Guest Editorial: Emerald City enlightenment

A Seattle transplant tells it like it is

By KATE LEBO

Any visitor to Seattle can tell you what the city looks like from the Space Needle's observation deck, what it smells like from the fish stalls at the Pike Place market or how it sounds in the music venues on the Pike/Pine corridor. I'm a Vancouver native who now lives in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood, and I can tell you what a guidebook can't. These are a few of my preoccupations with my adopted city:

The 'Seattle Freeze' is real (No, it isn't)
I'm not talking about the weather. "The Seattle Freeze" is a term I encountered in the first six months of living here. It's a phrase usually used by transplants, visitors to the city and the Seattle Times Living section. It refers to the supposed odd, closed-off friendliness of Seattle residents - how we're pleasant to newcomers but not particularly inviting beyond a simple "nice to meet ya." My friend from Montana says Seattleites are like this because we don't have a neighborly culture. My friend from Massachusetts says it's because we're a passive-aggressive lot of nervous workaholics. Personally, I think the Freeze is a myth perpetuated by folks who need to get out from under their iPods and go make some friends. To them I say, come out to Ballard! In my neighborhood we'd sooner hand you a beer and clear a space for you on the porch than give you a smile that doesn't reach our eyes.

Portland is better than Seattle (No, it isn't)
I don't know if this debate ever breaks out at Vancouver dinner tables, but for a couple years the question on many a migratory young person's mind has been "Should I move to Portland or Seattle?" They ask it like it's a question of dire personal importance, something as urgent as "should I go to college/grad school?" or "is this tattoo really going to be 'me' when I'm 50?" I don't mean to be flip. I just think it's funny that when you're in your 20s it feels like a city can shape your identity as drastically as a meteor can shape the moon, so the choice of a city isn't so much a choice of where to live. It's a choice of what sort of person you're going to be. I think most people grow out of that perception-I know I did. Once I realized that Seattle is only better than Portland because I love a lot of people here, I was done arguing.

There are a lot of condos in Seattle (No kidding)
And more going up every day. I wish someone would tell me why it's a good idea to gut thriving businesses, tear down their perfectly functional mid-century building and slap a five-story condo with inch-wide balconies in its place. That exact scenario is playing out all over Seattle every single day. Developers are now eyeing the outlying neighborhoods: White Center, Beacon Hill, Interbay. I wonder what they're going to do once the last neighborhood is gentrified? Move on to Renton?

Speaking of Renton, it's just one suburb around here that's enjoying the influx of artists and entrepreneurs fleeing Seattle property prices. For a lot of folks who live in Vancouver's Uptown Village, I bet that doesn't sound so strange.

Change is good, and we'd all rather have condos than strip malls and Wal-Marts, but the general feeling around here is one of acute discomfort with all this urban growth.

The poet Richard Hugo, who was born in White Center in 1923 and wrote a lot about Puget Sound (check out "1614 Boren" and "What the Brand New Freeway Won't Go By" in particular), said that people are compelled to write poetry because it gives them a modicum of control over their surroundings. A poem can freeze a bit of time and place under the author's singular vision. Maybe that explains why Seattle tops the lists of the country's most literate cities.

Kate Lebo is a poet and freelance writer living in Seattle, Wa. She writes about food - well, pie mostly - at Good Egg Seattle.