle, transportation, voting
